senior

The commission must approve exception appointments at the most senior grade, but below this level departments have a free hand to recruit.

Smyth, a barrister and senior member of a Christian charity, was accused of attacking dozens of boys, including those he met in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s.

At the inquest in Northampton, senior coroner Anne Pember said the provisional cause of death was "manual strangulation pending toxicology and histology".

He said that from the "very start" senior members of Russia's political system had made comments seeking "to distance them from any involvement in what was happening".

And last month, a woman was jailed for five years after lying about her experience and qualifications to get a job as a senior nurse in a unit for sick and premature babies.