Select committees in the new parliament

Some time in the autumn the House of Commons will elect chairs for most of its select committees, and candidates are already emerging for these influential roles

There is some uncertainty over when Parliament will sit over the next few months. Before Rishi Sunak called the general election, the House of Commons was scheduled to rise for the summer adjournment on Tuesday 23 July, with the House of Lords finishing its business two days later, on Thursday 25 July. Given that the new government has been in office for less than a fortnight, and the new parliament will not formally be opened by the King until this Wednesday, it is likely that the houses will not adjourn until the end of July, and may return very early in September, truncating the summer adjournment.

With the re-election of Sir Lindsay Hoyle as speaker of the House of Commons, the contest to select his three deputies will take place on 23 July, as I explained last week. The other significant process will be the election of chairs for the select committees of the House, which will take place at some point in September. Now that we know the result of the election, we can make some initial assumptions about how these positions will be distributed between the parties.

The chairs of select committees are allotted to reflect the strength of each party in the House, so the Labour Party will control the lion’s share of such roles. The Commons has 34 select committees (though Standards and Privileges by convention have the same chair) and additionally provides the chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, so there are 34 positions to be filled. Under the Standing Orders for Public Business, the Public Accounts Committee and the Committee on Standards must be chaired by an MP from the official opposition, while the Backbench Business Committee cannot be chaired by an MP whose party is represented in the government. These stipulations can and have amounted to the same thing but need not.

The speaker will by now have written to the party leaders with a proposed apportioning of chairs, while the business managers will among themselves agree which committees—subject to the conditions above—will be allotted to which party. However, it will be slim pickings for the opposition parties. Labour hold 412 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons, just under two-thirds, so are likely to claim 21 or 22 chairs. Of the remaining 11 or 12, the Conservatives will probably be given between seven and nine and the Liberal Democrats between four and six.

As the fourth-largest party, the Scottish National Party, only has nine MPs, it does not qualify for a chair. Since 2015 it has supplied the chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, Pete Wishart, to reflect its preponderance of seats in Scotland, but Standing Order S.O. No. 122A provides that a chair can only served a maximum tenure of “the two previous Parliaments or a continuous period of eight years, whichever is the greater period”, so he is ineligible for re-election. Moreover, as the SNP lost 39 seats and the Labour Party is now dominant in Scotland, there is no reason for the committee to continue to be chaired by a Nationalist.

Labour is likely to claim the most influential and prestigious committees like Treasury, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs and Defence. In 1997, when it enjoyed a similar numerical dominance of the House of Commons, Labour MPs chaired all but four of the committees which scrutinise each government department, forswearing only Agriculture, International Development and Northern Ireland Affairs to Conservative MPs and Social Security to the Liberal Democrats. If the Conservatives end up with, say, eight chairs, three of those will be Public Accounts, Standards/Privileges and Backbench Business. Of the remaining (let us suppose) five, only two or three will be standard departmental committees, probably scrutinising smaller Whitehall departments: Culture, Media and Sport, or Environment, Food and Rural Affairs? We will have to wait for official confirmation, which should come within a week of the King’s Speech.

Chairing a select committee is an attractive and prestigious role for a Member of Parliament, and attracts an additional salary of £18,309. When the system was revised and reinforced in 2009-10 in line with the recommendations of the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, chaired by Dr Tony Wright (Lab, Cannock Chase), there were noble hopes that MPs might see chairing select committees as an “alternative career path” to seeking ministerial office. This has not been the case to any great extent, though there has been greater interchange between chairs of select committees and ministerial jobs, and most Members if honest would admit that being in government is still very much their preference, but committees are now a more attractive “Plan B” than they were. For example, no fewer than eight Labour MPs who had been in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet between 2010 and 2015 went on the chair select committees instead of remaining on the front bench under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (2015-20).

Of the Labour MPs who chaired committees in the 2019-24 Parliament, Ian Mearns (Backbench Business) retired from the House, Dame Meg Hillier (Public Accounts) has hit her time limit and anyway is no longer eligible as a government Member, though she is supposedly considering a bid to chair the Treasury Committee; Dame Diana Johnson (Home Affairs) and Sir Stephen Timms (Work and Pensions) have been appointed to ministerial office. Jessica Morden has chaired the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments since 2018, not an especially sought-after role; Cat Smith only became chair of the Petitions Committee last year so many well seek to stay on; Sharon Hodgson has chaired the Finance Committee since March 2023 but is believed to be standing for deputy speaker of the House; Sarah Champion (International Development) and Liam Byrne (Business and Trade) are likely to want to retain their roles. Meanwhile Clive Betts has chaired the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and its previous iterations since 2010 and is now 74, so might choose a more restful existence.

There are a few figures whom one might expect to think about select committee work as their next step, and I offered some first thoughts before the election. Politico reported last week that Barry Gardiner, a Blair-era junior minister and then in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, wants to chair the Environmental Audit Committee. However he might face competition from Mary Creagh, who chaired the committee from 2016 to 2019 before losing her seat but has now returned as MP for Coventry East. Emily Thornberry, former shadow attorney general and the most high-profile casualty of Labour’s transition from opposition to government, has been tipped as a possible chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, having served as shadow foreign secretary 2016-20. Dawn Butler has now been in the House for nearly 20 years and is certainly of sufficient seniority to consider this kind of role. Dr Rosena Allin-Khan is able and an energetic campaigner on mental health, and might look at chairing a select committee as a platform to continue that.

