Select Committee on Communities and Local Government Committee First Report


2  Procedural and practical developments

7. Our experience with the Winter Supplementary Estimates this year led to a deeper appreciation of the new power granted to Select Committees this session enabling the publication of written evidence on the internet without any immediate requirement to print. This development enabled us to disseminate information quickly, widely and efficiently and thus to inform debate in Committee, in the House itself and more broadly in a manner which would previously have been practically impossible. We are grateful to the House for granting this power and to the Liaison Committee for pressing for the implementation of this long-desired facility.

8. Our own practices and procedures have also developed since our appointment. The Committee now holds an informal seminar in advance of almost every major inquiry and for our latest inquiry, into The Supply of Rented Housing, two seminars were held. These seminars have enabled us, by exploring issues in depth with a range of experts, to prepare more thoroughly for oral examinations and to concentrate more fully on exploiting the expertise of witnesses. This means that the inevitably limited time we have for oral examination of witnesses is used more effectively.

9. Part of the success of these seminars rests on the expanded pool of expertise which the Committee is now able to tap into as a result of the new procedures we adopted at the beginning of the Parliament for identifying potential sources of specialist advice. In December 2006 we issued a public invitation to anyone with expertise in the fields relevant to the Committee's remit to put themselves forward as potential specialist advisers. Over a third of the specialist advisers we have used this year first came to our attention as a result of this exercise. Our general invitation was re-issued in November 2006 in line with our intention to repeat the exercise annually. This will help to ensure that the net for capturing specialist advice is drawn as widely as possible: this year it also gave us the opportunity specifically to seek expressions of interest from experts in those policy fields for which the Department has acquired responsibility during the course of the year (see para 10).

10. Since the Committee was appointed in July 2005, it had been our task to scrutinise the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. In the machinery of Government changes which took place in May 2006, what had been the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister became the Department for Communities and Local Government. As well as retaining policy responsibility for housing, regeneration, planning, regional policy and local government, new areas were added including communities and civil renewal functions (transferred from the Home Office); equality policy, including policies on race, faith, gender and sexual orientation (which had previously been spread across a number of Government departments); sponsorship of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights; and the Women and Equality Unit was transferred to the new Department from the Department of Trade and Industry.[4] At the same time, the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Rt Hon. Ruth Kelly MP, became the Cabinet Minister for Women. The Government stated that these changes had created a Department with "a powerful new remit to promote community cohesion and equality…much better placed to deliver on this important remit".[5] That is a claim which we will test over the coming months and years. What was immediately apparent was that our already challengingly broad scrutiny remit had been made significantly broader.

11. In November 2006 we held a study seminar at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park which was in part designed to help us focus on the primary issues within the policy areas for which we acquired scrutiny responsibilities. This will, in turn, inform decisions on our future work programme. We would like to record our gratitude to Darra Singh OBE, Chief Executive of Ealing Council and Chair of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion; Dr Rachel Pillai, Fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research; and Melody Hossaini, co-Chair of the board of trustees of the UK Youth Parliament for their valuable contributions to our deliberations.

12. Our study seminar also provided the opportunity to examine our own internal working practices and explore potential means to increase both effectiveness and efficiency. Issues relating to working practices considered during the day included:

  • The frequency and timing of meetings;
  • Alternative approaches to the inquiry process;
  • Effective examination of witnesses;
  • Broadening the evidence base;
  • Following-up on previous reports and recommendations;
  • Media relations and communications, and
  • Induction for Members joining the Committee.

13. Some of these changes will be put into practice during 2007. We would like to express formally our gratitude to Kelvin MacDonald, Director of Policy and Practice at the Royal Town Planning Institute, who gave us the benefit of his experience not just as a close observer of the Committee but also as a witness on more than one occasion and as a former specialist adviser. It is our intention and our aspiration that the new approaches adopted in areas as diverse as public engagement and presentation of findings should serve to strengthen our scrutiny of the Department for Communities and Local Government and thus enable the more effective discharge of our responsibilities to the House.


4   The Department for Communities and Local Government defines 'civil renewal' in the following terms: "Civil Renewal is about people and government, working together to make life better. It involves more people being able to influence decisions about their communities, and more people taking responsibility for tackling local problems, rather than expecting others to". (http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1502436)

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5   10 Downing Street Press Notice on the Machinery of Government Changes, 5 May 2006, (http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page9391.asp) Back


 
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Prepared 18 January 2007