Speakers

Anne Davies is Professor of Law and Public Policy and a Fellow of Brasenose College. She studied at Oxford, completing the BA (winning the Gibbs and Martin Wronker Prizes) and the D.Phil. She was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College from 1995 to 2001, and the Garrick Fellow and Tutor in Law at Brasenose College from 2001 to 2015. From 2015-2020 she was Dean of the Oxford Law Faculty.

Professor Davies is the author of five books and numerous articles in the fields of public law and labour law. In public law, she has a particular interest in government contracts. Her D.Phil. thesis examined the phenomenon of contractualisation in the UK National Health Service from a public law perspective. She developed this research into a book entitled Accountability: A Public Law Analysis of Government by Contract which was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. Her book The Public Law of Government Contracts, a wider examination of public procurement and public/private partnership contracts from a public law perspective, was published by OUP in 2008. She continues to write about government contracts and public service delivery more generally, and chairs the Oxford POGO Club for the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford.

Kate recently chaired the Brook House Inquiry, the first statutory inquiry into abuse in immigration detention in the United Kingdom.

Kate has over 25 years’ experience of complex investigations within secure criminal justice settings. She has investigated prisoner homicides, suicides and natural cause deaths in prisons and jails in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Kate has previously served as the Head of Violence Reduction for HM Prison Service and Head of Suicide & Homicide Investigations for the Prisons & Probation Ombudsman. She has also worked for HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and the UK's first cross-sector Forum on Preventing Deaths in Custody.

In the United States, Kate worked for a number of federal, state and city jurisdictions, including the New York City Board of Correction, where she developed and implemented the methodology for death investigations across the City's jails. She also in public and private prions across the United States, interviewing victims of sexual violence while incarcerated and assessing compliance with the federal government’s Prison Rape Elimination Act.

Kate has an MSc in Criminology and an Advanced Professional Certificate in Investigative Practice. She is a Trustee for two UK based criminal justice charities.

Andy has been Head of Procurement at the SPS since 2010 and held a variety of procurement roles prior to that and has extensive experience in a broad range of procurement and commercial activity. Andy oversees a well-established procurement function which develops and manages a diverse portfolio of goods, services, works and maintenance contracts which support and enable SPS to deliver its service. The team works with stakeholders to both develop and manage contracts (currently in excess of 250 live contracts). Alongside his procurement responsibility, Andy currently also has responsibility for the SPS central stories and logistics functions which support prison industries.

Sir Gary Hickinbottom is a former High Court and Court of Appeal judge, who spent over two decades as a full-time judge before retiring in 2021. Since then, he has been appointed President of Welsh Tribunals and Chair of the Post Office Overturned Conviction Independent Pecuniary Loss Panel, as well as sitting as an arbitrator and chairing various sport disciplinary and dispute resolution panels. Sir Gary chaired JUSTICE’s Outsourcing Working Party which published its report Beyond the Blame Game in June 2024.

Daniel joined Transparency International UK as Chief Executive in 2019. Under his leadership, TI-UK has helped to secure significant legislative reform to close down loopholes allowing dirty money into the UK economy. He has overseen TI-UK’s forensic investigations of corruption in Covid-19 procurement and served as an expert witness to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, along with committees in both Houses of Parliament, as part of work to increase integrity in politics. Before joining TI-UK, Daniel served for nearly 6 years as Chief Executive of the global media support organisation, Internews. He has also worked on global transparency, governance and media initiatives for Article 19, Albany Associates, Fondation Hirondelle, UNESCO, the University of Pennsylvania and others. He spent his early career as a journalist, editor and broadcaster.