If Scottish Affairs has a Labour chair, as seems inevitable, the only two Scottish Labour MPs in the last parliament, Ian Murray and Michael Shanks, have both been made ministers. Of their new colleagues, however, Pamela Nash was an MP in 2010-15 and served on several committees, while Patricia Ferguson spent 17 years in the Scottish Parliament, including two and a half years as a deputy presiding officer and six years in the cabinet. With Labour dominating in Wales, the Welsh Affairs Committee will certainly go the party’s way, and the obvious candidates for chair at first glance are Jessica Morden (if she does not want to keep Statutory Instruments), who has been a Member since 2005 and has years of frontbench experience, although she has also been tipped to chair the Parliamentary Labour Party. Nick Smith, an MP since 2010 who spent nearly five years as a shadow minister and has been a member of the Public Accounts Committee twice.

It might be worth noting of what have traditionally been regarded as the most prestigious departmental committees that they have almost always been chaired by a Member from the governing party. The Treasury Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee have never had an opposition chair, although Home Affairs was allotted to the Labour Party after 2010, and the Defence Committee was chaired (very ably) by Conservative MP James Arbuthnot between 2005 and 2010 (and from 2010-14 as a government Member).

Conservative chairs will be drawn from a much smaller pool. The prize for the opposition is the Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinises government spending and is supported by the National Audit Office (I wrote about this “queen of select committees” in 2022). It has been chaired by some high-profile MPs in recent decades, including Sir David Davis (1997-2001) and Dame Margaret Hodge (2010-15), who realised that government spending is an issue which is always of keen media interest and allows them to range across policy areas. They have almost always been former ministers, often with some experience at HM Treasury, which might suggest Mark Francois, on the committee since 2021, or ex-cabinet minister Steve Barclay, who sat on PAC 2010-14, if he decides that the opposition front bench holds insufficient promise.

Davis has apparently begun campaigning for a return to the job. While recidivism in select committee chairs is unusual¹, he is a very credible contender, a genuine heavyweight in the party—former cabinet minister, leadership candidate and party chairman—and his independence of mind cannot be disputed. Another possible contender is Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who was defeated for chairman of the 1922 Committee last week; although he has no ministerial pedigree, he has been an MP for 32 years, was on the opposition front bench for most of the 13 years of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 and has been on the committee since 2017 (as well as a stint in 1997-99). Also rumoured to be interested are Sir Bernard Jenkin, who chaired the Liaison Committee in the last parliament but has never been a minister, and John Glen, chief secretary to the Treasury under Sunak and currently shadow paymaster general.

The Committee on Standards will be an important body given Sir Keir Starmer’s focus on ethics and propriety in Parliament. If Public Accounts looks too hotly contested, Jenkin might look to this role, as he was a member of the committee from 2020 to 2024; he has been an MP for 32 years and has established a degree of cross-party credibility chairing the Liaison Committee (as well as chairing the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee 2010-19). He has a long track record firmly on the right of the Conservative Party but he has perhaps been out of the political front line for long enough to seem sufficiently detached. Another former member of the committee (or rather its predecessor) is ex-attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox, but he has an active and lucrative legal practice which he may be reluctant to give up.

It will be interesting to see who chairs the Liaison Committee, the body of all select committee chairs which has general responsibility for the committee system and meets twice a year to question the prime minister. This has always been chaired by a government Member, but between 1997 and 2001 and from 2010 to 2019 the role was taken by one of its number who chaired a select committee. Many feel this is less than ideal in terms of impartiality and the practice of nominating an extra member specifically to be chair was resumed with Jenkin in 2020. It is a prestigious post with both internal and external responsibilities, the most public of the latter being chairing the twice-yearly evidence sessions with the prime minister.

With so many experienced MPs appointed to ministerial office, some of the “usual suspects” for this role are out of the running. Crucially, however, the Liaison Committee chair will not be chosen until well after the elections for select committees, and will be on a motion proposed by the government for approval of the House. This means that those who fail to be elected to committee chair positions might still be potential candidates, if the government thinks they are suitable on a number of counts.

There is one other hugely important parliamentary committee I have not discussed because it is sui generis, its membership is selected by the government in consultation with opposition parties, then approved by both Houses, and its chair is elected from within by its members. The Intelligence and Security Committee examines “the expenditure, administration, policy and operations of the UK Intelligence Community” and was created by statute rather than under Standing Orders. In the last parliament it had 14 members, of whom 13 were MPs, and these Commons places are allotted according to strength in the House then filled through internal party elections.

No doubt the rumour mill will work more and more quickly as the weeks go on until the summer adjournment, and I will return to this subject. But Westminster watchers should certainly keep their ears to the ground, as MPs are already thinking about these elections in the autumn.

See also:

“Select committees and Parliament” 15 September 2022

“Poor bloody infantry: membership of select committees” 20 September 2022

“Please, sir, can I have some more?” on select committee resources, 21 September 2022

1. George Sclater-Booth chaired the Public Accounts Committee in 1866 and again 1872-73; Frank Field chaired the Social Security Committee 1993-97 and its successor the Work and Pensions Committee 2015-19; Chris Mullin chaired the Home Affairs Committee 1997-99 and 2001-03.