Speakers
Dr Nigel Forman
Dr Forman is a freelance lecturer and trainer. He is an instructor in international economics and business studies at Wroxton College and has taught government and comparative politics at several universities, including Sussex, Essex and the UK campus of Queen's University, Ontario. He is the author of two leading textbooks: Mastering British Politics with NDJ Baldwin (5th ed, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2007); and Constitutional Change in the UK (Routledge, London, 2002).
Dr Forman was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Carshalton & Wallington from 1976 to 1997 and Minister for Further & Higher Education at the Department for Education in 1992. Earlier he had been Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Carrington at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and also to Rt Hon Nigel Lawson at the Treasury. He also served on three different select committees and published extensively on many subjects, including energy policy, tax policy and employment issues.
Kingston Rhodes
Kingston Rhodes is the Chairman of the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC).
Prior to taking up the post of Chairman, Mr Rhodes held a wide variety of senior positions within the ICSC organisation. Before joining the ICSC, he served the Government of Sierra Leone in different capacities. He became the acting Deputy Director of the Central Statistics Office, lectured on Quantitative Methods at the University of Sierra Leone and on statistics at the Civil Service Training College of Sierra Leone. He has also acted as Assistant Course Director at the Munich Center for Advance Training in Statistics and as Consultant Statistician to the Nutrition Unit at the University of California. He also spent a year with the US Bureau of the Census and US Bureau of Labour Statistics and has served as his a representative from Sierra Leone to the United Nations Africa Commission on Agricultural Statistics.
The ICSC is an independent expert body established by the United Nations General Assembly. Its mandate is to regulate and coordinate the conditions of service of staff in the United Nations common system, while promoting and maintaining high standards in the international civil service. The Commission is composed of fifteen members who serve in their personal capacity. They are appointed by the General Assembly for four-year terms, with due regard for broad geographical representation. The Chairman and the Vice-Chairman are full-time members and are based in New York. The full Commission meets twice a year. The term common system is shorthand for the United Nations common system of salaries, allowances and other conditions of service . Its origin can be traced to the relationship agreements concluded between the United Nations and the specialized agencies. While the wording of these agreements varies, most of them carry language to the effect that it is agreed to develop common personnel standards, methods and arrangements designed to avoid serious discrepancies in terms and conditions of employment, to avoid competition in recruitment of personnel and to facilitate the interchange of personnel .
The common system was intended to prevent competition among the organizations in staff recruitment and to facilitate exchange of staff. Other rationales for a common system include:
- Efficiency/economy of scale: central maintenance of salary scales and allowance schedules means far fewer resources have to be deployed for these purposes in each organization;
- Equity/fairness: morale can be jeopardized when staff working side by side have different conditions of service -- a uniform approach lessens such dissatisfaction;
- Cost-efficiency/control: for the Member States, a common set of employment conditions permits an overview of staff costs.
The system comprises the United Nations, its affiliated programmes, thirteen specialized agencies, and one organization with a special status under the ICSC statute. The total number of staff officially recorded as belonging to the system as at the end of 2005 was 58,228. (This figure does not include staff on short-term contracts, or those on other arrangements, or individuals on Special Service Agreements, Consultancies, etc.). The World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund -- also known as the Bretton Woods institutions -- are not part of the common system.
Bhartendra Singh Baswan
Bhartendra is currently Director of the Indian Institute of Public Administration. He has had an extensive and distinguished Public Service career in India, and his roles have included: Education Secretary, Government of India; Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India; Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India; Secretary, National Commission for Minorities, Government of India (including a Consultancy Project for the UNDP on Governance); Director, National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie; Senior Consultant, Planning Commission; Fellow, Singapore Institute of Arbitrators.
Baroness Hamwee
Sally Hamwee was a Councillor in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames from 1978-98. She has been Joint President of the Association of London Government and a Member of the Greater London Assembly from 2000-08, including holding the posts of Chair and Deputy Chair. She has also been the Deputy Chair of several GLA committees during her time there.
She was raised to the House of Lords in 1991. In the Lords, Sally has been Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Local Government, Housing and Planning, Local Government and Planning, Environment, Transport and the Regions, Local Government and the Regions, ODPM/Communities and Local Government, and Regional and Local Government. She has been a member of the Liberal Democrat general election teams in both 1992 and 1997, and a Member of the National Executive of the Liberal Party, the Federal Executive of the Liberal Democrats and the Federal Policy Committee. She is also a member of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee and is secretary of the Environmental Health All Party Group.
