Introduction

1. On 3 July 2007, only days after Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP had taken office as Prime Minister, the Government published proposals on "streamlining public appointments" in its green paper 'The Governance of Britain'. One of these proposals was:

that the Government nominee for key positions … should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing with the relevant select committee. The hearing would be non-binding, but in the light of the report from the committee, Ministers would decide whether to proceed. The hearings would cover issues such as the candidate's suitability for the role, his or her key priorities, and the process used in selection … The Government, in consultation with the Liaison Committee, will prepare a list of such appointments for which these hearings will apply.[1]

The Government's support for this idea was new, even if the idea itself was not.

2. Shortly beforehand, on 19 June, we had taken evidence on confirmation hearings from Janet Gaymer CBE, the Commissioner for Public Appointments. This followed a proposal by the Conservative Party Democracy Taskforce earlier the same month that "Select Committees should be the vehicle through which Parliament plays an increased role in public appointments".[2] Others have also made recommendations in this area during the past few years, including our predecessor Committee in a wide-ranging report on public appointments.[3]

3. In the light of the Government's proposals, we took evidence from Janet Gaymer again in December 2007, as well as from Rt Hon John McFall MP, the Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee. While a number of parliamentary committees had taken evidence from newly appointed office-holders and had commented publicly on specific appointments, the Treasury Committee had been unique in regularly taking evidence from and reporting on new appointments to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England over a period of ten years. The Committee had also held in July 2007 a 'pilot' pre-appointment hearing (along the lines envisaged in the Governance of Britain paper) with Sir Michael Scholar, recently nominated as the first Chair of the new Statistics Board. We are grateful to our witnesses for their time and for giving us the benefit of their substantial experience.

4. Arrangements for pre-appointment hearings are unlikely to require primary legislation, but we understand that the Government plans to produce more definite proposals at the same time as the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, due to be published in February 2008. We are therefore taking this opportunity to make our views known before the Government's proposals are finalised.

How public appointments are made

5. Ministers and the Crown are responsible for many thousands of public appointments, in areas ranging "from the regulation of key utilities to health service bodies and from the boards of museums and galleries to those who can investigate complaints about the way key public services are provided".[4] The independent Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments (OCPA) regulates in the region of 10,000 of these appointments in line with core principles of appointment on merit, probity and transparency.[5] However, as our predecessor Committee discovered, "OCPA's writ does not run everywhere" and there does not "seem to be any convincing rationale to explain why some bodies are free from direct regulation and some are covered".[6] Many of the appointments not regulated by OCPA nevertheless follow a process stated to be in line with OCPA's core principles.[7] The appointments system maintains the principle of ministerial responsibility in relation to public appointments, but puts checks on how the principle is applied in practice.

6. In practice, ministerial involvement in the vast majority of public appointments comes only at the beginning of the process, in setting out the balance of skills required for the post, and at the end, in deciding whether to appoint one of a limited number of candidates proposed by a selection board (which operates under the eye of an independent assessor). While this restricts the scope for political involvement in the appointment process, it does not remove it entirely—irrespective of whether the appointments are regulated by OCPA.

Purpose and conduct of pre-appointment hearings

7. We welcome the Government's decision to involve select committees in key public appointments. A number of committees have already responded positively to the proposal, and have recommended posts within their remit for pre-appointment hearings.[8] It is important, however, to establish with clarity what the purpose of pre-appointment hearings would be, before deciding to which posts they might apply. As the 'Governance of Britain' paper was not entirely clear as to this purpose, we asked our witnesses for their views.

