Boards of Public Bodies: Representation

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and to listen to his experience. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, for raising this very important issue.

We need to start with a basic question: why do we do this? Why is this important? It is because there is a business and service reason. Gaining a board with diverse life experiences, ideas and knowledge brings a collective team approach to what is best for serving the public and what is best for the organisation and the staff who work in it. We need to be clear: there is talent in every single community, whether it is one of identity—such as age, gender, sexuality or disability—or of the regions and nations of the UK.

We have to make sure that we do not make it harder—or nearly impossible—for someone’s talent to be brought forward and help the public sector improve what it does through barriers or the way the recruitment and selection to the boards is carried out. I welcome targets—some call them quotas—as a useful tool in helping that, but let us be clear: they cannot and must not be seen as the only tool; if they are, they become a tokenistic tick-box exercise that does not really bring about inclusivity in boards. The basis for having diverse boards that function well and serve organisations that serve people well is to ensure that there is good governance, that the culture of the organisation makes it normal and natural to reach out to everybody they serve and that the people who wish to serve on the board know that it is for them.

What is needed is a multi-layered approach to culture and governance and not a myopic focus on just recruitment and selection. For example, you could have all these tick-box exercises and all the data, but a board has a macho culture that has not changed, when somebody joins it who is not used to a macho culture—perhaps someone female or transsexual—they instantly become alienated. It is about much more than just numbers. We have to think about culture and governance.

I know of an LGBT person who was selected for a public board; there was an away event and the invite went out for partners of the opposite sex. Again, here we have to think about culture and governance. I have heard about disabled members with a sight problem where the board’s whole approach is about reading and paper, not thinking through its own effectiveness. It goes much deeper than just a percentage of people recruited and selected, even though that is important and must continue. It is about how we get sustainable and effective boards based on good governance and good culture as well as selection.

My first important question to the Government is this: why can we not have, as the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, said, centralised recording and monitoring which shows not just who is selected but how well people are integrated and functioning in public sector boards? That would put a focus to do something back on the board, if it knows it is being monitored not just on whether it has females and people from BAME backgrounds but on whether it is actually thinking about how to integrate and function properly.

The total breadth of diversity is also still not statistically recorded. I looked through the action plan and a number of documents, but could not find anything on LGBT individuals, for example. It is important that we understand the diversity of where people come from.

A big and unspoken issue here is the economic make-up of public boards. Looking around this Chamber, we are probably ideal candidates to be part of those boards; the majority of us are from a professional background. But many people from non-traditional economic backgrounds would make superb members of public boards, bringing their knowledge. How do we reach out to such communities? I see lots of adverts for places on public boards in the Sunday Times, for example. I have never seen one in the Pink Paper or in local daily newspapers that local people read. We have to think carefully about this. Even though we have quotas and targets, do they represent the totality of women or of BAME communities? Those communities and gender-based communities are not monolithic cultures; there are people of difference and diversity within them. How are we making sure that we are reaching out and getting to many people? As a noble Lord said, how are we using social media and digital technology to reach out and bring people to the boards?

I also looked at which recruitment agencies are being used by boards, and it tends to be the normal, big, public sector recruitment agencies and the City types. The whole process tends to be based on a corporate approach to bringing people in. Again, if you do not know that world and you are not used to it, it is very hard to break through. It goes much deeper than just numbers; we have to look at the whole culture and process to make sure that this happens. This afternoon I decided, because I am a sad person, to look at all the public recruitment vacancies around. The interview panels are nearly all of a certain make-up: they include Permanent Secretaries and the great and the good. It would be good if we could have more diverse interview panels, with people from different backgrounds, as they ensure that the views of people who have a different approach and view can be considered equally. It is therefore important that we look at the inclusiveness of the boards, the process and the interview panels, but we must also make sure that we look at the culture and the governance structures of those boards once people are on there, and at how they are working.

I will give the Government a couple of suggestions about how the process could be carried out better—not just recruitment and selection but working out how the boards work and how systems and structures could be put in place by government. When do entry and exit interviews take place? How well are people from different backgrounds being integrated? What are their reasons for leaving or not reapplying? We need to ask where that rich data has gone, then it needs to be fed back, not just to that particular board but so that it can be used much more widely. Why are standards for inclusive governance and culture not set for public sector boards? These should be used not just as part of the recruitment of all public boards and chairs but should become standards that public boards have to think about, looking at how they work and reach out and what their inclusive governance structure should be.

Do chairs of boards get deep, centralised and systematic development in diversity and its use within boards and organisations? If not, could we look at that? In particular, how will we bring about more diverse recruitment and selection panels, which can help to make sure that the talent in front of them is understood properly at interview and then perhaps recruited?

Will the Government commit to a real action plan with targets to improve diversity in public appointments, not focusing solely on recruitment and retention? Will they start to keep data on the whole spectrum of diversity, including social class? Will they work with organisations such as Inclusive Boards to work up standards for inclusive governance and culture within boards? That way, big steps will be made and the prize of better organisations and better services from public bodies to the diverse communities that they are meant to represent and serve will be achieved.