Should you be engaging with Select Committees?

Newington's Victoria McNish and Tiffany Burrows look at opportunities for engagement with Select Committees.

Select Committees are an overlooked, but often invaluable, opportunity to influence policy making. Their role in scrutinising Government policy has increased in importance over recent years, and their work is more regularly appearing in the press and filtering through to the public’s consciousness. For example, the extensive press coverage of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee’s investigation in 2016 into working practices at Sports Direct demonstrates how influential a committee can be in instrumenting change, or shining a light on policy areas that need to be addressed.

Whilst committees date back to the early days of Parliament – as far back as the 14^th century - the current Select Committees first came into being in 1979 to shadow all the main departments of state. Up until 2010, the committee members were appointed by their parties, who then alone voted for the Chair of the committees. This all changed under the Coalition Government and now the whole House partakes in voting for the Chairs.

Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election threw a spanner in the works of Select Committee inquiries earlier this year. All committees had to rush to conclude their investigations or abandon them altogether before Parliament dissolved ahead of the election. The Conservatives losing their majority is also significant. As membership of committees reflects the political composition of the Commons, they committees are now weighted less strongly in the Government’s favour.

Post-election, the committees were formed afresh. New Chairs were elected, new members appointed, and new inquires announced. However, given the short space of time between the new Parliament and summer recess, and the equally short amount of time between the return of Parliament and the conference recess, work has only just begun.

A number of formidable ex-Government and Shadow Ministers have been elected as Chairs, such as Nicky Morgan on the Treasury Committee, Rachel Reeves on the BEIS Committee, and Robert Halfon on the Education Committee. None of these MPs have returned to the backbenches quietly, and all are likely to give the Government a hard time in the months to come.

House of Commons Select Committees are cross-party groups of MPs, set up in part to scrutinise the work of government. Yet this is not all they do. They can hold inquiries into an area of policy, scrutinise a draft Bill, or respond to events – ultimately at the members’ choosing. Alongside Select Committees that mirror government departments, there are other committees, such as the Science and Technology Committee, whose work covers many policy areas.

The House of Lords Committees differ from their Commons counterparts. Rather than reflecting Government departments, they instead focus mainly on six specialist areas - science; economics; communications; the UK constitution; and international relations.

Large numbers of inquiries have been announced in the past few weeks. Some are new, and some relaunches of inquires that never really kicked off before the election. Below sets out the general process of a committee inquiry, and how you can engage with them.

1. Inquiry launched

Keep an eye out for committee announcements – their Twitter pages are a good place to start. Some inquires can be very long, some take just a few weeks – especially now given the delay caused by the election.

2. Call for written evidence

This is the most effective way to contribute to the inquiry, and feed into the process of informing or influencing government.
Committees also go on visits during this time. If your business is one of interest during an inquiry, this can be a good opportunity to engage.

3. Invites for oral evidence

Committees invite Government Ministers, representative organisations, private companies and interested individuals to give oral evidence.
Consider engaging with the committee clerks, they play an influential role – even if a sublte one. Clerks suggest potential future inquiries, propose witnesses, brief committee members, suggest lines of questioning during inquires, and draft the bulk of reports at the end of each inquiry.

4. Concluding report published

Findings are gathered in a report with recommendations for the Government.
This can be used as a hook for engagement and profile-raising, especially as committee reports are increasingly gaining media attention.

5. Government response published

The Government must (usually) respond to committee reports within its own set deadline of two months, and they are published online.
Again, this is another platform for engagement, even if the Government rejects the recommendations.

If you would like to discuss in more detail how to engage with Select Committees, please contact Chris White, Newington's Director of Public Affairs, at [email protected].