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Select committees under scrutiny

The Institute for Government publishes new research.

As MPs jockey for position to chair Commons committees, the Institute for Government has published new research about the impact select committees can have on government. Dr Hannah White sets out some of our key findings for individual committees and about the system as a whole.

Boosted by the introduction of elections for committee chairs, committees have been experimenting with new ways of conducting inquiries. But too frequently committees focus on completing tasks and delivering outputs – like reports – rather than on making an impact and delivering the outcomes they would like to see – like more effective government and better policy outcomes. Different sorts of inquiry are good at delivering different sorts of impact. So we argue that committees need to build their inquiries around the impact they hope to have – choosing their approach to suit the audience they hope to reach and the outcome they want to secure. And they need to make conscious decisions about the trade-offs inherent in the decisions they make – one inquiry cannot hope to achieve everything and some approaches and outcomes will preclude others. Committees also need to remember that sometimes the process of an inquiry can be just as valuable as its outputs. When we asked interviewees about the impact of the Home Affairs Committee, many more referred to its evidence sessions than to the reports to which they eventually contributed. Even the process of deciding what to enquire into can be an opportunity for engagement – as the Transport Committee recognised when it solicited ideas for inquiries from the public. In their attempts to establish themselves as players within the policy landscape, it may be tempting for committees to design their inquiries to achieve short term impacts – such as apologies, resignations or policy reversals. These short term impacts are attractive because they can often be readily attributed to a committee’s intervention. They may often be desirable for other reasons – holding individuals to account and having a powerful preventative effect on others. But committees need to make sure they keep their eyes on the prize – will the short term impact they can secure actually lead to the long term outcome they desire? A number of those we spoke to argued that the potential mutual benefits of scrutiny were sometimes lost in Westminster’s confrontational model of politics – too frequently committees and departments treated each other as ‘the enemy’. Our research found a particularly unproductive relationship between the Ministry of Defence and Defence Select Committee in the last parliament. Other departments do better but it seems there are no established cross-government expectations for parliamentary interaction, which might drive more positive relationships. A degree of mutual suspicion is inevitable but it should not be forgotten that sometimes scrutiny can create win-win outcomes for Government and Parliament. Overall we found that the Commons committee system is not set up to reflect on and learn about the impact of individual committees. Committees themselves are remarkably incurious about their own impact – they seem content to rely on their own assumptions about what they are achieving – rarely seeking feedback from those they scrutinise or interact with. And an almost complete absence of evaluation of committee impact means that committees are unable to build on their own successes and avoid repeating failures – let alone learn from those of their fellow committees. The Liaison Committee – the committee made up of the chairs of all the other Commons committees – is culpable here. There were occasions during the last parliament when the Liaison committee made useful policy decisions on behalf of all committees, most often in defence of their powers. But on balance the chairs we spoke to said they felt it was largely irrelevant to their work. One described it as ‘the most dysfunctional group of people you could ever hope to meet’ and another told us that attending Liaison Committee meetings was ‘the most ridiculous experience of my life’. Reform of the Liaison Committee should be an immediate priority for the chairs elected in the 2015 parliament – enabling it to fulfil its potential as a force for positive change, promoting reflection, evaluation and lesson learning, as well as being a powerful collective voice for the committee system as whole.

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