8. Both Janet Gaymer and John McFall identified the need to clarify whether the purpose of pre-appointment hearings was to help select a candidate for a post or to begin to hold a nominee to account for how they would carry out a position. Both seemed to view the hearings held so far as the latter, rather than the former.[9]

9. We are not convinced, however, that nominees can reasonably be held to account for their performance in positions they have yet to take up. Neither, it would seem, is Janet Gaymer, who told us…

What was interesting, I thought, about the Michael Scholar hearing was that, for example, there were questions about the budget of the Statistics Board and Michael Scholar, who had only been told the previous day that he was the nominee for the appointment, said, "I can't answer that question. It's too soon. I've done the reading round the post, but I can't answer that question. All I can do is tell you what I've learnt preparing for the interview and so on". It leads me to the view, and it is a personal view, that it must be better, therefore, to see this person post-appointment when they have gone through their induction, they have gone in, they have looked at the place, they have checked whether their first impressions were correct and then a meaningful discussion can take place.[10]

…and who reiterated this point in her written evidence:

there may be a more meaningful debate between a Select Committee and an appointee once the appointee has begun to discharge his or her duties and is in a position to discuss strategy and plans for the future of the public body in question from a more informed basis.[11]

10. We agree with the Commissioner for Public Appointments that those in public office can only be meaningfully held to account after they have taken up office. Pre-appointment hearings would inevitably, however, begin a relationship between a committee and an appointee (assuming he or she did take up office), which would subsequently develop into one of accountability: this is probably what the Chairman of the Treasury Committee had in mind when he described hearings as "start of a process of continuing accountability".[12]

11. If pre-appointment hearings are not about accountability, then they must be about selection. The question to be answered is whether there is a proper and valuable role for committees in this process.

12. Confirmation hearings by Senate committees are a well-known aspect of the public appointments process in the United States. These hearings were one of our main subjects of discussion during a visit to Washington DC in November 2007, when much of the comment we heard was negative. Senate hearings, however, operate in a particular political context, by providing a cross-party check to partisan presidential appointments made without a transparent process based on merit. Where a transparent, regulated process exists, this type of binding hearing could all too easily become perceived as politicisation of the process rather than as a necessary democratic limit on executive power.

13. Janet Gaymer has expressed concerns that pre-appointment hearings could lead to "perceived politicisation … the further you involve a political influence of whatever kind in the process the more you run that risk".[13] We agree with her entirely that pre-appointment hearings should not interfere with the OCPA-regulated or equivalent part of the selection process. But this is not what is proposed. Pre-appointment hearings would take place after the OCPA-regulated part of the process was complete and after the Minister had already provisionally chosen a candidate. In other words, they would provide political balance to the already political final part of the selection process: the ministerial decision. The proper role for select committees in the selection of candidates for public appointments is in informing the final ministerial decision, not in influencing the impartial process that precedes that decision. Select committees should only become involved once every part of the interview and selection process has been completed except for this final decision.

14. If they are to proceed, it is not enough that pre-appointment hearings should be proper; they should also add value. The value that committees can add over and above that provided by a rigorous selection process is to expose a candidate to parliamentary and public scrutiny. It follows that hearings should normally apply only to posts for which accountability to Parliament and the public are an important part of the role. A positive outcome of holding pre-appointment hearings for such posts is the likelihood that appointees will perform this accountability function more effectively.

15. Janet Gaymer's work has led her to the view that

the asking by politicians of questions about political activity and other matters might be seen by the public as politicising appointments processes overall, even though the questioning was intended to establish independence and lack of political bias.[14]

John McFall, on the other hand, suggested from his experience as a Chairman that hearings could help to allay suspicions that a candidate had been chosen for political reasons:

Sir Michael Scholar is the father of Tom Scholar who is the Chief of Staff at Number 10 Downing Street. As Chairman, I specifically asked the question of Sir Michael Scholar, did his son know that he was in for this job and did he have any contact with him, and Sir Michael was very clear and above board that the first the son had heard about it was after the appointment process, so that put to bed the issue of politicisation.[15]

16. It is interesting that the Prime Minister submitted the new Chair of the Statistics Board not just to a pre-appointment hearing, but also to the approval of both Houses of Parliament, although there was no requirement for him to do so. This may have been to allay concerns of party political bias in the appointment process. This suggests that hearings might also be appropriate where a ministerial appointment might otherwise appear to be improperly partisan, particularly where there had been no transparent process of appointment on merit. There also needs to be clarity and consistency about which appointments are made with cross-party agreement and are put to Parliament for approval.

