Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Pre-appointment Hearing: Commissioner for Public Appointments, HC 246
Wednesday 24 June 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 24 June 2026.
Members present: Simon Hoare (Chair); Markus Campbell-Savours; Sam Carling; John Lamont; Luke Taylor.
Questions 1-30
Witness
I: Fiona Cannon OBE, the Government’s preferred candidate for the Commissioner of Public Appointments.
Witness: Fiona Cannon OBE.
Chair: Good morning, colleagues. A warm welcome, literally and metaphorically, to Ms Cannon. She joins us for the most challenging bit of this process—the pre-appointment hearing—as she is the Government’s preferred candidate to be the new Commissioner for Public Appointments. Let us start by congratulating you on getting this far in the process. We are your final hurdle—your Becher’s Brook, as it were—so hopefully you will sail over with flying colours.
I am conscious of the heat and the temperature. So that we are not bombarded by the sartorial police who may be watching this edition of PACAC, I have used my Chair’s discretion to allow gentlemen to remove both ties and coats if they so wish. You will see that three of my colleagues have done that; some of us who believe in tradition and standards have of course not—but there we are. Just call me old fashioned, if you will.
Q1 Ms Cannon, let us start with some questions. Commissioner for Public Appointments is an interesting appointment. It is incredibly important to the delivery of good governance and the maintenance of standards along with the confidence that the public, and indeed Parliament, require when it comes to public appointments. What attracted you to the role and why you to fulfil it?
Fiona Cannon: First, thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here today. I believe strongly in the need for a trusted and robust public appointments process, given that public bodies make decisions that impact all our lives. As a citizen, I want to make sure that we have the best people in those roles to deliver the best and most effective use of public money. My career has focused on leading change in large and complex organisations, with a strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion. When I saw this role advertised, I felt there was a real match in terms of the skills and experience that I could bring to support and make a difference in this space and to build on the very good work that has already been done to deliver a robust public appointments process.
Q2 Chair: There have been delays in this appointment process—you will be aware of that. At any time did those delays give you pause for thought about withdrawing your application?
Fiona Cannon: My application went in on 6 January, and my interview was 12 May. In all honesty, I had assumed that the role had gone and so, when the opportunity for interview came up, I had to consider whether this was something that I wanted to do. Upon reflection and consideration, I felt that this is a great role. It is a real privilege to be able to have the opportunity to do it. I could also use my own experience of going through the process to think about what the commissioner might do to create a more positive candidate experience.
Q3 Chair: I have two quick questions following from that, and colleagues may very well dive into this a little deeper in later questioning. The process of making public appointments clearly needs to be robust, transparent and confidence inspiring. That does not necessarily mean it has to be slow, does it? In a competitive world where people are applying for all sorts of things, will you give urgent consideration to how, while safeguarding those important criteria that I set out a moment ago, the process itself can be speeded up?
Fiona Cannon: Yes. I am clear at this stage why the delays have happened, so absolutely we would want to look at that. Timeliness and a good candidate experience is absolutely vital, because the danger is that you lose strong people who may go off and get different roles, or you may be in a position where public bodies do not have a leader. Timeliness is really important.
What I think is probably more damaging is the lack of information. My experience was that there is nobody to talk to, so you do not know why the delays are happening, and therefore you fill the vacuum with assumptions about what may happen. Those two things are really important—the timeliness but also understanding and giving information throughout the process.
Q4 Chair: The pressures of social media and other fora are making the attractiveness of public service less compelling for many. You will be aware that we have had the situation very recently with regard to questions over the vetting process for Peter Mandelson to be His Majesty’s ambassador to the United States of America. There has to be a worry, does there not, that concerns about vetting and the need to keep it private may put people off from applying for public appointments? Do you see it as being somewhere near the top of your in-tray, were you to be appointed, to check the vetting process and make sure it is fit for purpose, while giving applicants the confidence that any information they submit will be dealt with in confidence?
Fiona Cannon: I certainly think that those are all things to be considered. I feel very strongly that people’s names going into the public arena through a process is very problematic and will absolutely put people off if they are thinking about applying, and therefore that is one of the things I will need to consider.
One of the first things I want to do is spend some time meeting people to understand what the issues are across a wide range of stakeholders, and from that I will be really clear about where my focus needs to be. But obviously, this is in the front of people’s minds, and it needs to be considered.
