WEC to hold a pre-appointment hearing for the Government's preferred candidate for the Chair of the Social Mobility Commission Alun Francis OBE
The Women and Equalities Committee holds a pre-appointment hearing during the first half of the session for Alun Francis OBE, the Government’s preferred candidate for Chair of the Social Mobility Commission (SMC). The Committee also take evidence in the second part of the session on the issue of sexual assault and harassment within the NHS workforce.
Meeting details
The Minister for Women and Equalities, Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP, has ministerial responsibility for the appointment. Following the session, the Committee will meet in private to decide whether to endorse the appointment and will then be invited to agree a short draft report confirming its decision.
Mr Francis was appointed as Deputy Chair of the SMC by Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP, then Minister for Women and Equalities, in November 2021 and has acted as Interim Chair following the resignation of former Chair, Katharine Birbalsingh CBE in January 2023.
Women and Equalities Committee to hear evidence on sexual assault and harassment within the NHS workforce
The session is in direct response to an article published in September by the British Journal of Surgery ‘Sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape by colleagues in the surgical workforce, and how women and men are living different realities: observational study using NHS population-derived weights’.
The paper reported the outcome of a survey conducted by the Working Party on Sexual Misconduct in Surgery, collating 1,704 responses regarding experiences of sexual misconduct by colleagues in the past five years. It found that 63.3% of female and 23.7% of male respondents reported being the target of sexual harassment.
MPs will hear evidence on the scale of the issue, the prevalence of assault, harassment and misogyny with the NHS workforce and the reasons for this, how effectively the issue is being tackled, plus any impact on patient care.
The session will feed into the cross-party Committee’s current inquiry on ‘The escalation of violence against women and girls’. The inquiry’s terms of reference includes a focus on the prevalence of escalating violence within the emergency services and other public sector organisations.