MRS JANET GAYMER CBE QC

21 APRIL 2009

  Q197  Vice-Chairman: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for attending. This is the fifth evidence session of the Speaker's Conference. Can I ask you to introduce yourself for the record, please?

Mrs Gaymer: First of all, good morning everyone. My name is Janet Gaymer and I am the current Commissioner for Public Appointments.

  Q198  Angela Browning: Good morning, Mrs Gaymer. What practical steps can be taken to increase diversity on the boards of public bodies? What are you doing about it to improve it? I wonder if I could ask you a supplementary. Is there any significant pattern of public appointments associated with different Government departments because most of them are associated with boards or bodies that are associated and link back eventually to a Government department, are there any that are significantly better and is there a reason for that?

  Mrs Gaymer: First of all, I think I ought to make two observations before I answer your question which covers quite a lot. The first is, I should make clear that I do not make appointments myself, I regulate the procedures for public appointments and not all public appointments. There will be a vast majority of public appointments which I do not regulate so my answer is going to relate only to my knowledge of the public appointments within my remit. The sort of positions that we are talking about here are senior positions, they are likely to be chairing roles. They are, therefore, looking for a very specific skill set. The second comment I should make is that I know your inquiry, which obviously I will do my very best to help, is looking in particular at the link between taking up a political office and public appointments. Unfortunately, we have no reliable evidence about the trajectory in relation to political office and public appointments but anecdotally my experience is that because of the nature of public appointments people tend to come to them after they have held political office, not before. I think it is important to make that observation, that my answer relates to a very specific type of public appointments.

  Q199  Angela Browning: Could I ask a supplementary just on that. When you say people take up public appointments after a political career, I can understand that. I should declare an interest, Madam Vice-Chairman, as I am retiring at the next election but I did have a public appointment before I was elected. Can I just ask you, is it because the skills set required requires expertise? Are you looking for narrowly defined experts or are you looking more for generalists? Among the group we are concerned about, particularly women, people of ethnic origin, people with disabilities, is it because they lack the skills set—it surely cannot be that—or is it that they have more difficulty than others in identifying the pathway into a public appointment?

  Mrs Gaymer: First of all, with regard to skills and experience, certainly for the public appointments I regulate, the skills and experience will vary from one appointment to another. There are some appointments that require very expert skills, for example in relation to science or technology. There will be other public appointments that are looking for a very broad range of skills and experience, for example ability to think strategically, ability to set policy and so on. I think it is fair to say that there is a specific group of skills and experience, for the sort of appointments I am talking about, which does require some sort of track record, if I can use that phrase, before an application can be made in any expectation that that application will be successful. If I can deal with the second half of your question, moving on to this question of diversity, what we have been doing about it, I think the big issue in relation to public appointments is ensuring that the pool of candidates, the pool of applicants who come forward to apply for public appointments, is as broad as possible, depending on the skills and expertise that are being sought, and certainly that is the main issue. I also think that there are three discrete areas that need work, have always needed work and I think will continue to need work. The first is what I would call the nurturing phase, getting people to understand what is involved in a public appointment and what it might be like to become a public appointee. In that respect there are all sorts of solutions which have been tried and are being tried: shadowing, mentoring. For example, I have been supporting a mentoring scheme for women in science and technology. Internship, traineeship, all these kind of mechanisms are really useful in that nurturing stage. Just getting someone to understand, for example, what an NDPB is. I find this when I undertake outreach work, I start talking about NDPBs and a lack of comprehension goes across members of the audience and I have to stop myself and say, "Of course, you may not know what that is, I need to explain that to you", so there is the nurturing phase. There is then the second phase of attracting applicants and I think in that area there are different challenges. There is, for example, evidence that women lack confidence in terms of making applications for positions, they will want to be compliant with all the criteria for the position whereas it is said that the male population will be happy with about 60 per cent. Disabled people may be very wary about making an application for an appointment which is going to cause them problems, for example, in relation to travelling. It is interesting that some of the work that my office has done in relation to people with disabilities identified not only a concern about mobility issues in respect of fulfilling the appointment and making the application but also after the appointment has been made, in other words throughout the appointment, so there are different issues there. The whole question is of encouraging people to apply and making the actual job, the appointment, attractive, that the terms and conditions and the culture of the organisation will encourage people to come in and apply. Finally, I am sorry this is a long answer, the third area is the process itself, the application process in which I am particularly interested because obviously that is the area I regulate. We try extremely hard, through my Code of Practice and through the training and guidance that we give, to get over this message that the process itself needs to help people to apply so we will advocate a simple application form. We will advocate advertising, publicity in as many different kinds of places as possible, the language will need to be non-exclusive, it will need to be easy to understand, the selection criteria need to be appropriate and not excessive, they need to be essential for the appointment and so on, all these kinds of things. The two areas in relation to the public appointments process which in my experience I found to be extremely important, are having first of all a process which is seen to be open and transparent, so people know how they are going to be treated, and they understand what the process is and secondly that there is independent scrutiny of that process, they know that they are going to be dealt with fairly essentially, because there will be someone there having a look at it, keeping an eye on it and making sure that everyone is being treated in the same way save where appropriate allowance may need to be made, for example if the person was disabled.

