Annual Report for 2005–06
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House of Commons Liaison Committee Annual Report for 2005–06 First Report of Session 2006–07 Report, together with appendices and formal minutes Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 15 March 2007 HC 406 Published on 17 April 2007 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 The Liaison Committee The Liaison Committee is appointed to consider general matters relating to the work of select committees; to advise the House of Commons Commission on select committees; to choose select committee reports for debate in the House and to hear evidence from the Prime Minister on matters of public policy. Current membership Mr Alan Williams MP (Labour, Swansea West) (Chairman) The Chairmen for the time being of the Select Committees listed below: Administration – Mr Frank Doran MP (Labour, Aberdeen North) Communities and Local Government – Dr Phyllis Starkey MP (Labour, Milton Keynes South West) Constitutional Affairs – Mr Alan Beith MP (Liberal Democrat, Berwick-upon- Tweed) Culture, Media and Sport – Mr John Whittingdale MP (Conservative, Maldon and Chelmsford East) Defence – Mr James Arbuthnot MP (Conservative, North East Hampshire) Education and Skills – Mr Barry Sheerman MP (Labour/Co-op, Huddersfield) Environmental Audit – Mr Tim Yeo MP (Conservative, South Suffolk) Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – Mr Michael Jack MP (Conservative, Fylde) European Scrutiny – Michael Connarty MP (Labour, Linlithgow and East Falkirk) Finance and Services – Sir Stuart Bell MP (Labour, Middlesbrough) Foreign Affairs – Mike Gapes MP (Labour/Co-op, Ilford South) Health – Mr Kevin Barron MP (Labour, Rother Valley) Home Affairs – Mr John Denham MP (Labour, Southampton Itchen) Human Rights (Joint Committee) – Mr Andrew Dismore MP (Labour, Hendon) International Development – Rt Hon Malcolm Bruce MP (Liberal Democrat, Gordon) Northern Ireland Affairs – Sir Patrick Cormack MP (Conservative, South Staffordshire) Procedure – Mr Greg Knight MP (Conservative, Yorkshire East) Public Accounts – Mr Edward Leigh MP (Conservative, Gainsborough) Public Administration – Dr Tony Wright MP (Labour, Cannock Chase) Regulatory Reform – Andrew Miller MP (Labour, Ellesmere Port and Neston) Science and Technology – Mr Phil Willis MP (Liberal Democrat, Harrogate and Knaresborough) Scottish Affairs – Mr Mohammad Sarwar MP (Labour, Glasgow Central) Selection – Rosemary McKenna MP (Labour, Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) Standards and Privileges – Sir George Young MP (Conservative, North West Hampshire) Statutory Instruments – David Maclean MP (Conservative, Penrith and The Border) Trade and Industry – Peter Luff MP (Conservative, Mid Worcestershire) Transport – Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody MP (Labour, Crewe and Nantwich) Treasury – Mr John McFall MP (Labour/Co-op, West Dunbartonshire) Welsh Affairs – Dr Hywel Francis MP (Labour, Aberavon) Work and Pensions – Mr Terry Rooney MP (Labour, Bradford North) Powers The powers of the Committee are set out in House of Commons SO No 145. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/liaison_committee.cfm. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Helen Irwin (Clerk), Robert Wilson (Second Clerk), Kevin Candy (Committee Assistant) and Catherine Close (Secretary). For this Report they were assisted by Eliot Wilson, David Weir, and Matthew Hamlyn and Anwen Rees from the Scrutiny Unit. Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Liaison Committee, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 5675; the Committee’s email address is [email protected] 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 1 Introduction 5 2 Review of committees’ work 6 Core tasks 6 Task 1: Scrutiny of policy proposals 7 Task 2: Identification and examination of areas of emerging or deficient policy 10 Task 3: Scrutiny of draft bills 12 Task 4: Examination of departmental decisions, circulars, guidance etc 16 Task 5: Scrutiny of expenditure plans and outturns 17 Task 6: Scrutinising Public Service Agreements and targets 22 Task 7: Monitoring the work of agencies and other public bodies 24 Task 8: Scrutiny of major appointments 27 Task 9: Implementation of legislation 28 Task 10: Debates in Westminster Hall and the Chamber 29 3 Working practices 33 Working with others 33 Relations with the devolved assemblies 33 Relations with the Judiciary 34 Cooperation between committees 35 Cooperation at the EU level 37 Information gathering 38 Engaging with the public and the media 40 Working with government departments 43 4 New developments 48 Post-legislative scrutiny 48 5 Activity and