Equality and Human Rights Commission

On 19 November 2009, Meral Hussein Ece OBE was announced as a commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Meral has been a local Councillor for 15 years and is special advisor to Nick Clegg MP on Community Cohesion and BME Communities.  She was the UK’s first female Councillor from the Turkish community. She was also a member of the Government’s Black Asian and Minority Ethnic Women’s Councillors Taskforce.

Meral has held senior roles as a local councillor, including Cabinet Member for Health & Adult Social Care at Islington Council with responsibility for health, adult social care, developing partnership work and strategy & policy and joint commissioning with Islington PCT, social care services, and was a Non-executive director of Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust .

She is an accredited local government peer reviewer for the Improvement & Development Agency (IDeA) working to improve local government performance. She has taken part in numerous peer reviews of local authorities, such as leadership, community engagement, delivering through partnerships, performance management and organisational development.

Meral was awarded an OBE in 2009 for services to local Government.

Meral does not hold any other Ministerial appointments.  She declared that she has obtained office as a Local Councillor; stood as a candidate; spoken on behalf of a party or candidate; canvassed on behalf of a party or helped at elections; made a recordable donation to a political party: all on behalf of the Liberal Democrats during the past five years, when responding to the political activity questionnaire.