Ian MacFadyen
Ian MacFadyen is a respected consultant, coach and commentator. He has advised governments in the UK and overseas, coached senior public officials, and commented in print and television on public services, reform and the Budget.
His public service career finished in Namibia, advising the government, and South Africa, helping design a poverty relief programme.
He set out to be a lawyer and volunteered in a law centre, appearing at the Old Bailey. But, he was engrossed in advising ministers by the time he got the degree. He went on to work closely with government lawyers and advise ministers on employment protection and other matters while working on policy in the Prime Minister’s Efficiency Unit in the Cabinet Office.
He brought to that work direct experience of commissioning health services in County Durham and having to justify decisions face to face with the public. His audiences ranged from several hundred to a single person. He won many people over and replaced a decade of animosity with cooperation. Earlier he advised on artificial limb services, hospitals, addictions, medicines, delinquency and manpower in the Department of Health and Social Security. He began by assessing benefits.
In Luton he founded a battered wives refuge. In east London, he was a Liberal council candidate. In Leeds in 2010, he is chair of the Liberal Democrats’ city-wide campaign group.
He was on the management committee of a charity for young homeless people in London. In east London, he was a successful chair of governors at a popular multi-ethnic, multi-faith school. Currently he is an elder and trustee of a church charity in Leeds.
Welsh and Scots by background, brought up in England and internationalist in outlook, his talks, writing, consultancy, coaching and workshops, draw on local and global references. With amusing anecdotes and quotations from a wide range of sources including Calgacus and the Beatles he shares his deep understanding of politics, current affairs, government, leadership, the public sector and reform. His style is relaxed. Successes include persuading a political commissar outsourcing could advance the revolution, winning over trades unions and persuading a most senior government figure to change his mind.
