Good morning, colleagues and good morning to our witness, Sir William Shawcross. William, it is lovely to see you as always and thank you for finding the time to join us for what I think may be your valedictory appearance.

Yes, it will be. I am leaving next year.

Indeed. So this is on the work of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, something that, as you know, this Committee takes an interest in on behalf of Parliament and I think the country takes an interest in as well. Let me start with the general question that I hope may set the scene for this session. We have been asking witnesses this as we have looked at the landscape of proprietary ethics and the wider standards issue. Why are standards—good standards, transparent standards, high standards, if you will—in public life important, and what is the purpose of an effective standards system?

As you know, standards are important because without standards you cannot measure performance and you cannot measure whether people in government and supporting government are responding to events and crises properly. We are lucky that the standards were laid down by Lord Nolan in his extraordinary report in 1995, and I always refer to that. I am always conscious of that in everything I have done in public life in the last 10 years. The result of his report was to set up many of the present ethics bodies, which look at and rate standards in public life. Basically what he did with his report, as you know, was to enunciate seven principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership, and all those principles together allow one to work out how far you can trust people and whether people who are in public life are indeed abiding by those principles. If people in public life do not discharge their powers in a way that do abide by those principles, democratic consent can be undermined. Standards as set out by Nolan create expectations of how power should be used and that those in public life act with integrity, honesty and are open and accountable for their actions. It is rather wonderful that these principles were enunciated in 1995 and they are still the yardstick by which public life is gathered. I think we should be proud of that.

Yes. What is your assessment of the current standards system in the UK?

I have been working in public service now for 10 years, starting with six years at the Charity Commission and then working on Prevent and, as you know, on Gaddafi’s appalling behaviour in Northern Ireland, and now four years in this wonderful job. I think despite what one reads every day in the press, which are very often a lot of very important concerns and criticisms, my own view is that the current system is pretty robust and that in public appointments there have been occasional breaches of the rules but officials, politicians and others involved in public life adhere to the Nolan principles still and to the high expectations of ethical conduct. There is another phrase that I like to remember as well as Nolan. It is a phrase from C. S. Lewis, “Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.”

We should all abide by that. I think the Committee would be interested to hear your observations on this. Nolan was written at a time that predates social media. Has social media in any way helped the public’s understanding of how public life and governance is discharged in this country, or has it distorted the narrative? I am told “rage bait” is now the word of the year according to the “Oxford English Dictionary”.

I know. Wasn’t that horrible?

It is a terrible term, but we all know what it means. It is making it less attractive, is it not, for people to step forward to serve because of often unwarranted and baseless critical scrutiny from particularly the populist trends of the political commentariat?

I think you are right that social media is a new and extraordinarily powerful phenomenon that has some merits. It brings information and increases transparency in some ways and makes information more widely available, but it is also a curse. It excites aggressive and exaggerated opinions, you are completely correct, and particularly where children are concerned I think it is something that a lot of people are looking at to see how dangerous it is. It would be wrong to say the jury is out. A lot of concern is rightly being expressed about the effects of social media.

Good morning, Sir William. My question is about the Government’s replacement of the Committee on Standards in Public Life with the EIC, the Ethics and Integrity Commission. What is your view on this change?

When I heard before the election that the Labour party was thinking of this my instinctive reaction was it is not necessary because the Committee on Standards in Public Life under Doug Chalmers for several years has done an extremely good job. None the less the Labour party was elected and this was a manifesto promise, so I did what I could to work with new Ministers on working out how the new Ethics and Integrity Commission could be best implemented. I recommended to Ministers and officials that it should be based still on the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s model for investigating general issues in the management of ethical standards, and I was pleased that the Government’s commission as it developed over the course of about a year, took it carefully, took on this role from the Committee on Standards in Public Life with the additional role of advising public authorities on codes of conduct, and will report to the Prime Minister every year on the health of standards in public life, which I think could be a useful yardstick.

The EIC now has a more formal role in terms of co-ordinating the various standards bodies that exist. Do you welcome that more formal role of co-ordinating that the EIC has?

It is in its initial stages. We have not had very many meetings yet, but I think that the benefit of it is that it allows chairs and office holders of the different bodies involved in ethical standards to share their knowledge in particular areas within the standards system. That has two benefits. It helps one understand the broader issues at play in the system and concerns that may be developing as from social media, and it improves the links between different bodies. We have only had two meetings so far of the more formal network body, but it seems that it will work. It depends of course on the members being diligent, and fortunately it is being chaired by Doug Chalmers who as I said has already chaired the Committee on Standards in Public Life very well.

Are there any other bodies that deal with standards that should be part of this network that are not currently?

I am sure that is something that will remain under consideration, and should remain under consideration, by the chair of the commission. There is a balance to be struck, I suppose, between including as many bodies as possible and also having a small enough group to have a proper discourse and conversation between them. As I understand it the new commission does have the ability to invite non-members to speak on issues that are relevant to it and to the broader network, so that may be the way in which it develops—that people are invited to speak rather than overloading it with too many members. That might be a better way.

In terms of the office and the role that you hold now, how do you anticipate the relationship with the EIC evolving over time?

