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Jackie
Ballard to head the RSPCA
The
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has chosen
an anti-hunt campaigner and former MP as its new chief executive
(sometimes known as Director General). Jackie Ballard was selected
for the £90,000-a-year job from a shortlist of four after
presentations were made to the charity's ruling council last
Saturday. She was offered the job earlier this week.
She beat Steve Marshall, the former chief executive of Railtrack,
after the two other candidates, Michelle Thew and Maj Gen Michael
Laurie, had been eliminated. One member of the council has resigned
in protest at both the appointment and the chaotic process that
preceded it, and others threatened to follow suit during the
week.
Reformers within the society are furious that someone with little
financial expertise or experience of running such a large organisation
will be charged with pulling the charity out of its current
financial crisis.
The RSPCA is facing a series of cuts after it lost £16
million on the Stock Market and has already put major capital
projects on hold, including the building of animal centres and
hospitals. Staff are considering industrial action over changes
to their terms and conditions.
There is also expected to be a strong reaction from some senior
staff at the charity's headquarters, in Horsham, West Sussex,
who have already voiced privately their concerns over the possibility
of Mrs Ballard taking the top job.
Mrs Ballard, 49, is said to have won over the council with a
"politician's speech" during which, in contrast to
other candidates, she used no spreadsheets or figures to show
how she intended to pull the society out of its financial troubles.
Jacq Denham, a business adviser, resigned from the RSPCA council
earlier this week and said she was rewriting her will to cut
out the society, which has been the main beneficiary for the
past 34 years.
She said: "Jackie Ballard has no experience of running
this size of organisation. She has employed eight people in
the past, now she is going to be employing 1,800. What the RSPCA
needs is someone with financial experience and Steve Marshall
was head and shoulders above the other candidates. Maybe he
was too strong for the liking of some members of the council.
"Mrs Ballard was asked the difference between cash flow
forecasts and management accounts and she said she had never
even heard the terms. It beggars belief that she has been offered
the job."
Mrs Denham, who was a member of the six-strong panel originally
charged with selecting a new chief executive, said the process
had been dominated by vested interests and by people wanting
to increase their own profiles in the organisation.
"The whole process was flawed and it has been since the
beginning. There are good people who applied for the job and
didn't go forward to the final selection because of people's
personal interests.
"Richard Ryder, the chairman of council, put forward Jackie
Ballard. He's a failed Liberal Democrat candidate, she's a failed
Liberal Democrat MP."
No conflict of interest
Three
separate legal opinions were sought during the selection process
over David Thomas, the chairman of the panel, and his support
for Ms Thew, who is the chief executive of the British Union
for the Abolition of Vivisection.
Mr Thomas, a solicitor, had argued that there was no conflict
of interest in his being involved in the interviews, a view
confirmed by two of the legal opinions.
The selection panel, which Mr Thomas chaired, failed to agree
on a single name and wanted to send the names of both Ms Thew
and Mr Marshall to a meeting of the full council. But Mr Marshall
refused, leading to the re-interviewing of all the candidates
last Saturday.
Mrs Ballard, even though she was the first candidate to be
rejected by the panel, was formally offered the job after
giving her presentation to the full council.
Mr Marshall is understood to have said that he would not accept
the job as a reserve if she turned it down.
He said in a short statement yesterday: "I wasn't entirely
surprised by the result, but I'm very sad not to have the
opportunity to work with the society." Friends said he
had made a case for changes at the RSPCA, to refocus it away
from campaigning and back towards animals.
Mrs Denham, 55, said the society was in desperate need of
reform and she criticised the way the ruling council had become
dominated by infighting and internal politics. She added:
"The member of staff who said in the Daily Telegraph
that the RSPCA is run by amateurs is absolutely right.
"I am making an appointment with my solicitor to change
my will, so that will lose them a substantial amount of money."
Mrs Ballard was not available for comment.
Mrs Ballard is a passionate anti-hunt campaigner, although
she represented Taunton for the Liberal Democrats, a town
in the heart of Somerset, the most hunted county in Britain.
Born Jacqueline Mackenzie in Scotland in 1953, she read social
psychology at the London School of Economics and worked for
two years as a social worker. She married Derek Ballard, a
quantity surveyor, in 1975 and a year later they moved to
Somerset in search of the "good life".
After becoming a mother, she was recruited into the Liberal
Democrats in 1986 by Paddy Ashdown, her local MP. Despite
her vocal dislike of fox and deer hunting, Ms Ballard, who
divorced in 1989, won the Taunton seat in 1992.
She rose through the ranks of the party to become women's
affairs spokesman. She contested the Liberal Democrat leadership
election in 1999 on a ticket of "who cares wins".
She came third.
In 2001 she was beaten in the general election by around three
hundred votes by Adrian Flook, the Conservative candidate.
Her dismissive attitude towards people employed by the various
hunts was undoubtedly a crucial factor in her unseating. When
she appeared on BBC’s ‘Question Time’ two years
ago, she advised a kennel master in the audience to "start
training for a new job" when he voiced concern for his
family’s livelihood in the event of a hunt ban.
A vehement feminist, she quit England after losing her seat
to study in Iran, where women are often described as second-class
citizens.
Her appointment to head up the RSPCA is certain to be extremely
controversial in the run-up to the Government’s own hunting
Bill.
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