List of appointments

17. How then to decide which posts should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing? The Government's suggestion is that hearings should apply to "positions in which Parliament has a particularly strong interest because the officeholder exercises statutory or other powers in relation to protecting the public's rights and interests".[16] We agree that this is a necessary criterion, but it is not sufficient: it would not be appropriate for the judiciary to be subject to pre-appointment hearings, despite their role in protecting the public's rights and interests. Positions subject to pre-appointment hearings should also, as set out at paragraph 14, carry an expectation of accountability to Parliament and the public. We would expect pre-appointment hearings to apply to major auditors, ombudsmen, regulators and inspectors, as well as to those responsible for the appointments system itself.

18. The Government has cited the following positions as examples of those suitable for hearings:

• the First Civil Service Commissioner;
• the Commissioner for Public Appointments;
• the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration and Health Service Commissioner for England ('the Ombudsman');
• the Local Government Ombudsman for England; and
• independent inspectors such as the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Chief Inspector of Probation for England and Wales.[17]

19. The Government's list does not claim to be exclusive, and there are other obvious candidates. Organised by the categories identified above, some examples are:

• auditors: the Comptroller and Auditor General (whose appointment is already subject to a vote in the House of Commons) and the Chair of the Audit Commission;
• ombudsmen and complaints investigators: the Pensions Ombudsman and the Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission;
• regulators: the Information Commissioner and the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life;
• inspectors: HM Inspector for Education, Children's Services and Skills, and HM Inspector for Constabulary; and
• appointers: the Chair of the Appointments Commission (formerly the NHS Appointments Commission) and the Chair of the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

There are potentially many others, although Janet Gaymer's point is well taken that pre-appointment hearings "should concentrate on quality rather than quantity in the first instance".[18] We welcome the Government's commitment to keep under review the list of appointments subject to pre-appointment hearings, and to maintain a discussion on this list with the Liaison Committee.

20. Ministers do not make appointments to all posts matching the criteria set out at paragraph 17. For example, the Chair of the Financial Ombudsman Service is appointed by the Financial Services Authority; the Chair of the Healthcare Commission by the Appointments Commission. Despite the parliamentary and public interest in these appointments, it would be difficult to justify involving a committee of politicians in appointments processes where politicians were not also taking the final decisions. We recommend that a pre-appointment hearing should take place only where the final decision on appointment remains in the hands of a politician.

21. The Government proposes that for "market-sensitive and certain other appointments, including the Governor and the two Deputy Governors of the Bank of England, the Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, and some utility regulators", pre-commencement hearings should be held, after the appointments have been approved but before the appointee has taken up post.[19] We understand why the Government might be cautious about adding a public scrutiny element to the appointments process if this might affect markets or dissuade private-sector candidates from putting themselves forward. However, it is not clear what the value would be of a hearing which was able neither to influence the appointment of a candidate nor to allow an office-holder to account for their performance. It could also be argued that pre-commencement hearings might put a Minister in a difficult position, if issues of competence or acceptability emerged before an appointee had begun work but too late to step back from appointing them. We are not attracted to the idea of pre-commencement hearings as an alternative to pre-appointment hearings. For a limited range of genuinely sensitive appointments, an alternative to a public hearing might be for a pre-appointment hearing to be held in private, with the transcript of evidence published once the status of the appointment had been confirmed.

22. Janet Gaymer argued in evidence to us that appointments regulated by her office should not be subject to hearings.[20] We are not persuaded. Some of those posts which most closely meet the criteria we have identified fall within her remit; others do not. Of those posts outside her remit, many nonetheless follow a well-regulated and meritocratic appointments procedure. If the basis on which posts are regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments is arbitrary, as the Commissioner seems to believe,[21] it would be equally arbitrary to exclude posts from pre-appointment hearings simply because they are regulated by the Commissioner.