I have no reason to suppose that it will not evolve well. As I say, Doug Chalmers has done his job very well with the committee, and he and I work well together, not least because our offices are next door to each other. I also work closely with the First Civil Service Commissioner, Gisela Stuart, and with others within the network of standards bodies. The new commission’s role in appointments should be similar to its general role—identifying gaps and weaknesses in present systems and making recommendations where appropriate. I do not think there are any particular issues on which advice is needed currently, but things will change and will develop and I have every confidence that it is going well so far, but it is in its infancy.

If you fast-forward five or 10 years how would you define success or failure of EIC?

That is a very difficult question. Who knows what the landscape is going to be like in five years’ time but I think it will look very much like the success looked for the Committee on Standards in Public Life, whose work it has taken on. It will need to encourage communication between all the ethics bodies, identify gaps and weakness and propose solutions, and promote responsibility across government for high standards of ethical conduct. Maintaining standards—I think this is the important point—is something that, as Lord Nolan showed, is not a one-off. It is something that has to be done day by day.

The Government have been very clear about their wider commitment to restore confidence in government and ensure Ministers are held to the highest standards beyond the establishment of the EIC. What other reforms do you think might be necessary to achieve that goal?

We must always be looking for new measures that might improve such standards, as you say, but the establishment of the commission itself is very recent. It is a major change and a very big change, and I think its implementation should be closely monitored and we should see how it beds in before embarking on any further changes. Maybe in a year’s time Doug Chalmers and other members of the advisory groups will see where the weaknesses or gaps are and suggest further changes, but I do not think it is easy or sensible to suggest changes now when this new system has only just started.

That is helpful. One last question from me. If the opinion polls are to be believed there are going to be some radical changes after the next election, with perhaps a whole new way of doing government. Do you think our system of standards in public life are sufficiently robust to deal with new ways of doing government that might be in place after the next election?

I do not think it is my job to speculate on what might be in play after the next election, but I think that our standards in public life are pretty robust at the moment, and I am very honoured and pleased to have been able to take part in implementing them in the last four years.

A week is a long time in politics and four years even longer. Just before I bring in Mr Carling, could you just say a word or two about the sufficiency of the robustness of the guard rails with regards to senior civil servants and in the arena of local government as well?

I am not quite sure what you mean by guard rails in this context.

We are inclined to narrow down the debate and discussion of the expectation of standards and probity and transparency and so on to Members of Parliament and Ministers, but there is an expectation, is there not, of all people in the public realm, be they civil servants who are going off to pastures new or those discharging very important jobs within their Departments and also in the arena of local government? That is going to become even more important particularly as we move towards unitary councils and combined authorities and so on. The coalition Government removed the Standards Board for local government in 2010-11. Do you think there is sufficient weight of emphasis and interest in standards in the civil service and in local government, as there is in Westminster?

I think there is. Obviously I spend more time in Westminster than I do in local government and I cannot pretend to be adequately qualified to lay down the law about what is going on in local government, but at the risk of being repetitive I think that the standards set up by Lord Nolan have survived extremely well. In the campaigns that I have been involved in in the last four years the vast majority of them work well. A lot of them involve people in local government applying for jobs and so on, and they all seem to understand both the merits and the requirements of public service. In 2023-24, for example, there were over 1,000 appointments or reappointments to public roles that came through my office, and I was consulted on appointments without competition only 53 times. That shows that the competitive process is alive and kicking. The main issue is timeliness, which I suspect we may get to—that everything takes much too long still. I do not think I am the right person to comment in detail on local government but what I see, and what I have seen through the last 10 years and also in the Charity Commission, is that people in public service are well aware of the Nolan principles. They may not call them Nolan but they are well aware of the principles.

Which I suppose underscores how well embedded the Nolan principles are in the public service psyche.

Yes. I think it is extraordinary. Nolan did a great service.

He did. On the subject of great service let us turn to Sam Carling.

Sir William, now you have been in post for four years and are nearing the end of your term, what is your assessment more broadly of the public appointment process we have in the UK and its efficiency and structure?

I said a little bit about that in my previous answer, but as I say we have roughly 1,000 appointments every year and reappointments and only 53 were done by the Government without competition, which is a very small number. Timeliness is a serious issue still. My job as commissioner is to provide independent assurance in the whole appointments process. I do not make appointments. Final decisions in the appointment processes are of course for Ministers, but I think the public can be assured that in most cases the system that we run is rigorous in its assessment of the merits of all candidates. Candidates are always well tested, I think, and again I repeat that Lord Nolan’s standards are maintained well still.

That is helpful. What do you think the key points in the system are where your role and your office adds value to it?

We are there throughout the system, throughout the appointment process of the major appointments, from the Chairman of the BBC down to less public appointments in the NHS in Wales—they are still important but less public. We are there providing assurance at all times and my office brings me requests from Government if they want to bypass some element of the appointment process, which I consider very carefully before saying yes. It does not happen very often and sometimes I think it is inappropriate, but often it is a question of time and timeliness, which I always think is very important. I am sorry to be repetitive, and I do not want to be complacent, but I think the process of public appointments as it has been created still works well.

That is very useful feedback. I think you recently described the role of commissioner—you touched on this just now—as being to “provide public assurance that these appointments are made through a fair and open process, based on merit.” Do you feel that the public are assured of that? If not, why not, and how might we be able to change that?

