Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

On the latter point, we certainly intend to give Mr Riddell an opportunity to appear before the Committee before too long to see how he is settling into his new role. We would not have agreed to his appointment unless we were convinced that he was determined to be independent, but with so many of his powers being questioned and with Ministers substantively proposing to take back control of the appointments process, how he carries out the role will be crucial. How he maintains the importance of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments will be very interesting to observe.

We would like whatever changes are made to be made on the basis of consensus. We have picked up a certain amount of—how shall I say it?—tension between civil servants and Ministers about these appointments. There may be an opportunity to build a better understanding of both parties, so that these changes are not necessary.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that to ensure that the best candidates are aware of these opportunities, the vacancies must be promoted far and wide? That would go some way towards ensuring that applications were received from candidates regardless of their race, creed, colour, religion, gender or even the university or school they happened to go to. It would also open up the process to people from different and varied walks of life who could bring their life experience to a different arena. Advertising a job on a specialist website and then phoning round our pals to encourage them to apply is not an effective or appropriate way to attract the strongest candidates.

At a time when the public are rightly demanding more accountability from their elected representatives, the opportunity to apply for jobs such as the Commissioner for Public Appointments should be widely publicised across a spectrum of United Kingdom society to encourage a diverse range of applicants, rather than going down the traditional route, which will reaffirm the public’s view that there is cronyism and engender disenchantment and apathy.