Appointments to the Board of the UK Statistics Authority
Professor Sir Adrian Smith and Professor David Rhind have been appointed as Deputy Chairs of the UK Statistics Authority.
2 July 2012
CAB 060-12
Professor Sir Adrian Smith and Professor David Rhind have been appointed as Deputy Chairs of the UK Statistics Authority for three years.
Sir Adrian Smith will have responsibility for governance of the Office of National Statistics and will take up his post on 1st September, whilst David Rhind will have responsibility for advising and supervising the authority’s regulatory work and promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of all official statistics across the UK. He took up the role on 1 July. In addition, Dr David Levy has been appointed as a Non-Executive Director of the UK Statistics Authority for two years from 1 August.
The appointments were the subject of an open recruitment exercise following the Code of Practice set out by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.
Sir Adrian Smith is currently Director General for Knowledge and Innovation at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Professor Rhind has been a non-executive member of the Board of the UK Statistics Authority since 2008. David Levy is a Fellow of Green Templeton College and Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism within the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, a post he has held since September 2008.
Notes to 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.
Sir Adrian Smith FRS will leave the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills this summer to take up the post of Vice Chancellor of the University of London with effect from 1 September 2012. He was Principal of Queen Mary, University of London between 1998 and 2008, and before that held a number of senior academic and management posts at Imperial College. He was President of the Royal Statistical Society between 1995 and 1997, and previously served on the Board of the UK Statistics Authority during 2008 as Deputy Chair (Statistical System). He does not currently hold any other ministerial appointments.
Professor Rhind was a member of the former Statistics Commission from 2000 to 2008, and between 2003 and 2008 was the Commission’s chairman. He was Vice-Chancellor and President of the City University London between 1998 and 2007, a non-executive director on the Bank of England’s Court of Directors from 2006 to 2009, and Director General and Chief Executive of the Ordnance Survey between 1992 and 1998. He is currently Chair of the Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information (APPSI), of the Bank of England Pension Trustee, of Portsmouth Hospitals’ NHS Trust Board and of the Trustees of the Nuffield Foundation. His APPSI role is also a ministerial appointment.
David Levy spent 20 years in his career at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), latterly as Controller of Public Policy (2000 to 2007). Prior to that role he was Head of Policy Development and chief adviser and head of European Policy, Editor of BBC Radio 4’s Analysis, and a reporter for BBC TV’s Newsnight and Radio 4’s File on Four. He does not currently hold any other ministerial appointments.
The remuneration for the Deputy Chair posts is £30,000 per annum for four days per month, and the remuneration for the Non-Executive Director is £15,000 per annum for two days per month.
All appointments are made on merit, and political activity plays no part in the selection process. In accordance with the original Nolan recommendations, there is a requirement for appointees’ political activity (if any is declared) to be made public. The successful candidates did not declare any political activity.