Voluntary sector leaders have called for a rerun of the process for choosing the next head of the charities regulator, saying they have no confidence in the appointments system after the shock resignation of the new watchdog chair.
Martin Thomas, whose appointment as chair of the Charity Commission was approved by a committee of MPs this month, quit last Friday, just days before he was due to take up the job, over allegations he had acted inappropriately while chair of a women’s charity.
Thomas’s decision to stand down has further thrown into confusion an appointment that has been beset by long delays, complaints of political interference and lack of diversity. The charity regulator for England and Wales has been without a full-time chair for 10 months.
According to the Times, Thomas was subject to four formal misconduct complaints while at Women for Women International UK, including an incident in 2018 when he mistakenly sent a picture of himself in a Victoria’s Secret lingerie store to a female employee. He had meant to send it to the charity’s chief executive as part of a conversation about whether to accept a donation from the company, with him arguing the photo was evidence against taking the money.
This and two other complaints were not upheld. He told friends he only discovered from the press last week that a fourth complaint against him – regarding comments he had allegedly made to an employee on a Zoom call – had been partially upheld. He had left the charity in the summer and claims he was unaware of the finding against him when he applied for the Charity Commission job.
Many in the voluntary sector have questioned why the appointments panel – chaired by two senior Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) civil servants – was unaware of the complaint partially upheld against Thomas, despite the charity formally notifying the Charity Commission.
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) said Thomas’s appointment raised serious questions about whether proper due diligence had been carried out, and called for the process to be started again from scratch.
“We want to see a strong, credible and impartial Charity Commission capable of fulfilling its role regulating our sector and that has the confidence of charities in England. Restarting is the only way to restore the faith in the process and, ultimately, in the permanent chair of the Charity Commission,” said Sarah Vibert, the interim chief executive of the NCVO.
Members of the DCMS select committee, which approved Thomas’s appointment, are understood to be “annoyed” they were not made aware of the allegations against him. It follows controversies over the ministerial attempts to appoint favoured candidates as chair of the media regulator Ofcom and the BBC.
The Labour party called for a fully transparent and independent re-run of the appointment process. The shadow culture secretary, Lucy Powell, said: “This process has been a shambles from the start, compounded by the fact that the Conservatives have messed around with this post for years.”
Charities believe that the process had been marked by allegations of political interference after the former culture secretary Oliver Dowden said before interviews for the post that the new chair would be expected to pursue charities which stray into so-called “woke” and “political” activities.
There had also been disappointment in the sector at the lack of diversity on the longlist for the chair role. Of the seven people interviewed for the £62,500-a-year job, only one was female and one black, Asian or minority ethnic.
The appointment of Thomas was initially generally welcomed in the sector, after a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing with MPs at which he demonstrated experience of the voluntary sector and understanding of charity law. There had been fears ministers would appoint an openly political “culture warrior” to the role.
Thomas, who declared no political interests in his application, also sought to downplay reports that he was a friend of Boris Johnson. The prime minister is a patron of Downside Up, a children’s charity chaired by Thomas. The charity gave Johnson a Russian watch as a gift in 2014, when he was mayor of London.
• This article was amended on 21 December 2021 to clarify the details of the incident involving the photo of Thomas in a Victoria’s Secret store.
