Evaluate the view that select committees are the most effective way for the house of commons to hold the executive to account

Intro:

• Departmental select committees are made-up of a small group of MPs that examine the work of government departments.

• In order to provide a nuanced answer, it is worth considering the impact of the government's majority

• With this in mind, My LOA is that while select committees will also be affected by this, they are generally bipartisan and independent in nature, and therefore they can be somewhat shielded from executive dominance

• Therefore, it is convincing to say that select committees are the best form of scrutiny that the House of Commons has to hold the government to account.

Select committees - Ineffective (Part 1)

• There are some, I believe, legitimate but ultimately flawed arguments that these committees provide ineffective scrutiny.

• Some argue this view as they can only advise the government by making non-biding recommendations.

• They cannot force the government to implement their suggestions.

• This can be seen by the statistic that the government only accepts an estimated 40% of Select Committee recommendations.

• Granted, these recommendations usually do not involve major changes of policy

• Furthermore, Select committees have weak and ill-defined powers to compel witnesses to appear before them to tell the truth.

• For example, in 2013, as Home Secretary, Theresa May blocked the Home Affairs Select Committee from interviewing the head of MI5 Andrew Parker, senior civil servants. Have to appear before select committees, but ministers may refuse.

• Boris Johnson evaded attendance before the Liaison Committee (This is a committee consisting of all the chairs of the Select Committee.) for his first ten months in office

• This is why they have been.Called 'watchdogs without teeth.'

• This means that although they have a critical eye on what government departments do. That doesn't necessarily mean to say that what they come up with then leads to any meaningful change.

• Most select committees are still chaired by MP's from the governing Party as chairships are awarded in proportion to party representation, thus the size of a majority affects just how friendly, in theory at least, select committees might be to the government, which could then have a knock on effect regarding how good they are at scrutiny.

• After the 2019 general election, the opposition the Labour Party held 202 seats in the House of Commons out of a total of 650 and were thereby allocated just nine Select Committee chairs.

• Com

Select committees - Effective

• Select committees provide valuable scrutiny of government departments.

• There is a Select Committee to scrutinize the policy, administration and spending of each government department.

• And following the Wright committee reforms, chairs are now elected by their fellow MP's in a secret ballot, which is significant because they are no longer chosen by the party whips

• A move which has increased their independence.

• This can mean that even if the chair comes from the governing party, they are unlikely to be sycophants for the government of the day.

• Government ministers, opposition front benches and party whips do not serve in the select committees and do not shape their membership, meaning that such committees give a voice to back bench concerns.

• In May 2021, the Health, Science and Technology Select Committee heard seven hours of evidence from the prime minister's former special adviser, Dominic Cummings, who revealed that the government lacked a plan to fight COVID.

• At the start of the outbreak, he also accused Boris Johnson of not being fit to be Prime Minister and health secretary Matt Hancock for lying to the public when he claimed the government was testing hospital patients for COVID before sending them back to care homes.

• His accusations resulted in further scrutiny of government policy and louder calls for a full and immediate public inquiry into the handling of the COVID pandemic.

Select committees - Effective (Part 2)

• Select committees may appoint specialist advisors, possibly an academic in the field they're investigating to assist them with their work. They produce a report to which the government is expected to respond within two months.

• The Home Affairs Select Committee led an inquiry into the Windrush scandal, where the then home secretary Amber Rudd, denied the Home Office had targets for deporting illegal immigrants.

• Leaked emails subsequently suggested that there were targets and that Rudd was aware of them. She resigned from her post, taking full responsibility.

• This example demonstrates the ability of select committees to investigate the work of government and make it accountable for its actions.

• Select Committee members build up worthwhile expertise in that area.

• Tom Toogenhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, brought his experience of serving in the military and of working in the Middle East to the role.

• But to answer the question as to whether they are the most.Effective as the question demands, we have to compare them to other forms of scrutiny let's turn then to the other types of committee.

