Questions posed to the Leader of Liverpool City Council, 8th July 2009 - Q28

Question

Since 1997, can the Leader say how many candidates from the BME communities,
successful or otherwise, have been interviewed for Executive posts by the Appointments Panel?

Answer

Since 2006 18 Executive posts have been recruited to. The number of candidates from
BME communities that have been interviewed, successful or otherwise for Executive
posts is 2. This is based on information supplied by candidates on the equal opportunities form. Please note that submission of an equal opportunities form by the candidate is optional and we will not have necessarily received a form for every candidate who applies.

Verbal supplementary question
I began my question by responding to the Leader's point about why I was asking him all the E&D questions by saying that in my view something this serious required leadership from the top and I saw it as his role, however, if he wished to give this important responsibility over to someone else, then I would address them elsewhere in future.

I then said

I am disappointed that the Council has only provided figures going back to 2006 when LDL took over responsibility for HR. I am aware as he will be that this exercise was carried out once before at the behest of Councillor Marbrow and I know there are figures going back as far as 1997, which is why I asked for them today. I also know that the last time this exercise was carried out, there had been no BME candidates interviewed for Executive Posts. This means that we have interviewed precisely 2 candidates for these senior posts in 12 years. Is it not therefore the case that we have made no progress whatsoever since the 2000 review chaired by Cllr Fielding?

Verbal response
The Leader said that candidates might not be completing their monitoring forms in full, so there might be more candidates than we knew about.