The process which led to David Kogan being picked to chair the Independent Football Regulator was a “dog’s dinner of an appointment process”, Sir William Shawcross has said.
Shawcross, who is the commissioner for public appointments, also described the appointment process as the “worst” he has seen in his four years in the role.
A recent Shawcross inquiry into the process found three breaches of the public appointments code: culture secretary Lisa Nandy failed to declare that David Kogan had donated to her leadership campaign; the Department for Culture, Media and Sport failed to disclose Kogan's political activity when he was announced as the government’s preferred candidate; and donations from Kogan were not discussed with him at his panel interview.
Appearing before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Shawcross was asked for his assessment of the process, “setting aside the specific breaches of the code”.
Shawcross said: “It is not easy to set those breaches aside.
“These were three serious breaches and it was very disturbing to find them.”
Shawcross said the appointment process was “an outlier” and the only time he has found three breaches of the governance code in one appointment.
He noted that in 2023-24, the government made more than 1,000 public appointments and re-appointments and received 10 complaints about those processes, with six breaches found. “That is pretty good and reassuring,” Shawcross said.
Shawcross was also asked about the credibility of the claim from Nandy that she did not remember the donation from Kogan. In his report, Shawcross said he accepted that Nandy "did not recall or know about these donations" during the appointment campaign.
“I will refer back to my report,” Shawcross said. “That was a very complex campaign, a very unusual campaign, badly run, and a lot of it was inappropriate. My report sets out clearly both the process of the campaign and my conclusions. I describe the process as having a number of unsatisfactory features. It did not accord with best practice. Indeed, in my opinion it is the worst appointment process that I have seen.”
Later in the session, he added: “I think that a secretary of state and others should be very observant and very careful when they are making appointments to check whether the potential appointee has or has not contributed to any campaigns of theirs, particularly when the appointee was widely known to be a generous Labour supporter, which is perfectly within his right.”
Reforms 'should have gone further' to tackle slow pace of appointments
In the session, Shawcross, who will leave the role next year, also returned to a concern he has raised repeatedly over his tenure: the timeliness of the public appointments system.
The government recently announced reforms to the system to make the appointments process quicker and more efficient. Ministers can now be consulted at the beginning and the end rather than at every stage of the campaign. Another change saw the "aim" that departments should conclude chair, chair equivalent and statutory office holder appointments within four months of a competition closing, and member appointments within three months, upgraded to an "expectation".
The reforms come after only 13% of hiring campaigns were completed within three months in 2023-24.
The government said it is tackling the issue “head on” with the reforms, but Shawcross said it should have gone further.
“There is not enough swiftness and I was a little bit disappointed that the timeliness aim was upgraded to an expectation but not a formal target,” he said. “I think it should be a target that all competition should be completed within three months for ordinary contests and up to four months, which is a long time, for ones that involve the most important ones such as chair of the BBC.”
Shawcross said the lack of pace “discourages good people from outside the system, not in public service yet, from applying for jobs”.
“If they know it is going to take three or four months and possibly longer they may say, ‘Well, there is a job in the private sector they will offer me next week’,” he said.
“It is very important that the timeliness thing should be improved, and in my last few months I will work hard on that.”
“Often things get slowed down in departments,” Shawcross added. “Some departments are more efficient than others, and the ones that are not so efficient should be chased more by me and others.”
On the change allowing ministers to be less involved in appointments, Shawcross warned that “ministers should realise and always remember that they are the crucial people, and it is for ministers to choose people whom they think suit their priorities”.
“I would not want this change to enable ministers to sit back and just leave it all to officials,” he said. “It should be ministers and elected politicians who remain in charge of the campaigns.”
However, he added: “If the fact that they do not have to be consulted every week on the progress of the campaign speeds it up and they can remain closely involved in the progress of a campaign, then that would help.”
Shawcross said his other key concern is that people with disabilities “continue to be very much under-represented” among public appointees.
“In my last few months I want to try to work harder to see that people with disabilities are treated more generously and that they have wider knowledge of the opportunities open to them,” he said.