Commons divisions

MPs and peers expressed concern about the proposed appointment of Carol Mills – currently head of the Department of Parliamentary Services in the Australian Parliament, on the basis that she did not have sufficient knowledge and experience of the British constitution and parliamentary procedure to perform the role successfully. This included senior MPs and former cabinet ministers. The latest development in the saga came on Wednesday with reports that the Speaker, John Bercow, had agreed that the roles of Chief Executive and Clerk of the House should be split. It was reported that this was a move he had argued for before the appointment process began, only to be met with resistance from the then Leader of the House, Andrew Lansley, and the outgoing Clerk, Sir Robert Rogers. How the candidates in the frame will feel about this development has yet to emerge. How the appointment process will be concluded this time also remains unclear – particularly whether the House will decide that any candidate whose name is put forward for these roles should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing, as proposed by Bernard Jenkin MP, Chair of the Public Administration Select Committee. Since 2007 the government has allowed parliamentary committees to conduct pre-appointment hearings with candidates for a range of high profile public appointments, though not for permanent secretaries. These can have a real impact on the appointment process, as a number of candidates have found. The purpose of pre-appointment hearings is two-fold. First, they give Parliament a role in scrutinising appointments otherwise made by the Executive - although secretaries of state are under no obligation to follow the recommendations made by committees. Ed Balls demonstrated as much in 2009 when he went ahead and appointed Maggie Atkinson, his preferred choice for Children’s Commissioner, against the advice of the Education Select Committee. This would not be grounds to argue for a pre-appointment hearing in this instance, as the appointment process has been led by parliamentarians. The second reason to hold pre-appointment hearings is to ensure that ministers are not deliberately appointing candidates who will pose less challenge to the policies they wish to pursue. This was the suspicion of the education committee when they rejected Maggie Atkinson – the Chair Barry Sheerman said at the time, "We just didn't think she had the independence of mind to stand up to a secretary of state who loves to get his own way." The Public Administration Select Committee had similar concerns about the process which led to the nomination of Dame Janet Finch to head the UK Statistics Authority. In the case of the Clerk a preferred candidate was the choice of a panel, rather than a single individual, so concerns of this sort ought to have been assuaged. The panel was chaired by the Speaker and composed of two government (Andrew Lansley and John Thurso) and two opposition members (Angela Eagle and Margaret Hodge) together with an external figure – the Parliamentary Ombudsman Dame Julie Mellor. It did not include any of the elected Deputy Speakers. Although the House is under no obligation to follow any external guidelines on appointments, the Speaker’s chairing of the panel was a departure from normal practice in the Civil Service – where panels are usually chaired by an external member – a Civil Service Commissioner in the case of senior civil service appointments and a Public Appointments Assessor for statutory public appointments and chairs of public bodies. Such measures are intended to provide assurance around high profile appointments, although as the current process for appointing the new Chair of the BBC Trust demonstrates, they still may not provide adequate protection against allegations of politicisation. Nonetheless the use of any form of open appointment process at all is a recent innovation for the House, introduced by the Speaker for the first time for the appointment of Sir Robert, and to be welcomed. But if Members of the House have felt excluded from the process, as the recent vocal dissent suggests, a pre-appointment hearing might be one way to ensure that a wider pool would have the chance to assess the candidate’s credentials. This would not be unreasonable – after all – any Member may want to seek the advice of the Clerk on some matter of procedure or practice and all Members therefore have an interest in who is appointed to the role. The obvious candidate committee to conduct such pre-appointment scrutiny would be the Liaison Committee – made up of the backbench Chairs of all the Commons select committees. There would be potential risks involved, including that of deterring future candidates from applying for what is already a challenging role. The counter argument is that a hearing would enable any prospective candidate to prove their ability to account for themselves under pressure to a selection of senior Members – a key skill for anyone seeking to take on the role. The next time the House needs to fill its senior vacancies it will certainly want to ensure there is greater openness from the start about what the process will be, and who will be involved. As the Institute has previously argued in relation to public appointments, it would also make sense to consult MPs more widely on any job description before the recruitment process begins. Ensuring that there is cross-party agreement from the backbenches as well as the front benches, might avoid a repeat of the controversy which has surrounded this appointment.