Risks

23. Janet Gaymer has warned us of a number of risks that could arise from holding pre-appointment hearings:

i.  "whether this will put off potential candidates";

ii.  "the concern that it may lengthen the process";

iii.  "perceived politicisation of the process" (already considered above); and

iv.  "inappropriate questioning and potential legal consequences".[22]

24. These deserve close consideration, along with two other concerns:

i.  What would happen if a committee objected to an appointment?

ii.  How would the need to hold pre-appointment hearings impact on committees' agendas?

WOULD CANDIDATES BE PUT OFF?

25. When she came before us in June 2007, Janet Gaymer suggested that "the confirmatory hearing process …may put off a number of candidates from applying in the first place and, therefore, reduce the pool of candidates from which the ultimate choice is being made".[23] She repeated these arguments in December and in her written evidence.[24] The posts to which we are recommending that pre-appointment hearings should apply require a substantial degree of parliamentary and public accountability. We therefore think it highly unlikely that suitable candidates would be dissuaded from applying because of fear or concern about a pre-appointment hearing.

26. Janet Gaymer also suggested that holding pre-appointment hearings "might even have some sort of gender-related effect" on applications.[25] This too strikes us as unlikely, but would clearly be of concern if it were the case.

27. Thirdly, there is a concern that some candidates, particularly those with a private sector background, might not wish the fact of their candidacy to emerge before they had been formally appointed or rejected. Janet Gaymer has put it to us in written evidence that "the very fact that an individual had applied for a particular position might, for perfectly proper reasons, need to be kept confidential until the unconditional acceptance of the position had been confirmed".[26] She suggested to us in June 2007 that hearings might be difficult for "people on boards of FTSE companies whose very act of voicing the thought of departure can affect share prices".[27] She told us in December that she herself would probably not have applied for her post if a pre-appointment hearing had been required because of the potential for her employer's reputation to be adversely affected.[28]

28. It is difficult for us to judge to what extent this would be a widely held concern, but we think in practice that the likelihood of an individual's or an organisation's reputation being significantly affected by a pre-appointment hearing is very slight indeed. In reality, the likelihood of a candidate who has reached the pre-appointment hearing stage not subsequently being appointed will also be very slight.

29. It is not our intention that pre-appointment hearings should put off suitable candidates from applying, and we do not think that they will be put off. Given the suggestion that this may be a risk, however, we recommend that the Government should attempt to monitor the effect of pre-appointment hearings on the number, balance and quality of applications for the positions to which they apply, and should aim to discuss with the Liaison Committee the results of this monitoring exercise as they become available. Janet Gaymer is supportive of an attempt "to measure any reduction in the pool or diversity of candidates", although she points out that "in practice it will be extremely difficult to identify those candidates who did not proceed with an application for a public appointment at all and whose reason was the need to attend a pre-appointment hearing".[29]

WOULD IT LENGTHEN THE APPOINTMENTS PROCESS?

30. Confirmation hearings in the United States can significantly delay appointments. It is important that pre-appointment hearings should not. The Treasury Committee has an excellent reputation in this respect. As its Chairman pointed out by way of example, "when we found out about the appointment of Sir Michael Scholar, I think we went into gear very quickly and within a week or so we had the hearing".[30]

31. It is, however, equally important that the Government should have in mind the parliamentary timetable when scheduling appointments, and should give committees adequate notice of any forthcoming appointment to which a hearing might apply. We recommend that the Government should allow committees at least three sitting weeks within which to hold a pre-appointment hearing and to give their advice on an appointment. A committee's failure to do so would not prevent an appointment from being made.

WOULD HEARINGS BE PROPERLY CONDUCTED, AND MIGHT THEY BE OPEN TO LEGAL CHALLENGE?

