Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has been found to have "unknowingly" breached public appointments rules when naming sports rights executive David Kogan as the government's preferred chair of England's new football watchdog.
Nandy announced Mr Kogan as her pick in April but subsequently stepped back from the appointment after discovering he had donated to her 2020 Labour leadership campaign. The donations totaled £2,900, made as two payments of £1,450 — one personally and one via his company — and formed part of wider contributions of £33,410 to Labour and party candidates in the five years before his appointment.
Sir William Shawcross, the commissioner for public appointments, concluded that the existence of those donations was capable of giving rise to a perceived conflict of interest and that the secretary of state should have checked for them before selecting Mr Kogan. He found that Nandy was "readily able to check" whether Mr Kogan had supported her campaign and should have taken any necessary consequential action to mitigate the perception of bias.
The commissioner’s inquiry was launched in June after Mr Kogan revealed during a parliamentary confirmation hearing in May that he
