Select committee attendance
26. Full participation of a committee's members
in its work is essential to the effectiveness of that committee.
It ensures that Members share the experiences and evidence upon
which they will base their report; it encourages vital trust between
them; and it helps in building up the collective expertise of
the committee.
27. In the circumstances it is strange that the
House's convention of recording attendance at select committees
should mark a Member as present if, for example, he or she were
in the committee room for only the first minute rather than remaining
for the whole of the three-hour evidence session which followed.
Over a Session, the formal record of a Member's attendance may
thus be wholly misleading.
28. A Member who is prepared to serve on a select
committee must regard that service as a significant priority in
his or her Parliamentary work, with the appropriate commitment.
We therefore think it entirely reasonable that the Chairman of
a select committee should be able to report to the Panel a Member
who, without good reason (such as standing committee service),
had not taken a full part in, say, four successive formal Committee
activities (both sittings and other events). We would expect the
Select Committee Panel to replace a Member whose participation
was no longer justifying his or her membership of that committee,
but was keeping out other Members who wanted to join.
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