Ministers should not be allowed to appoint the independent watchdogs that inspect prisons, probation, the police and border control, say MPs.
The Commons public accounts committee made the call in the wake of the Ministry of Justice’s “shocking mishandling” of a major conflict of interest involving the chief inspector of probation, Paul McDowell, which led to his resignation.
The report also follows a decision by the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, to re-run the appointment process for a new chief inspector of prisons after he rejected an “excellent candidate” put forward by the appointment panel. It also emerged that two of the four members of the panel were active Conservative party members, including an adviser to the party chairman, Grant Shapps.
“Independent inspection is essential for enabling parliament and the public to hold government to account for the performance of vital services and identifying areas at risk of failure. It is therefore crucial that inspectorates are, and are seen to be, genuinely independent,” said the committee chair, Margaret Hodge.
“However, in our view, current arrangements for appointing chief inspectors and setting their budgets potentially pose a significant threat to their independence.”
The MPs said in their report, published on Monday, that the chief inspectors overseeing the criminal justice system were reliant for their appointment, the length of their tenure and the size of their budgets on the very same ministers who are responsible for the sectors they inspect. There is a risk that departments could use these controls over inspectorates as levers to influence the chief inspectors.
The committee heard evidence from the chief inspectors that they did not believe their independence was in doubt, but the MPs said the Cabinet Office should conduct a full review to see whether they should be completely independently appointed and report to parliament rather than ministers.
“We were shocked by the Ministry of Justice’s mishandling of [an] entirely foreseeable conflict of interest in its appointment of Paul McDowell – whose wife held a senior position in Sodexo Justice Services, a private provider which subsequently successfully bid for six out of 21 probation contracts – as HM chief inspector of probation,” said Hodge.
“It is particularly disappointing that the ministry failed to keep parliament adequately informed about this conflict as it developed.” McDowell resigned in February.
The MPs are also critical of changes made by the Home Office to the publication arrangements for reports by the chief inspector of borders and immigration. They say that the home secretary setting the publication dates for his reports undermines his independence and has led to delays in publication – in one case for up to 163 days – which blunt the reports’ impact. The Home Office publishes them within eight weeks of receiving them – twice as long as the original arrangement.
