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Prime Minister announces members of the House of Lords Appointments Commission

The Prime Minister today announced the names of the founding members of the new House of Lords Appointments Commission, which the Government promised as part of its first stage of the reform of the House of Lords. The names were selected through an open process conducted in accordance with the principles of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.

The Chairman will be Lord (Dennis) Stevenson of Coddenham (54), the Chairman of Pearson plc and Halifax plc and a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords.

The independent members will be Mrs Angela Sarkis CBE (45), the Chief Executive of the Church Urban Fund; Dame Deirdre Hine (63) previously Chief Medical Officer at the Welsh Office and Chairman of the Commission for Health Improvement; and Mrs Felicity Huston (36), Chairman of the Northern Ireland Consumer Committee for Electricity and previously the Deputy Chairman of the General Consumer Council of Northern Ireland.

In addition, the Commission will contain a member nominated by each of the three main political parties. The Labour Party member is Baroness (Brenda) Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (57). The Conservative Party member is Lord (Douglas) Hurd of Westwell (70). The Liberal Democrat member is Lord (Navnit) Dholakia (63).

The Prime Minister said

“The establishment of the Appointments Commission marks an important next step in the modernisation of the House of Lords. It removes an important source of patronage from the hands of the Prime Minister of the day. In the future, independent peers will be recommended by an independent commission.

“The independent members have been chosen from a field of very strong candidates. The seven members of the Commission combine knowledge of the existing House of Lords and come from a range of personal backgrounds. This makes them well-qualified to take forward the Government’s objective of a House of Lords which is more representative of our diverse society. The Commission will look for suitable candidates in a wider field than up to now. It will also ensure that the process of appointing non-political peers to the House of Lords will be open and transparent.”

4th May 2000

Notes for Editors

The Appointments Commission

1. The Appointments Commission is a non-statutory advisory non-departmental public body. It has two main functions: to make recommendations for non-political peers; and to vet for propriety all nominations for peerages, including those from the political parties. The latter task has hitherto been carried out by the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee.

2. The Government announced its intention to establish the Appointments Commission in the White Paper Modernising Parliament Reforming the House of Lords published in January 1999. The Commission is part of a package of pledges made by the Government to reduce the Prime Minister’s powers of patronage in relation to the House of Lords, and is an integral part of the arrangements for the first stage of House of Lords reform, which included the removal of the automatic right of hereditary peers to be members of the House through the House of Lords Act 1999.

3. In the White Paper, the Government said that the Commission would operate an open and transparent nominations system for cross-bench peers, both actively inviting public nominations and encouraging suitable bodies to make nominations. It would make public the general qualities being sought and the type of information required to support a nomination. It would seek to cast its net wider than the present system to achieve successful nominations. It will seek the advice of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, Dame Rennie Fritchie, about best practice for attracting and assessing potential nominees. The Prime Minister will determine the number of nominations he will invite from the Commission, but has undertaken to recommend those nominations to Her Majesty except in the most exceptional circumstances, such as those endangering the security of the realm.

4. The Royal Commission on Reform of the House of Lords has recommended that there should be a statutory Appointments Commission with a wide range of functions, including the power to determine the balance of membership of the House, and to make political as well as non-political nominations. The Government has said that it accepts the principle of a statutory commission as part of any permanent arrangements, but has reached no views on its precise role and functions. The present Appointments Commission is quite unconnected to the Royal Commission’s recommendations.

The members of the Appointments Commission

Lord (Dennis) Stevenson (54). His main business activities are as the Chairman of Pearson plc and the Chairman of Halifax plc. He was until recently Chairman of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery. He is an independent member of the Takeover Panel, a member of the Board of the British Council, and the Chairman of the Aldeburgh Festival. He has advised both the present and the previous Government in a number of capacities.

Angela Sarkis CBE (45) is the Chief Executive of the Church Urban Fund. She trained as a probation officer, and after a career in the public sector, she worked as a Director of the Divert Trust, which works with disaffected young people, before moving on to her present position in 1996. She is an adviser to the Government’s Social Exclusion Unit. Her voluntary work includes membership of the Council of the Howard League for Penal Reform; committee membership of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation; a Trustee of the BBC Children in Need and Vice-Presidency of the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance.

Dame Deirdre Hine (63) is the Chairman of the Commission for Health Improvement, and President of the Royal Society of Medicine. She was previously the Chief Medical Officer of the Welsh Office, and was made a Dame for services to medicine in 1997. She is the President of Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Chairman of the Board of National No-Smoking Day.

Felicity Huston (36) is a self-employed tax consultant based in Belfast. She has just been appointed as the Chairman of the Northern Ireland Consumer Committee for Electricity. She holds a number of other positions in Northern Ireland, including the membership of the Post Office Users Council, and she sits as a panel member on industrial tribunals. She is also a member of Belfast Charitable Society (known as Clifton House). She was Deputy Chairman of the General Consumer Council until April 2000 and stood as a candidate for the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition in the 1996 Forum elections.

Lord (Douglas) Hurd (70) was Foreign Secretary in the Conservative Government from 1989-95, having previously served as Home Secretary and Northern Ireland Secretary. He is the Chairman of the Prison Reform Trust and the Deputy Chairman of Coutts & Co. He is a member of the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, and was a member of the Royal Commission on Reform of the House of Lords.

Baroness (Brenda) Dean (57) was the General Secretary of SOGAT ‘82 from 1985-91. She is currently the Chairman of the Housing Corporation; Chairman of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body; President of the College of Occupational Therapists and a Board member of the General Insurance Standards Council. She is a member of the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, and was a member of the Royal Commission on Reform of the House of Lords.

Lord (Navnit) Dholakia (63) worked successively for the Community Relations Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality. He is Chairman of the National Association of Care and Resettlement of Offenders; Council Member of The Howard League of Penal Reform; on the Home Secretary’s Race Forum; Vice Chairman, Policy Research Institute on Ageing and Ethnicity; on the Governing Body of the Commonwealth Institute; and a Trustee of the Mental Health Foundation.

The selection process

The selection of the independent members followed the procedures laid down by the Commissioner for Public Appointments.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Executive Search and Selection were engaged by the Cabinet Office to provide expert advice and support to the process. The posts were also publicly advertised. Names were recommended to the Prime Minister by a Panel of selectors chaired by Sir Richard Wilson, the Secretary of the Cabinet. The other members were Lord (Robert) Fellowes, previously Principal Private Secretary to The Queen and a cross-bench peer; Sir Herman Ouseley, previously the Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality; Ann Abraham, the Legal Services Ombudsman and a member of the Neill Committee, and Paula Grayson, an independent personnel management consultant.

700 people altogether expressed interest in the posts of either Chairman or member. In all, 10 applications were received for the post of Chairman alone and 213 for the posts of member alone. 36 people applied for both positions.