A business mind in politics; a political mind in business
Paul Scully
Paul has over 25 years experience in politics, campaigning and at a senior level of business. A former UK Government Minister, Paul has had responsibility for policy on London, Small Business, Retail, Hospitality, Consumers & Competition, Labour Markets, the Post Office, Building Safety, Local Government Finance, Aviation, Gambling regulation, Technology & the Digital Economy. He is now back to the business world serving on the board of a number of companies, from start-ups to scale-ups.
Paul's Approach
Unlike many other countries, the path between politician and business professional is rarely smooth in the UK. The closest pure business comparison is between the CFO and the Marketing Director. They both not only have a different set of skills, but a different mindset. Paul navigates this skilfully with a high level of emotional intelligence, combined with a logic and determination to secure clear thought-out solutions.
In government, his guiding principle was to remain human first; politician second and his constant mantra to civil servants was that outputs – the reports, White Papers and strategies, were merely a path to outcomes – the effect on people’s lives. This is also true in business with profit, shareholder value and client satisfaction the indicators of outcome.
These principles were best illustrated in Paul’s time as Post Office Minister, coming into office in 2020 to oversee the government’s response to the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history, the Horizon Post Office scandal, later made famous with the ITV drama “Mr Bates and the Post Office.” Realising the human scale of the situation which had been downplayed by predecessors, Paul turned around the view of civil servants and the Treasury, set up a statutory Public Inquiry, secured hundreds of millions of pounds of backing by Treasury and started the compensation process to restore the lives of postmasters, many of whom had been sent to prison by a state-owned institution.
During Covid, his time running small businesses was invaluable in his regular weekly calls with the Chief Executives of household name retailers, pub companies, restaurant groups and other High Street businesses and indeed the Trade Unions, to act as their champion in securing support and channel their views to the top of government.
As Technology Minister, Paul oversaw the publication of the AI White Paper, the UK Semiconductor strategy and the completion of the Online Safety Act. As Minister for Gambling Regulation, he engaged both with the gambling sector and those campaigning against gambling harm to draft the Gambling White Paper which gave the land-based sector opportunities for growth, whilst putting stronger protections in place against online gambling. As Minister for London, Paul understood the need to build a narrative and solutions for the disparity of the approach to London as a global city, the UK’s capital city and a local city to its 9m residents.
All of the learnings from these experiences are informed by and act as transferable skills to business. Understanding how to use good regulation to give confidence to clients and campaign against bad regulations; having deep insight into human behaviour to market products and services to a busy client base and using the experience of leading nearly 10% of the last government’s entire legislative programme through Parliament acts as a vital training ground for marketing, process and compliance.
Some of the companies Paul is working with
paul@lamarrproject.com
Phone
+44 7967 651670
London, UK