Advisory Committee on Business Appointments
Crown servants at all levels, including civil servants, special advisers, members of the Armed Forces and diplomats, are subject to rules on accepting outside appointments, which apply for two years after they have left Crown service.
The ‘Rules on the Acceptance of Outside Appointments’ form part of the Civil Service Management Code [External website]. There are corresponding requirements for other Crown servants.
The purpose of the rules is to maintain trust in the Crown services and in the people who work in them, and in particular to
Applications from the most senior Crown servants are referred to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which gives its advice to the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary, as appropriate. Decisions on all other applications (except those from Special Advisers) rest with Departmental Ministers, after reference to the Cabinet Office for advice in certain circumstances. The Head of the Home Civil Service is consulted on applications from staff immediately below the most senior levels, although responsibility for approving these applications remains with the employing Department or Agency.
Applications may be approved unconditionally or subject to conditions which may last for up to two years. These may, for example, include a waiting period before the appointment can be taken up, or a requirement that the individual should stand aside from certain activities of his or her new employer for a period. It is also open to the Advisory Committee to say that they consider a particular appointment to be unsuitable.
Former Permanent Secretaries are normally subject to a minimum waiting period of three months from the date they leave Crown service, which takes account of their access to policy issues at the highest levels. This ‘automatic’ waiting period can, however, be waived if in the Committee’s view the appointment is entirely unconnected with the applicant’s official knowledge and no questions of propriety arise.
Special Advisers were brought into the system in 1995, following a recommendation by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, but decisions on their cases are not made by Ministers. The Head of the Home Civil Service approves applications from the most senior Special Advisers, and the permanent Head of the Department concerned makes the decision in other cases.
Former Ministers are expected to seek advice from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments about appointments or employment they wish to take up within two years of leaving office. This follows another recommendation by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1995 that a similar but voluntary system to that for Crown servants should be introduced for former Ministers. The Committee gives its advice directly to the former Minister concerned. Ministers of Cabinet rank are normally expected to observe a similar minimum waiting period to that which applies to Permanent Secretaries.
All cases are considered in confidence, but the Committee’s recommendations are made public if the appointment is taken up. Consolidated records of these cases are published in the Committee’s annual reports.