32. It is for the House of Commons and committees themselves to determine how pre-appointment hearings should be organised and if there should be any constraints on questioning. For its hearings with nominated members of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (MPC), the Treasury Committee agreed from the outset that "questioning should be restricted to the two criteria of professional competence and personal independence".[31] Where impartiality and the need to speak out are core to the role, questioning on personal independence should, in our view, properly cover concerns about political allegiance which it would not have been appropriate to raise at interview.[32]

33. Where individuals are being asked about their personal qualities in public, it is also particularly important that questioning, however probing, should be courteous. This has almost always been the case in the Treasury Committee's history. There has been no recent equivalent of the unfortunate incident in which a new MPC member was asked whether it was "fair" to suggest that whereas another member "was premier division of the quality of Arsenal, maybe Manchester United", he was "likely to turn out to be Vauxhall League of the quality of Yeovil, maybe Kidderminster".[33]

34. We invite the Liaison Committee to agree guidelines for pre-appointment hearings, and suggest that the Chairman of any committee who departs egregiously from these guidelines should be answerable in the first instance to his or her fellow Chairmen. We trust to the good sense of committee Members to ensure that pre-appointment hearings are conducted appropriately. If they are not, the reputations of committees are likely to suffer and the Government is likely to reconsider whether pre-appointment hearings are appropriate.

35. Select committee hearings, like other parliamentary proceedings, are protected from challenge in the courts. As has been pointed out to us, however, the ministerial decision on an appointment could be open to challenge, and if it were challenged, "then questions arise as to what sort of considerations went into the decision".[34] It would be foolish of us to contradict Janet Gaymer, when she tells us as an expert on employment law that this is "a very arcane area of the law and it would be a very brave person who said that they knew the answer one way or the other".[35] It would, however, be perverse in the extreme if Ministers felt unable for legal reasons even to take into account the results of pre-appointment hearings.

36. We recommend that the Government should ensure that a Minister, when coming to a decision on an appointment, will not be dissuaded by the risk of legal challenge from taking committee proceedings into account. If committee involvement in an appointment led a Minister to change his or her mind on the suitability of candidate, it would be absurd if the Minister felt required for legal reasons to proceed with the appointment against his or her better judgement.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF A COMMITTEE OBJECTED TO AN APPOINTMENT?

37. It has been suggested that it would be "a very brave Secretary of State" that appointed any candidate not reported on favourably by Parliament.[36] However, on the rare occasions in the recent past when committees have produced negative opinions on new appointees, the Government has supported those it has appointed:

• In May 2000, the Treasury Committee reported in the case of Christopher Allsopp as a nominee to the MPC that they were "disappointed in his answers to our questions, and believe that this casts doubt on whether he possesses the skills required to take part in meetings of the Monetary Policy Committee". The Committee decided to "call on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to think again about Mr Allsopp's appointment".[37] This was a week before Mr Allsopp was due to take up the position. In its reply two months later, the Government simply noted that "Mr Christopher Allsopp fully satisfies the criteria for appointments to the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee", set out why this was the case and noted that "his appointment has been widely welcomed, including personally by the Governor and Deputy Governor".[38]
• The Science and Technology Committee, following evidence from Sir John Chisholm as Chairman of the Medical Research Council, reported in July 2007 that they had "serious reservations as to whether Sir John is the right person to guide the MRC Executive through the coming period of change".[39] The Government responded that it "disagree[d] with the Committee's reservations. The Government, the MRC Council and the MRC senior executive have every confidence in Sir John Chisholm and believe that the skills and experience he can bring as chair will be invaluable through this period of change".[40] This was by no means a pre-appointment hearing: the Committee heard from Sir John the best part of a year after he had taken up the appointment.

