New select committee chairs (1)

Eight select committee chairs were elected unopposed on Monday: what are their immediate challenges and prospects?

On Monday, eight new chairs of House of Commons select committees were announced, as they were unopposed when nominations closed at 4.00 pm. The contested elections will take place today, Wednesday 11 September, with ballots under the Alternative Vote system between 10.00 am and 4.00 pm, and the results announced shortly thereafter. Most of the high-profile and influential committees, unsurprisingly, have more than one candidate seeking the chair, but I thought it was worth just looking quickly at the first tranche of unopposed chairs. The following have been elected without a contest:

• Backbench Business Committee: Bob Blackman (Con)

• Culture, Media and Sport Committee: Dame Caroline Dinenage (Con)

• Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem)

• Health and Social Care Committee: Layla Moran (Lib Dem)

• Northern Ireland Affairs Committee: Tonia Antoniazzi (Lab)

• Petitions Committee: Jamie Stone (Lib Dem)

• Treasury Committee: Dame Meg Hillier (Lab)

• Welsh Affairs Committee: Ruth Jones (Lab)

The Backbench Business Committee was created in 2010 and allocates time for debates in the chamber and in Westminster Hall set aside for subjects chosen by backbenchers. Under Standing Order SO No. 14, it is given 35 days, of which at least 27 will be taken on the floor of the House. It holds public sessions in which MPs put forward their proposals for subjects, and then decides on which should be allotted time. From 2010 to 2015, it was chaired by Labour MP Natascha Engel, who was then a deputy speaker and second deputy chairman of Ways and Means from 2015 to 2017; from 2015 until 2024, the chair was Ian Mearns, Labour MP for Gateshead, who was popular, fair-minded and hugely successful in a low-key but important role.

Bob Blackman, MP for Harrow East since 2010, has been a member of the committee since 2012, almost its whole existence. He has also served on the Procedure Committee and the various iterations of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee; he has never been a minister, so his backbench credentials are impeccable. He has from time to time stumbled into controversy, at one point proposing the revival of the notorious Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 (which prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities), hosting an Hindu nationalist and alleged anti-Islam extremist at a House of Commons event and accepting hospitality from the Azeri government, parliament and connected lobbying groups as chairman of the Azerbaijan All-Party Parliamentary Group. It is worth noting that he was elected chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee in July, so has two distinct hats to wear in his parliamentary activities.

Dame Caroline Dinenage was standing for re-election as chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. She was first elected in May 2023 to replace Julian Knight, who resigned due to a number of allegations of sexual misconduct, and defeated not only the former chair, Damian Collins, but also the acting chair, Damian Green. I wrote about her election at the time and there is not much more to add, though it is worth noting that the government department her committee oversees, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, lost its responsibility for digital policy to the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology in February 2023, which includes much regulation and matters covered by the Online Safety Act 2023.

The three Liberal Democrat chairs were unopposed because the party exercised internal discipline and decided within itself who the candidates would be. The Petitions Committee is a relatively minor body which considers both old-fashioned physical petitions presented by a Member of Parliament and e-petitions submitted through an electronic portal. I have in the past raised doubts about the value of this arrangement: I think there is a danger that it raises expectations unrealistically, when in fact very few petitions have any impact on government policy, but the powers that be regard it as a valuable aspect of the House’s public engagement. Jamie Stone, MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross since 2017, is an amiable, rather well-spoken fellow (Gordonstoun and the University of St Andrews) who was a Member of the Scottish Parliament from 1999 to 2011. He is diligent and likeable and will no doubt chair the committee perfectly well.

Carmichael and Moran have rather heftier policy briefs. Carmichael, now chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, has been MP for Orkney and Shetland since 2001, served as Liberal Democrat chief whip twice (2010-13 and 2017-20) and was secretary of state for Scotland in the coalition government from 2013 to 2015, which period of course included the referendum on independence in September 2014. He is a rather harder-edged politician than Stone: in the 2015 general election campaign he leaked inaccurate details of a memo which purported to reveal that Nicola Sturgeon, then first minister of Scotland, would privately rather have seen David Cameron stay as prime minister than Labour’s Ed Miliband win. Although the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is not a major cabinet portfolio, there are some issues which make headlines, including water quality and the regulation of water companies, food security and environmental regulations, so Carmichael will have some moments in the sun.