Her political interests include local government, planning, London, the arts, media, and housing.
Janet Gaymer CBE QC
Janet Gaymer CBE QC is the Commissioner for Public Appointments in England and Wales and a Civil Service Commissioner. Previously, she was Senior Partner of Simmons & Simmons, the City based international law firm. As Commissioner, she regulates ministerial appointments to designated public bodies in England and Wales and Northern Ireland. She was a member of the Employment Tribunals Service Steering Board and Chair of the Employment Tribunal System Taskforce. She was also a member of the Council of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. She was a Founder Chairman of both the UK and European Employment Lawyers Associations and is now respectively life Vice-President and Honorary Chairman of the Associations. She is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, an Honorary Doctor of Laws of Nottingham University and an Honorary Doctor of the University of Surrey.
Maria Rankka
Maria Rankka is CEO of The Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation, and President of Timbro. Ms. Rankka joined Timbro in 2005, first as Deputy President and since October 2006 as President. Prior to Timbro, Ms. Rankka was a partner at the Swedish public relations firm Prime PR. Before joining Prime Pr, Ms. Rankka served as speechwriter for the then Chairman of the Moderate Party, Mr. Carl Bildt (currently Foreign Minister of Sweden). Ms. Rankka has written books concerning the emerging European tigers Estonia and Ireland, and the social dimensions and impacts of high taxation on individuals.
Lord Richard Best
Lord Richard Best is the President of the Local Government Association. The LGA was formed in 1997 to be the voice of local government in the national arena. Based in Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall, the LGA is a voluntary lobbying organisation, acting as the voice of the local government sector, and an authoritative and effective advocate on its behalf. In fulfilling this role, the LGA target its efforts on the issues that matter most to councils, working with and on behalf of its membership to deliver their shared vision of an independent and confident local government sector, where local priorities drive public service improvement in every city, town and village and every councillor acts as a champion for their ward and for the people they represent.
Lord Best was raised to the peerage in 2001. In the House of Lords he has been Chairman of the House of Lords Audit Committee, and a Member of the Economic Affairs and the Economic Affairs Finance Bill Sub Committee. He is Secretary of the Urban Development All Party Parliamentary Group, and Treasurer of those on Homelessness and Housing Need, and Employee Ownership. He is also Vice-chairman of the Regeneration Group.
Outside Westminster he has been Commissioner of the Rural Development Commission, Chair of the Hull Partnership Liaison Board, a Member of the Audit Commission's Advisory Board on Housing, Communities and Environment, Chair of Westminster Housing Commission, Hanover Housing Association, the Office of Public Management's Public Interest Council, Vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association, Deputy Chair of the Standards Committee at Westminster City Council, and Chair of both the Commission on Housing in Northern Ireland, and the Property Ombudsman.
Lord Norman Blackwell
Norman Blackwell was the Head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit under John Major from 1995-97. He also worked in Number 10 Downing Street in the 1980s as an adviser in Mrs Thatcher’s Policy Unit.
He also worked for seventeen years as a partner at McKinsey & Co and has been a Director at NatWest Group, Dixons, SEGRO, the Corporate Services Group, among others, and worked as a Special Adviser at KPMG. He is currently a member of the Office of Fair Trading.
He was raised to the peerage in 1997. In the House of Lords, he has been a Member of the Tax Simplification Joint Committee, the European Union Sub-committee A (Economic and Financial Affairs), the Economic Affairs Sub-committee on the Finance Bill, the European Union Committee, the Tax Law Rewrite Bills Joint Committee, the European Union Sub-committee E (Law and Institutions), and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. He has written a number of publications on the subject of public policy, the constitution, pensions, healthcare and government. His political interests include economic policy and taxation, the European Union, and public services.
Philip Cullum
Philip is Deputy Chief Executive of Consumer Focus. Philip was previously Deputy Chief Executive of the National Consumer Council. Before joining the NCC in 2004, Philip was Executive Director at Opinion Leader Research, where he worked closely with a wide range of public, private and third sector clients. Prior to that he was an Associate Partner at Accenture, responsible for creating new thinking aimed at top CEOs and policymakers around the world. Philip has also worked at Which?, where he was Head of Policy. He has been a Board Member of a leading housing association and Chair of a not–for–profit organisation providing mental health services.
