A committee of MPs has warned the Bank of England that it could block the appointment of male candidates to its main policymaking committees to arrest a decline in female representation.
In the first known example of MPs threatening to reject candidates for senior public sector jobs to improve diversity, the Treasury select committee said it would look at the progress made by Threadneedle Street in appointing more women to senior roles before it endorses the next appointment.
Committee chair, Nicky Morgan, said the next time the Bank of England advertised senior jobs for its three main policymaking committees – the monetary policy committee (MPC), financial policy committee (FPC) and prudential regulation committee (PRC) – MPs were “prepared to take progress on this matter into account”.
The move is a shot across the bows of the Bank’s governor, Mark Carney, and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, who makes the final decision on the appointment of senior central bank officials.
MPs have traditionally rubber-stamped Bank committee appointments following a hearing with each candidate in parliament, but have recently become concerned at the lack of women reaching the institution’s higher echelons.
The next appointment will be to fill a vacancy on the FPC next February and then the role of governor when Carney steps down in June 2019.
Morgan wrote to the most senior civil servant at the Treasury, the permanent secretary Sir Tom Scholar, following the appointment of academic Jonathan Haskel to the MPC and Bradley Fried as head of its oversight board, the court of the Bank of England. Haskel was appointed ahead of four women on the shortlist.
Morgan said: “Whilst the Committee has approved the appointments of ProfHaskel and Mr Fried, it’s disappointing that the gender balance at the most senior levels of the Bank of England will not be improved.”
The Bank’s annual report earlier this month revealed that the proportion of women in senior roles fell from 30% to 29% while the share of black and minority ethnic (BAME) staff in senior positions fell from 6% to 5%.
Carney has set ambitious targets to push the proportion of women in senior roles to 35% and the equivalent BAME figure to 13% by 2022.
Rachel Reeves, the Labour MP for Leeds West and chair of the business select committee, said at the time of Haskel’s appointment that it was “truly staggering” that the Treasury had failed to appoint a woman, adding: “The top jobs [at the Bank] seem to be reserved for men.”
Morgan said: “The Committee raised concerns about the Bank’s gender diversity following the appointment of Sir Dave Ramsden and Prof Silvana Tenreyro in October 2017. Since October, only three out of 10 public appointments and reappointments to the Bank’s committees have been women.
“With the Bank’s female representation in senior management roles at the Bank decreasing to 29% last year, it seems increasingly unlikely that the Bank will meet its own diversity strategy to have 35% female participation in senior management positions by 2020.”
Scholar said in a letter to Morgan that Hammond’s chief economic adviser, Clare Lombardelli, had managed the recruitment process and contacted 87 potential applicants, 44 of whom were women.
Despite receiving replies from only eight women, while 19 men replied, he said four women and one man were interviewed. Haskel was the chancellor’s preferred choice.
A recent examination by the committee of female employment across the finance industry highlighted “recruitment practices and workplace culture that are often barriers to women progressing to the most senior levels”.
Morgan said the Bank and the Treasury must explain how they would address such barriers to improve the diversity in public appointments.
She added that the committee was “prepared to take progress on this matter into account in the next appointment made to any of the Bank of England’s policy committee.”
