Work of the Committee in 2008-09 - Public Administration Committee Contents

3  The Committee at work

Working methods

22. We continue to rely principally on oral evidence and written evidence submitted in response to the announcement of a new inquiry. All of our formal evidence during the Session was taken in public. We also held a private seminar under the Chatham House rule on the arrangements for the Iraq War Inquiry, allowing a broad range of people to exchange views freely and frankly. We are grateful to all those who have given evidence and otherwise assisted us in our inquiries.

23. Our only visit in this Session was to the Welsh Assembly Government and Office of National Statistics (ONS). We met the First Minister of Wales and officials to discuss the Welsh Assembly Government's approach to outside appointments to the civil service. Our visit to the headquarters of the ONS allowed us to see at first hand the impact of the organisation's relocation to Newport.

24. The broad scope of our remit means that we often encounter areas of mutual interest with other committees. During our work on Leaks and Whistleblowing we were aware of the Home Affairs Committee's report Policing Process of Home Office Leaks Inquiry and carefully studied their findings when coming to our own.[3] We have also coordinated our work with other committees in the Commons during the progress of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill.

Relationship with Government

25. As our inquiries can range widely across government we continue to rely heavily on the Cabinet Office, and particularly on their Propriety and Ethics team, to manage our interactions across the public sector. As always, we are grateful for the continued support they have provided to us.

26. Our last annual report drew attention to the length of time the Government has taken to respond to our reports. Despite previous assurances of better performance this remains unsatisfactory. Four of the nine Government Responses published this Session were received more than six months after the publication of the original report and only three were received within the target two month period.

Future programme

27. A proportion of our work is inspired by those concerns brought before us by the Ombudsman, by government announcements and in response to current affairs and this will continue to be the case.

28. We will continue to follow closely the progress of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill through Parliament. We expect to report on four of our ongoing inquiries, into unelected ministers, outside appointments to the Civil Service, executive pay in the public sector and official language, in the next Session. With the end of the Parliament approaching we do not expect to be able to launch any major new inquiries. However, we expect to continue the policy of the past year in focusing short inquiries on specific issues where parliamentary scrutiny would be productive.

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3   Home Affairs Committee, Fourth Report of Session 2008-09, Policing Process of Home Office Leaks Inquiry, HC 157 Back

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Prepared 2 November 2009