Q5 Sam Carling: You have indicated that you may need to deepen your understanding of working within a regulatory system as the regulator. You have also commented on expanding your knowledge of the culture of Government Departments. Can you give us a sense of how you might go about doing that?
Fiona Cannon: Yes. Obviously, I have worked in a highly regulated sector my whole career, and I have understanding through my work at the Equal Opportunities Commission about working within a statutory body. But of course, my goal is to get to understand the regulatory landscape that sits around this role. The way I would want to do that is to spend time with the team, but also with past commissioners and other regulators. In particular, I am keen to draw on the experience, skills and knowledge of the Ethics and Integrity Commission network of standards bodies, because there are a lot of people in that space who I hope will be able to help me with that.
Q6 Sam Carling: Thank you; that is really helpful. Is it similar for the Government Departments culture side of things?
Fiona Cannon: Sorry, could you repeat the second part of your question?
Sam Carling: It was just the same point about how you will get to know the culture of Departments.
Fiona Cannon: As I said to the Chair, one of the things I want to do is go out and meet a range of people—Ministers, perm secs and so on—to understand culture. While the culture of public bodies is not directly within the remit of the commissioner, culture is set from the top. That is why the public appointments process is even more important, to make sure that you get high-calibre individuals, who understand their roles and responsibilities and are focused on delivery, sitting on those boards, in order to develop that culture further. That is where my focus will be.
Q7 Sam Carling: I appreciate that you may need to be in post a bit to think about this one, but do you have any initial thoughts on whether the role of the commissioner is set up right for it to be able to make an impact, or are there any changes that you think should be made to the set-up or the powers?
Fiona Cannon: I would need to get into role to really have a look at that. I think the important thing is to build a process that is robust, trusted by stakeholders and trusted by current and future Governments. The focus needs to be on what that looks like in terms of structures, but everything is open to consideration as we seek to do that.
Q8 Luke Taylor: Thank you for joining us this morning in the heat. Coming from the private sector, you have probably got quite an insight into what barriers are stopping or impeding the best people taking up public appointments. What do you think some of those are?
Fiona Cannon: There are two main issues. The first is a lack of awareness about public appointments. Outside the public sector, the public appointments process is seen as pretty opaque and often determined by who you know. There is an issue around lack of awareness, so there is something to do with being more visible and raising awareness.
The second is the need for a consistent and positive candidate experience. People talk to each other and, if someone goes through a bad experience, they will share that with colleagues. Then myths grow up around what it means to go for a public appointment. Those are the two biggest barriers right now in terms of people coming forward.
Q9 Luke Taylor: On the first of those, about general awareness, what are some of the things that you can do in your role to make that a little more transparent, so that there is an appetite for people to engage in the process, feel that it is worth their time and believe there may well be a positive outcome at the end of it?
Fiona Cannon: There is a role for the commissioner to be more visible. That is about talking at events across the country and with different groups of people in order to kill off some of those myths about what a public appointments process is. In my previous role, one of the things that I did as an employer was bring the commissioner in to talk to our most senior talented individuals about the idea of public appointments. That is the kind of thing that I think will be important going forward. It is also about that geographical split.
Social media, notwithstanding some of the issues that have been raised, is an important channel. We need to start thinking about how we use social media in a very positive way, and using different channels to meet different groups of people will be important too.
The third area is stories: people are interested in people’s stories. Being able to highlight individuals in roles who have come from different sectors will be an interesting way of thinking about that.
Q10 Luke Taylor: You speak about awareness, and we have acknowledged that that is one of the challenges. One of the other things that has been picked up is timeliness—the length of time that appointment processes take to complete. There is now an expectation that a process should be completed in three or four months. How would you address that issue of timeliness?
Fiona Cannon: The first thing, if I were appointed, would be to get in role and understand why the delays are happening. I do not have a view at this stage about why they are happening.
One thing that strikes me is that it is useful to consider what interventions can be put in place earlier in the process—across the whole process, actually—so that you pick up and understand the issues earlier rather than later. That is something I am really keen to build on.
We all know that there is a crisis of trust among the public in public institutions. There are two elements to trust: integrity and competence. If we say that we are going to do something, we need to do it in the way that we say we are going to do it to deliver that trust. That is absolutely one of the areas that will be high on my list of considerations.
Q11 Luke Taylor: Do you see it as part of your role to actively check in on recruitment processes when they are not running to time, or is it about setting up the structures and having the right people in place to oversee those processes?
