Interview: Lord Lang

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), which scrutinises the jobs taken up by ministers and senior officials as they leave Crown service, operates on the principle that the people best placed to examine this crucial intersection between the public and private sectors are those who’ve themselves made the leap from public service into the world of non-executive directorships, consultancies and advisory posts. And on this measure, ACOBA’s new chair is eminently well qualified for the role.

Ian (now Lord) Lang (pictured above) was a Conservative minister for 11 years, ending up as trade and industry secretary. Since 1997, he’s juggled a portfolio career (see box), culminating last August in his appointment as ACOBA’s chair. This makes him a neat fit with his predecessors in the role; all but one have been former cabinet ministers with jobs in business.

Lang, then, is not bringing revolutionary change – but he has identified some reforms that he’d like to make. He wants, he says, to bring “continuity in the underlying approach, but change in that we’re trying to make the activities of the committee more readily understood in the outside world.” This, he explains, means giving occasional interviews, upgrading the committee’s website, meeting regularly rather than making decisions by correspondence, and updating the committee’s rules – largely to reflect changes to the civil service and ministerial codes.

More substantially, Lang explains that ACOBA has begun seeking “assurances, and possibly undertakings” from prospective employers on exactly how new staff will be used; to date, it has only questioned would-be employees on their future role. This, he says, reflects the complexity of scrutinising consultancy jobs, which may involve working with a wide range of clients. “You can’t go on re-interviewing them every time they take on a new client, but you can use certain safeguards to prevent that kind of problem arising,” he says.

Lang also raises concerns over the “grey areas that are emerging” between traditional Crown roles and a new breed of temporary appointments. The ‘goats’, awarded peerages in recent years to enable them to work as ministers, “expect to leave government and walk straight back into their previous activities,” he says: “Well, they can’t. They should have been told that at the outset, and we are now making sure that they are more fully told on joining.”

The rise of goats, special advisers and ‘czars’, Lang continues, has meant that “at the edges the situation is becoming blurred, and we need to take a view on the extent to which our powers should extend to these people”. Furthermore, he adds, permanent secretaries “should be taking a close interest in the way in which the departure of retiring or outgoing civil servants is handled in their departments. We only deal with the top three grades; below that, it’s up to the permanent secretary to make sure that he or she has a grip on it.”

Given these gaps, ACOBA’s coverage is clearly not comprehensive. But it’s better now than it was during the two years to November 2009, when a “contractual situation” meant that the committee was unable to scrutinise the jobs taken up by departing armed forces personnel. Given the sensitivity of links between the armed forces and the arms industry, is Lang worried about the gap? “We were concerned about it, yes,” he replies. “We couldn’t act until the prime minister gave us an instruction, which my predecessor as chairman sought and which I sought, and which we have now received.”

Lang concedes that the gap is “unfortunate”, but notes that the Cabinet Office scrutinised appointments during that period (the Cabinet Office was unable to provide further details). Anyway, he suggests, most such departing military officers will have “self-scrutinised. These are people of distinction who have had honourable and successful careers.” Surely, prior to the expenses debacle, most people would have said the same of MPs? “I don’t think it’s a fair parallel”, he says. “The kind of people who come before us are sought-after because of their successful and distinguished careers. MPs are elected from a wide range of sources. Some are very able; some probably less so.”

Asked whether he’s concerned that the MPs’ expenses scandal has damaged perceptions of the probity of senior civil servants and ministers, Lang replies that he hasn’t noticed any decline in the number of companies interested in employing them. And he firmly defends both ACOBA’s trust-based approach to compliance, and its composition: the committee comprises a peer from each of the three main parties, plus retired representatives of the armed forces, the diplomatic service and the civil service.

ACOBA’s composition has in the past come under fire from the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC), which complained that the previous membership consisted entirely of Oxbridge graduates over 70 years of age. Since then, all but one of the committee’s members have been replaced: the average age is now 67, and only four of the seven are Oxbridge graduates. Should this address ACOBA’s concerns? “The age issue is not relevant,” Lang replies. “The important point is that these people have been through their main careers and are now retired. They now have less of an axe to grind themselves, but they do understand what is needed”.

Indeed, Lang argues robustly that top Crown servants departing for business careers have the right to be examined by people who’ve been there themselves. “It’s important that the people involved have experience and understanding of how government and industry work and the transition between the two,” he says, adding that ACOBA’s composition “brings cross-party representation, which tends to neutralise any political input, plus experience of the industries we deal with.”

Lang is equally unapologetic about the “procedural irregularity” concerning his own appointment as chair: after his selection the Commissioner for Public Appointments complained that she had not – as was required – been consulted on the selection process. Given Lang’s role, is there an irony here? “I suppose you could see it like that,” he replies, adding that he wasn’t aware of the irregularity until his pre-appointment hearing before PASC. “It will be up to the Cabinet Office to make sure that they do it properly in future,” he says. “The fact that they had not gone through the appropriate process is a matter that they – presumably shame-facedly – will now have put right.”

PASC has also criticised ACOBA’s unusual method of choosing a chair: the chair is chosen from among the committee’s existing members rather than, as with most such committees, selected following an open recruitment process. Asked his opinion of the system, Lang says that it’s a “bigger, broader matter”, and out of his remit. Is there a logic behind why ACOBA’s chair is chosen in this way? “Logic is not something I have troubled myself with on this matter,” he says.

Like many corners of central government, ACOBA has remained largely unchanged in recent years. While the targets systems and inspection regimes that scrutinise public service delivery have multiplied, the porous border between the top of government and the private sector is still overseen by a small group of retired mandarins and peers. Yet Lang opposes turning ACOBA into “an enforcement or investigative agency”. The committee, he says, wouldn’t “be able to perform its independent appraisal role adequately if we also had policing and investigative powers, and the powers of pursuit that some people think we should have.”

Ultimately, Lang believes, the top officials and ministers who move into the world of business are honourable people, and deserve to be treated as such. “We should be detached, independent, weigh our advice carefully, publish it ­– then it’s for others to police it and explore it,” he says. “And it’s up to the individual to make sure that he or she fulfils the undertakings that we seek from them.”

Lord Lang: CV highlights
1962: Graduates from Cambridge University with a history degree, and becomes an insurance broker
1970: Elected MP for Galloway
1981: Made a whip; later becomes a minister in the Department for Employment, then the Scottish Office
1990: Appointed Secretary of State for Scotland
1995: Becomes Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
1997: Leaves Parliament, ennobled as Lord Lang of Monkton, and embarks on a portfolio career. He has been the chairman of Thistle Mining and a non-executive director of General Accident,CGU and the AA, and is currently a non-executive director of US insurance firm Marsh & McLennan and of Charlemagne Capital, and the chairman of consultancy SI Associates 
2001: Sits on the House of Lords Constitution Committee (till 2005)
2009: Joins ACOBA, and made chair