I am sure that there must be some areas where party politics come into their own, however Sport England is certainly not close to being one of those places. It has been widely reported, as explained in this article that Tanni Grey-Thompson was approached by Hugh Robertson the Sports Minister and asked if she would chair Sports England. This post is well paid but a relative minnow when compared to many other Government quangos. The two day a week post comes in at £40,000 pa or pro rata it would be £100,000 if it was a full time post. However it is a prestigious role and carries large responsibilities, such as control of the £300M budget. If as the article suggests the Grandees of the Conservative Party wanted to prevent Tanni from holding this post then one might hope that they would be prepared to go public and explain why. Alternatively perhaps the process for choosing such an important post could be dealt with in an open and accountable manner and to avoid any appearance of political bias, such appointments could be handled by people not involved in party politics.

The argument being applied by the so called ‘Whitehall Sources’ is pure nonsense. Of course controlling a £300M budget demands a range of skills, but if Lord Coe is supportive of this appointment, one imagines he is confident that Baroness Grey-Thompson can handle the role. In any event this is a small amount compared to the budget of a typical Local Authority, whose political leaders are not in any way chosen for their business acumen. The 41 recently elected Police and Crime Commissioners are also managing budgets of around £300M and none of them were asked to prove that they had the skills for the job. I may be wrong but I imagine if the British Public were presented with a choice of Tanni Grey-Thompson or Nick Bitel for this use of public money, that Baroness Grey-Thompson would be the first choice by a huge margin, and that would be an election that people would go out to vote in significant numbers. So how about it, if the Conservatives want to play Party Politics, let us have a choice and I would back the Independent Baroness every time.