Trevor Phillips welcomes regulations to ban discrimination on religious grounds, but he says the government could do more

At long last the right of individuals to be protected from discrimination in the workplace on grounds of their religion or beliefs is properly enshrined in UK legislation.

It is something we at the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) wholeheartedly welcome.

I know all too well from my work, both with the Runnymede Trust and since becoming chairman of the CRE, how British Muslims continue to be vilified and discriminated against because of their religion - even more so since the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001.

Sadly, even some government ministers seek to lump Islamic extremists together with the mainstream, tolerant majority of British Muslims, pitting the politics of Islam against 'the British way' of political dialogue.

The situation is more extreme in France, where it seems that equal citizenship for Muslims is fine as long as you pretend not to be a Muslim.

Don't wear a hijab if you want to go to school or work for the French government.

In the past, the CRE has been able to take cases of religious discrimination where the religious group concerned is capable of being defined by reference to its ethnicity.

Indeed, it was CRE-backed cases that established Jews and Sikhs as recognised ethnic groups under the Race Relations Act.

Regrettably, our remit here will not change, as our powers are restricted to those set out in the Act.

It appears that the CRE's scope to offer assistance to individuals will be restricted to cases of multiple discrimination on the grounds of racial discrimination and religion or belief.

The government has stated its intention to establish a Commission for Equality and Human Rights, which will have a role in policing all anti-discrimination and human rights legislation, but this is unlikely to be in place until late 2006 at the earliest.

Until then, no public funding has been made available for representation of individuals making claims of religious discrimination in employment tribunals.

The cases we have handled that concern faith issues have established important rights - such as enabling Muslim women to wear appropriate clothing in places of work or in schools.

But their impact will always be limited if that case law cannot be supported by more general litigation and law enforcement powers.

The experience of the disability discrimination legislation brought in by the Conservative government - which then failed to provide an agency to champion complainants - was that it could not deliver, a weakness the present government put right.

It is a shame to see it now repeating the same mistake as its predecessor.

We also regret that the government has not seen fit to extend protection to outlawing discrimination in the provision of goods and services, education and housing.

The CRE has a great deal of expertise to offer in relation to the conduct of race discrimination cases.

That experience would be of value to other agencies such as law centres, Citizens Advice Bureaux and ACAS - all of whom will be better placed to offer independent advice to potential claimants under the new regulations.

While the CRE's ability to support cases of religious discrimination will continue to be limited, we do intend to work with faith and other groups to promote good relations between religious and other communities.

We hope that through our work on community cohesion, we at the CRE can play a role in promoting religious tolerance between and among different communities, and that the government will see fit to remedy the current lack of provision for supporting complainants.

Trevor Phillips is the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality

See [2003] Gazette, 11 December, page 14