Charlotte Hogg's promotion to Bank of England deputy governor under question

Just days after her promotion to deputy governor of the Bank of England, Charlotte Hogg is now facing the prospect of having her appointment questioned after she failed to disclose her brother's role at Barclays.

MPs on the Treasury Select Committee are set to decide whether to ask the central bank to cancel Hogg's promotion. The former BoE's chief operating officer took over from Minouche Shaif as the new deputy governor for markets and banking on 1 March 2017. Her appointment was approved by the committee last week.

The committee held an extraordinary meeting on Thursday (9 March) to consider Hogg's admission that she failed to tell the central bank that her brother is the director of group strategy at Barclays, a bank that the BoE regulates.

At the meeting, MPs discussed a statement to be drawn up over the weekend and released next week over Hogg's appointment, the Financial Times reports.

"It's not looking good for her. She has been hoist by her own petard," one member told the newspaper.

Another member said that the committee was considering a recommendation on "whether or not this [appointment as deputy governor] should proceed."

'Standards in public life'

John Mann MP, who also sits on the Treasury committee noted the irony that Hogg wrote the bank's code of conduct and yet failed to uphold it herself. "This is simply a question about standards in public life and in this regard she has failed and must resign," he said, according to The Telegraph.

Another committee member, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, slammed the central bank for being complacent about the issue. "I've moved on from being concerned about Ms Hogg's error to being concerned about the bank's reaction - and that the bank's reaction has been pretty unrigorous. It's taking bland assurances and passing them to us."

The central bank itself is said to be discussing how to deal with the situation and is also considering whether Hogg should be asked to stand down to preserve its reputation, the FT reports.

The Treasury committee does not have the power to force Hogg to give up her promotion. However the newspaper noted that in 2011, Dame Janet Finch withdrew herself as a candidate for the chair of the UK Statistics Authority under similar circumstances and before the committee could issue its recommendation.

In 2000, the Treasury said that Christopher Allsopp was unsuitable to be appointed to the Monetary Policy Committee but the then-chancellor Gordon Brown ignored the recommendation.

'A very serious breach'

Anthony Habgood, the chair of the central bank's court of directors, has already admitted that Hogg's non-disclosure is a "very serious breach" and "there could be the perception of a conflict".

The Treasury Committee declined to comment, the FT said.

The newspaper said that as deputy governor, Hogg would be sitting on several committees, including the Prudential Regulation Committee which regulates private sector banks, including Barclays.

"The big banks are a major regulatory focus of the PRC. Therefore obviously people who are involved with those banks are potentially in conflict," Habgood told MPs on Tuesday.

The newspaper noted that in her previous role as chief operating officer at the BoE, Hogg was also privy to decisions made by the Prudential Regulation Authority board, the PRC's predecessor.

Hogg's mother, Baroness Hogg is a non-executive director at John Lewis, while her father, Viscount Hailsham, was a minister in former prime minister John Major's cabinet.