House of Commons Commission (External Members)

John Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I am mindful of the concerns of colleagues that they do not want to be delayed for too long. I have no animus against, or indeed any knowledge of, either of the two individuals being appointed, and they may well fit the glowing descriptions that we have heard. I certainly hope so, and no doubt the Leader of the House will be pleased to sit alongside them as well, but I have huge problems with the process. What seems to have happened here, as so often—in fact, almost invariably—with our selection processes, is that we determine and narrow the outcome by the criteria that we use. It is like any algorithm: if we set the criteria for it, it will predict the outcome that we are going to get.

So let us look at the criteria. They include the need for:

“Senior executive leadership experience within a complex organisation”.

Already we are saying, basically, that we want the corporate suits. Male or female, it is the corporate suits we want, not people who have gone out and created and run a business themselves; not people who have actually worked in industry or maybe run a factory and really know about running things; not trade unionists who have had to engage with complex issues; not people who have worked in hospitals—not in senior management but maybe running a ward; and not those who are running a school. Those people do not get considered.

Every time we have a list of nominations, it nearly always consists of those who have been in big corporates and who have then sat on the boards of quangos and charities. It is always the great and the good. We keep appointing them time and time again, then we are surprised that this country ends up being so badly run. Basically, we are drawing from a very narrow cast, and we are constantly enabling them to perpetuate themselves —and not only them as individuals and their narrow range of experience, but their general ethos and that narrow self-perpetuating culture, which I am surprised, frankly, that the Leader of the House so readily accepts.

I have another problem with this. Paragraph 14 of the report from the Commission to the House says:

“In the case of both candidates, the selection panel was satisfied that neither had undertaken any political activity within the last five years”.

I am absolutely fed up with this assumption—again from this self-perpetuating elite that I have described—that party political activity is somehow reprehensible, shabby and shoddy, and that it is only those who will not engage in politics who are fit to be engaged in running public life. That is detrimental both to politics and to public life. I will continue to raise this issue on all such occasions when this same rotten process occurs, because, as we have seen many times, the public see through this arrogant metropolitan intellectual and cultural elite and the way they are running this country. But yet again, all the time, we are playing our part in perpetuating its malign grip. As I have said, I have no animus against the individuals concerned, but I have huge objections to the process.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar]

I would understand if the right hon. Gentleman were arguing, for example, that a political leader of a council might change the balance of the Commission, but if we are trying to get expertise, they would also be used to running large organisations. He rightly said that the Commission tends to work with a degree of consensus; it is not divided. Many other countries managed to encapsulate that. They appoint people to public bodies in the full and public knowledge that they have been politically active. I still do not understand why the right hon. Gentleman thinks that should be a major debarring factor.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

As I hope I was making clear, I think it debars from the Commission, where politicians are already appointed. It inevitably does not debar from other public sector appointments, where that may be perfectly reasonable, and where people may be appointed because of their connection to a political party if we are seeking a political balance. As I said, I have particular confidence in the two people we are appointing today. I think they will be first class and make a considerable contribution to the Commission and the work of this House.