Submission from Dr Stephen Bates, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, University of Birmingham & Dr Mark Goodwin, Lecturer in Politics, Coventry University

 

Liaison Committee Inquiry into the Effectiveness and

Influence of the Select Committee System

 

 

  1. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS: MEMBERSHIP

 

1.1.   To summarise our findings:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.2.   We recommend:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.3.   Basis of the Evidence and Recommendations:

 

Our interest in this inquiry is as academic researchers who specialise in the study of Parliament. The evidence submitted is based on a series of studies of Parliament and the House of Commons Select Committee system, along with some underlying research that has yet to be formally published, that were part-funded by the British Academy. The studies have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals and by specialist news sites and blogs. A full list of the published work is included in the ‘Further Reading’ section. The data comes from a variety of sources including aggregated quantitative data from parliament’s own records, as well as qualitative material taken from interviews with MPs, peers, Committee staff, specialists and researchers.

 

  1. Are there any matters relating to the diversity and independence of select committee membership and chairs that should be addressed?

 

2.1.   Our research shows that select committee membership still has serious problems with gender diversity. While women participate in the overall select committee system in proportion to their strength in the Commons, there is very wide variation from committee to committee. Some committees have not benefited from the rising proportion of female members in Parliament and remain almost as male-dominated as they were at the foundation of the committee system in 1979. We describe this as a gendered division of labour in select committee work whereby women tend to be disproportionately absent from the most prestigious committees and from certain policy areas.

 

2.2.   In our work covering the 1979-80 to the 2015-16 parliamentary sessions, we found that female MPs tend to serve on lower status committees and those covering more feminised policy areas. At the extremes, high-status committees such as Defence, Foreign Affairs and Treasury have been strongly male-dominated across the period we studied, while committees shadowing Health, Education and Work and Pensions (or their forerunners) are disproportionately female. We also find that neither sharp increases in the proportion of female MPs in the Commons, nor changes in government, nor the introduction of elections for select committees can be relied upon to systematically disrupt these gendered divisions of labour.

 

2.3.   There is some evidence, albeit not strong, that the proportion of female members on a select committee has an impact on the proportion of female witnesses called to give evidence to that committee. This has potential ramifications for the diversity of voices heard during inquiries.

 

2.4.   We found evidence that the Wright reforms led to some improvement in the representation of women as select committee chairs (mirroring the findings of O’Brien 2012). The initial slate of candidates for chairs was not promising: 85% of the candidates in the first elections in 2010 were men (50/59). Yet since the introduction of chair elections the likelihood of a select committee chair being female has increased, and female MPs now occupy 9 of the 28 chairs which is proportionate to their strength in the House as a whole. Women also have a higher success rate than men in these elections: women tend to win when they stand. The success rate for female candidates since 2010 is 51% compared to just 40% for male candidates. Over time, the performance of female MPs in these elections has improved. In 2017, nine out of 14 female candidates were successful (64%), against 19 out of 40 men (48%). However, the persistence of male and female portfolios is demonstrated by the fact that there has still been no female chair candidate for the Defence, Northern Ireland or Foreign Affairs committees or only one for the Treasury committee. In the same period 11 women stood for the chairs of the disproportionately female Education, Health, and Work and Pensions committees.

 

  1. Is the rule requiring Members whose attendance falls below 60% to be reported effective?

 

3.1.   The simple answer is no. Our research found no evidence to suggest that this rule has had a positive impact on attendance. There is no statistical evidence that MPs were more engaged or involved with committees post-Wright, despite the many claims made about their higher status and significance following the reforms. We find no evidence that this rise in status has produced any greater willingness on the part of MPs to attend Select Committees. The ‘carrots’ of the claimed rise in status of SC work due, in part, to the introduction of elections, and the restriction of departmental Select committees to 11 members have not affected rates of attendance; nor has the ‘stick’ of the use, or the threat of the use, of the mechanism by which members with what is deemed to be a poor attendance record are discharged and replaced. Similarly, an increased emphasis on ownership and alternative career paths has not lead to a decrease in turnover rates (see Bates, Goodwin and McKay (2017)).

 

3.2.   One contributing factor is that the ambition of the Wright committee to reduce the number of select committees was not achieved. There were no changes to the Standing Orders by the then Labour government in relation to the number of select committees, nor even an explicit response to the Wright Committee’s recommendation of a decrease. The powers of government to control the number of committees are mitigated somewhat by external factors – for example public and political pressure regarding ethics and parliamentary conduct, equality and public engagement have led to the creation of new committees. For its part, the Commons must track changes to the architecture of government such as the creation of new departments, by creating new select committees, as seen in the aftermath of the recent EU membership referendum which resulted in the creation of two new departments with two new shadowing committees. As Wilson, Bates, Goodwin & McKay (2017) show, the number of committees and committee places has tended to grow over time (See Figures 1-2 in the Appendix). This is a further demonstration to the notion that MPs are spread too thinly across the range of their functions to be able to devote adequate time to their select committee work.

 

  1. Should the election of select committee chairs be extended to all committees?

 

4.1.   The answer to this question depends on the desired outcome of chair elections. The previous sections have demonstrated that elections have had no effect on members’ engagement with the committee system but have had some positive effects in terms of the gender diversity of committee chairs. The Wright committee understood elections principally as a means of making select committees and their chairs more independent of government and therefore more effective scrutineers. There is reason to doubt that the mere fact of the new election system helps to produce higher quality committee chairs in these respects.

