When he took up his post as head of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission last week, Trevor Phillips joked that he had a bigger job than the Archbishop of Canterbury or Gordon Brown.

But if his boss has the biggest role, then John Wadham is quick to claim that his is the “best”. As legal director of the new commission, it falls to Wadham to devise the legal strategies to protect people against discrimination or breaches of human rights.

“This is an incredibly exciting organisation,” enthused Wadham, “and I have the best job in it. For the first time, all issues of equality – all the discrimination law strands – are together and our job is to enforce those cases and provide services to individuals, to try to make a difference to their lives.”

The £70 million commission combines the Equal Opportunities Commission, Race Relations Commission and the Disability Rights Commission. But it is also the first statutory body with a brief to enforce the Human Rights Act.

The spanking new offices, within a glass complex largely occupied by Norton Rose, the law firm, beside the Thames are a far cry from Wadham’s beginnings as a solicitor in a law centre and then at Birnbergs.

Best known for his 13 years with Liberty (legal officer, then director) and in the past two years as deputy chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, Wadham heads a team of 80 lawyers including ten in Scotland and ten in Wales. It has three arms: one in charge of policy; the second litigation – deciding what cases to take or to fund; and enforcement. The latter includes policing the public sector to ensure compliance with statutory duties over gender, race and disability in providing services.

There are obvious advantages, Wadham says, to being able to tackle discrimination holistically; a black woman facing discrimination can now bring claims over race and sex together, and not have to go to separate bodies. The obvious example is the infamous case of Kamlesh Bahl, the Law Society vice-president, who took her professional body to a tribunal.

“It will be a one-stop shop,” Wadham says. But the new Equality Act also irons out some of the red tape surrounding enforcement powers, making them easier to use. As important, discrimination on grounds of age, and sexual orientation and religion or belief – even though protected in law since 2003 – will now for the first time have a body to enforce that law.

But perhaps most critical is that the new commission has twice the funding of the three old commissions together. Who will enjoy the benefits? A large number of cases have been inherited. Arising from one of these, the commission will announce today backing for a landmark case with implications for Britain’s six million carers at the European Court of Justice. A mother of a disabled son claims she was discriminated against at work because of her child and forced to resign.

Areas of discrimination in the commission’s sights include private care homes, recently said by the courts to be outside the scope of the Human Rights Act, and the workings of the sexual orientation law. The aim, Wadham says, is to “use our powers strategically, so that we help the greatest numbers”.

Another key difference is that the new body is specifically charged to monitor human rights – the first such body with that power in Britain. At a time when there are calls for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped or amended and widespread concern that it favours the criminal and not the ordinary person – plus accusations that it has been hijacked by the lawyers – could the commission find itself a sitting target?

Wadham has a campaigning background, but he sounds like a lawyer, choosing his words with care. What has happened with the public image of the Human Rights Act is “skewed”, he argues – “only part of the picture”. Had a watchdog commission on Human Rights been set up along with the Act, as he and others then argued, things might be very different. “In the absence of the commission, there has been a lot of publicity around the difficult and controversial court cases. Had a commission been in place, it would have been able to ensure people understood that it’s not a charter for particular groups but can make a difference.”

It’s a subject close to his heart: he was instrumental in the Act’s creation, wrote a book on it and was heavily involved in its promotion, including throughout Whitehall. One problem, he says, is that because the Act came in long after the equality laws, people think that “human rights and equality are not the same thing – they are. Common to both is the concept of dignity.”

He dismisses the idea that the tribunals – already groaning under the weight of equal-pay claims – will face a whole new raft of work. “We will not bring human rights cases ourselves – although any case we bring or support may have human rights elements. But we can take enforcement action – such as judicial review where human rights are being breached.” Crucially – and resulting from an amendment to the Equality Bill pushed by Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC – this can be done without a need to pin a case on a particular victim, he says. “And the commission can intervene in other proceedings to raise human rights points, say in the Court of Appeal or House of Lords.”

It puts the new commission in “pride of place” as regards the Act, he says. Likewise Wadham himself: his slightly crumpled look may be more in tune with the battered offices he used to frequent, but his new job could not be more tailor-made.

Key facts

Born: Crystal Palace, South London
Educated: Stanley Technical School; LSE, (sociology); MSC, University of Surrey
Status: Married; two cats
Hobbies: Pilot's licence; owns one sixth of four-seater lifgt aircraft

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