38. It is not intended that pre-appointment hearings will be binding, and Ministers will therefore retain the right to disagree with a committee's views on an appointee. Pre-appointment hearings will only be of any significance, however, if there is the possibility that Ministers might change their minds, and that a candidate's appointment might not be approved. We expect that it will be only in very exceptional cases that committees will recommend against the appointment of a candidate; but the test of the Government's commitment to pre-appointment hearings will be how Ministers react in such cases.

39. How should a committee make its reservations about a candidate known? Where a committee has held a public evidence session, media speculation about a candidate's future might develop unless a Report was made to the House and published as swiftly as possible. If a session has been held in private, as we have suggested might be appropriate for particularly sensitive positions,[41] then a committee could enter a confidential "Letter of Reservation", in line with a proposal from our predecessors.[42] Clear procedures are needed to avoid protracted media speculation about a candidate's fate following a pre-appointment hearing, particularly where a committee is minded to recommend against an appointment. We invite the Liaison Committee to ensure that these procedures are in place.

40. As Janet Gaymer has rightly pointed out, the Government will also need to set out clearly procedures that will be followed if a Minister decides not to appoint a candidate following a pre-appointment hearing.[43] In those cases in which more than one appointable candidate will have been identified (the majority), we would expect a further pre-appointment hearing to be scheduled as swiftly as possible.

HOW WOULD COMMITTEES' AGENDAS BE AFFECTED?

41. As a general rule, select committees currently control their own agendas and forward programmes. There is a risk that committees will have to abandon other work in order to hold pre-appointment hearings, or may simply choose not to hold the hearings instead. This risk will depend on how many hearings each committee is expected to hold, and to what schedule. We recommend that a select committee should not necessarily be expected to hold more than three pre-appointment hearings in a year. Where this total is likely to be exceeded, the committee should be warned in advance and may reasonably choose not to carry out all of the hearings proposed.

Conclusion

42. The Government's commitment to involving the House of Commons more closely in key public appointments is an important step. It recognises that both the House and the public have an interest in some posts, which makes it inappropriate for appointments to be made by Ministers without parliamentary input. In this Report, we have set out what we believe committees' role in these appointments should be, and which appointments should be affected. This is a new step, somewhat into the unknown, the Commissioner for Public Appointments has expressed a number of concerns, and we would understand if the Government wished to keep how the system was working under review, in close co-operation with the Liaison Committee. Given the limited number of posts affected, data to conduct such a review would probably only be available after three years of operation.

43. There is one other circumstance in which pre-appointment hearings should be introduced. Occasionally, Ministers have made public appointments without following the usual processes, where normal practice and the public expectation are that these appointments will be made on merit. The most common examples are appointments to the Diplomatic Service, often of former Members of Parliament. Such appointments may occasionally be appropriate, but they deserve to be tested in public by a cross-party committee.[44] There is a strong argument for requiring a pre-appointment hearing—even a binding hearing—in such cases.

Conclusions and recommendations

1.  We welcome the Government's decision to involve select committees in key public appointments. (Paragraph 7)

2.  It is important, however, to establish with clarity what the purpose of pre-appointment hearings would be, before deciding to which posts they might apply. (Paragraph 7)

3.  We agree with the Commissioner for Public Appointments that those in public office can only be meaningfully held to account after they have taken up office (Paragraph 10)

4.  If pre-appointment hearings are not about accountability, then they must be about selection. The question to be answered is whether there is a proper and valuable role for committees in this process. (Paragraph 11)

5.  The proper role for select committees in the selection of candidates for public appointments is in informing the final ministerial decision, not in influencing the impartial process that precedes that decision. Select committees should only become involved once every part of the interview and selection process has been completed except for this final decision. (Paragraph 13)

6.  The value that committees can add over and above that provided by a rigorous selection process is to expose a candidate to parliamentary and public scrutiny. (Paragraph 14)

7.  hearings should normally apply only to posts for which accountability to Parliament and the public are an important part of the role. A positive outcome of holding pre-appointment hearings for such posts is the likelihood that appointees will perform this accountability function more effectively. (Paragraph 14)

