2The recruitment process
33.We also have several concerns about the recruitment process. This chapter will briefly address these.
34.First, we are keen to understand whether Baroness Stowell was the Government’s first choice, or whether another candidate had been chosen beforehand but did not take up the role. Second, we are concerned that this appointment has all the signs of an ‘insider’ appointment drawn from a limited pool of candidates with a pre-determined outcome in mind.
The announcement of the candidate
35.Shortlisted candidates were interviewed on 10 November 2017. We were told by the Department that following the interview the panel were unanimous in finding three candidates appointable. These three appointable candidates met the Minister for Sport and Civil Society on 27 November “before a formal decision was taken by the Secretary of State”.32
36.We do not know when or how the final decision by the Secretary of State was taken, or what role the report of the panel’s detailed deliberations played in the final choice. We were simply told in the ‘background information’ submitted by the Department that “Baroness Stowell was announced as Ministers’ preferred candidate for the Chair of the Charity Commission following a fair, open and transparent recruitment exercise”.
37.However, the length of time between the final stage of the recruitment process and the announcement of Baroness Stowell as the Government’s preferred candidate was inexplicably long. A date (12 December 2017) for the pre-appointment hearing had been long-agreed with the Department, but was postponed at the last minute.33 The Committee Clerk was subsequently told in a phone-call on 5 December that the announcement of the preferred candidate was imminent. However, the following day this was retracted, and the hearing was postponed until the New Year.34 The unexplained oddities of the timings around the dates when Ministers were consulted suggests to us that this was not a straightforward case of the first-choice candidate being identified and proposed.
38.Andrew Hind wrote in the publication Civil Society that, according to sources close to the process, Baroness Stowell was not the favoured candidate of the independent assessment panel chaired by DCMS. ACEVO and other charities quoted this in their submission, stating: “There was another preferred candidate who is reported to be highly experienced and politically neutral. However, this person was not selected for the role by number 10.”35
39.Andrew Hind further told us that “at least one other candidate in the Public Appointments process, with outstanding experience of both charities and regulation, has been overlooked. Perhaps it is because that individual has no political connections?”36
40.While we have been told that two other candidates were deemed appointable, we have also not been given their names by the Department. We understand that for reasons of personal privacy giving out this information is difficult. Instead we asked the Secretary of State (amongst other questions): i) whether any other candidate was recommended prior to Baroness Stowell and ii) whether any candidates with regulatory and/or charities experience were interviewed, and if so, why was the preferred candidate was chosen ahead of them?37
41.The Secretary of State’s response, received on 23 February, did not seek to provide answers to these questions.
42.The fact that there was a lastminute delay in the announcement of the candidate leads us to think that a candidate (other than Baroness Stowell) was put forward, and then—for some reason—was unable to take up the post of Chair. In their written evidence to us, charities allege that Baroness Stowell was not the favoured candidate of the independent assessment panel, and that there was another preferred candidate “reported to be highly experienced and politically neutral,” but this person was not selected for the role by Ministers. We cannot assess the veracity of these claims, but we are keen to understand more about the process so we can draw our own (better-informed) conclusions and perhaps help dispel suspicion - which is, after all, one of the key purposes of pre-appointment hearings. The Department must explain why, a week after appointable candidates met the Minister (27 November), we were told (5 December) that an announcement was “imminent”, only to be told a day later that the process “was taking longer than expected” and the hearing of 12 December needed to be postponed. The Department must confirm whether or not the allegations in charities’ written evidence that Baroness Stowell was not the favoured candidate of the independent assessment panel are accurate. Further, we await the answer to the question in our letter of 22 February: whether any candidates with regulatory and/or charities experience were interviewed, and, if so, why the preferred candidate was chosen ahead of them?
Pool of candidates
43.We have informed the Department previously of our concerns about the pool from which candidates for public roles of the kind we scrutinise appear to be drawn. In a letter sent to the Secretary of State on 19 December, we highlighted our thinking about this narrow group of establishment figures. In response, Mr Hancock sent a letter setting out some new approaches being taken by DCMS regarding advertising, outreach and diversity. This is useful, but we wait to see whether these approaches produce results.
44.We put our concerns about the narrow recruitment pool to Baroness Stowell. She told us that she was “a veteran outsider”.38 We put it to her that being Leader of the House of Lords, Head of Corporate Affairs at the BBC, and Deputy Head of Staff to the Leader of the Conservative Party did not look like the CV of an “outsider.” She said that by “outsider” she meant that she had been a newcomer to the industries she worked in (for example she told us that when she joined the BBC she had “little previous experience in the broadcasting industry”) but that she went on to forge successful careers in these organisations.39
45.We were also discouraged following Baroness Stowell’s answer to a question about how she came across the role of trustee of the Transformation Trust, which she took up in January 2018.40 She said that it “was not advertised” but that she had heard about it “through a mutual friend of the person who is the chief executive of that charity”.41
46.The narrow pool of establishment figures from which some public appointments appear to be drawn does not inspire confidence that we are getting the best people for the job, or that the Government is genuinely committed to presenting a public face more representative of modern British society. If we, and more importantly the charity sector as a whole, are to be persuaded that these concerns are groundless the Secretary of State must give us further information about the two appointable candidates (without their identities being disclosed) including the nature of their previous employment, and for how long they have worked in these sectors.
47.We sought evidence from the Department that the process by which Baroness Stowell emerged as the preferred candidate for the Chair of the Charity Commission was fair, open and inclusive. The evidence has either not been provided or is unpersuasive. We do not have confidence therefore that Baroness Stowell is the best person who can be found to take on this crucial role.
32 Background information submitted by DCMS, Appendix 2.
33 In September the Department suggested a date in w/c 27 November 2017 for the hearing. To fit with the Committee’s programme, a date of 12 December was agreed mutually. On 2 and 14 November the date of 12 December was reconfirmed in separate emails by DCMS. On 23 November the Department said that the date of 12 December “may slip”. But on 29 November a further email stated that the hearing was still scheduled for 12 December. (Emails between DCMS Parliamentary Clerk and Acting Clerk, DCMS Committee, 21 September to 29 November 2017.)
34 The then Secretary of State, Rt Hon Karen Bradley MP, wrote to the Committee on 6 December informing us that the process “is taking slightly longer than we anticipated.”
37 Letter to Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, 22 February 2018
38 Q3
39 Q42
40 Qq 31-2
41 Q32
27 February 2018