APPENDIX 23
Letter from the Chairman of the Foreign
Affairs Committee to the Chairman of the Committee
I understand that the Modernisation Committee
is presently considering, inter alia, the size of the departmentally-related
select committees. The Committee might find it helpful to receive
my personal opinion on proposals to increase the membership of
such committees to as many as 15 or even 17 members. My own view,
which I believe most of my colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee
would share, is that the present complement of the Foreign Affairs
Committee is about right at 11 Members. In fact, I have found
that meetings seem to work best with about eight Members round
the table.
Always assuming that the extra Members could
be found, I believe that an increase to significantly more than
11 Members would risk committees becoming unwieldy and their meetings
becoming disjointed. In particular:
— oral evidence sessions will be less
effective if each of 15 or 17 Members is to have a turn at questioning
each witness and inevitably those not called would feel excluded;
— unanimity on Reports will be more
difficult to achieve;
— private deliberations will be more
protracted;
— without a significant increase in
funding, it will not be possible for committees of 15 or more
members to travel as often as they do now;
— even with an increase in funding,
the value of such travel will diminish, because the logistics
of organising a large party impose practical limitations on what
can be achieved; and again, in questioning witnesses abroad, it
would be more difficult to have the time for individual Committee
Members adequately to purse a line of questioning.
I therefore agree with the views already expressed
on this matter by colleagues such as David Hinchliffe, and join
them in the hope that your Committee will decline to recommend
an increase in the membership of the departmentally-related select
committees.
Mr Donald Anderson MP
18 December 2001
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