Public bill committees - Effective

• Public bill committees, so the the weak argument in my view, goes provide a role in amending legislation and thus getting the government to think again.

• Public bill committees examine a bill line by line and suggest amendments and in many ways they are effective during the legislative process.

• Most bills are sent to a committee stage when a group of at least 11 MP's consider the proposed act clause by clause, line by line, in detail.

• The ministers attending come from the department involved and are matched by the shadow Cabinet frontbencher that parallel them.

• And this brings a certain degree of different expertise to each discussion. Public Bill committees, formerly known as standing committees, are given the task of applying detailed clause by clause, scrutiny of legislation at committee stage

• That's all that is good which can be said about them

• The idea, of what they are meant to do in theory, just looking through a bill and suggesting amendments, should be good scrutiny.

Public bill committees - Ineffective

• Yet, there are many limits to the effectiveness of Public Bill committees. Which makes them far less valuable than select committees.

• many critics see scrutiny of legislation via partisan whipped bill committees with many inexpert MP's just voting along a party line as just ritualistic, ineffective and normally of very little value.

• Government whips can completely dominate proceedings, starting with the membership over 99% of ministerial recommendations succeed, while the success rate for non government amendment amendments is just 1% or below

• in Isabelle Harmon's book 'Why we get the wrong politicians' she noted that MPs used public bill committees to write their Christmas cards.

• Public bill committees are involved at the later stages of the legislative process, once there has already been a Commons vote at the second reading, so we know the bill is already going to become law, It's just a question of whether there can be small amendments made to it while these committees are able to table amendments.

• These are, as the the the stats suggest, very friendly to the government.

• The ordinary members of the Bill Committee have very little Expertise, because these bills, these committees are only set up when there is a bill going before Parliament and then they are disbanded, unlike select committees which are permanent, allowing those members who serve for a long time on those committees to build up a real knowledge of their subject area

• In 2011 Sarah Williston, a Conservative backbench MP who worked for 24 years as a doctor was prevented from sitting on the public bill committee scrutinized changes, scrutinizing changes to the NHS, she told a newspaper.

Public bill committees - Ineffective (Part 2)

• It was made very clear to you that if you are in a bill committee, you support the government. I was not prepared to accept that and that's because she brought her own wealth of experience to the role, and that's something that these committees and the whips dominating them clearly do not want..

• Independent think tank Reform claims that a mere 8% of seats and public bill committees are allocated to MP's who sat on the relevant departmental Select Committee.

• Opposition MP's are lectured that their only influence.Is the ability to delay government bills.

• They are urged to fill time space with words whose main purpose is to gum up the works.

• This raises the issue of a government majority. The greater the dominance of a government, the greater is the domination of public bill committees.

• Now you would expect that to be the same in select committees, but the independent nature of the latter partly insulates them from governmental pressure.

• whereas public bill committees have their membership determined by whips doing the government's bidding.

• Thus, select committees are more effective at scrutiny.

But are they more effective than what takes place in the Commons floor, most notably parliamentary questions?

Parliamentary questions - Effective (Part 1)

• Let's start with the presumption that parliamentary questions can be effective, and, so the argument goes, a more significant form of scrutiny than that provided by select committees.

• Proponents of this view will mistakenly point out that urgent questions fulfill a really important role in scrutiny.

• If the Speaker feels that an MP's question is urgent and of public importance, an urgent question will force ministers to attend and answer that question at short notice, with very little preparation.

• A response must be given in the House by the relevant minister, who will then face around an hour of questions from other MP's.

• Just two such questions were granted in the 2008 to 2009 parliamentary session.

• In the six years to 2015, though Speaker John Bercow allowed well over 300.

• He allowed 173 between the 2017 general election and February 2019.

• One urgent question included the use of the power to deprive a person of citizenship following the request in February 2019 by Shamima, begun to return to the UK after she joined ISIS in Syria when she was just 15.