That is very hard to answer, how well assured the public is on any of these issues. I think your question has great merit. It is probably not well enough, always, and that is perhaps because my office should be doing more to explain the nature of the public appointments system and the fact that, without being complacent, it does seem to still work well and properly. I think the answer to your question is that I and my successor should probably work harder to bring the whole process to public attention, and have more hearings like this in front of your great Committee. It is really a question of public attention and seeing how to focus that.

Sir William, thank you for attending.

It is a pleasure.

You noted your disappointment that breaches you identified in your 2022-23 report were repeated again. Changes have been made to the public appointments Order in Council. What was your view of these changes in relation to your disappointment with repeated breaches?

The breaches are not repeated. They are there, and I complain about them and protest when they happen, but it is not as if it happens every day. As I said there are a very few in a thousand. It is an important question that you ask. The Order in Council is updated regularly, and that update ensures that the list of regulated bodies remains current with new bodies added and defunct bodies removed. For example, in the most recent update the Windrush Commissioner was added to the list and the organising committee of the 2022 Commonwealth Games was removed. There is always an attempt to keep the list up to date with changes in society.

In the case of the specified employee posts removed from your remit that you have just mentioned, who does the oversight of those appointments now fall to, and does it concern you, or are you quite pleased that they are no longer part of—

Sometimes these things should have been removed earlier. The ones you talk about did not cause me great concern. The two posts that were removed from the Order in Council were the executive chairs of UK research councils, such as the Medical Research Council—a very important body, but I recommended that they be removed following the suggestion of a 2022 review into UK Research and Innovation. I am always conscious that oversight should be provided where it is needed and not provided superfluously. Given the close relationship between UK Research and Innovation and these research councils this was, I thought, a case of double regulation, which is always to be avoided, but I do continue to regulate appointments to the board of UK Research and Innovation, and I think that does provide sufficient oversight. I hope that alleviates your concern.

Yes. Would you expect further roles and posts to be removed before the end of your term?

Before the end of my term I do not know. I have no reason to suppose there is going to be massive removal of posts in the next couple of months. The new governance code took on several of the recommendations I made to the Government in my 2023-24 report and during the consultation process. I was particularly pleased to see the publication of the Prime Minister’s interest list and a reference to this list in the new code. Prime Ministers should always have interests in who is appointed to public positions, but I think it is much better that their list be open and transparent so that anyone applying for a job will know whether or not the Prime Minister and No. 10 are going to be taking an interest in it as well as the ordinary Departments, which was not clear before this. The other thing that I am glad has happened is that this Government have retained the posts of senior independent panel members for the most important jobs, such as Chairman of the BBC or Chairman of Ofcom. They were considering removing the so-called SIPM, and I urged them not to do so and they have kept them, which I am glad about.

On the governance code and its revision, you have outlined what you were pleased to see. Is there anything you were disappointed that was not included?

As I mentioned earlier I am concerned still that timeliness is such an issue. There is not enough swiftness and I was a little bit disappointed that the timeliness aim was upgraded to an expectation but not a formal target. I think it should be a target that all competition should be completed within three months for ordinary contests and up to four months, which is a long time, for ones that involve the most important ones such as Chair of the BBC.

On the timeliness bit, timeliness and thoroughness are often seen as being enemies of each other and mutually exclusive. It does not have to be that way, does it?

No, I agree with you. It does not have to be that way.

What could be done to make it more timely? I suppose, as well, because the people who are likely to be applying may have interests in other things, they may have other opportunities in front of them and it is unfair to keep them dangling as it cranks through various iterations of oversight.

That is absolutely correct. You have put your finger on one of the serious issues and consequences of sloth, if that is not too strong a word, or lack of timeliness to be more polite. It discourages good people from outside the system, not in public service yet, from applying for jobs. If they know it is going to take three or four months and possibly longer they may say, “Well, there is a job in the private sector they will offer me next week.” That is a serious issue and we cannot expect public appointments to be done always within a week, or at all probably within a week, because they are public appointments and they must be taken seriously. It is very important that the timeliness thing should be improved, and in my last few months I will work hard on that.

Might it be your assessment that the best people are likely to be more competitively attractive for either other public appointments or things in the private or the third sector?

What do you mean by more competitively attractive?

If somebody is in that niche of being appointable to a public body role they are clearly going to have a certain skillset which is likely to be in demand or of interest to the wider private sector, the third sector, and maybe even possibly the international arena. My question is, do we run the risk of—well, I am not going to use the term second- or third-raters because I do not mean it in that way, but unless there is a timeliness approach and the system gets faster while maintaining its thoroughness, are we in danger of not getting the top of the tree, the very best people?

There is always that danger. You are completely correct, and the delay in the system is one thing that discourages good people from seeking public appointments. There are other disincentives also. Not everybody wants to be in public service, and some people would consider that the payment in public service is inadequate for their needs if they have large families and so on. That is a serious issue that cannot be easily changed because public expenditure is already very high, as we see every day in arguments in Parliament and elsewhere in the press and so on. Competing for the best people is a very difficult job, and you want to get people who are very able and also want to contribute something to their country. That sense of duty or contribution is crucial. One of my jobs has been to try to emphasise that and make people I meet and talk to and lecture to understand that public service is very gratifying. This is a great country; it has had a wonderful history and its future greatness depends on people of merit and dedication taking part in public service.

I could not agree with you more. Thank you for that.

