Select committees in the 2024 Parliament
If Labour wins the election, the party will claim the chairs of many of the most prestigious and influential committees: but who will get the jobs?
This is a subject to which I will no doubt return after the election but it is worth putting down a brief marker at this point. Assuming, as the opinion polls and received wisdom suggest, that the Labour Party wins a sizeable majority at the general election, one of the effects once the House of Commons assembles in July will be changes in the chairs of select committees. These are important scrutiny bodies when they work well and can cause enormous mischief for governments, so the people who chair them matter.
There are 34 select committee chairs (who meet together as the Liaison Committee, which currently has a chairman, Sir Bernard Jenkin, who does not chair another committee). They are allotted according to the rough party balance in the House, with the proviso that the Public Accounts Committee, which has a particularly high-profile role, must be chaired by an opposition MP. (The same had been true of the Environmental Audit Committee until 2020, when Conservative Philip Dunne became chair.) Unsurprisingly, the governing party will want the chairs of the most powerful and prestigious committees for itself, though under normal circumstances the opposition will be given at least one “big” committee.
In the 2019 Parliament, accordingly, Conservative MPs chaired 20 committees including the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Treasury Committee, the Defence Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee. Labour were allocated 11 committees of which the most high-profile and prestigious, apart from Public Accounts, was probably the Home Affairs Committee. (The other three committees were chaired by two Scottish National Party MPs and one independent, formerly SNP.)
After the next election, it is likely that the Labour Party will want to occupy the chairs of most of Treasury, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Defence, Education, Health and Social Care, Business and Trade and Work and Pensions, to take a selection. Dame Diana Johnson has been chair of the Home Affairs Committee since December 2021 and seems likely to stay in place. There will, however, be some relatively plum jobs up for grabs.
I’ve written before about the role of select committees, and chairing them is an attractive role in the current climate. In the heady days of reform after Speaker Martin’s resignation in 2009, there was an attempt to make scrutiny work on select committees an “alternative career path” for Members of Parliament, and the introduction of election by the whole House for most chairs, combined with modest additional pay, was supposed to reinforce this idea. It has been a qualified success: MPs will almost always prefer ministerial office to being a select committee chair, but the latter is now firmly regarded as a potential platform for influence.
It is worth noting that, of the current shadow cabinet, four—Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn and Darren Jones—have chaired committees since 2010, some of them seeking refuge from the unfavourable ideological climate of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. In addition, the current chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, chaired the Health and Social Care Committee in 2020-22, after losing the Conservative leadership contest to Boris Johnson, and seven current chairs are former cabinet ministers.
The fact that most chairs are now elected by the whole House means that the positions can no longer be distributed as patronage by the party whips. That said, in Parliament there are always understandings and tacit deals, and it is fair to say that the results of select committee chair elections are often (though not always) predictable. However, if there are some medium-level front benchers who are passed over by Sir Keir Starmer, or even perhaps offered ministerial positions which don’t suit them, they may think that chairing a select committee is a preferable option. (I don’t expect any members of the current shadow cabinet to be left out, unless by their own agreement, though some may enjoy short ministerial careers.) Equally, some new MPs who have previously served in the House may feel that they have the stature and skills to offer themselves for such roles.
At this distance, with the general election campaign barely underway, it is hugely speculative to suggest names, so I will limit myself to a few, partially mischievous, suggestions. Still, one could imagine Douglas Alexander, if elected in East Lothian, might look at Foreign Affairs, as a former international development secretary and shadow foreign secretary. Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) was brought back to the front bench last year but has previously chaired the Finance, Privileges and Standards Committees and was a junior Foreign Office minister under Gordon Brown; if Starmer does not translate him to ministerial office, he might well be regarded as a possibility to chair Foreign Affairs.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill) currently chairs the Business and Trade Committee but was chief secretary to the Treasury from 2009 to 2010, famously leaving a jocular note for his successor apologising that “I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards—and good luck!” He would be a plausible figure to lead the Treasury Committee. Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) has chaired the Public Accounts Committee since 2015 but reaches her term limit this year. If she is not offered a ministerial role, she might want another role on a different select committee.
If Defence is earmarked for a Labour chair, there are relatively few obvious candidates. Kevan Jones (North Durham) has long experience and great expertise, but has just announced that he is standing down. Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) is a former major in the Parachute Regiment but was appointed shadow security minister in 2023. Perhaps the likeliest candidate is the veteran John Spellar (Warley): he was a junior defence minister from 1997 to 2001, an opposition defence spokesman from 1995 to 1997 and has been on the committee since 2015.
Mary Creagh, standing in Coventry East, chaired Environmental Audit between 2016 and 2019 and might seek to return to the job of scrutiny. Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) was a shadow cabinet minister 2020-23 and stood for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 2020 and has a degree of weight.
All of this lies in the future, and rests on the assumption of a Labour victory. It is worth keeping in mind as we go through the election campaign, however, as there will come a time when the chairs of these committees are significant figures on the political landscape.