William Shawcross, chair of the Charity Commission, has criticised Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, a Labour peer, for making “surprising and disappointing” accusations about a lack of diversity on the regulator’s board.
Foulkes’ comments came while Shawcross was giving evidence to a House of Lords select committee on charities. He questioned why the regulator's board was not more diverse.
“If someone was to describe your board as a fairly right-wing, upper middle-class, white, middle-aged group of people from the south of England, would that be unfair?” he said.
“You’ve no black people, no one living north of the Wash, no young people.”
Foulkes' comments came after the Charity Commission recently recruited three new board members. He questioned the commission’s recruitment process, which he said had led to a lack of diversity.
“Would it not have been better to try and recruit someone from the black and minority ethnic communities?” he said. “You don’t seem to have done very much to get one.”
Shawcross submitted supplementary evidence to the committee, which was published this week.
Shawcross said these comments “seem to me to have gone beyond legitimate scrutiny into personal criticism”.
He said the commission had succeeded in growing its black and minority ethnic workforce from 4 per cent to 7 per cent in the two years to March 2016.
“I completely refute Lord Foulkes’ personal accusations against me,” he said. “I have worked for four years to improve the Commission's transparency and reputation as a regulator and thus to serve the charity sector better. I knew none of the three new board members before they entered the appointments process, which was overseen by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments in the normal way.
“The issue of achieving greater diversity on boards is not limited to the commission or to the charity sector. This is an issue across the whole of government, within Parliament and wider society. I will encourage my successor to continue to encourage greater diversity on the board and within the Commission, alongside achieving the right skill set and experience profile.”
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