Sir Peter Dixon
Chair, Non-Executive Director, University College London Hospitals
Sir Peter Dixon was first appointed to the chair of UCLH in 2001 and was re-appointed for a final two year term in June 2008. He has lived locally and been active in community affairs and social housing in north London for over 35 years. Peter was until recently a Trustee of the NHS Confederation and chaired their Audit Committee. He was appointed Chairman of the Housing Corporation, the government’s national affordable housing agency, in October 2003 and chaired the board until December 2008 when it transferred its function to two successor agencies.
His previous working life included running a variety of businesses as well as working in banking and finance. Peter was awarded a knighthood ‘for services to the housing sector’ by Her Majesty The Queen in the New Year Honours List 2009.
David Albury
Since January 2001, David has been an independent organisational, management and policy consultant. He specialises in strategy formation and consequential organisational development, in leadership and improving organisational performance, in organisational and systemic change in public services, and in establishing and developing public-private sector partnerships.
From May 2002 to January 2005, David was also a Principal Adviser in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, playing a leading role in a number of projects including long-term reviews and strategies for education and health, the path-breaking analysis of the strategic issues facing London, an analysis of - and recommendations for the removal of - systemic causes of unnecessary bureaucracy, and system design principles for public services. He was co-author, with Geoff Mulgan, of the highly influential report on Innovation in the Public Sector. He also advised David Milband and the Department of Communities and Local Government on development of the Thames Gateway Strategic Framework; chaired a Review of the National College for School Leadership; advising Ministers and senior officials in the Department for Education and Skills on developing and implementing policy for local education and children's services. He has also led projects within the NHS relating to Primary Care Trusts.
Previously David was a Senior Fellow at the Office for Public Management, a visiting Research Fellow at the London School of Economics; Director of Corporate Strategy at Thames Valley University; Dean of Educational development and Director of the Docklands project at NE London Polytechnic (now University of East London). He has a BSc (Hons) Logic-with-Physics - from the University of Sussex from 1969 to 1972 - and he has also done postgraduate studies in Paris and Sussex on technological and organisational development and the management of innovation and change.
Throughout his career David has published extensively, been the keynote speaker at many major conferences and been interviewed several times on television and radio. He has undertaken a wide variety of leadership and management development programmes and participated regularly in a large range of policy and organisational development round-tables, workshops and seminars, as well as numerous private reports and presentations to Government Ministers, senior officials and other clients.
David is also Member of the International Board of KaosPilots, Denmark - International School of New Business Design and Social Innovation; Member of the Advisory Board for the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery. He is a former Member of the West London Leadership Board/Park Royal Partnership and a former Member of the Advisory Board for ESRC Programme on Information and Communications Technologies (PICT).
Ben Jupp
Director of Public Services Strategy and Innovation, Cabinet Office
Ben Jupp is the Director of Public Services Strategy and Innovation in the Cabinet Office. His team are responsible for developing the Government’s overall approach to improving public services and embedding this through workforce and service innovation. The team look at how people can be given greater power to shape the services they use and how services can better meet their needs. They promote ways to strengthen professionalism in public services and ensure that Government focuses on providing strategic leadership in service provision whilst enabling local innovation. This approach to service improvement was set out in the recent Cabinet Office publication Working together: public services on your side.
Prior to his current role, Ben was the Director of the Office of the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office, responsible for fostering a thriving third sector. He has also been head of strategy at the Home Office, a manager in the health service and worked at the think tank Demos.
Phillip Blond
Former Director, Progressive Conservatism Project, Demos
Phillip is an English political thinker, theologian and philosopher who studied philosophy and politics at the University of Hull, Continental philosophy at the University of Warwick and theology at Peterhouse College at the University of Cambridge. He also held a prize research fellowship in philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York.
He was formerly director of the Progressive Conservatism Project at the London-based think tank Demos. Prior to that he was a Senior Lecturer in Christian theology at the University of Cumbria and was a lecturer in the Department of Theology at the University of Exeter.
Phillip has recently written a series of articles in The Guardian and The Independent, as well as interviews with Prospect, the New Statesman and Radio 4, arguing for a wider recognition of the merits of civic conservatism and an appreciation of the potentially transformative impact of a new Tory settlement.