1. Trevor Phillips presented Trevor Phillips on Sunday, a Sunday morning talk show on Sky News, from 2021 to 2022, and currently presents Sunday Morning on Sky News since 2023.
45 Facts About Trevor Phillips
1. 2.
Trevor Phillips was the President of the Partnership Council of the John Lewis Partnership from 2015 to 2019 and was the first external appointment for the role since 1928.
3.
Mark Trevor Phillips was born in Islington, London, the youngest of ten children.
4.
Trevor Phillips's parents emigrated from British Guiana in 1950.
5.
Trevor Phillips returned to England to study at Imperial College London, where he obtained a BSc degree in chemistry in 1975.
6.
Trevor Phillips worked initially as a researcher for London Weekend Television, before being promoted to head of current affairs in 1992, remaining in the post until 1994.
7.
Trevor Phillips produced and presented The London Programme for LWT and has worked on projects for the BBC and Channel 4.
8.
Trevor Phillips has won three Royal Television Society awards, including Documentary Series of the Year for Windrush in 1999.
9.
In March 2015, Channel 4 broadcast Things We Won't Say About Race, a feature-length documentary written and presented by Trevor Phillips and co-produced by Pepper Productions and Outline Productions.
10.
Trevor Phillips was invited to analyse and interpret the survey for the documentary What British Muslims Really Think aired April 2016, which followed similar themes to Things We Won't Say About Race relating to exploring racial truths through statistics.
11.
From 2021 to 2022, Trevor Phillips covered for Sophy Ridge's Sky News Sunday morning programme Sophy Ridge on Sunday while she was on maternity leave.
12.
Trevor Phillips's programme was temporarily rebranded as Trevor Phillips on Sunday.
13.
Trevor Phillips was chairman of the Runnymede Trust, a think-tank promoting ethnic equality, from 1993 to 1998, and a commissioner for a number of other charities.
14.
Trevor Phillips served as chairman of the London Arts Board.
15.
In 1999 Trevor Phillips ran to be Labour's candidate in the 2000 election for the first Mayor of London.
16.
Trevor Phillips described Livingstone's offer as "patronising" in a response that was seen as an accusation of racism, though Trevor Phillips later denied this.
17.
Trevor Phillips served as chairman of the Assembly until February 2003, resigning his seat to take up his appointment at the Commission for Racial Equality.
18.
In March 2020, Trevor Phillips was suspended from Labour following allegations of Islamophobia.
19.
In 2006, Livingstone accused Trevor Phillips of "pandering to the right" so much that he "would soon join the BNP".
20.
Trevor Phillips replied that his views had been "well documented" and "well supported".
21.
Trevor Phillips has made speeches stating that "it was right to ask hard questions about multicultural Britain".
22.
Trevor Phillips subsequently cited later work by, among others, Professor Eric Kaufmann of Birkbeck College, London University, showing that white and non-white segregation in London and Birmingham increased during the census period to 2011.
23.
Trevor Phillips was invited to advise the French government and in September 2007 was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.
24.
Trevor Phillips has spoken on the need for free speech to "allow people to offend each other".
25.
Trevor Phillips was responding to the growing uproar surrounding proposals to amend counter-terrorism legislation to permit 42 days' detention without charge.
26.
Trevor Phillips raised the possibility of the EHRC legally testing the legislation by judicial review.
27.
In 1996 Trevor Phillips initiated and sat on the Runnymede Trust's Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, whose report Islamophobia: a challenge for us all reviewed the state of anti-Muslim prejudice in the UK.
28.
Trevor Phillips later developed his views and in 2016, as part of his Channel 4 documentary What British Muslims Really Think, he said that the commission had correctly recognised the existence of incidents of abuse against British Muslims "but we got almost everything else wrong".
29.
Trevor Phillips went on to say that far from suggesting that Muslims as a group are in some way at fault, he questioned whether the rest of Britain needed to re-examine its own norms and behaviours.
30.
Trevor Phillips was suspended from the Labour Party pending investigation into alleged Islamophobia based on his past statements, a move which he called "Corbynista payback" and "pure political gangsterism".
31.
Labour MP Khalid Mahmood defended Trevor Phillips saying the "charges are so outlandish as to bring disrepute on all involved in making them".
32.
Trevor Phillips defended his statements on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, reiterating his view that Muslims should not be treated as a racial group and saying "Muslims are different, and in many ways I think that's admirable".
33.
Conservative Member of the House of Lords Sayeeda Warsi responded that "Trevor Phillips cannot treat Muslims as a homogenised group when it suits him, then later deny they are racialised".
34.
Trevor Phillips has pointed out that his actual remarks were reported by The Times on 27 January 2016.
35.
Trevor Phillips is chairman of Green Park Interim and Executive Recruitment, director of WebberTrevor Phillips, a data analytics provider.
36.
Trevor Phillips was the cofounder and director of Pepper Productions, an independent television production company, now dormant following the demise of co-founder Charles Armitage.
37.
Trevor Phillips has been a member of the board of the Barbican Arts Centre, the Council of Aldeburgh Music, and a trustee of the Social Mobility Foundation, among other charities.
38.
Trevor Phillips became head of the Commission for Racial Equality in 2003, and on its abolition in 2006 was appointed full-time chairman of its successor, the EHRC, which had a broader remit of combating discrimination and promoting equality across other grounds.
39.
However, they were replaced and Trevor Phillips later completed his term in September 2012.
40.
In 2010 Trevor Phillips was investigated regarding alleged attempts to influence a Parliamentary committee writing a report on him.
41.
Trevor Phillips completed his second term of office in September 2012, which, together with his term at the CRE made him the longest serving leader of any UK equality commission.
42.
In 2006 Trevor Phillips said that Britain's current approach to multiculturalism could cause Britain to "sleepwalk towards segregation".
43.
Trevor Phillips was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1999 New Year Honours for services to broadcast journalism.
44.
Trevor Phillips received a knighthood in the 2022 New Year Honours in recognition of his services to equality and human rights.
45.
Trevor Phillips married Asha Bhownagary, a Parsi child psychotherapist with Indian ancestry, in 1981 and they had two daughters, one of whom, Sushila, died in April 2021 due to anorexia.