Good morning, Sir William. You referenced earlier what I would describe as a relatively minor change that the Government have made, changing something from an aim to an expectation around how long it will take to conclude these campaigns. You quite reasonably said that you think it should be a firm target. I note that in the 2023-24 report only 13% of campaigns or recruitment processes met the aim to conclude within three months. Do you expect that change from an aim to an expectation to have any difference whatsoever in terms of improving the timeliness?

It is difficult to know. I said earlier that I thought it should have been a target, not an expectation, and that we need to be more urgent on these issues, and that is something that I want to stress to all Departments. Often things get slowed down in Departments. Some Departments are more efficient than others, and the ones that are not so efficient should be chased more by me and others. I think that the change that you have just mentioned to the code will only have an impact if other changes to the code are also used sensibly. This is quite a controversial issue, but under the new code Government Ministers now have the option to run simpler campaigns in which they are consulted at the beginning and the end rather than at every stage of the campaign. I think that Ministers should realise and always remember that they are the crucial people, and it is for Ministers to choose people whom they think suit their priorities. I would not want this change to enable Ministers to sit back and just leave it all to officials. It should be Ministers and elected politicians who remain in charge of the campaigns. If the fact that they do not have to be consulted every week on the progress of the campaign speeds it up and they can remain closely involved in the progress of a campaign, then that would help.

It is helpful to know what other changes you think will have more of an impact. Is there anything that the Government are not doing or have not made a commitment to do that you think they should consider to improve the timeliness?

I think that every Minister should make sure that his or her Department takes on board the urgency of campaigns and completing campaigns on time. That is very important because not all Ministers and Departments do that, and there is a certain lassitude in some Departments. That is a very serious issue.

You discussed earlier the Government accepting a recommendation to publish the list of appointments the Prime Minister has an interest in. The involvement of the Prime Minister in an appointment process was cited as one of the main factors that extended the length of campaigns. Do you think this change will address that, and if not do you think there is more that could be done?

Yes, I am sure there is more that can be done, to answer that question. The principal benefit of this, as I think I mentioned earlier—of having the Prime Minister’s list published—is greater transparency, and candidates and everyone else knows which appointments the current Prime Minister is most interested in. That I think is entirely appropriate. Applicants have a right to know that. Transparency in itself can lead to improved timeliness. There is a worry that I have read about and talked about that the involvement of the Prime Minister in an appointments process is and can be a major reason for more delay. As I say, I do believe that the Prime Minister has an absolute right to be involved in the appointments process and that his or her involvement should be made clear to potential applicants, and that applicants have a right to know that but it must not be used as a reason for further delay. I completely agree with you about that.

Moving on to the annual report, we were expecting to be able to question you about the 2024-25 report at this session but unfortunately that has not been published yet. Can you explain for us why that is the case?

I share your disappointment. My report is ready. It was written by my brilliant staff for me several weeks ago and it is ready to go, but it has been held up by the Cabinet Office because it involves data from the—

Another timeliness issue.

Indeed. Absolutely. You are quite right. I should have mentioned that myself. You caught me there. It involves data from the Cabinet Office’s report on diversity in public appointments and I am not allowed to publish my report until the Cabinet Office have published their report, which includes this data. It is very annoying and I wish that you could have that report to consider, not just the report of the previous year. I am sorry about that. I apologise, and I have written to the Minister for the Cabinet Office about this matter. I hope this august Committee will get it soon, but obviously not soon enough for me to comment on it today.

Thank you. I think we would be interested even in advance of the publication if you could provide us with an overview of the public appointments for the last year since that 2023-24 report.

Yes. My findings last year were pretty similar to those in the previous year, which is the 2023-24 report that you have. The system largely works well, though timeliness and swiftness remain a serious issue. There was a phrase I learnt once from a senior policeman that in all these issues everyone needs to show grip and pace. Grip and pace is absolutely crucial in public appointments, and it is not always implemented and fulfilled properly. Apart from timeliness, one of the concerns that I have in diversity is that people with disabilities continue to be very much under-represented among public appointees, and in my last few months I want to try to work harder to see that people with disabilities are treated more generously and that they have wider knowledge of the opportunities open to them.

I think we may also write to the Cabinet Office to jog their elbow. Maybe you should abide by the advice of the Duke of Wellington and just publish and be damned.

I will consider that. I would enjoy doing that—I am not sure what the consequences would be with the Cabinet Office, but I will try to find out and I will let you know.

Can I invite you to give an observation? You have given the reason for the delay in the publication, which is clearly out of your hands. There is a strain of thought among lots of people that the agenda of diversity sometimes results in not securing the best person for the role to either meet a target or just to have plurality. Can you think of any appointments that have been urged and pressed where that has been your concern, or is it a misplaced concern that some people in society have?

That is a very important issue you are describing and discussing, but what question is it specifically you want me to answer?

In essence, how much of a concern should society have that in the interests of pursuing the diversity agenda people who are not best suited to fulfil a particular role are getting it merely because they tick the box of diversity, rather than being the most appropriate person for the job?

That is a very important and neuralgic issue in public life. I am required under the Equalities Act to promote diversity and I take that requirement very seriously, but the complications that you have just mentioned can be very serious, and I have always made it clear that as well as promoting diversity I want to make sure that every appointment is made on the basis of merit.