Fiona Cannon: I would want to take the time to consider what the right interventions were once I was clear about why the delays were happening. That would then lead to what the right interventions might be. Having gone through this experience myself, I understand that this is one of the big issues that we need to look at. It is absolutely about what we can do to focus minds on that.
Q12 Luke Taylor: Before we move on, what particular experience from your work in the private sector do you think would be helpful in this new role? What have you seen in the private sector that works well and that you can implement to try to attract better people and make sure that things are done in a timely way?
Fiona Cannon: I think pace is really important. That absolutely goes back to the timeliness issue. But as I mentioned, I think this is also about keeping people informed. People understand that processes, particularly at this level, which is very senior, have a massive impact in terms of public perception and public bodies. These things take time to do properly. The biggest issue, I think, is just keeping people informed and talking to them through the process. The black hole of no information is a bigger drag, I think, on people’s willingness to get involved than the timeliness of it, because people understand that things can sometimes take time, but if they do not know why, that is where the problems start.
Q13 John Lamont: What do you think makes a good public appointments process?
Fiona Cannon: Some of the things that we have already talked about: timeliness, information, an understanding of and clarity about your roles and responsibilities, an understanding of the framework and governance that you will be going into and an understanding of the standards that you need to adhere to. Those are some of the elements, as are transparency and publicly reporting on where things have not happened successfully and what has been done to look at that.
Q14 John Lamont: What skills do you think a successful candidate to sit on or to chair a public board would have?
Fiona Cannon: They are slightly different, aren’t they? Chairs of boards are slightly different from non-exec directors, but you need an understanding of good governance, first, the ability to communicate well—strong communication skills—and the ability to challenge effectively and respectfully. One of the problems with boards can often be that you think that you have agreement when you do not have agreement, because people do not challenge. So there is an absolute need for people to be able to challenge respectfully when they are sitting on boards. You also need to be really clear about the mission and vision of the organisation or the board that you are sitting on. What are you there to achieve? How do you best do it? How do you build the best relationships? How do you make sure that you have transparency among all the things that you are doing? Those are some of the skills that I think are required at board level.
Q15 John Lamont: Do you think somebody who has worked in the private sector has skills that might complement that, or do you think working in the public sector is a unique role? Clearly, we need a range of skills in people, but is there something that the private sector can offer and that people who have spent their working life only in the public sector may not be able to provide?
Fiona Cannon: My view is that talent exists everywhere and that skills and experience are transferable. I think it is the transferring of skills and experience that is important. I don’t take the view that the private sector has particular skills and experience that the public sector does not necessarily have, because I have seen myself, in my working life, the innovation and experience of civil servants and others in the public sector. At senior levels of organisations, whichever sector you are in—public sector or private sector—the skills that you need are transferable. They are about good governance, communication, the ability to challenge—all those things that we have just discussed. They sit across sectors.
Q16 Chair: You have spoken about challenge and asking questions—in shorthand, having a curious mind. All people who are subject to a public appointment should have a curious mind and should be saying, “Why?”, rather than just, “Okay, thank you.” Do you have a view about the role that the office that you are applying for can play in order to establish what the deficiencies or gaps in skillset in relation to public bodies are, to ensure not just that a good person with good skills is getting an appointment, but that the need to appoint a good person with good skills, and the right skills for the job that needs to be done, is taken into account, possibly more readily than it has been hitherto?
Fiona Cannon: Again, that is something that I would need to consider as I understand what some of the issues are and where people think the issues are at the moment. One of the things I was struck by—I was an independent panel member for a recent public appointment, and it seems to me that there is also a real role for the senior independent panel member in terms of making sure that there is clarity about exactly those points that you have talked about, and perhaps a stronger connection back to the commissioner. Obviously, the commissioner role is not directly involved in appointing people. It is therefore about the process and making sure that the process creates the right environment. That is where the focus would be, but I see that there is potentially a role for the senior independent panel member to make sure that there is a checklist of the things that we should be thinking about within that.
Q17 Markus Campbell-Savours: One of the roles of the commissioner is to advocate for diversity in public appointments. You have said that public appointments need to reflect the communities they serve. How do you believe this can be best assessed and achieved?
Fiona Cannon: Clearly, the main way is ensuring that the public appointees actually are representative of the communities they serve, and are also representative of the different sectors across the UK. That is particularly important with regard to key roles, such as chairs and lead non-executive directors, so it is about looking and making sure that those are representative.
