The future of the Confederation of British Industry is in the balance this weekend as one business leader warned its brand was “beyond repair”.
A CBI board statement on Friday said there was demand for “far reaching change” after allegations of sexual attacks and harassment first revealed by the Guardian. The organisation has suspended key activities until June after an exodus of business members.
It is now embroiled in a City of London police inquiry into an alleged rape at a CBI staff party and an inquiry by the law firm Fox Williams into allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct.
Andy Wood, chief executive of the Suffolk brewer Adnams, said the organisation which was founded by royal charter in 1965 had “probably run its course”. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday: “I think probably the CBI brand is now beyond repair. It will have to reinvent itself root and branch.
“This is deep-rooted cultural and behavioural issues and I think we’re going to have to move on to a new place. We have some terrific trade associations and they can represent our organisation for the time being.”
Adnams is among more than 60 firms and organisations that have cancelled or suspended CBI membership over the furore. They include BP, Shell, Rolls-Royce, Barclays, John Lewis and National Grid.
The CBI said in its 2021 annual report that its total income for the year was £25m, with £22.2m from subscriptions. It does not disclose its membership list, but claims to represent 190,000 members through trade associations and a much smaller number of direct members, reported to be around 1,500.
The Guardian revealed claims this month that more than a dozen women claimed to have been victims of sexual misconduct by senior figures at the CBI. One of the complainants alleged she had been raped at a CBI summer boat party on the Thames in 2019. A second woman has also alleged she was raped by two male colleagues while working at the CBI, according to a Guardian report on Friday.
Allegations concerning complaints about the conduct of Tony Danker, then the director general, were reported by the newspaper last month. One female employee was said to have claimed that Danker made unwanted verbal contact with her which she considered to be sexual harassment. He was dismissed on 11 April. Danker insists he never used sexual language at work.
Danker, who was appointed in November 2020, has complained that he has been made a “fall guy” and his reputation has been destroyed by wrongly being associated with allegations of serious sexual offences. He told the BBC that four reasons were cited for his dismissal, including viewing the Instagram accounts of CBI staff and sending non-work-related messages to employees on work messaging platforms.
Paul Drechsler, a leading business figure and CBI president from 2015 to 2018, said it was “incredibly sad” for the victims of the reported assaults. He said he also had great sympathy with hard-working staff at the CBI who had “devoted their careers” to make the UK a successful business nation. He said he had no indication of any allegation of sexual misconduct at the organisation or any failings in its oversight while working as president, an unpaid role. “It came out of the blue,” he said. “I’m devastated.”
He added: “I’ve been around business for 40 years, all sorts of organisations around the world. I spent a lot of time at this organisation and I didn’t see anything even remotely close to this kind of stuff.”
Drechsler said the CBI fulfilled an important function, but it needed to understand what had gone wrong and fix the issues. He said: “In today’s world, patience is very short. They clearly don’t have long to find a way forward.”
Baroness Wheatcroft, former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal Europe, told Times Radio the future for the CBI appeared bleak. “It’s very hard to see that it has a positive future, I’m afraid. This organisation has presided over the most extraordinary culture by the sound of it,” she said. “It’s very hard to imagine an organisation where not one but two allegations of rape are now being investigated, and I think it makes it nigh-on impossible for the CBI to do the job that it’s there to do.”
She added: “I think it’s time for a total rethink. The CBI is having to accept itself that it was clearly deeply flawed and now it’s looking for a new sense of direction... they probably need to disband.”
In a statement on Friday, the CBI said it was taking steps to “address our failings”. The statement said: “Much needs to change if we are to win back trust so we may continue to represent business at this critical time for the country.”
