Trevor Phillips today launched an investigation into the impact immigration makes on housing allocation as the Conservative Party called for a cap on migrants coming into the UK.

The head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has proposed a joint study with the Local Government Association (LGA) to examine whether immigrants are given any priority in the waiting list for council accommodation.

Local housing provision has become one of the most hotly contested areas of the immigration debate. Mr Phillips wants to assess comprehensively whether there is any truth behind the claim that local white families are discriminated against.

The equality chief was addressing the LGA, who today called for an overhaul in measuring the number of immigrants and for a £250 million emergency fund to help local authorities cope with the strain on public services from migration.

The EHRC head criticised David Cameron’s call for a limit on the number of immigrants arriving in the UK. However, he welcomed the Tory leader’s rejection of the racial posturing of politicians such as Michael Howard and Enoch Powell – best remembered for his controversial 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech on immigration.

Mr Phillips said: “For the first time in my adult life I heard a party leader clearly attempting to de-racialise the issue of immigration and to treat it like any other question of political and economic management.

“And given that Mr Cameron is speaking against a background in which his party’s policy inheritance is defined by Howard, Hague, Thatcher and Powell, this seems to me like a turning point in our national debate about immigration - one that will make it possible for us to speak openly and sensibly about the subject, which most of the country sees as the single-most important in politics."

While the former head of the Commission on Racial Equality, which has been superseded by the EHRC, praised the Conservatives’ analytical approach, he claimed they had misjudged their policy.

“He is asking the 21st century question about immigration. But unfortunately he is giving the 20th century answer in proposing that all of these issues can be solved by capping numbers,” Mr Phillips told LGA delegates.

He suggested that rather than slow population growth the Government should be trying to harness the economic benefits of immigration more effectively. Today’s cross-party LGA report concluded that migration benefited the country by generating £40 billion a year.

Mr Phillips accepted that this injection of cash was not necessarily being spread effectively to the areas and individuals most in need.

He claimed that what angered people was not sharing public services with migrants, but the perception that immigrants were given an unfair advantage within the services.

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