Looking for an increase in data disclosure is also really important. An increase in data disclosure allows you to have data that you can take action on. More diversity across the senior independent panel members, and indeed the independent panel members, gives out an impression of what the public appointments process looks like. The last area is about increased engagement with different groups of individuals, so that you are opening up and widening access to as wide a group of people as possible.
Q18 Markus Campbell-Savours: Specifically on data disclosure, I noticed the following from your pre-appointment hearing questionnaire: “data disclosure feels like an area to consider alongside more granular data over time.” Could you explain and expand on that a bit, please?
Fiona Cannon: My experience, in terms of diversity, is that the single most important thing that you have to start with is a really strong data foundation, and that starts with data disclosure. That allows you to focus on the areas that really need activity, rather than the areas that you think might need activity. Encouraging and engaging candidates in terms of filling that in is really important.
But there is a granular point. For example, at the moment data is collected on ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities are not a homogenous group of people. The thing that you want to look at is whether it can that be broken down by black, Asian and minority ethnic groups, for example, so that you can see and target actions in that space more effectively.
That will take time. I understand that the data system is only recently in place, but in order to really get behind some of this and work out what actions we need to take, we need much more granular data than we currently have.
Q19 Markus Campbell-Savours: Just to clarify, is the issue that we are not diverse enough or is it that we are not measuring diversity accurately enough?
Fiona Cannon: It is about progress. If all organisations started measuring ethnic minority data, for example, that would give you a starting point in terms of whether we are being as representative as we can. As you develop your processes and as you develop your activities and deepen the work that you are doing, that is the point at which you might want to look at whether there are members of particular communities within the ethnic minority community that are more successful than others. That allows you to really focus your attention.
Q20 Markus Campbell-Savours: You have highlighted disability as one area that needs work. How can this be addressed?
Fiona Cannon: Disability issues are deep and complex. For example, there are 1,000 non-exec directors on FTSE 100 boards, and there is one director who has publicly declared that they have a disability. Most disabilities are not visible, and senior people are often uncomfortable about raising it because they worry about how people will see it. The public appointments process sits in that context.
One of the things that I really want to do is to spend time talking with expert organisations, such as the Business Disability Forum and PurpleSpace, as well as developing an informal network of senior individuals who have a disability and have held senior roles, in order to think about what it is that we can do within the public appointments process—as we sit in the context of a broader societal issue.
Q21 Markus Campbell-Savours: You also highlighted socioeconomic background as an area that needs to be addressed. How would you achieve that?
Fiona Cannon: It is similar. Socioeconomic status is a societal issue. Again, I would want to spend time talking to the experts, such as Progress Together. Socioeconomic status is largely invisible. One of the things that we might want to think about doing—we talked about social media earlier on—is looking at whether a social media campaign could start highlighting individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds holding public appointments, and in a sense making the invisible more visible. But speaking to the experts is where I would want to start.
Q22 Markus Campbell-Savours: You have said that you would seek to convene, and I quote, “an ecosystem of stakeholders, including headhunters, executive coaches and others to deepen the understanding of the issues faced by potential candidates”. What would that look like in practice, and what would it achieve?
Fiona Cannon: My experience is that you cannot achieve change alone; you have to work in partnership with others. My most recent experience sitting on the board of the FTSE women leaders review was a real example of that. I worked with regulators, the Government, businesses, and a whole range of different people in order to achieve a common goal.
Exec coaches, for example, are talking to people at the point when they are thinking about taking on a new role and thinking about what they might do with their life. Tapping into that community, understanding what the potential issues are for candidates and using the coaches to raise awareness could be an important thing for the commissioner to do in the unique role that they have.
They also talk to other diversity organisations, such as Empowering People of Colour, again to understand what the specific issues may be so that we can think about what actions we should put in place.
Q23 Markus Campbell-Savours: You will have to excuse me as I am a bit of a novice in this area, but how do you do that without it simply becoming a pipeline for those particular stakeholders to dominate the process?
Fiona Cannon: This is about gathering as much data and information as you can in order to make the right decisions. All of us would accept that talent exists across a whole range of different communities, and at no point would you want to over-index on any one community at the expense of others. It is important that we understand the world that we live in and that we talk to people who can give us insight into some of the issues and areas that we might want to focus on.
Q24 Markus Campbell-Savours: I am trying to work out how that ecosystem would be any different to anybody in a role identifying organisations that are go-tos for conversations on these things. Is there something unique about what you are suggesting?
