Source · Select Committees · Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Recommendation 26
26
Accepted
Subject the Government Lead Non-Executive to direct parliamentary scrutiny and oversight
Recommendation
The Committee acknowledges the arguments against NEDs being formally accountable to Parliament for any departmental or policy-specific matters, given the potential implications for the principle of ministerial responsibility. However, we believe that the Government Lead Non-Executive, as a quasi-regulator and coordinator of the NED cohort, should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. (Paragraph 76) 38 The Role of Non-Executive Directors in Government
Government response summary AI-generated
The government does not agree with the committee's characterisation of the Government Lead Non-Executive as a quasi-regulator, but notes that GLNEDs have historically appeared before the committee and will continue to make themselves available for scrutiny.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
We do not agree that the Government Lead Non-Executive should act as a quasi-regulator as the remit of the role does not have that authority. The role of Government Lead Non- Executive is clearly defined within the Corporate Governance Code: ‘The Government Lead Non-Executive will meet regularly with departmental lead non-executive board members, individually and as a collective, and feed their views back to the Prime Minister; Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service; and the Chief Executive of the Civil Service.’ However, successive Government Lead Non-Executives have appeared before the committee in response to requests and we have no doubt will continue to wish to make themselves available. We recommend that future candidates to the role of Government Lead Non-Executive should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. We also recommend that, as has been practised in the past, the Government Lead Non-Executive should appear before the Committee, as and when requested, to discuss the contents of the Government Lead NonExecutive Annual Report and any other matters relating to the overall system of NEDs.
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