What Is a Select Committee? How Parliament Scrutinises Government

A select committee is a small cross-party group of MPs, peers, or both, appointed by Parliament to examine a particular subject or area of government and report back. Select committees do not pass laws. Their job is scrutiny: they run inquiries, take evidence from ministers, officials and experts, and publish reports with recommendations, to which the government is expected to reply. They are separate from the committees that scrutinise bills.

Commons and Lords select committees

In the House of Commons

The best-known Commons committees are the departmental select committees. Under Standing Order No. 152 they examine the spending, administration and policy of the main government departments and their associated public bodies. Each department is shadowed by its own committee; at the start of the 2019 Parliament there were 20. Most have 11 members.

The modern departmental system dates from 1979, following a report by the Commons Procedure Committee in 1978, and the first fourteen committees began work in 1980.

Other Commons committees cut across departments or deal with the running of the House:

• Cross-cutting committees, such as the Environmental Audit Committee, whose subjects run across several departments.
• The Public Accounts Committee, which examines public spending across government (see below).
• The Liaison Committee, made up of select committee chairs, which takes evidence from the prime minister.
• Internal committees, which deal with Parliament's own affairs, such as procedure and standards.

In the House of Lords

Lords committees are organised by broad policy area rather than by department. Examples include the Constitution, Economic Affairs, and Science and Technology committees. The Lords also sets up fixed-term special inquiry committees, typically four a year. Lords chairs are named in the motion that appoints the committee or chosen by the committee; there are no chair elections. A rotation rule means peers who have served three sessions in a row cannot be reappointed for the next two.

Joint committees

Some committees are appointed by both Houses and include MPs and peers, such as the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

How members and chairs are chosen

Members

Committee membership reflects the party balance in the Commons. Since a House decision in 2010, each party elects its own committee members by secret ballot, using a method of its choosing. The House then approves the membership through a motion moved on behalf of the Committee of Selection.

Chairs

Until 2010, Commons committees chose their own chairs from among their members. Because most committees have a government majority, this gave the government whips considerable influence. Following a 2009 report by the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, known as the Wright Committee, the House adopted Standing Order 122B on 4 March 2010. The first chairs elected by the whole House were chosen by secret ballot on 9 June 2010.

The process works like this:

1. The Speaker decides how many chairs each party should have, to reflect the make-up of the House. The parties agree which chairs they will take, and the House approves the allocation.
2. Once a chair is allocated to a party, only MPs from that party can stand for it.
3. Candidates need the signatures of 15 MPs from their own party or 10% of the party's MPs, whichever is lower, and up to five from other parties may also sign.
4. All MPs can vote, by secret ballot, using the alternative vote: they rank candidates, and the lowest is eliminated round by round until one has more than half the votes.

The chairs of departmental committees, the Public Accounts Committee and several others are elected this way. Some committees, including the Privileges Committee and joint committees, still choose their own chairs.

Inquiries and evidence sessions

Most committee work takes the form of inquiries into a chosen topic. A committee normally invites written evidence and then holds oral evidence sessions, where witnesses answer members' questions.

• Written evidence is usually published online alongside the transcript of the oral evidence and, in due course, the committee's report.
• Oral evidence is usually given in public. A committee can decide to go into closed session, or ask for a confidential written memorandum, when information is sensitive. That decision belongs to the committee, not the witness.
• Officials appear on behalf of their ministers, because it is ministers who are accountable to Parliament.

Committees have the power to "send for persons, papers and records" relevant to their remit. Enforcing that power, including punishing contempt, is reserved to the House as a whole rather than to individual committees. Witnesses from outside government have sometimes declined invitations to appear.

Reports and government responses

At the end of an inquiry a committee publishes a report with conclusions and recommendations, addressed in large part to the government.

Government guidance tells departments to aim to give a considered response to Commons and Lords committee reports within two months of publication. Complex reports may take longer, in which case the committee should be kept informed; a response should be put off for more than six months only in exceptional circumstances. Replies usually take the form of a Command Paper, a memorandum or letter to the committee chair, or an oral statement.

The government does not have to accept recommendations. One study has estimated that 30 to 40% of committee recommendations end up becoming policy.

An example: the Public Accounts Committee

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) examines government spending to check that public money is used effectively and honestly. It has a long history: it was first proposed in 1857, and its structure dates from reforms in the 1860s by William Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

• The Exchequer and Audit Departments Act 1866 linked the committee to the Comptroller and Auditor General, who is a permanent witness at its hearings.
• National Audit Office staff brief the committee on each report and help to prepare its own reports.
• Under the Commons' standing orders, its chair comes from the official opposition, usually a former senior minister.

Committee type	Example	How the chair is chosen
Commons departmental	A committee shadowing one government department	Elected by the whole House by secret ballot
Commons spending scrutiny	Public Accounts Committee	Elected by the whole House; reserved for the official opposition
Lords	Constitution Committee	Named in the appointing motion or chosen by the committee
Joint	Joint Committee on Human Rights	Chosen by the committee

Select committees are one of the ways Parliament holds the executive to account in a system where ministers sit in the legislature. Our explainer on the separation of powers sets out that wider context.