8.  hearings might also be appropriate where a ministerial appointment might otherwise appear to be improperly partisan, particularly where there had been no transparent process of appointment on merit. There also needs to be clarity and consistency about which appointments are made with cross-party agreement and are put to Parliament for approval. (Paragraph 16)

9.  We would expect pre-appointment hearings to apply to major auditors, ombudsmen, regulators and inspectors, as well as to those responsible for the appointments system itself. (Paragraph 17)

10.  We welcome the Government's commitment to keep under review the list of appointments subject to pre-appointment hearings, and to maintain a discussion on this list with the Liaison Committee. (Paragraph 19)

11.  We recommend that a pre-appointment hearing should take place only where the final decision on appointment remains in the hands of a politician. (Paragraph 20)

12.  We understand why the Government might be cautious about adding a public scrutiny element to the appointments process if this might affect markets or dissuade private-sector candidates from putting themselves forward. However, it is not clear what the value would be of a hearing which was able neither to influence the appointment of a candidate nor to allow an office-holder to account for their performance. (Paragraph 21)

13.  We are not attracted to the idea of pre-commencement hearings as an alternative to pre-appointment hearings. For a limited range of genuinely sensitive appointments, an alternative to a public hearing might be for a pre-appointment hearing to be held in private, with the transcript of evidence published once the status of the appointment had been confirmed. (Paragraph 21)

14.  If the basis on which posts are regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments is arbitrary, it would be equally arbitrary to exclude posts from pre-appointment hearings simply because they are regulated by the Commissioner. (Paragraph 22)

15.  It is not our intention that pre-appointment hearings should put off suitable candidates from applying, and we do not think that they will be put off. Given the suggestion that this may be a risk, however, we recommend that the Government should attempt to monitor the effect of pre-appointment hearings on the number, balance and quality of applications for the positions to which they apply, and should aim to discuss with the Liaison Committee the results of this monitoring exercise as they become available. (Paragraph 29)

16.  We recommend that the Government should allow committees at least three sitting weeks within which to hold a pre-appointment hearing and to give their advice on an appointment. A committee's failure to do so would not prevent an appointment from being made. (Paragraph 31)

17.  We invite the Liaison Committee to agree guidelines for pre-appointment hearings, and suggest that the Chairman of any committee who departs egregiously from these guidelines should be answerable in the first instance to his or her fellow Chairmen. We trust to the good sense of committee Members to ensure that pre-appointment hearings are conducted appropriately. If they are not, the reputations of committees are likely to suffer and the Government is likely to reconsider whether pre-appointment hearings are appropriate. (Paragraph 34)

18.  We recommend that the Government should ensure that a Minister, when coming to a decision on an appointment, will not be dissuaded by the risk of legal challenge from taking committee proceedings into account. If committee involvement in an appointment led a Minister to change his or her mind on the suitability of candidate, it would be absurd if the Minister felt required for legal reasons to proceed with the appointment against his or her better judgement. (Paragraph 36)

19.  It is not intended that pre-appointment hearings will be binding, and Ministers will therefore retain the right to disagree with a committee's views on an appointee. Pre-appointment hearings will only be of any significance, however, if there is the possibility that Ministers might change their minds, and that a candidate's appointment might not be approved. We expect that it will be only in very exceptional cases that committees will recommend against the appointment of a candidate; but the test of the Government's commitment to pre-appointment hearings will be how Ministers react in such cases. (Paragraph 38)

20.  Clear procedures are needed to avoid protracted media speculation about a candidate's fate following a pre-appointment hearing, particularly where a committee is minded to recommend against an appointment. We invite the Liaison Committee to ensure that these procedures are in place. (Paragraph 39)

21.  We recommend that a select committee should not necessarily be expected to hold more than three pre-appointment hearings in a year. Where this total is likely to be exceeded, the committee should be warned in advance and may reasonably choose not to carry out all of the hearings proposed. (Paragraph 41)

