Ministers may be bringing in political “super-spads” through the backdoor by putting them on the boards of Whitehall departments, a leading committee of MPs has found, as it called for an overhaul of appointment rules.
The public administration and constitutional affairs committee, led by the Conservative MP William Wragg, called for new guidance to prevent “personal and political” friends of ministers being installed as non-executive directors of government departments.
It launched its inquiry into civil service boards a year after Matt Hancock was found to have appointed his unpaid adviser Gina Coladangelo to the board of the Department of Health and later started an affair with her. The committee said it was “difficult not to question her independence in this role”.
Non-executive directors were brought in to provide challenge and an independent view to the boards of Whitehall departments.
However, the committee’s report identified another seven examples where politically connected people have been put on Whitehall boards, including the former special adviser and Vote Leave activist Henry De Zoete; the former special adviser Simone Finn; the former Tory and Ukip MP Douglas Carswell; the former Labour MP and Vote Leave campaigner Gisela Stuart; and the former chief of staff in No10 Nick Timothy.
It also highlighted examples where Gerry Grimstone, a non-executive in the Department for International Trade, and Theodore Agnew, a non-executive director in the Treasury and Cabinet Office, became government ministers in the House of Lords.
Other instances not mentioned by the committee include the former Conservative vice-chairman Dominic Johnson, who was appointed to the Department for International Trade and is now a minister; and Ben Goldsmith, the party donor and brother of the Tory peer and former cabinet minister Zac Goldsmith, who is on the board of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
They highlighted evidence from Miranda Curtis, who was a lead non-executive in the Foreign Office until 2020, said: “We have all experienced appointments being made in departments of political allies of ministers or secretaries of state, who come in as super spads. That is clearly a different role from the role of an independent non-exec.”
Michael Jary, the lead non-executive for the government, told the inquiry he had not observed it was a problem.
But the committee said it was significant that there was a view, real or perceived, that non-executive directors could be appointed as political advisers to ministers because of their supposedly fundamentally different purposes. It said: “The ministerial code and corporate governance code state that departmental boards should only focus on operational delivery, not policy.”
It called for an urgent overhaul of the corporate governance code for non-executives, saying it was “not fit for purpose”, and a ban on ministers appointing individuals “with clear political or personal connections”.
The committee also said ministers should avoid replacing all departmental non-executives when they take over and for the commissioner for public appointments to regulate the appointments.
A report from the Institute for Government found in 2021 that about 20% of the 94 non-executive directors then in post have political experience or allegiances.
At the time, it called for a complete overhaul of how they are appointed, saying it was “impossible to know whether candidates are genuinely being appointed on merit, or if advantage is being given on grounds of political affiliation”.
