Charlie Peters

Tory MPs are right to complain about the Runnymede Trust

The Runnymede Trust's Halima Begum

What’s the problem with the Runnymede Trust? More than a dozen Tory MPs have written to the Charity Commission demanding an investigation into the charity. They claim that the self-described ‘UK’s leading independent race equality think tank’ criticised the recent Downing Street-backed report into race relations ‘in bad faith’. The MPs, including Edward Leigh, Sally-Ann Hart and Imran Ahmad Khan, claim that the Trust was ‘pursuing a political agenda’.

Runnymede has hit back hard. ‘The Trust regrets the recent trend for politicians to forsake dialogue and simply file complaints against charities whose efforts to address and challenge racism they contest,’ the charity said in a statement. ‘Beloved British institutions including the National Trust and Barnardo’s have also fallen foul of this worrying trend’.

Is Begum really the right person to run a non-partisan race equality charity?

Yet while the Trust’s response was furious, it’s hard not to see that the MPs have a point. Even before the Sewell report was published, the charity wasted little time in rubbishing it. More than a week before Tony Sewell’s findings were unveiled, the charity said the report was expected to ‘downplay the role of structural and institutional racism’. The Times also reported that the charity solicited a critical response from supporters before the report was released.

The race equality charity has done some good work during the pandemic, not least in the reports it has produced on the impact of coronavirus on ethnic minorities. But its Covid-19 work also extended to joining legal action by the Good Law Project against the government over the appointment of key figures in the pandemic response, including highly effective vaccine taskforce chief Kate Bingham. 

Is this really something the Runnymede Trust should be doing? After all, it’s worth asking what effect race-related issues play in government appointments for vaccines? None at all.

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