22.  In this Report, we have set out what we believe committees' role in these appointments should be, and which appointments should be affected. This is a new step, somewhat into the unknown, the Commissioner for Public Appointments has expressed a number of concerns, and we would understand if the Government wished to keep how the system was working under review, in close co-operation with the Liaison Committee. Given the limited number of posts affected, data to conduct such a review would probably only be available after three years of operation. (Paragraph 42)

23.  There is one other circumstance in which pre-appointment hearings should be introduced. Occasionally, Ministers have made public appointments without following the usual processes, where normal practice and the public expectation are that these appointments will be made on merit. The most common examples are appointments to the Diplomatic Service, often of former Members of Parliament. Such appointments may occasionally be appropriate, but they deserve to be tested in public by a cross-party committee. There is a strong argument for requiring a pre-appointment hearing—even a binding hearing—in such cases. (Paragraph 43)

2   Conservative Democracy Taskforce, Power to the People: Rebuilding Parliament, p 4 Back

3   Government By Appointment: Opening Up The Patronage State, Fourth Report from the Public Administration Select Committee, Session 2002-03, HC 165-I, paras 103-110 (henceforth Government by Appointment). See also The report of POWER: An independent inquiry into Britain's democracy, March 2006, pp 139-142. Back

4   The Governance of Britain, p 28 Back

5   Ev 15, para 5 Back

6   Government by Appointment, para 19. See also Q 77. Back

7   Qq 6 and 63; Ev 20, para 13 Back

8   Chairman of the Medical Research Council: Introductory Hearing, Eighth Report from the Science and Technology Committee, Session 2006-07, HC 746, para 15; The Chairmanship of the BBC, First Report from the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, Session 2006-07, HL 171, para 42  Back

9   Q 2 [John McFall]; Q 71 [Janet Gaymer] Back

10   Q 9 Back

11   Ev 18, para 11 Back

12   Q 2 Back

13   Q 62. See also Ev 16-17, para 10 (ii). Back

14   Ev 16, para 10 (ii) Back

15   Q 1 Back

16   The Governance of Britain, p 28 Back

17   The Governance of Britain, p 29 Back

18   Ev 19, para 12 (iii) Back

19   The Governance of Britain, p 29 Back

20   Qq 4 and 17. See also Ev 19, para 12 (v). Back

21   Qq 76-80 Back

22   Q 1 Back

23   HC (2006-07) 731-i, Q 1 Back

24   Qq 1 and 43-44; Ev 16, para 10 (i) Back

25   Q 44 Back

26   Ev 16, para 10 (i) Back

27   HC (2006-07) 731-i, Q 1 Back

28   Qq 20-22 Back

29   Ev 19, para 12 (iii) Back

30   Q 2 Back

31   The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England: Confirmation Hearings, Seventh Report from the Treasury Committee, Session 1999-2000, HC 520, para 3 Back

32   Qq 2, 4, 7 and 9 Back

33   HC (1999-2000) 520, Q 32 Back

34   Q 37 Back

35   Q 39 Back

36   The Chairmanship of the BBC, HL (2006-07) 171, Q 444 Back

37   The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England: Confirmation Hearings, Seventh Report from the House of Commons Treasury Committee, Session 1999-2000, HC520-I, para 5 Back

38   Seventh Special Report from the Treasury Committee, Session 1999-2000, HC 859  Back

39   HC (2006-07) 746, para 14 Back

40   Sixth Special Report from the Science and Technology Committee, Session 2006-07, HC 1043, Appendix, para 10 Back

41   See paragraph 21. Back

42   Government by Appointment, para 110 Back

43   Ev 18, para 10 (vi) Back

44   The Foreign Affairs Committee has reported its interest in carrying out scrutiny of this kind on a number of occasions, most recently in its First Report of Session 2007-08, HC 50, paras 199-200. Back