Fiona Cannon: Ecosystem is probably too big a word for what we are talking about. I have a lot of networks already from my career to date, and it is about tapping into those networks to think about what we can do, how we can learn and, where appropriate, how we can use the experience of those groups to build a robust and trusted public appointments process.
Q25 Markus Campbell-Savours: I do not know a great deal about this, but should there be transparency around those networks when people in public appointment roles are using them?
Fiona Cannon: It would be for me to learn from people and, as you quite rightly say, transparency is absolutely important. In terms of annual reports from the commissioner, you would absolutely want transparency about the people who you have been speaking to so that you can demonstrate that you have been talking to a wide range of people. It is always in service of making sure that we have a robust, trusted public appointments process, and transparency is absolutely a core part of that.
Q26 Chair: Where does meritocracy sit in all of this?
Fiona Cannon: Now we are getting into an issue that is quite controversial because some people will say there is no such thing as meritocracy.
Chair: Let me define it: the best qualified person gets the job because they are the best person to do it.
Fiona Cannon: Absolutely, as long as you know that the pools that you are pulling from are as broad and as wide as possible. Otherwise, you might have the best person with the best set of skills from a very narrow group of people. It is about making sure that the pool that you are drawing from is as wide as possible. At the end of the day, the right person has to get the job, but if you have cast your net as wide as possible—
Q27 Chair: So we are not talking about any form of quota, just making sure that the pond from which one is fishing is wide and reflective of society as it stands today?
Fiona Cannon: Exactly.
Q28 Chair: That is helpful. What are your thoughts on Government or organisations engaging headhunters as against the organisation, Government or whatever doing it themselves in advertising and recruitment? It strikes me—this speaks to the point that you and Mr Campbell-Savours were just discussing—that very often there is a small coterie of agile and adept headhunters who specialise in this area; they then have a cadre of people on their books who they call up and say, “This is coming up,” or whatever. It then becomes almost public appointments musical chairs, but done in a rather egalitarian way: you will always get the seat at some point; you just have to keep running round.
Is there any discernible benefit in having direct appointments—that is, Government themselves running the recruitment process—rather than still predominantly using headhunters? What do you think you might be able to do to get those headhunters to avoid too many of these appointments appearing almost to be—I do not mean this in as pejorative a sense as it might be taken—Buggins’ turn?
Fiona Cannon: I would need to spend some time understanding how much headhunters are used in the process at the moment.
Chair: But what has your research to date led you to think?
Fiona Cannon: I have seen it done both ways—I am talking more about the private sector right now. The important thing is around the pool that you are fishing from. Headhunters are useful because they take out a lot of the work that you need to do—the screening and those kinds of things. They provide a service that, when you are resource strapped, is very helpful. The important point is that, whichever system you use, they are a place that candidates can go and speak to. That is important because, as I referenced earlier, the bit that is probably missing from the candidate experience is someone to talk things through with.
Of course, the danger in any of these situations is that, if you use certain headhunters, they potentially have a particular group of people that they know. We would want to guard against that. But I would not know until I was in role and was able to look at that. Perhaps I could come back to you to talk about that, Chair.
Q29 Chair: We are happy to do that. If you are appointed, we are going to ask for a commitment from you. As a Committee, we like to roll up our sleeves and keep a weather eye on matters. Would you agree to write to us within three months of the commencement of your appointment, if appointed, setting out your key learnings garnered to date, your reflections on what a good commissioner should be doing, and an indication of the timetable that you might be following? Allied to that, will you make yourself available to this Committee for timely cross-examination and updates?
Fiona Cannon: Absolutely. I am very keen to have a strong relationship with this Committee, because it is important for the integrity of the process, so I am happy to commit to that.
Q30 Chair: Thank you very much indeed. Colleagues, do we have any further questions? No. Ms Cannon, is there anything that you particularly wanted to impart to us that our questions have not given you the opportunity so to do?
Fiona Cannon: I do not think so. I would say only that I am genuinely excited about the opportunity to do this role. I think it is a really important role in the UK. I want to work very closely with you as a Committee to help me achieve the things that I would like to set out and do.
Chair: If the temperature had not been as warm, I was going to ask you to regurgitate the Nolan principles to the Committee. As it is slightly warm, I will not inflict that intellectual challenge on you.
Fiona Cannon: That is very kind of you, Chair. Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you for your time this morning. Thank you for applying for the position and, again, congratulations on getting this far. We will now clear the room, and the Committee will sit in private to deliberate upon your answers to our questions.