Following an open recruitment exercise, Dame Janet Finch, former Vice Chancellor at Keele University, has been selected as the government’s preferred candidate for appointment as the new Chair of the UK Statistics Authority. The Minister for the Cabinet Office has invited the Public Administration Select Committee to hold a pre-appointment hearing with Dame Janet, which will take place on 28 June.
An Approval Motion will take place on 11 July. Parliament will vote on the appointment and will consider carefully the conclusions of the Committee in reaching their decision.
Notes for Editors
The UK Statistics Authority was established on 1 April 2008 by the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, with a statutory objective to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good, and the quality and comprehensiveness of, and good practice in relation to, official statistics across the UK.
The Chair of the Authority is a Crown appointment, as set out in the Act. The current Chair, Sir Michael Scholar, is due to retire at the end of August when his term in office comes to an end.
Pre-appointment scrutiny hearings enable select committees to take evidence from the Government’s preferred candidate for certain key public appointments prior to the final appointment decision. Hearings are in public and involve the select committee publishing a report setting out their views on the candidate’s suitability for the post.