More Resources
27. If the select committees are successfully to
hold to account major Whitehall departments then we need to do
more to balance the resources respectively available to Ministers
and to those who hold them to account. It is often the case that
a revealing answer can only be produced in response to the knowledge
that enables a penetrating question to be formed. The departmental
select committees have done remarkably well with very limited
specialist advice. We believe that their effectiveness could be
further enhanced by direct access to further specialist advice
independent of Government.
28. We endorse the proposal by the Liaison Committee
in the previous Parliament, in its report 'Shifting the Balance',[12]
that there should be a unit within the Committee Office containing
specialised staff with the expertise to support the scrutiny work
of the departmental committees. Although this new support staff
will be of particular help to the committee chairmen, their advice
and research would be open to all members of the committee irrespective
of party. We recommend that the House of Commons Commission
should make available the necessary funds for a central unit of
specialist support staff to be in place in the next financial
year.
29. Financial scrutiny is a good illustration of
the need for specialised support to select committees. It is impossible
for select committees properly to discharge their job of scrutiny
unless they can adequately examine the budget control of the Department
they shadow and the priority of its spending plans.[13]
The introduction of Resource Accounting and Budgeting has increased
both the potential for systematic financial scrutiny and the need
for technical expertise to interpret it. We were encouraged to
hear from the Chairman of the Liaison Committee that Sir John
Bourn, the Comptroller and Auditor General, has indicated that
he is willing to consider secondees to provide expert support
on financial scrutiny.[14]
We recommend that the National Audit Office be invited to help
assess the need for specialist and other support staff for select
committees and to advise on how this could best be provided, and
that the House of Commons Commission should look favourably on
funding for staffing increases which may be proposed.
30. We have received vigorous representations from
some committee chairmen that the role of running an active select
committee generates considerable demands for secretarial services.
Some may well receive several hundred letters from the public
in the course of a single inquiry. It is plainly unreasonable,
and perhaps impossible, for an individual Member to meet such
substantial additional burden out of the standard Office Costs
Allowance. We recommend that within the Committee Office there
should be sufficient staff to assist with the function of supporting
the administrative workload of the select committee chairmen.
12 HC 300 of Session 1999-2000, paragraphs 71 to 84. Back
13
See Procedure for Debate of the Government's Expenditure Plans,
Sixth Report from the Procedure Committee, HC 295 of Session 1998-99. Back
14
Q 92-93. Back
| 