• The current speaker, Lindsay Hoyle has continued to grant urgent questions.He allowed 120 in the 2019 to 21. Parliamentary session equivalent to more than one.UQ every two sitting days.

Parliamentary questions - Effective (Part 2)

• those who downplay the role of select committees and have a love with parliamentary questions will also focus on PMQ's Prime Minister's Questions.

• These are held in the Commons every Wednesday that Parliament is sitting.

• The Leader of the Opposition is called upon to ask the Prime Minister up to six questions and other backbenchers get a chance to question the Prime Minister too.

• Starmer recently questioned the government on its immigration policy after net migration in 2023 rose to over 600,000.

• The Leader of the Opposition can also inflict serious damage on a government with memorable sound bites.

• Starmer's 'Why is he still here?' Question of Boris Johnson compounded the pressure upon the then Prime Minister over party gate and revelations of lockdown parties at no. 10.

• Going back further, Blair quipped of John Major that he was in office but not in power, and that I leave my party and he follows his.

• Yet both U q's Urgent Questions and PM Q's Prime Minister's Questions are flawed in several ways, relegating them from the top spot when it comes to scrutinizing the government.

• My view that select committees are.Superior thus holds more sway when we take a closer.

Parliamentary questions - Not Effective

• Urgent questions have been undermined by focus on image rather than substance.

• In February 2020, Labour MP Tracy Brabin was criticized for what she was wearing while raising an important issue about journalists.

• Access to no. 10 Downing St. is usually limited in regards to Urgent questions.

• A junior minister, is often sent to answer UQ's rather than the Secretary of State.

• In January 2022, Boris Johnson sent his Paymaster General.

• That's probably the most junior of junior at roles in the government to answer an urgent question relating to lockdown parties at #10, opposition MP shouted Where is he?

• Regarding PMQ's. Even former Prime Minister David Cameron described them as a Punch and Judy show.

• Governments often ask their own backbenches, planted questions which are easy for the Prime Minister to score with

• Government whip strongly encourage repetitious and memorable sound bites from the government's backbenches, allowing the Prime Minister the chance to answer in an easy way and prepare them for campaigns

• E.g. MP's reminded David Cameron a lot of his party's longterm economic plan before the 2015 general election, and that had far more to do with electioneering than scrutiny.

• This is not something that select committees do instead. They provide a razor sharp focus on specific actions or inactions of the government compared to parliamentary questions, which are often.

• Posed for a variety of reasons, not least to Carry favor with the government rather than actually hold it to account.

• So surely it.Is right to focus on what they and their.Party do when it comes to scrutinizing the government.So here goes for a more indepth.

His Majesty's Opposition - Effective

• Main form of scrutiny is probably through opposition days, which is what I will focus on here

• Under the Common Standing Order #14, opposition parties are allocated 20 days every parliamentary session during which they can choose the main topic of business

• These are known as opposition days. 17 of these days go to the official opposition. That's the Labour Party and three go to the small opposition parties.

• In October 2020, Labour used one of its opposition days to put forward a motion to extend free school meals through half term, following footballer Marcus Rashford's campaign urging the government to do so.

• The motion was rejected in parliament, but it allowed Labour to keep the issue in the public eye.

• The government later reversed its position.

• The debates that are held on these days are usually followed by a non-binding vote. Which seeks to put pressure on a government to change policy. They can also seek to divide the governing party.

• Labour's opposition day motion on fracking in October 2022 sparked chaos on Tory backbenches and was mishandled badly by party whips, it contributed to the resignation of Liz Truss as Prime Minister.

• So surely we consider we can consider opposition days as a real candidate to replace select committees.

• At the top of the scrutiny table?I'm afraid not.

His Majesty's Opposition - Not Effective (Part 1)

• First point in contention is that it's only 20 days out of 365, which inevitably means they have a relatively smaller impact on the passing of legislation.

