Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, for what reason he is restarting the process for appointing a new Ofcom Chair; and how long that process will take.

Under the Governance Code for public appointments, Ministers should be presented with a choice of high quality candidates drawn from a strong and diverse field from which to make an appointment. Unfortunately this was not achieved during the campaign to appoint the Chair of Ofcom due to the low number of applications that lacked breadth and diversity. In line with the Governance Code and after consultation with the Commissioner for Public Appointment, the Secretary of State therefore decided to re-run the campaign with a new panel. Further announcements will be made on the new campaign in due course.