The Confederation of British Industry should disband after rape allegations led to an exodus of top firms from the lobbying group, business leaders said on Saturday.
One said the CBI’s “extraordinary culture” has made it “nigh-on impossible” for it to continue representing firms, while another said it has “probably run its course” after a “tsunami of resignations”.
The Guardian has published a series of accounts from more than a dozen women claiming they were victims of sexual misconduct by men at the CBI – including two women who said they were raped by colleagues.
Friday’s revelation, in which a woman said she was raped by two male colleagues at an overseas office of the CBI, led to more than 50 of Britain’s biggest businesses quitting or suspending engagement with the group.
And on Saturday, Lady Patience Wheatcroft, a former non-executive director of Barclays, said: “It’s very hard to see that [the CBI] has a positive future.”
She added: “This organisation has presided over the most extraordinary culture by the sound of it.
“It’s very hard to imagine an organisation where not one but two allegations of rape are now being investigated, and I think it makes it nigh-on impossible for the CBI to do the job that it’s there to do.”
“I think it’s time for a total rethink, not just by the CBI of what it does but a rethink of how business is represented and lobbies government. The CBI is having to accept itself that it was clearly deeply flawed and now it’s looking for a new sense of direction … they probably need to disband.”
On Friday, the CBI decided to suspend all policy and membership activity until an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) is held in June.
The decision followed the departure of members including NatWest, the John Lewis Partnership and Vodafone. Tesco, Meta, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lloyds Banking Group, Unilever and Shell announced they were suspending all activity with the lobbying group.
The Adnams brewery chief executive, Andy Wood, said continued membership was now “untenable”.
Wood told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There’s a human story here and we greatly regret the experience that these young and vulnerable people have had with these alleged events that went on, it sounds truly horrific.
“I think business has said, and Adnams has said, enough is enough, and a tsunami of resignations, suspensions and terminations yesterday I think is evidence of that. We’re an organisation that takes its culture and its values really seriously, and it’s just totally untenable and unsustainable to remain members.”
Wood added an organisation “conceived in the 1960s” had “probably run its course”.
The government has suspended engagement with the CBI while law firm Fox Williams conducts an investigation into the latter.
Details of the latest rape allegation were passed to police by the CBI. Last week, the City of London police began investigating a series of misconduct allegations made by more than a dozen women about CBI managers.
The Guardian revealed a pattern of alleged inappropriate behaviour from male employees towards their female colleagues. One woman said she was raped by a manager on a 2019 summer boat party on the River Thames.
In 2018, another woman based at the CBI’s London office, complained she was being stalked by a male colleague in person and online. While the CBI held a finding of harassment, sources claim the woman was actively discouraged from making a police report and the alleged perpetrator kept his job.
