SOME Asians see membership of the House of Lords as an end in itself. Not so Jitesh Gadhia.
The investment banker is still only 49, but has played what can only be described as a starring role in the upper house since former prime minister David Cameron elevated him to the peerage in his resignation honours list in 2016.
Lord Gadhia has taken up a range of issues, such as the pressing need for the UK to take a more “progressive” view over the admission of foreign students, especially from India. At Cambridge University, where Lord Gadia himself read economics as an undergraduate, he is now on vice chancellor Stephen Toope’s circle of advisers for India. Lord Gadhia has promoted India-UK economic relations; he helped Cameron with some of his speeches, including the one made in Wembley Stadium when the prime minister was host to the visiting Narendra Modi in November 2015.
Behind the scenes, it has been rumoured that when Samantha Cameron or Theresa May needed a sari or assistance in wearing one for an Indian event, Lord Gadhia’s wife, Angeli, mother of their two children, was always happy to step in “to do the needful”.
In November 2015, Lord Gadhia came up with the idea of a red poppy, but one made from khadi, the homespun cotton that Mahatma Gandhi favoured, as a way of recognising the contribution of Indian soldiers in two world wars on Remembrance Sunday.
The idea wasn’t taken up by the Royal British Legion until last year, but is coming back bigger and better in time for Remembrance Sunday on November 10 this year. “They are doubling the number of khadi poppies that they are making,”
Lord Gadhia says. “They are going to try and reach places outside of London. The khadi is sourced ethically from India and the poppies are hand made in the UK.”
The khadi connection led to Lord Gadhia getting involved with events in London, Cambridge and elsewhere marking the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2 this year.
Lord Gadhia explains: “I have been researching his footprint in the UK. He came to the UK on five occasions between 1888 and 1931. In a world where nations are competing to wield soft power, Gandhi is right at the apex.
So many countries and leaders, ranging from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela, have all been inspired by Gandhi. He was probably the most successful NRI (non-resident Indian) that India has ever produced. But India has not been fully able to cultivate the aura of Gandhi.” It is to his credit that Lord Gadhia has not shied away from the sensitive but vitally important subject of organ donation.
“There are nine Asians waiting for a transplant for everyone that has one,” he begins. “So it is terribly disproportionate. And with the change in law to deem consent you have to opt out now. It is on the statute books – it is going to be implemented from next spring.” He reveals: “I came very close to it in my own family.
My father passed away a few years ago, and he was on the verge of kidney dialysis. The incidence of kidney disease and diabetes (is very high) and therefore the requirement for organs is pretty acute now in our communities.”
Lord Gadhia has put forth his ideas in a gentle, but persuasive way: “Families will effectively have the last word after someone has passed away. Seva or daan – giving – is part of our heritage.” For Hindus and Jains, he says, “the ultimate philosophy is that the soul is immortal, your body is mortal; there should be absolutely no spiritual and philosophical barrier to organ donation.
In fact, quite the opposite.” Jitesh Kishorekumar Gadhia was born in Kampala, Uganda, the son of Kishore and Hansa Gadhia, on May 27, 1970, and arrived in Britain at the age of two.
As an investment banker, he has been a senior managing director at the Blackstone Group, a US private equity firm. He has also worked for Barclays, ABN AMRO, and Barings Bank. In the Lords, he does not sit as a crossbencher, but as someone who is “non-affiliated”.
This is because he has to “stand back” as a board member of UK Government Investments (UKGI). “This entity manages on behalf of the state everything ranging from Channel 4 Television to Network Rail, Land Registry, Companies House, British Business Bank – there are at last a couple of dozen that we manage as shareholders on behalf of the taxpayer.”
The UKGI also looks after the bailed-out financial assets of various banks from the crash of 2008. “The government owns 62.4 per cent of RBS, Britain’s fourth-biggest bank by market value, which it rescued in 2008 with a £45.5 billion capital injection.
“We used to own 42 per cent of Lloyds Bank which we sold in its entirety – over time we sold over £20bn worth of Lloyds Bank shares. We have been in the process of winding down all the holdings in Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock which were the mortgage assets.” Lord Gadhia’s is a sane, responsible voice.
On Brexit and other economic matters, he emphasises “the need to re-articulate the importance of wealth creation. We simply cannot meet the British people’s aspirations for higher living standards and better public services without raising our sights and becoming much more ambitious about promoting prosperity.
“Whenever I travel around the world and come back to the UK, I cannot help but observe that British politics is focusing either on the zero-sum game of redistribution or reconciling itself to below-trend growth of 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent. “At the heart of rediscovering the art of wealth creation must be addressing our productivity gap.
We need to fix the fundamentals which have left our nation’s productivity around 20 per cent lower than the trend followed before the financial crisis.” He has set up a group called the Multicultural Professional Networks Forum, made up of “65 mainly corporate organisations that employ something like 3.6 million-3.8 million people: big accountancy firms, law firms, or banks. What I have done is get together the heads of their diversity networks.
So they can share best practice, have mentoring programmes and also advocate more strongly as a group. “We have contributed to some of the work that the Race Disparity Audit team have been doing in the Cabinet Office. Our group was advocating more transparency on the ethnicity pay gap and getting more BAME people into public appointments.