resources 50 Select committee activity 50 Costs of select committees 52 Resources for select committees 53 Conclusions and recommendations 55 Appendix 1: List of Annual Reports of Select Committees for 2005–06 58 Appendix 2: Letter from the Chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee 60 Appendix 3: Letter from the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights 66 2 Appendix 4: Memorandum on the work of the Scrutiny Unit 73 Appendix 5: National Audit Office Support for House of Commons Select Committees in 2006: note by the NAO 80 3 Summary Accountability of Government now depends vitally on select committees, whose work since the General Election of 2005 is reviewed in this report. Hopefully, select committees are doing what the public would like to do. They are posing challenging questions to ministers and civil servants. Without them, there would be no meaningful parliamentary scrutiny. In open evidence sessions, often in front of the cameras, ministers—in our case the Prime Minister—and officials have to explain and justify their policies. Committees analyse issues and offer conclusions based on evidence. Their reports regularly set the daily political agenda. In this way the full range of Government activity is under Parliament’s scrutiny. Eighteen select committees monitor the main government departments, and others specialise in subjects covering more than one ministerial responsibility. Half the House of Commons takes part in this work, working together in committees of up to 14 Members. Nearly thirty years since its creation in 1979, the modern system of select committees is coming of age. This report begins by reviewing the different sorts of investigative committee work which now make up the central scrutiny agenda. It then discusses the ways in which committees have been developing their working methods, most notably to connect more directly with the public through webfora or via the media. Financial scrutiny is getting greater emphasis and more resources. Post-legislative scrutiny may be another area for examination, if the right mechanism can be found. Overall, the annual scrutiny output remains impressive— currently up to 150 reports, more than 500 evidence sessions. Thanks to select committees, Parliament is now more active in watching and challenging what Government is doing. 5 1 Introduction 1. This is our first review of committee work following the General Election of May 2005, and we cover the period to early 2007. As usual, there was some delay before select committees were nominated, but all were established in time to meet and initiate programmes of work before the summer recess. Since then committees have been active across a wide range of policy areas, discharging their duties in a variety of different, and often innovative, ways. Their work regularly dominates political news. It ranges from high profile evidence sessions—such as those which unearthed the failure of the Home Office to deport foreign nationals released from prison,1 or extracted an admission from the Home Secretary that the immigration system was “not fit for purpose”2—to reports which set the daily agenda for public discussion—on identity cards, drug classification, party funding, carbon emissions, parking policy and enforcement or smoking in public places, to give some recent examples. 2. Scrutiny is carried out by the individual select committees which our Members chair— the 18 committees which correspond to government departments, and others such as Environmental Audit, Human Rights,3 Public Accounts, Public Administration, or Regulatory Reform whose work cuts across all ministerial responsibilities. 3. For proper accountability of Government, committees need full cooperation from ministers and officials, access to information and witnesses, resources to assess the material, and public awareness of their work, currently achieved mainly through the media. Our brief as the Liaison Committee is to make sure that these are available. Particular issues are discussed in later sections of our report, or in the reports on their work produced by individual select committees, on which we have drawn for this text. 4. The Liaison Committee carries out its own scrutiny by means of twice-yearly evidence sessions with the Prime Minister, most recently on 6 February 2007.4 We have also continued our dialogue with the Leader of the House over issues such as committees’ access to information from departments, post-legislative scrutiny of Acts of Parliament and the role of committees in examining draft bills. We are grateful to the current Leader, Rt Hon Jack Straw, and his predecessors for their willingness to cooperate with our work,