The House of Commons Modernisation Committee: background, opportunities, and potential pitfalls

The Home of Commons has voted to determine a brand new Modernisation Committee. Tom Fleming and Hannah Kelly discover the alternatives and challenges dealing with this new committee, drawing on their latest Structure Unit report on previous approaches to delivering Home of Commons reform.

Final week MPs voted to determine a brand new choose committee, the Modernisation Committee, ‘to think about reforms to Home of Commons procedures, requirements, and dealing practices’. This proposal was introduced ahead by the Chief of the Home, Lucy Powell, and was promised within the Labour manifesto.

The identify implies similarity with the earlier Modernisation Committee, which was appointed underneath the final Labour authorities between 1997 and 2010, and which we analysed in our latest Structure Unit report, Delivering Home of Commons Reform: What Works?. This blogpost due to this fact attracts on that analysis to guage the alternatives and potential pitfalls dealing with the brand new committee.

A brand new Modernisation Committee

The committee may have 14 members – 9 Labour MPs, three Conservatives, and two Liberal Democrats – to be nominated by way of a future movement from the Chief of the Home. It’ll embrace the Chief of the Home herself (who expects to chair the committee) and the Conservatives’ Shadow Chief, Chris Philp. Although Powell wasn’t specific in final week’s debate about how different members of the committee can be chosen, Philp indicated that they’d be chosen by their events’ whips.

The committee’s composition will due to this fact be uncommon in two methods. First, Home of Commons choose committees often solely embrace backbench MPs. Second, since 2010 the members of most choose committees have been chosen by their fellow MPs by way of intra-party elections, not by get together whips.

Reviving an outdated strategy?

This new committee has been modelled to an extent on the instance of the 1997–2010 Modernisation Committee, which the Chief praised final week. One key similarity – past its identify – is that the earlier committee was additionally chaired by the Chief of the Home, and included frontbench members of the 2 largest opposition events (then, as now, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats).

Nonetheless, the federal government’s plans for the brand new committee additionally point out some fairly necessary variations from its earlier namesake. First, the Chief of the Home has significantly emphasised its position in reviewing the regulation of MPs’ requirements of conduct and parliamentary working practices. This has been a distinguished theme in press protection, and within the Chief’s personal rationalization of the committee’s work. However this subject didn’t obtain a lot consideration from the outdated Modernisation Committee, which targeted extra on points just like the legislative course of, sitting hours, and committees.

Second, and maybe extra considerably, the Chief has prompt that the brand new Modernisation Committee won’t work like a typical choose committee, as an alternative appearing extra as a ‘clearing home, drawing on all the great work of different committees’. Fairly how the federal government expects this to work in apply continues to be somewhat unclear, as we talk about beneath. But it surely appears to counsel a largely reactive, convening position. This contrasts with the unique Modernisation Committee, which operated extra like different choose committees – whereas it after all drew on concepts from elsewhere, it held its personal inquiries on matters of its selecting, gathered proof, and usually issued experiences and suggestions.

A possibility for delivering reform

This new committee presents one key alternative for reaching procedural reform: its potential potential to get proposals agreed and applied. Being chaired by the Chief of the Home was a helpful asset for the earlier Modernisation Committee, rising its proposals’ probabilities of getting some sort of authorities backing. This may be essential for securing reform, on condition that ministers management most parliamentary time within the Commons, and are backed by a majority of MPs (however the conference for procedural selections to be unwhipped).

Past this, combining frontbenchers and backbenchers from either side of the Home may enable the committee to develop into a venue for constructive dialogue between all completely different elements of the Commons. This may assist it to supply a package deal of reforms that may command broad assist amongst MPs. However doing so would require the committee to navigate some important challenges.

Potential pitfalls

The earlier Modernisation Committee was controversial, largely resulting from its composition. Being chaired by a Cupboard minister was not simply uncommon; it additionally meant that the committee was criticised – significantly by opposition members – as being a automobile for rubber-stamping proposals that got here from, and so primarily benefitted, the federal government.

Our report due to this fact argued that the important thing problem for any new Modernisation Committee can be to earn a repute as an enviornment for real dialogue throughout completely different elements of the Home, somewhat than for merely approving authorities proposals. The Chief of the Home has made a transparent dedication to the committee constructing consensus, suggesting she understands the significance of this problem.

Nonetheless, the federal government’s early decisions in regards to the committee’s composition and position might make this consensus tougher to attain. Three points specifically may hamper the committee’s potential to construct broad assist for its work and its eventual suggestions.

