She was the first female Asian chief executive of a FTSE 250 company. She is outspoken on gender equality, diversity and bad government regulation. Now Ruby McGregor-Smith, head of one of the country’s largest cleaning companies, thousands of whose staff are on the national minimum wage, is casting herself as a flag-waver for business as a Conservative peer, one of David Cameron’s controversial appointments of 45 more Tory members of the House of Lords.
Mrs McGregor-Smith, the £1.5 million-a-year chief executive of Mitie, the outsourcing group, said that she would use her elevation to the Lords to demonstrate why government must engage with business more coherently.
“My interest is in bringing business and government closer together,” she said. “In that sense what is needed is the relevant experience of current CEOs. I am more than happy to help them out on that and on the practical implementation with companies.”
She said a recent phone call from the prime minister had come out of the blue and there had been no discussion over whether she might yet have a future in government.
Friends have expressed surprise that Mrs McGregor-Smith has agreed to be a Tory peer. She has previously conceded to being a floating voter and might in the past have been regarded as being closer to new Labour.
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She said that in the 1980s she had been “the usual student who did the usual student things” and who believed the administration of Margaret Thatcher “was tough on many parts of society”.
She continued: “Through my life I have always been about equality and fairness and supporting those with aspiration.
“I came to this country at the age of two from India. My parents gave up a lot to give me that opportunity. I was educated in the state sector. I had no privilege. I know what it is like for those who find it tough. I worked very hard to get my chartered accountancy exams.
“This is less about the political dimension. It’s more about having the relevant business experience. The key thing is to reduce the deficit and to avoid the consequences of falling back into recession if we don’t address it. Business has got to do its piece on this. I sit with those who support deficit reduction.”
Mitie is one of the larger quoted employers of workers on the national minimum wage whose pay will rise by 10 per cent in the next year to fit the chancellor’s new £7.20 national living wage. Her company has yet to state how much that will hit its pay bill or its profit margins.
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Mrs McGregor-Smith is a past chairman of the Women in Business lobby but was a stern critic of the coalition government’s move to set targets for female representation on company boards. In a recent interview with The Times, she said: “On what basis do I need to be told that I need a quota for my board? The UK is over-regulated. Over-regulation stops growth.”
She plans to retain her part-time non-executive directorship at Michael Page, the recruitment company, but run down her commitments with the apolitical CBI, where she is a member of the president’s committee and chairwoman of its public services strategy board.