- Matt Hancock appointed Gina Coladangelo as a member of the Board of Directors of the UK Health Department in September 2020.
- Unusually, she was hired outside of another non-executive director recruitment process.
- The government defended its handling of recruitment, including deleting job advertisements related to these positions.
- For more stories, please visit Business Insider.
After reviewing the Whitehall Non-Executive Director (NED) system, the British government defended the details of the appointment process for the removal of departmental board members.
It stems from criticism of the hiring of Gina Coladangelo, who was an assistant to Matt Hancock, the former Minister of Health, who was revealed in the tabloids to be his lover.
The video of the two kissing in his minister’s office caused an uproar – it violated the social distancing regulations – Leads to Hancock’s resignation.
During Hancock’s tenure, Coladangelo got a job at the health department NED at an unusual rate.
At the same time, department officials slowed down the recruitment process for four other NED vacancies, and only one of them was filled.
NED works 15 to 20 days a year and is paid £15,000 (US$20,600).
The Ministry of Health and Social Care (DHSC) issued a job advertisement on August 19, 2020, and the expected closing date is September 11. According to the copy of the advertisement stored by the National Archives.
Coladangelo was appointed on September 1, when the initial application period was about to end.
By September 17, This page has been deleted.
Old link-such as the link on DHSC LinkedIn Page -Automatically redirect to the public dating homepage. This means that the government no longer keeps a record of any detailed information about the application process time or interview panel members.
As Metro.co.uk reportActivists question the completeness of the process of seeing Coladangelo join the government payroll when others are still invited to apply.
The Good Law Project, a campaign group, Say This timing “raised serious concerns that Matt Hancock might have bypassed the recruitment process of his own department in order to speed up the appointment of Gina Coladangelo.”
The page advertised for NED work stated that applicants need to “challenge the professional credibility and authority of DHSC leaders” and must “have the highest standards of personal etiquette in governance, accountability, risk, and financial management.”
According to the Cabinet Office, To oversee NED recruitment, all appointments are “subject to a fair, open and transparent recruitment process.”
In a statement to Insider, the Cabinet Office defended the removal of advertising pages. It stated that they were cancelled because the NED role was not a supervised appointment and therefore will be automatically deleted.
A DHSC spokesperson declined to comment on the details of the recruitment process.
Public appointments commissioner Peter Riddell is responsible for supervised appointments. He previously talked about “concerns about the lack of transparency in unregulated public appointments.”
In its June report, the Public Living Standards Committee called for supervision of the NED’s appointment process. Standard question 2.
Hancock is still a backbencher. In a letter accepting his resignation, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated that he believes Hancock’s “contribution to public service is far from over.”
