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PGI-trained expert to probe Islamophobia in Conservative Party
Singh is a former commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The ruling Conservative Party has appointed Swaran Singh, a Warwick-based professor who trained in Chandigarh and worked with children traumatised by violence in New Delhi, to chair an inquiry into Islamophobia within the party.
The inquiry was announced following increasing criticism that the party has a problem with Muslims. The inquiry, promised earlier this year, will also go into other kinds of prejudice, but soon attracted criticism from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).
Based in the Warwick Medical School, Singh is professor of social and community psychiatry. He initially trained as a surgeon and later as a psychiatrist in the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, before moving to the UK in 1991.
Conservative chairman James Clevelry said: “The Conservative Party has always worked to act swiftly when allegations have been put to us. There are a wide range of sanctions to challenge and change behaviour. The Conservative Party will never stand by when it comes to prejudice and discrimination of any kind.”
Singh is a former commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The MCB said it had “deep reservations” about Singh, and repeated its call for an independent inquiry into Islamophobia in the party. The remit of the inquiry threatens to ignore the systemic problems of Islamophobia in the party, it alleged.
MCB’s Harun Khan said: “This appointment is at risk of being seen in the same light as the Conservative Party’s customary approach to Islamophobia, that of denial, dismissal and deceit. We were promised an independent inquiry into Islamophobia specifically.”
“Now, we have a review that aims to broaden the scope to examine discrimination more generally. A laudable aim if it were not for the fact that the Conservative Party is afflicted with a particular type of bigotry which it refuses to countenance. The appointment of Professor Singh does not instil huge confidence in the process,” he said.