  Q200  Angela Browning: You have mentioned mentoring and other practical things that you have introduced, but is this based on just an overall inclination and willingness to improve diversity in public appointments or is there a set strategy and do you benchmark that strategy about how well you do compared with other organisations?

  Mrs Gaymer: The first point I should make about the mentoring scheme is that the mentoring scheme I referred to is not a scheme which I was running, it was a scheme which was set up by the UK Resource Centre and aimed at women in science and technology and I have been giving active support to that scheme. So far as the mentoring itself is concerned, I have long thought that there ought to be a proper mentoring scheme for public appointments and I think you have had my submission, you will see that I am about to embark upon effectively an 18 month diversity and talent strategy which is going to examine each of the strands. One of the aims of that strategy is to produce what I hope will be very practical sustainable programmes to encourage diversity across the piece, so far as my own appointments are concerned, and I have to keep explaining that because there are, of course, lots of other public appointments in respect of which there may be other strategies.

  Q201  Mrs Cryer: You have explained very thoroughly what you are doing to try to encourage the organisations that you oversee and their appointments. What evidence have you that they are taking notice of what you have said? I am impressed that you are insisting—I think you are insisting—that they should advertise so that it is not a boys' club where women do not hear about these things. Is it actually working? Are they advertising globally? For instance, where a body is overwhelmingly men, dare they say in their advertisement, "This organisation would be pleased to hear from women" or if there are no ethnic minority people, are they saying, "We will be very pleased to hear from ethnic minority candidates"? Is this happening?

  Mrs Gaymer: I should make the point here—I think it will help in understanding the answer—it is Government departments who are responsible for running the appointments processes. They are a very key constituency so far as I am concerned. I make it my business to see them on a regular basis. I communicate with them on a regular basis. We have two sites on my website which specifically deal with diversity issues and the aim, particularly in relation to departmental contacts as we call them, is to make sure we keep them fed, so to speak, with a whole series of guides, support, practical guidance, to help them deliver what they are responsible for. The question of publicising public appointments, has been a condition of the mandatory Code of Practice for which I am responsible, almost from the very beginning, it is taken as read, the issue is how it is done of course. We try very, very hard to help departments think about where they should be publicising particular public appointments. I should also explain that I have a body of people called independent public appointments assessors who are accredited by my office and it is their job to keep an eye on the particular public appointment process and they are specifically charged to make sure that issues of diversity are addressed throughout the process.

  Q202  Vice-Chairman: Is it working because your own statistics in the brief you kindly gave us suggest that an agenda from between 2005 to 2008 had dropped from 36.6 per cent to 32.6 per cent; on ethnicity in 2005 it was 8.6 per cent and that is down to 7.7 per cent and disability began at 4.4 per cent, came up to 6.1 per cent and is back down to 4.6? That does not sound as though it is going in the right direction.

