Phillips to head giant equality commission

Trevor Phillips, Britain's outspoken race relations chief, is set to be handed a powerful new role as the country's first official champion of women, gay people and other groups who suffer discrimination.The head of the Commission for Racial Equality is poised to be named as the chairman of a new 'super-watchdog' that will also combat bias against a range of other people: ethnic minorities, the elderly and the disabled.

Phillips's pending appointment as leader of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) will see him given tough powers to stamp out discrimination and highlight 'problem areas' requiring tough action.

The move will be controversial. Phillips's critics claim he is too close to Tony Blair to run a politically neutral body, has not done enough to help ethnic minorities, and courts publicity by making 'grandstanding' interventions on sensitive issues such as racial segregation.

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, has accused Phillips of having moved so far in his views that he was 'pandering to the right' after the CRE chairman said the Notting Hill Carnival was not a triumph of multiculturalism.

Phillips, Blair's choice for the new post, is understood to have been picked from a shortlist that included Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights body Liberty, ex-union leader Margaret Prosser and Naaz Coker, chair of the British Refugee Council.