Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
I apologise for my momentary delay. The motion proposes that an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will appoint the person to the office of ordinary member of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for a period of five years, with effect from 14 March 2022.
The Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority produced a report that is tagged to the motion—its first report of 2022. I have no doubt that Members—the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) is certainly one of them—will have studied the report carefully before agreeing to the motion. I thank Philippa Helme for running the selection process diligently.
I would like to try to respond to what the right hon. Gentleman said, because it is important that people are drawn or apply from as wide a background as possible. That is something that he has tirelessly encouraged, and it goes along with the Government policy of trying to move Ministries outside SW1 to other parts of the country, to ensure greater involvement of people up and down the country from various degrees of experience. I know that Mr Speaker is keen to encourage applicants who do not necessarily fit the entirely traditional bill. I have to say, I think he thinks that only applicants from Lancashire would be suitable for most posts, whatever that post happens to be.
John Spellar
Can I put it to the Leader of the House that time after time we get recommendations to appointments, and they all come from the same narrow social circle? It is not even, as it was with the traditional Tory party, that they come from industry. We almost never have anybody from industry; they are always from the professions and the City of London. The person we are being recommended was a journalist and then worked at the Bank of England. Could we not have somebody who worked for Jaguar Land Rover, either as a convenor or as the manager?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point. I think we do want to fish in a bigger pool, and I think we should always be very concerned about what might broadly be called the quangocracy. We do not want this country run by people who pass and bounce from quango to quango, and pick up nice appointments along the way.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
In response to the point the Leader of the House has just made, with the earnest desire he expresses to ensure that we broaden the pool, what examples can he point to of how the recruitment panel attempted to broaden the pool in this particular case?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The process of the recruitment panel and what it looked at is all set out in its report. It had quite a large number of applicants, and it has to be said that Lea Paterson was the outstanding applicant by a long margin. She is not a characteristic quangocrat: that has not been her career. Until recently, she was the executive director of people and culture at the Bank of England. She is currently an independent member of the University of Warwick remuneration committee. She has previously held a number of senior management positions at the Bank of England, including being the director of independent evaluation. Before working for the Bank, she was a journalist, as economics editor, at The Times. I am afraid I have a particular bias in favour of The Times, its being the great newspaper of record and having fantastic editors, particularly in the 1970s. Journalists are not typical quangocrats, it has to be said—they are normally the ones throwing stones into the pools of the quangocracy—so I do not think that is the type of person we are appointing today.
However, I do take very seriously the criticisms from the right hon. Member for Warley. It is really important that we try to attract people of ability from across the country, because that is what we are trying to do as Members of Parliament. We come together from across the country to try to support a Government who will act with wisdom and discernment, which I am glad to say is what we have at the moment. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will continue his campaign, and I know that there are people sympathetic to it.
In the meantime, I am proud to be able to recommend this Humble Address to the House. If the appointment were to be made, Lea Paterson will serve on IPSA for five years. I commend this motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.