That is a laudable overarching approach. Do you find that echoed through the corridors of Whitehall?

I would not say that I have heard it echoed, but I have not been listening for echo. What you have raised is a very serious issue that requires serious discussion and I am glad you brought it up. Thank you.

You mentioned diversity, and the current report is not out, so I will not re-ask you all the questions around that. Touching on where you mentioned those with disabilities, what measures need to be taken to improve appointments?

Generally?

Just around areas in terms of diversity.

The whole public appointments process should be spoken about more often by me and by my staff and by others in government. It is extremely important that everyone should know what the opportunities are, and for everybody, whatever their ethnicity, whatever their sexual preferences, everyone should know that these jobs are open to everyone. That is very important. There is a lot of publicity about that in the press all the time. I am not worried that it is a major concern that the knowledge is inadequate, but it is certainly a responsibility for my office to make sure that people do know that.

I sense a little bit of polite and mild frustration at the Cabinet Office having not yet signed off on your diversity data. Why do you think a Minister needs to sign off on that? Surely it is not contentious.

You would have to ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office that.

I think the Chair may well be doing that. In terms of that frustration, do ,you think the Cabinet Office aids your work or is at best a mild handbrake?

No, I have found the Cabinet Office to be pretty helpful and supportive particularly when there are difficult issues. I have not found them to be a hindrance at all, I am glad to say. I could have found that but I have not.

I will paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “We are from the Cabinet Office. We are here to help.” Usually the words that send a shiver down somebody’s spine somewhere.

Quoting Ronald Reagan.

Exactly, yes. Mr Taylor.

It is not easy to set those breaches aside. I found three breaches in the conduct of this campaign. I have never found three breaches in the conduct of any other campaign in the last four and a half years. The first breach was that the Secretary of State did not declare and resolve appropriately the donations that she had received from Mr Kogan before appointing him. Secondly, the donations were not discussed with Mr Kogan at his panel interview, and thirdly the Department did not disclose Mr Kogan’s political activity in the appropriate manner. These were three serious breaches and it was very disturbing to find them.

I will refer back to my report. That was a very complex campaign, a very unusual campaign, badly run, and a lot of it was inappropriate. My report sets out clearly both the process of the campaign and my conclusions. I describe the process as having a number of unsatisfactory features. It did not accord with best practice. Indeed, in my opinion it is the worst appointment process that I have seen.

Absolutely.

Usually, as I have tried to say, the processes are conducted very straightforwardly, simply and appropriately. This was an outlier, I am glad to say. I have seen no other campaign run like this one, which is a very good thing. In the campaigns that I have seen, none of them have had three breaches of the governance code and I continue to receive only a very small number of complaints about the conduct of campaigns. In 2023-24, which is the last year I can talk to, I am afraid, because of the Cabinet Office delay, we made over 1,000 appointments and reappointments. I only received 10 complaints about those processes, and in that year I found six breaches of the governance code in total. That is pretty good and reassuring. Again, I am always worried about not being complacent and one always must be alert—one always has to look for concerns and to chase them if there are any—but the numbers that we found in 2023-24, 10 complaints and only six breaches of the governance code, were was pretty good.

I do not think that is my department. I think the Government should decide that. The point was that these levels were there and they were ignored, and the Secretary of State should have declared and resolved appropriately the donation she received from Mr Kogan at the right time, before appointing him.

I think that a Secretary of State and others should be very observant and very careful when they are making appointments to check whether the potential appointee has or has not contributed to any campaigns of theirs, particularly when the appointee was widely known to be a generous Labour supporter, which is perfectly within his right. Any Minister or Secretary of State considering appointing such a person should do due diligence and check if they had received any contributions from such a generous donor.

Exactly.

Again, I do not want to add to my report, but I hope you think it was a very thorough report. Even some Government Ministers said it was. You must remember that I do not make appointments. Ministers are in power to identify the best candidates for every role, and the governance code provides a regulatory framework for the process that allows Ministers to do that. The basic point is that this was not a good campaign. It was not properly run. It was not in keeping with the governance code, but I am glad to say it is not typical of the appointments processes in my own experience.

I do not know the answer to that, but it is a good question and I will check it and give you the answer. I do not know the precise number.

I cannot remember exact examples, and I will get back to you, but the point about this campaign was that it was poorly judged and run.

Yes.

Can we just pause there for a moment, Sir William? You have told this Committee that in the last year you and colleagues oversaw about 1,000 appointments and that the Kogan appointment was—I have taken a manuscript note of how you have described it—"the worst you have seen”, “a bad campaign”, “not in keeping with the code”, “badly run”, “poorly judged”. The record will show that those are the terms that you have described it in. In the interests of what the Prime Minister told the country at the time of the general election and immediately thereafter about restoring dignity, transparency and so on to public life—and given the importance of the enduring nature of the Nolan principles, which this Committee endorses—rather than resemble the appointment of Kogan, which does seem to resemble a mafia appointment in Sicily sometime in the 1950s, would the Government not just be better advised in the interests of reputation and public confidence, and to give confidence to other applicants for other things, that it must not just be a political crony, supporter, friend, ally, and that the whole process should be rerun from scratch and done properly? Is there merit in that?

I think that is not a decision that I can make.

No, William, I am aware it is not a decision for you, but you are a wily old bird, if I can use that phrase, in these matters.

