Last week I noted Harriet Harman’s statement that the way the Equalities and Human Rights Commission had been set up was a mistake, though her comments were largely ignored in the furore over her Sunday Times interview that kicked off a week of Harriet-bashing in the press.

‘She now admits the way the organisation was set up was misguided and reveals she has ordered Phillips to restructure it,’ reported the Sunday Times. “We put it all into a melting pot, when in fact it needs to be distinct strands,” she says, referring to the different advocacy groups on disability, race and gender that were brought under one roof when the commission was set up. “I think the model was not one that was likely to succeed and it hasn’t.”

It was significant not only for the implications for the EHRC but because she was making exactly the same case that the Greater London Authority, under Ken Livingstone, made before the EHRC was set up:  that in moving to abolish the existing equalities organisations there would have to be dedicated representation and work streams for the different equalities strands or it would set back work on many of these issues.

I said last week that we would have to see what, if anything, the government would come up with arising from Harman’s statement. Paul Waugh’s story in the Standard yesterday confirms that Harman’s comments were not a flash in the pan.

“The chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has agreed to restructure the super-quango to appoint a senior figure to lead each area of its activities, including gay rights, disability, race and sexual equality.

“One option being discussed is a series of powerful figureheads who would each become the national voice on their issues, diluting [Trevor] Phillips’s power considerably. At the moment, he speaks for the commission on all equality issues.

“The EHRC was created only three years ago to bring together the Commission for Racial Equality, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Disability Rights Commission in a single body.”

Again, we will have to see what this means in practice. Simply having leading figures may not be enough – we’ll have to wait for more detail. But the decision to press ahead with a reorganisation in order to address the problems caused by the wrong thinking and structure at the time of the EHRC’s inception again confirms that Ken Livingstone’s administration was right to dig in on this issue, however inconvenient those views were at the time.