Main navigation

Publication Scheme

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments

Status and role

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments is an advisory non-departmental public body. The Committee considers applications under the Rules on the acceptance of outside appointments from the most senior Crown servants and makes recommendations to the Prime Minister, if the applicant is a senior civil servant or officer in the Armed Forces, or to the Foreign Secretary if the applicant is a senior diplomat.

The Committee also provides advice, under published guidelines, directly to former Ministers on any appointments or employment they wish to accept outside Government within two years of leaving office. The Committee acts as a joint body providing such advice to former Ministers of the UK Government in Westminster, the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales.

The Advisory Committee was set up as a standing committee by the then Prime Minister in 1975. There have been Rules on the acceptance of outside appointments for Crown servants in place since 1937, and the Guidelines for former Ministers were introduced in 1995.

Purpose

The publication scheme responds to the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which requires all public bodies to adopt and maintain a scheme for the proactive publication of information. The schemes are intended to ensure that information is made available without the need for a specific request. This scheme has been approved by the Information Commissioner. Information which would be exempt under Part II of the Act, for example because it is sensitive or confidential, is not included in our scheme. Such information may be edited out of documents published under the scheme.

The scheme sets out the classes under which information will be made available, how to obtain it, and at what cost.

Responsibility for administering the scheme rests with the Secretary to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (telephone 020 7276 2610). For more detailed enquiries about the Committee’s publication scheme contact Eamonn Moyles in the Committee secretariat (telephone 020 7276 2622).

Address: Advisory Committee on Business Appointments
35 Great Smith Street
LONDON
SW1P 3BQ
Fax: 020 7276 2607

Classes of information and description

• Role and membership – information about the Committee’s remit and its membership, biographical information about Committee members
• Framework of operation – information about rules and procedures, including the application forms for Crown servants and former Ministers
• Decisions – the Committee is an advisory body and makes recommendations, not decisions. The Committee publishes its advice about appointments which have been taken up (or announced), but, as the Committee on Standards in Public Life have accepted, it does not publish information about appointments which are not taken up
• Documents placed in the libraries of both Houses – Advisory Committee documents placed in the libraries of both Houses of Parliament
• Evidence to committees – evidence given to the Committee on Standards in Public Life
• Annual Reports – texts of the Advisory Committee’s annual reports
• Press notices – press notices released by the Committee relating to its work
• Organisation and Management – information about the role of its secretariat and lines of responsibility, funding and costs, performance targets, and how to contact officials.

Charges

Single copies of the information described in this scheme are available free of charge from the above address. The rules on the acceptance of outside appointments by Crown servants (including Guidance for departments and agencies on the Rules on the acceptance of outside appointments by Crown servants) are available on this website www.acoba.gov.uk.

Reproduction for sale or other commercial purposes is not permitted. For any other use, or if in doubt, further information and guidance notes on publishing and copyright are available from HMSO’s Licensing Division (telephone 01603 621000).