 

4.2.   The pool of candidates for any committee chair is restricted by two factors. First, since select committees are Parliamentary institutions that seek to scrutinise and hold government to account, the chair must be a backbencher. With the expansion of the payroll vote in recent years, this reduces the pool of candidates from 650 to around 410. Secondly, committee chair positions are divided up among the parliamentary parties in rough proportion to their levels of electoral support and with government having a large say in which committee chairs they retain. For Labour or Conservative-chaired committees, therefore, the pool of candidates is around 150–200 with 25 chairs available, meaning that competition is rather less fierce than it might initially appear. For committees chaired by smaller parties the pool of candidates is much smaller still. A large proportion of the chairs are uncontested. Of the 85 positions filled using the Wright system up to 2017 (26 in 2010, 27 in 2015, 4 by-elections, 28 posts in 2017, with some MPs winning more than once), 37 were elected unopposed as the only candidate.

 

4.3.   It is difficult to imagine how this alone could produce a transformative impact on the ownership and operation of committees. The evidence that the chairs who are selected by this process are any different to the type of parliamentarian who previously occupied committee chairs in the unreformed system is also minimal to non-existent. There is only very weak evidence that elected chairs are more independent-minded or unbiddable than their predecessors or in comparison to backbenchers as a whole, that they supply ‘new blood’ to the system[1], or that they are opting for committee chairs as a deliberate choice as an alternative parliamentary career path, foregoing junior ministerial appointments (See Bates, Goodwin & McKay (2017); Bates, Goodwin & McKay (2016).

 

4.4.   If there has been an improvement in the performance of select committees, the new system of electing chairs does not seem to be the direct cause. If select committees seek to entrench their growing significance in future, they should perhaps seek to avoid complacency in assuming that the Wright reforms are a sufficiently powerful mechanism to drive improvement alone. While elections may have had some beneficial consequences, these are hampered by a lack of competition for places which would probably be exacerbated by the introduction of elections for a wider range of committees. However, the experience of select committees post-Wright suggests that it is possible that extending whole-House elections to other kinds of committees might see some improvement in gender diversity and this would be welcomed.

 

 

 

 


  1. Further Reading

 

2019             

 

Bates, S; Goodwin, M; McKay, S, “Electing to do Women’s Work?: Gendered Divisions of Labour in UK Select committees 1979-2016”, unpublished manuscript available from authors on request.

 

Bates, I; Bates, S; Geddes, M; Goodwin, M; McKay, S , “Why Can’t Some Select committees Get a Female Witness?” , Political Studies Association Parliaments Specialist Group Blog, 24th January 2019, https://parliamentsandlegislatures.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/select-committees-female-witnesses/

 

2017             

 

Bates, S; Goodwin, M; McKay, S, “Do UK MPs Engage More with Select Committee Work Since the Wright Reforms? An Interrupted Time Series Analysis 1979-2016”, Parliamentary Affairs, 70:4, 780-800

 

Bates, S; Goodwin, M; McKay, S, “Everyone loves select committees these days. But have they really changed?”, Democratic Audit, 10th November 2017 http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/11/10/everyone-loves-select-committees-these-days-but-have-they-really-changed/

 

Bates, S; Goodwin, M; Geddes, M; McKay, S, “The Remainers who now chair select committees will harry the government over Brexit”, Democratic Audit, 14th July 2017 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-remainers-who-now-chair-select-committees-will-harry-the-government-over-brexit/

 

Wilson, S; Bates, S; Goodwin, M; McKay, S “Women are still outnumbered on Select committees”, Democratic Audit, 2nd March 2017 http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/03/02/women-are-still-outnumbered-on-commons-select-committees/

 

Wilson, S; Bates, S; Goodwin, M; McKay, S, “Women on Select committees – has progress been made?”, Institute for Government blog, 14th February 2017, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/women-select-committees-has-progress-been-made

 

Wilson, S; Bates, S; Goodwin, M; McKay, S. “Are MPs spending more time on scrutiny?”, Institute for Government blog, 9th February 2017 https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/are-mps-spending-more-time-scrutiny

 

2016

 

Bates, S; Goodwin, M; McKay, S “Elected chairs do not seem to have brought a new kind of parliamentarian to Select committees”, Democratic Audit, 6th July http://www.democraticaudit.com/2016/07/06/elected-chairs-do-not-seem-to-have-brought-a-new-kind-of-parliamentarian-to-select-committees/

 

Bates, S; Goodwin, M; McKay, S, “Parliamentary Select committees: Are elected chairs the key to their success?”, Political Studies Association Parliaments and Legislatures Specialist Group blog, 5th July2016 https://parliamentsandlegislatures.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/parliamentary-select-committees-are-elected-chairs-the-key-to-their-success/

 

Bates, S; Goodwin, M, “The Powerless Parliament?: Agenda-Setting and the Role of the UK Parliament in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008” , British Politics, 11:2, 232-255

 


  1. Appendix

 

Figure 1

 

Figure 2

[1] In the first round of elections in 2010, 13 of the 47 elected chairs had also previously served as select committee chairs under the old, unelected system.