• The frequent large majorities that first-Passed-the-post bestows upon a governing party allows governments to overcome the votes that opposition parties call for.

• Opposition days are largely ineffective in scrutinizing the government.

• In recent years, MP's from the governing party have simply abstained from voting if they felt they were going to lose.

• A vote in 2017, the government, which at that time had no parliamentary majority, abstained from voting on a Labour motion calling for a pay rise for nurses.

• Avoiding scrutiny by failing to participate was described at the time as a bad week for democracy by the then Shadow Leader of the House Valerie Vaz

• At best, opposition days can put real pressure on a government.

• But are we really saying Liz Trust resigned because of a vote?Tabled by Labour, Or was it because she proposed a Set of tax cuts that spooked the markets, I think It's the latter, folks.

• They can be effective, as can all other forms of scrutiny.

• But only when the government lacks a majority or if the governing party is bitterly divided, as was the case with the Truss administration.

His Majesty's Opposition - Not Effective (Part 2)

• Select committees, meanwhile, do not necessarily rely on governmental divides.

• Because their day job is to shadow the work of what is being done, the culture in these committees tends to be one of bipartisanship rather than point scoring, as we see with parliamentary questions and use of opposition days to embarrass the government

• Embarrassment politics is not.

• Always the best form of scrutiny, select committees generally do not engage with that kind of thing and that is why I feel that select committees are far better than whatever the opposition does on the Commons.

Conclusion

• Thus, select committees, while not completely immune from a large government majority that can hinder their work, are more immune than the other forms of scrutiny mentioned.

• Public bill committees are heavily whipped and government dominated.

• Whereas the Wright committee reforms have created select committees with genuine independence, their chairs have developed a fearsome. Reputation, regardless of party parliamentary questions, especially U Q's, do sometimes put ministers on the spot.

• But it's easier to give evasive answers on the common floor. Unlike in a committee room hearing that can last for hours

• Opposition days are arguably tokenistic and indeed heavily partisan.

• Embarrassment.Politics is the name of the game, and that tends to lead to headlines rather than policy change, which we see more of through meaningful and thoughtful Select Committee reports.

• This is not to say that Select Committee scrutiny is wonderful.

• Executive dominance persists.

• We see that with the 2023 Illegal Immigration Act. Select committees warned that the government could end up using International Development aid.Illegally, if it reclassified all asylum seekers as illegal immigrants and continuing to do so, they said, would break international law.

• Well, the government pushed ahead with the law anyway, and now finds itself in a pickle on how to fund its.

• Promises to proceed or to process the immigration backlog, as it was warned.

• Would be the case by the committee, but if we had a league table of methods of scrutiny, select committees would be at the top that's it then.

• Factors that affect scrutiny.I've mentioned the size of majority a few times and divides within the governing Party too.

(EXTRA PARAGRAPHS BELOW) Select committees - Effective (Part 3)

• Moreover, because the work carried out in select committees is consensual rather than combative in nature, MP's are far less concerned with political point scoring.

• When government ministers are questioned by select committees, they cannot so easily use rhetoric to evade scrutiny.

• Because they are held to account to provide accurate and recent evidence, they may be forced to explain their actions in a way that provides not only the committee.

• But the wider public with valuable information, unlike debates in the chamber and Prime Minister's Questions (these are typically brief.).

• There is far greater depth of scrutiny in committees and that can be achieved over a much longer period of time

• These ministers could be scrutinized for up to several months whereas questions tend to just last a few seconds.

• Following the right committee reforms, chairing select committees has become a viable alternative career route to a career as a minister.

• Chris Bryant, chair of the parliamentary standards committee, has seemingly given up on a career on the Labour front bench and opted instead.

• For a role that involves intricate scrutiny of MP's behavior. In 20/21 he was at the forefront of criticizing MP's for having second jobs.

