He is also the chair of NHS Resolution, the health service’s medical negligence agency. Thomas has not declared any political activity, and has a strong track record in the voluntary sector, including holding several senior charity trustee posts. However, Thomas’s appointment appears to have defused much of that concern. There was also wide concern in the voluntary sector that Dowden’s intervention was a signal that the government would seek an overtly political commission chair. This advice triggered a legal challenge by the Good Law Project charity, which claimed it was an unlawful attempt to politicise the charities watchdog. The previous culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, caused a row in September when he said the commission chair should be taken only by someone who committed to tackling charities which, he suggested, had been “hijacked by a vocal minority seeking to burnish their woke credentials”. In each case the commission exonerated the charities, none of whom had broken charity law and are not to face regulatory action. Each organisation was accused of pursuing a politicised, leftwing, anti-racist agenda at odds with their charitable missions. The commission has had to adjudicate in a series of high-profile complaints in recent months brought by rightwing backbench Tory MPs against the National Trust, Barnardos, and the Runnymede Trust. There has been much speculation about who would be appointed to the post given its central role in several recent political controversies involving high-profile charities that found themselves in “culture wars” over alleged “woke behaviour”. Thomas is chair of trustees of the Forward Arts Foundation charity, which is responsible for the promotion and enjoyment of poetry in the UK.
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