That is very kind of you, Chair.

I mean that in a complimentary way.

I know you do.

Your emotional attachment, if I can use that phrase, to high standards is clear and demonstrable. This process offends against all of that. You have told this Committee that the best future of this country is dependent so much upon standards and getting the right people to do the right thing in the right way, so while I understand entirely that you cannot make this recommendation and you cannot make this decision, against that backdrop and the enduring attractiveness of Nolan and the relevance of Nolan would it be your assessment that there would be merit for the reputation of good governance of the United Kingdom for this process to be rerun?

Mr Chair, that is not for me to say. You could recommend it in your position. My role and my duty was to examine this appointment as others, all others, to find out the truth of what had happened. I think we have established the truth, and indeed some of the principals have said that it was a very thorough and credible report. What the Government do on it is up to them, and I hope that they have taken it seriously and understood the consequences of it, but it is not for me to say whether the whole competition should be rerun.

Let me try to ask not the same question but a question in a similar vein. Should we be concerned, should Parliament be concerned—and this would apply to any Government—that a message goes out that if you want to be successful in the application process, bung a few quid to the party in government and you enhance your chance of securing the position? That cannot be helpful to the good governance of this country.

The way you describe it is that it is very unhelpful to good governance. I completely agree with you. One must always remember that people are allowed to make contributions to the political party of their choice.

Yes, I understand that entirely.

Making political contributions should not be a bar to appointments. The bar should be that everything should be done transparently, and in this case there was among other problems a lack of transparency and in particular by the Secretary of State and by Mr Kogan himself. That is the problem, and I support your concern and agree with your concern about this whole process. That is why we published such a detailed and, dare I say, damning report about the whole process. What political leaders decide to do with it is up to them, not really up to me now.

Just before I bring in Mr Lamb, Mr Taylor asked whether the reasons given by Ministers were credible. The creation of the football regulator of itself was quite politically highly charged. I have absolutely no interest in association football, so it was highly charged for reasons that I do not even purport to understand. A lot of comment had been made in the media and on the Floor of the House of Commons about the political links and financial support for the governing party from the Government’s preferred candidate in this. Speaking back to the question that Mr Taylor legitimately asked—were the reasons given deemed to be credible—given the fact that it was a sensitive appointment to a contentious new post, was it credible for Ministers involved in the process not to have thought to themselves, “Gosh, this man gives money to my party. I really had better just dot the i’s and cross the t’s on all of this to make sure that I am squeaky clean, and if I am not—through no fault of their own, and all the donations were perfectly legal and all the rest of it—“I had better recuse myself from the process”?

Yes, and just declare them. But it does show a rather worrying lack of intellectual curiosity, does it not, from Ministers not to have joined the dots and asked the right questions? That cannot have been a credible position for Ministers of the Crown to arrive at.

May I read you the paragraph from my report itself?

Please.

Talking about the Secretary of State’s failure to declare and resolve an interest before selecting Mr Kogan as the Government’s preferred candidate—this is the first breach that I identified—she did check whether Mr Kogan specifically had made any form of donation to her campaign after selecting him as the preferred candidate. She explained to me and my staff that updating her register of interests on 6 May 2025 on the eve of Mr Kogan’s confirmation hearing before a parliamentary Select Committee had prompted consideration of that question as to whether he had contributed to her. “On establishing that he had donated to her campaign she recused herself from the final decision as to whether to appoint Mr Kogan. The Commissioner finds that she had unknowingly breached the Code. She should have carried out that check and taken any necessary consequential action before selecting him.” That seems to me to be a simple explanation of what went wrong.

I think if your late father were here he might just remind us that ignorance is no defence.

You may well say that. I could not possibly comment.

Thank you, Francis Urquhart. Did you want to come back, Mr Taylor? Then I am going to bring in Mr Lamb.

That is correct.

Within the pack we have a timetable for appointment. Can I run through a very quick, simple list of questions to put this on the record, given the tone of the last few sets of questions? The campaign for this role began in April 2024. That is correct, is it not?

We are talking about the football commissioner?

Yes.

It began under the previous Government.

It began under the previous Government. Mr Kogan’s late application, on which he was assisted in getting it in past the deadline, took place under the last Government. Mr Kogan was shortlisted under the last Government. The appointment process was then delayed because the civil service did not want to take a decision that close to a general election. Various parts of the process of this, which have been criticised within your report, took place under the last Government. Is that correct?

Yes.

On donations or cash income, when we talk about donations to the leadership campaigns for the Prime Minister and Secretary of State, there is not a final figure on what the Prime Minister’s general election leadership campaign costs, but the figures suggest it is in the order of about £1 million, that the leadership contest costs. That means about 0.15% of his contributions would be a £1,400 donation. I cannot tell you in terms of my own donations every single person who donated to me roughly 0.15% of my campaign contributions. I doubt that any member of this Committee could recall every person who made a donation of that size and scale.

It may well be donations to another party, but the reality is that if we were sitting down here and trying on paper today to recreate everyone who donated to our campaigns we could not do it to that level of specificity. The idea that that is an unusual thing, well, perhaps Luke Taylor has talents in this area beyond the rest of the Committee.

Mr Lamb, if I may just make an observation and direction. The observation is that not all of us are making appointments to regulators, so therefore the importance of memory and knowledge is slightly different; but we are here to ask questions.