  Mrs Gaymer: First of all, this is the first time the figures have dropped. There has been a steady rise right through until the previous year before this drop. That drop was very surprising, worrying and it is actually one of the reasons why I have launched this particular strategy because I want to find out why. I think it is interesting that it is a drop right across the piece. I am not sure what the reasons for it are. I think it is simplistic to point to one solution, I think there could be all sorts of solutions. For example, if you have a look closely at the statistics in relation to the drop in female appointments, there was a fall in the number of female chairs appointed in the National Health Service, that might be the reason, I do not know. We have not analysed the statistics, indeed we do not have the resource to analyse the statistics in that detail. What is interesting is that there has been this drop right across. It was for that reason that I launched the strategy. Coincidentally, and I very much welcomed it, in October last year I was given specific power under my Order in Council to promote diversity in procedures for public appointments. I did not have that power until last October. Before that I had a power to promote equality of opportunity so I now have specific power to focus on diversity and that has been very welcome. I am certainly not complacent about this issue. I think it is an urgent issue to be addressed and certainly we are doing the best we can to deal with it.

  Q203  Andrew George: Ultimately these are ministerial appointments.

  Mrs Gaymer: They are.

  Q204  Andrew George: I wonder to what extent there have been occasions when ministers have sought to intervene either in the later stages or whether you have detected any involvement of Government departments at earlier stages in the process?

  Mrs Gaymer: As I explained, departments themselves are responsible for the processes. My code has been very clear from the beginning, from when Lord Nolan first reported, that the very first principle must be ministerial responsibility and ministerial choice. The minister is responsible for making the appointment from a choice of appointable candidates identified by the appointments process. However, notwithstanding that choice, the minister should not be involved during the selection process in an active fashion and that is one of the things which, quite frankly, my Code of Practice is there to police, as is the work of the independent public appointments assessor. My experience is that this does not occur, certainly not in a routine way. If there is any suggestion that a minister is becoming involved in the appointments process, the advice which my office gives is that I speak to the minister and we try to find out what the problem is. I am a great believer in prevention rather than cure. I want to get an appointments process right and I want to identify the very best appointable candidates at the end of it to offer choice to the minister.

  Q205  Andrew George: Can you answer the question as to who appointed you and how you were appointed?

  Mrs Gaymer: I am technically a Crown servant. I am answerable to the Queen. My appointment was made on behalf of the Queen by the Privy Council. My appointment was approved by the leaders of all three parties.

  Q206  Fiona Mactaggart: I just want to ask, in relation to your responsibility to promote diversity, whether when appointments are being made where there is a group of people conducting a role, a board or something like that, you have ever been able to encourage as one member of a team of people someone who perhaps might be at the margins of the normal qualifications, who might be much younger, who might, for example, have robust experience of their family using public services but not necessarily of being in a management role and so on? Have you seen that as part of your role to promote diversity?

  Mrs Gaymer: I am going to answer this by reference to two phrases, positive action and positive discrimination. There is a lot of confusion, I think, on the part of many people about positive action, which you can take at the beginning of an appointments process, in order to create a diverse pool of candidates and positive discrimination, which you certainly must not do, during the course of the process. Generally speaking, when I talk about an appointments process I am talking about a single appointment, not an appointment of a number of members to a public body, so they tend to be single appointments. Any attempt to change the make-up of a group of candidates at the final stage of the process is not the way to do it because that would be positive discrimination if one was trying to look at it in terms of various groups, the way to do it is to use positive action at the beginning of the process in order to get that diverse pool of candidates.

  Q207  Fiona Mactaggart: But you are not getting the diverse pool of candidates.

  Mrs Gaymer: I am aware that the Equality Bill will contain provisions which will allow voluntary positive measures to be taken at the point of selection, so the law will be changing slightly on it.

