8 Attendance
101. Committees have for many years published details
of the attendance rate of Members at meetings. The Wright Committee
said in 2009: "We believe there should be clear consequences
for unreasonable absence from select committees".[35]
The Liaison Committee has kept an eye on this issue in this Parliament.
There are a few cases of Members whose participation in committee
work could have been higher. We are conscious however that there
are many reasons why a Member may not have attended most meetings
of a committee to which he or she has been appointed. These include:
· Personal or family illness
· Membership of other select committees
which meet at the same time
· Participation in public bill committees
meeting at the same time
· Other parliamentary commitments or posts
which make membership of the committee no longer possible or compatible.
102. Early in the Parliament, a procedure was adopted
by the House under which Members with an attendance rate of less
than 60% could be removed from a committee if the chair invited
the Speaker to request the Committee of Selection to remove him
or her. The safeguards in place were to allow for the Member having
some compelling personal reason for not attending. The possibility
of using this provision has been drawn to the attention of Members
in some cases, but the process has not been carried to a conclusion
to date.
103. In practice the problem has been different:
a Member who is no longer attending because of other duties and
commitments cannot resign before his or her party elects a replacement—the
motion discharging one Member from a Committee usually appoints
the replacement. Most cases of poor attendance fall into this
category. The Committee of Selection has accordingly agreed that
in cases where a Member wishes to stand down from a committee
but the party cannot nominate a replacement within six weeks,
then a motion can be moved in the House to remove the Member from
the Committee. This has now been used in a small number of cases.
Size and number of committees
104. There is
a wider problem which was also highlighted by the Wright Committee:
a finite number of backbenchers has to be spread over an increasing
number of select committees. The size and number of select committees
remains an issue. The Wright report said:
54. … [In] March 2009 the Liaison Committee
repeated its concern at the size of select committees, which over
the 30 years since foundation of the departmental select committee
system in 1979 has risen from 9 or 11 on a standard committee
to 14, despite objections over many years from the Committee.
The number of places to be filled on all Committees, including
temporary and statutory committees, has doubled in that time,
from 275 to 576, but there has been no change in the numbers willing
and able to serve. There has also been a steady rise in the number
of committees, from 24 to 39, not counting the Regional select
committees. As a result, a number of Members serve on two or more
committees, and the prohibition on service by PPSs and Opposition
front-benchers has been breached in order to fill vacancies. Chairs
have argued that committees are now unwieldy and that it is hard
to engender a collective purpose and direction. In this report
we make proposals on increased access for select committees to
the floor of the House for debate and decision on substantive
motions. If committees are slimmed down, we recognise the need
to incentivise attendance and participation among that smaller
group of Members. Rather than an unremunerated honour to be sought,
and a responsibility to be discharged, a select committee place
is in danger of being regarded by some backbenchers as a burden
best avoided.
We propose that the new House of Commons reduce
the size of its standard departmental committees to not more than
11; Members in individual cases can be added to specific committees
to accommodate the legitimate demands of the smaller parties.
We also recommend that the practice of appointing parliamentary
private secretaries and front bench Official Opposition spokesmen
should cease. We believe there should be clear consequences for
unreasonable absence from select committees. The House must also
seek to reduce the numbers of committees, ending overlapping or
duplicate remits and rationing the scarce resource of Members
time and commitment.[36]
105. Some 321 Members serve on 39 committees, 85
of them belonging to more than one committee. There are some 440
places on committees in all. There are obvious overlaps in certain
areas. In the coming Parliament there will be a new Petitions
Committee and, possibly, a new Committee on Gender and Equalities,
as well as a temporary Joint Committee on the Restoration and
Renewal of the Palace of Westminster. These additional committees
will require the participation of Members and the commitment of
staff resources.
106. One reason for increasing the size of certain
committees has been to enable the representation of minor parties
on such committees. Thus the Treasury Committee has 13 Members
to provide places for the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National
Party as well as six Conservative and five Labour Members. We
wholly support the inclusion of minor parties on key committees
and endorse the principle that, taking the number of places on
select committees as a whole, the party representation should
reflect that of the House. It is preferable if this can be achieved
by accommodation between the parties rather than by making committees
too large. Because select committees operate by consensus and
unanimity, arithmetical proportions do not have the same degree
of relevance that they do with public bill committees. As
the Wright Committee recommended, departmental select committees
should have a maximum of 11 Members.
107. In this Parliament select committees have worked
well, with no one party having a majority in the House and 44
Members representing parties other than the two largest. It may
be time to contemplate the possibility that each committee itself
does not have to mirror the exact party composition of the House.
For instance a committee of nine might have four from the largest
and three from the second largest party with two places for Members
representing other parties. The
balance need not be identical on each committee if the overall
representation across all committees was fair and proportionate.
Otherwise there is a risk of committees getting bigger and bigger
to incorporate Members from smaller parties—and spreading
Members too thinly over many committees.
Support for committees
108. This Parliament has seen some significant changes
in the way committees are supported by staff of the House. These
include:
· A savings programme in line with the rest
of the public sector reducing the budget by 17%
· Moving committee and Library staff to
work alongside each other in open plan offices in one building
· A major shift towards greater use of digital
technology and social media
· An increasing number of inward and outward
secondments broadening the experience and diversity of staff supporting
committees
· Greater innovation in using staff in different
ways in support of chairs and committees.
109. We are confident that these developments will
continue to bear fruit in the next Parliament. The additional
resources now allocated by the House for scrutiny will need to
be deployed imaginatively and accounted for carefully.
35 House of Commons Reform Committee, First Report
of Session 2008-09, Rebuilding the House, HC 1117 Back
36
House of Commons Reform Committee, First Report of Session 2008-09,
Rebuilding the House, HC 1117 Back
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