Review of Investigative Select Committee Activity in Session 2016–17
Chapter 1: Introduction
Introduction
1.The House of Lords has a wide range of select committees. The 2010–15 Parliament saw a considerable expansion in select committee activity, with an increase of ad hoc committees (from one to four each session) and the introduction of post-legislative scrutiny committees. There was a further expansion in the 2016–17 session with the establishment of a new sessional committee on International Relations. The result has been an unprecedentedly high level of committee activity.
2.In October 2015 the Liaison Committee announced a full review of the structure of investigative committees in the 2017–18 session. The Liaison Committee has carried out regular smaller scale reviews, and in recent years has adopted the practice of publishing a report focusing on the highlights of the previous session. The present report includes a highlights report for the 2016–17 session.
The Jellicoe Committee (1992) and subsequent developments
3.The full review will be the first such review since 1992. Following concerns about pressures on the committee resources of the House, which had briefly been considered by a working group in 1988, the Jellicoe Committee was established in 1991 to conduct the first comprehensive review of the use of committees in the House. It reported in 1992 and put forward proposals for a “more balanced and structured committee system”,1 including a recommendation that ad hoc committees should become a regular part of the House’s work and that limited experiments should also be conducted with the use of public bill committees, special standing committees and a Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee, which was accordingly established in 1992. For the first time, it also articulated the principle that select committees in the Lords should generally seek to complement rather than duplicate the work of those in the Commons.
4.When the Jellicoe Committee reported there were only two sessional investigative committees in the House of Lords. The European Communities Committee (now the European Union Committee) was established in 1974, and its success led to the establishment of the Science and Technology Committee in 1979. Following the establishment and subsequent expansion of the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee there was a pause in further committee developments until 2001, when the Select Committees on the Constitution and on Economic Affairs were first appointed. Since then further committees have been added to the structure: the Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments (now the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee), was first appointed in 2004 and the Communications Committee in 2007. As we have already seen, the 2010–15 Parliament saw further significant expansion and this was followed by the establishment of the International Relations Committee at the start of the 2016–17 session.
5.The time, therefore, was already ripe for the second full review of House of Lords Committee activity. The impact of the EU referendum result on the scrutiny work of the House of Lords has given this review added importance and timeliness. The present report provides useful background information for the review.
1 Select Committee on the committee work of the house, Volume I — Report (Report of Session 1991–2, HL Paper 35–1), p 9