  Q208  Angela Browning: Can I come back on one thing. You mentioned at the beginning that in your own area you are dealing a lot with scientific subjects and clearly there is a need for people who have the qualifications and ability to deal with those subjects, but is it the case that all these public bodies now have as a matter of practice a lay member of that body? I realise on the scientific side you have got to have somebody who understands the science and at the same time they may not be somebody who is a recognised expert in that field, but do we have lay representatives on these bodies and is there more scope there?

  Mrs Gaymer: It will vary from body to body. I gave the example of a scientist because that is an easy example of someone who needs a specific skill and experience but every public body will be different according to perhaps the statute that sets it up or the job it has to do and the requirements for the job it has to do. I do not think it is right to talk about lay representatives, you are talking about a board which is going to be in control of the governance of a particular organisation so it is very unusual that that board will actually be representative in nature. There are some boards which have representatives on them but the great majority of boards will be comprised of board members who are being recruited for specific skill and experience needs depending upon the remit of the public body concerned.

  Q209  Mr Blunkett: Can I just follow up on that. There is a tendency, maybe anecdotal but certainly in terms of experience it shines through at the moment, where in public appointments we are getting a mirror image of the professionals running the service in the public appointments. It is true in health where the finance officers want to have someone on the boards who are experienced as finance officers so we are getting not a reflection of the public and their wider experience and a reflection of some degree of accountability, we are actually getting instead a duplication. It may make the professionals feel more comfortable because they can have a comfortable conversation but it is not one we intended when we took away the substantial elements of political appointees and handed them over to other people who then in turn reflect their own mirror image in who they appoint.

  Mrs Gaymer: There are three comments I would make on that. First, I totally accept and recognise what many people recognise in relation to the appointment processes, a tendency for people to appoint people who are like them. I think it is a well-known fact that that is one of the issues which needs to be addressed. Having said that, I go back to what I said in answer to the previous question, the public bodies whose procedures for appointment I regulate do vary enormously so their requirements vary enormously because they are covering virtually every aspect of life in our society. There are some groups of public bodies whose procedures I regulate, health is a good example actually, where specific efforts I know are about to be made, for example to increase local engagement, to try to bring those bodies closer to the bodies with which they deal. But I come back to the general proposition that each public body is different and it is very, very difficult to make a generalisation about it.

  Q210  Vice-Chairman: Can I ask a final question. Is it an advantage or a disadvantage to be a member of a political party if you are going forward to be considered for a public appointment?

  Mrs Gaymer: I go back to the very beginning, namely what Lord Nolan said in his first report, that no appointment to a public body should be made by reference to a political criterion.

  Q211  Vice-Chairman: If that is the case how can it be a potential route?

  Mrs Gaymer: There is no rule which says that someone who is politically active cannot apply for a position on a public body and, indeed, that is one reason why my office monitors people who declare their political activity during the appointments process. The figures are actually in the statement I have sent to you. My job is really quite straightforward: to make sure that the procedures guarantee appointment on merit and for that reason alone. That is all I focus on.

  Q212  Vice-Chairman: Perhaps that explains why it might be at the end of their political career. Angela is not going to be able to hide that she was once a Tory MP but a young Tory activist who might be looking for experience, thinking it is a labour government, and indeed vice versa, if his political colour was different, might not declare their political allegiance.

  Mrs Gaymer: That is true.

  Q213  Vice-Chairman: That in itself would be a shame as well because we do know if you are coming into politics you need to be part of a political party.

  Mrs Gaymer: But political activity should play no part in the appointments process and I would be very upset if I found evidence of that.

  Q214  Mrs Cryer: I assume that we are seeking a political balance on these various public bodies. How can you get a political balance if you do not know what their politics are?

  Mrs Gaymer: By and large public bodies do not require political balance. There are very few public bodies that actually require that the members of that public body be representatives of a political party. One example is the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the framework for that requires there should be representation on that body from political parties but it is usually specified that that is a requirement for the body.

  Vice-Chairman: Thank you very much. We have taken more of your time than we intended. Thank you very much for coming along this morning.