• It's increasingly attracts serious ex ministers and genuinely expert and less partisan backbenchers who can command regular engagement from their committee members and respect of the wider chamber.

Select committees - Effective (Part 4)

• The recent Labour reshuffle by Keir Starmer shows that in fact future shadow ministers and If Labour take office, future ministers start off learning about departments of state and the work they do and what their shortcomings are by serving on a committee providing them with valuable experience for when in government

• In September 2023, Starmer appointed Darren Jones as Shadow Chief Secretary of the Treasury, largely due to the fact that he's shone while grilling witnesses.

• As chair of the Business Select committee, indeed, various select committees have performed valuable forms of scrutiny.

Select committees - Effective (Part 5)

• The Commons backbench business committee invites proposals for debates and votes.

• That have cross party support and on matters unlikely to be debated in government time by the end of the 2010 to 2015 parliament, more than 300 such debates have been tabled by this committee, including some provoked by public petitions.

• Issues included prisoners voting rights, The Hillsborough football disaster and the recognition of Palestine.

• The Public Accounts Committee is the most high profile Select Committee.

• The pack as it's abbreviated to, has a higher status and its chair receives an additional salary and it's always chaired by a member from the opposing party to the government.

• Its current chair is Labour's Meg Hillier and November 2021 Pack report raised concerns at the ease with which companies could access taxpayer funded schemes to help fight the pandemic, even though many of these companies were later deemed unsuitable and untrustworthy

• So it ensured that the government had to answer these concerns that the liaison committee, consisting of chairs of all the other select committees, it convenes to cross examine the Prime Minister.

• In March 2021, several members of the Liaison Committee pressed Boris Johnson to address the problem faced by musicians touring the EU now that they required expensive visas due to the end of free movement. After Brexit, thus, select committees are excellent vehicles for scrutiny.

Select committees - Ineffective (Part 2)

• Select. Committees only work effectively as well when they operate in a bipartisan matter when the parties work together.

• MP's from different different sides of the committees need to endorse the same report for it to be effective and influential. As a result, critical issues dividing the parties may not be examined as being too difficult. (as rigorously?)

• The Exiting the EU Committee chaired by Labour's Hilary Benn lacked cross party cohesion. In May 2018 Conservative committee members John Whittingdale, Andrea Jenkins and Jacob Rees Mogg all publicly criticized it for being too pro remain.

• According to Jenkins, only seven of the 21 committee members voted to leave. This committee, chaired by an opposition MP, lost all influence as Johnson steered the country towards a hard Brexit, regardless of what the committee suggested,

• Most select committees are still chaired by MP's from the governing Party as chairships are awarded in proportion to party representation, thus the size of a majority affects just how friendly, in theory at least, select committees might be to the government, which could then have a knock on effect regarding how good they are at scrutiny.

• After the 2019 general election, the opposition the Labour Party held 202 seats in the House of Commons out of a total of 650 and were thereby allocated just nine Select Committee chairs.

• Compare that to the Conservative Party that was given 16 and the Scottish National Party just two.

Select committees - Ineffective (Part 3)

• Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's elevation to Select Committee chair of the Health Select Committee in 2020

• Raised doubts about how well he would want to hold his former department to account, given that he introduced most of that department's policies, including austerity.

• Witnesses have to answer questions but can claim not to know or to have information with impunity. So that's a problem too. Denying to know information will not necessarily have any consequences for the witnesses that are called before these committees select.

Parliamentary questions - Not Effective (Part 2)

• In September 2023 .Three after the Labour run Birmingham council.

• Declared itself bankrupt, no one was surprised to hear planted partisan and anti labour questions asked by Tory MPs sitting behind Rishi Sunak attempting to give Sunak an easy attack line in a Prime Minister's.

• Questions that was supposed to be dominated by the uncomfortable subject of dodgy concrete in school roofs.

• Sunak's own MPs gave him an easy ride and attempted to.Steer the focus away from the failings of government on this matter.