Small get together illustration

First, the committee won’t embrace members of any of the smaller events within the Home, as was highlighted by a number of MPs in the course of the debate on establishing the committee, and by subsequent information protection. This raises the chance that smaller events’ distinct procedural pursuits will not be mirrored within the committee’s deliberations, and in addition means no MPs representing Northern Eire constituencies will likely be included within the committee. However as Lucy Powell highlighted, this can be a consequence of the Home’s typical strategy to allocating committee locations proportionately amongst events. That strategy will not be set in stone, and could possibly be barely relaxed so as to add a member of at the least one of many small events (seemingly the SNP, because the fourth largest get together) with out making the committee an unwieldy dimension. Even so, the quantity and variety of the smaller events makes it unlikely that the SNP may converse for all of them. Given this, it is necessary that the Chief has dedicated to ‘common and significant engagement with any and all events represented on this Home’.

Relationships with different choose committees

Second, one other distinguished theme in final Thursday’s debate was how the committee will relate to different present choose committees, significantly the Process Committee and Requirements Committee. A number of MPs – together with the Shadow Chief – raised considerations about the potential for the Modernisation Committee chopping throughout the work of those specialised our bodies. Lucy Powell sought to reassure the Home that the committee’s position as a ‘clearing home’ for concepts from elsewhere will assist to keep away from this. Nonetheless, it isn’t completely clear how far the committee will likely be reactive (triaging others’ work), proactive (finishing up its personal critiques, or commissioning work from different committees) or some mixture of the 2. On the one hand, the Chief has stated that the committee ‘don’t count on to be doing that work ourselves, or duplicating it’. However then again, press protection and the Chief’s personal remarks counsel that ministers do have a fairly particular agenda that they need the committee to research. Clarifying this ambiguity will likely be an necessary a part of the committee’s early work.

These completely different potential approaches would every current distinct challenges for the committee. If proactively conducting its personal critiques or commissioning work from others, it could must keep away from ‘turf wars’, and set up a constructive division of labour with different committees. Whether it is purely reactive, the committee might want to define clearly its advantages as a ‘clearing home’. In any other case, the present committees might query why their proposals must be filtered by means of a brand new physique (particularly one chaired by a minister), somewhat than simply being put to MPs for a immediate choice. In spite of everything, a key previous impediment dealing with the Process Committee has been the federal government’s unwillingness to schedule debates on its proposals. Ministers may take away that impediment with out establishing a brand new committee.

Number of backbench members

Third, the best way backbench members of the committee will likely be chosen might grow to be a big supply of controversy. As famous above, it appears that evidently the federal government expects members to be chosen by their events’ whips, not by their fellow MPs in intra-party elections. Choice by the whips was the norm till choose committee elections had been launched in 2010 with the aim of decreasing the affect of get together machines over the Home’s committees and guaranteeing independent-minded voices weren’t shut out. Some sort of hybrid mannequin would at all times have been wanted for the Modernisation Committee, to instantly appoint the events’ frontbench spokespeople. However there isn’t a clear motive why elections couldn’t be held for the remaining backbench areas.

The danger for the committee is that this strategy provides it precisely the repute that we warned about in our report, by making it appear extra like a government-controlled (or frontbench-controlled) automobile than an enviornment for real dialogue. This might in flip make it tougher for the committee to attain the Chief’s aim of constructing a broad consensus for its reform proposals.

Nonetheless, final week’s debate on establishing the committee featured nearly no dialogue of this level. This can be partly as a result of the means of choosing members was not explicitly indicated within the movement put to MPs, or within the Chief’s rationalization. MPs may fairly assume that the Modernisation Committee will likely be included among the many committees elected within the autumn, as solely a passing reference within the Shadow Chief’s closing speech prompt that this won’t be the case. If the committee is certainly to be appointed, ministers have due to this fact not defined their causes for selecting this strategy. One argument may need been pace, if appointing members allowed the committee to begin work sooner. Nonetheless, its members weren’t nominated earlier than the Home rose for the summer season recess. Therefore, these appointments may come concurrently the election of most different choose committees, highlighting to MPs the contrasting strategy being taken for the Modernisation Committee. This might spell controversy forward.

Concerning the authors

Tom Fleming is a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics at UCL. He’s presently main the Structure Unit’s ESRC-funded venture ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Process’.

Hannah Kelly is a Analysis Assistant on the Structure Unit, engaged on the ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Process’ venture.

Featured picture: Lindsay Hoyle (CC BY-NC 2.0) by UK Parliament.