The Liberal Democrats did well to secure the chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, which has some claim to be the committee whose subject matter voters care most about. Layla Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon since 2017, has spoken for her party on education, science, young people, digital, culture, media, sport, foreign affairs, international development, innovation and technology but not, oddly enough, health. However, she has spoken out on obesity and depression, and the Liberal Democrats campaigned prominently on health at the general election. She has an enormous opportunity as chair of a high-profile committee of Parliament, but it comes with qualifications: the committee will, like all select committees, have a majority of Labour MPs, and she will need to find a delicate balance between robust scrutiny of government policy, which is absolutely her role, and the promotion of an alternative, party political agenda, which is not.

Two of the committees which scrutinise the United Kingdom government end of relationships with devolved administrations, Northern Ireland Affairs and Welsh Affairs, also have chairs. Ruth Jones, MP for Newport West (now Newport West and Islywn) since 2019, has much the easier job. The Labour Party won 27 of the 32 seats in Wales at the general election, and the Welsh Government, while it has recently had to elect a new first minister and does not have a majority in the Senedd, is Labour, so there should be relatively little friction between London and Cardiff. The committee only published five reports in the 2022-23 session of the last parliament, and none at all in the truncated 2023-24 session.

Northern Ireland Affairs is always different. Tonia Antoniazzi, MP for Gower since 2017, was briefly parliamentary private secretary to the shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, Owen Smith, and then served as opposition spokesman on Northern Ireland from December 2021 to September 2023, so she is familiar with the policy area. She has the advantage that there has been since February a functioning Northern Ireland Executive and Northern Ireland Assembly, and, although the executive is making laborious progress, it has finally published a Programme for Government. However, there are still some contentious matters reserved to Westminster which will give the committee plenty to consider, principally the promised repeal and replacement of the contentious Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. The legislation had little support within Northern Ireland, but Labour has indicated it wishes to preserve one aspect, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery led by Sir Declan Morgan, former lord chief justice of Northern Ireland. There may be widespread backing for getting rid of the act, but putting something else in its place will be more complicated.

The surprise in terms of uncontested elections was that to chair the Treasury Committee, of which Dame Meg Hillier is now chair. MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch since 2005, she is an immensely experienced parliamentarian: a junior Home Office minister between 2007 and 2010, she served in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet for a year as shadow energy and climate change secretary, and from 2015 to 2024 chaired the House of Commons’s powerful Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinises government expenditure and draws on the resources of the National Audit Office.

Hillier will find the Treasury Committee a different proposition. Her resources are more modest without the 800 staff of the NAO, and her remit is more narrow: the Public Accounts Committee looks at expenditure across government, whereas the Treasury Committee only examines the policy, administration and expenditure of HM Treasury. But the influence of the Treasury across Whitehall is axiomatic, and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has made much of the early running in the Starmer government. In addition, the Treasury has responsibility for a number of important agencies and other non-ministerial bodies like the National Infrastructure Commission, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Financial Conduct Authority and the UK Infrastructure Bank.

With the Budget due to be announced on 30 October, there will be plenty of issues for the committee to look at, and Hillier will have to judge how to display impartial and penetrating scrutiny of a government of her own party. It is hard to say how well the new government will react to criticism—early indications have not been promising—but ministers should understand that select committees do a vital job. Dame Meg Hillier has a major role to play in the evolution of economic policy over this parliament: will she be a thorn in the chancellor’s side or a relatively easy pass?

Today will come the majority of results for the departmental select committees and other major appointments like the Public Accounts Committee, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Committee on Standards. By the end of the day, we will know much more about the landscape of scrutiny in the House of Commons over the coming five years. Who will the stars be?