You are entirely correct to point out that the process was not followed, but your comment earlier that the impression from this process is that if you bung a Minister a few quid you are going to get on to a shortlist does not recognise the fact that this man was already on the shortlist prior to the change of Government, and does not recognise the fact that this is not a significant amount of money in the scale of what we are talking about with these campaigns.

I think, Mr Lamb, what I said was if you bung a few quid to the governing party, not to individuals.

Which did not happen in this case, Chair. This was the Opposition, which was given money, and they were not in government at the time in relation to this role, although I absolutely sit with how the reporting of this might well suggest that, and I think some of the conversation we have had in this session today would also suggest that. No one comes out of this looking rosy, do they, Sir William? Neither the preceding Government nor the current Government come out of this process having fully dealt with expectations.

Presumably the Government did not get into the process as deeply as happened after the election because of the election. Who knows what would have happened if the election had not taken place.

There were already delays at that stage, and we had already had not an ideal process followed at that point.

I am not sure that is correct, but I can look at that and come back to you on that with the details to expand on your concerns.

The point that you highlighted of an area that was not a technical breach but was still a problem—the process of having a candidate whose application was submitted by invitation, it would appear, after the closure of the process—took place under the last Government. Is that correct?

I am not sure that is correct, actually. Do you mind if I check that detail and come back to you?

Absolutely. The timetable has that happening on 16 May 2024.

Let me will find out and come back to you with the full details on that.

Thank you very much. The Prime Minister has written to the independent adviser to acknowledge his error in having any involvement in the appointment process of Mr Kogan, but there has been little discussion of that within your report. Given the Prime Minister’s intense interest and involvement in the football industry, including donations to himself and the direct donations that he received from Mr Kogan, why has that not been given greater significance in your report?

I have been asked why I had not investigated the Prime Minister’s role in the appointment also. The question that was asked was whether the Prime Minister had breached the principle of integrity as the Secretary of State had done, but the definition of the principle in the old governance code under which this appointment was originally made is clear that it refers to Ministers when making appointments. The Prime Minister was not the one making the appointment here, so the code did not apply to him. Now, this has changed and been strengthened in the new governance code. The integrity principle now applies to all those involved in the appointment process. If this campaign had happened under the new code, people have asked me if the Prime Minister’s conduct would be in breach of the principle of integrity. My response to that is that the IFR campaign was under the old code and the Prime Minister, as he was not the Minister formally making the appointment, could not have breached integrity as a result because the code then did not apply to him. The new code—it is all rather complicated, and I apologise—brings a material change to this principle, and as such I do not think it is possible for me to give a definitive answer now as to whether a breach would or would not have occurred. These matters are pretty complex. That is my answer to the question on the Prime Minister’s involvement.

I guess the question is around wider ministerial involvement in future cases. The Prime Minister was not technically the decision maker in this, but I think a member of the general public would come to the assumption that he may well have influence on the process were he to choose to exercise it, despite not being the formal decision maker. Under the new code, would that mean that anyone in a significant office, such as another Minister in that Department or indeed in another Department, would have to report any such potential interest if they were to try to influence the process?

It is what I tried to say just now. The new code does bring a material change to the principle, and as such I do not think it is possible to give a definitive answer as to whether or not a breach would have occurred in this case. I am not blaming the Prime Minister for anything in this case, because as I say this appointment took place under the old code, which referred only to Ministers appointing.

That potentially leaves a difficulty for anyone who is a Minister who may well have the opportunity to speak with the appointing Minister in knowing whether or not they should declare such an interest, if you cannot give an assessment as to whether or not this would have been a breach.

You are quite right, and again I will take that question away—you are asking a lot of important and quite complicated questions and I want to answer them properly, so if I may I will submit that answer to you in writing as well. I think the general answer is that if any Minister is in doubt they should check whether the person, in this case Mr Kogan, had or had not made contributions to their political campaigns. The Secretary of State’s mistake was not to check in time. It is a requirement of anybody in political life to be seen to abide by the Nolan principles and check whether or not there is a clash of interest here.

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.

Indeed.

Moving on to another area, David Kogan was not appointed in short order following the pre-appointment hearing, as would normally have happened. Do you believe your investigation delayed his appointment?

No, I do not think it did. It did take a long time. This inquiry took seven months, because it was a very complicated issue and it did span two Governments, as you say. The appointment process itself was almost a year long and was conducted under two different Governments, as you have pointed out. There were hundreds of pages of evidence to consider. I offered the parties time to make representations and considered those conscientiously. It would not have been appropriate for me to rush to judgment, and when the DCMS Secretary of State asked me to consider new evidence of course I did so always. Members of the Government, as I have said already, have acknowledged that the report was very thorough, and I am glad of that.

You became aware of this issue in early May and you launched an investigation at the end of May. Given that you have emphasised the speed of public appointments being important, why did the investigation take over five months, and why did it take so long to commission that investigation, having been made aware of the issue in early May?

I took the time necessary. It took a long time because it was a very complicated story, as you have shown in your questions and your understanding of it. They were very difficult matters and the appointment process itself was almost a year long and conducted under two different Governments, as I have said and as you know well. Above all, I was determined that my process of examination should be fair and be seen to be fair. I said to my staff and to all of us that we must be robust and fair, and I think we were fair and I am glad of that. When the Secretary of State, as I have already mentioned, and the Department, DCMS, asked for additional opportunities to provide new evidence throughout the inquiry, I obviously allowed them to do so. All those elements made it a long inquiry, and I am sorry about that, but I am glad in the sense that it enabled me to produce a very detailed and thorough report.

In the course of that process no one was interviewed until the end of August. Is that because you were trying to get everything into place before you started interviewing people?

Yes, I think that was one of the reasons for that, and people were away and so on.

What changes do you think should be made to ensure investigations such as this one can be carried out in a speedier process, if that is possible with cases of this complexity?

As I say, it is not always going to be possible. Of course I am sorry it took so long, but I am glad that everyone recognises that it was a thorough report, even the Government, and I am pleased about that. Complex matters such as this will take time, and it took time because we were very thorough in examining it, and as I say I wanted to be fair to everyone and to be robust where that was necessary.

Could I come in briefly on one of Peter Lamb’s points? Putting aside the issue around the donations, it relates to concerns I have in general about the processes for some of these public appointments where there are perhaps Government-favoured candidates. If we look at the timeline back to May 2024, as Peter Lamb said, there were exceptions being made for this candidate particularly in terms of extending the deadline and I think proactively reaching out to him to apply. As a Committee we have seen that kind of approach in other areas, and again I think it probably crosses this Government and the previous Government. The Cabinet Office, perhaps in relation to senior people at the ONS, have had their person that they think would be good for a role and they are put forward in that way. It speaks to a broader concern I have around what you have been talking about today, about there being fair, transparent and open processes for key public appointments. Do you think there is anything that we have been discussing in today’s session that would stop that happening again in future or change that culture?

Sorry, stop what happening in future?

Government having favoured candidates, whatever the political party, whatever the position around donations. The Government having favoured candidates and then, in what should be a fair and transparent process, exceptions being made to allow that favoured candidate to proceed.

It is a very important issue that you have raised and a difficult one to answer simply. At elections Governments change, and a new Government may have different priorities and favour different people from the previous Government and that is part of democracy and it has to happen. Government have a right to wish to find people for jobs who understand that Government’s priorities and are not against them. That is an inevitable part of life as well as of democratic change, but it cannot as you suggest bring in abuses, and it is my job and the job of other standards officials to make sure that abuses do not take place and that in the end all appointments should be made on merit, and that is what I have always tried to stress. The fact that a Government like somebody does not mean to say that that person does not have merit, but that person must have merit as well as the support of any Government.

Do you think it is appropriate, then, for the recruitment processes to change to support a Government-favoured candidate to proceed?

No, I think that the Government-favoured candidate, if there is such a person in the competition, should take his or her luck and go through the whole process. The crucial point at the end is the panel that interviews people for public appointments, and that panel is very important. There may be five candidates that come before it, one of whom is favoured by the Government, but it is the job of the panel and particularly the chair of the panel to examine those candidates to see which of them is competent and has merit regardless of political affiliations.

When we look through this timeline we can see that exceptions have been made for a Government-favoured candidate. The process has been changed, which has affected all the candidates regardless of their merit. What impact do you then think that has on public perception about fair process for some of these key public appointments?

That is a germane issue, and I made the point in my report that this was a dog’s dinner of an appointment process and it is harmful in every regard including the one that you have just mentioned. It should not have happened.

I am adding “dog’s dinner” to my list of Shawcrossian quotes.

I am not sure that is the right description, but anyway.

It is on the record now. I have something here at the bottom of our briefing pack that says, “Valedictory question”, which sounds almost funereal, I suppose. I am not going to call it a valedictory question. I am going to ask you, Sir William—and I am going to take the words “Don’t do it” off the list of potential answers—what bit of advice would you give your successor?

My advice would be to say to him or her, “You are very lucky. You have been awarded a wonderful job in the appointments process of this great country, and it is a great responsibility that you have. Having been chosen through a proper and well-regimented process, you will I am sure have all the qualities to do this job well. You need to be enquiring, you need to be diligent, you need not to stop asking questions of all candidates and all processes, and above all you need to remember what we started with, the Nolan principles. Congratulations, sir or madam. I am very envious of you having five years ahead of you to serve this country in an important and significant position.”

What would you highlight to him or her from your assessment and reflection to being the principal challenge for the next five years in this arena?

That is really difficult. I do think timeliness is a terrible curse on the process and damages the process, and that is a serious challenge. The other challenges are to abide by the law of diversity, which is not always simple, but always to remember that in the end appointments must be made on merit.

Sir William, thank you for your time this morning. We will join your pressure to the Cabinet Office to get your report out there. We pick up your frustration. You hopefully will have picked up ours. You have some months to go yet in this appointment. Your work is not done but this is likely to be your last appearance before this Committee wearing this particular hat. So on behalf of this Committee, Parliament and if I may the country, can I thank you for taking up the burden and discharging it with such diligence, elegance and authority? Thank you very much indeed for your service in this important area of our public life.

Thank you, Chair. It is an honour to appear before your Committee, which plays a vital role in this whole process. It is an honour to appear before you specifically for a second time, the last time on a very different issue.

Exactly, and both of us wearing entirely different hats, so there we are. Lock & Co. of St James’s are doing a very good trade out of you and me. Thank you very much indeed.