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Thirty Years of Reform House of Commons Select Committees, 1960-1990 Philip John Aylett A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of History Queen Mary, University of London 1 Declaration of Originality I, Philip John Aylett, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Philip Aylett Date: 1 December 2015 2 Abstract This thesis is a study of the development of investigatory select committees of the House of Commons during the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on the period between 1960 and 1990. Synthesising existing analysis as well as presenting new evidence, it describes the early origins of such committees as an integral part of the work of the House, and then considers the House’s apparent loss of interest in select committees between 1920 and 1960. The thesis next discusses the reasons behind the introduction of new select committees in the mid-1960s, and traces further changes to committees during the 1970s. These developments are set in the political context of the period, and in particular the growth of backbench dissent in both major parties during the 1970s. The thesis then analyses the process by which departmentally-related select committees came to be established in 1979. Finally it assesses the quantitative and qualitative evidence about the activity and impact of the new departmental select committees in their first decade up to 1990, relating them closely to the political environment created by the government of Margaret Thatcher. 3 Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 7 Chapter One: House of Commons Select Committees before 26 1960 Chapter Two: Select Committees 1960-1970 - Measurable 77 Progress Chapter Three: Select Committees and Political Crisis in the 125 1970s Chapter Four: The Process of Select Committee Reform, 1978- 181 79 Chapter Five: Select Committees in the 1980s: Measuring 215 Activity and Assessing Progress Chapter Six: The Influence and Impact of Select Committees 256 on Political Issues during the 1980s Conclusion: Reform by Small Steps: Select Committees 1960 308 to 1990 Appendix A - Numbers of meetings held by investigatory 343 committees in selected policy areas, selected Sessions 1971 to 1982 Appendix B - Witness appearances before investigatory 347 committees covering four key policy areas, 1970-79 Appendix C - Select Committees: Mentions in Lords and 351 Commons Chambers Bibliography 352 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many people who have helped with my work towards this thesis. My first supervisor, Professor Peter Hennessy, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, FBA, suggested this topic to me, and I am very grateful to him. Peter’s deep knowledge and generosity have long brought Westminster and Whitehall to life for me, as for so many others. Dr James Ellison, my second supervisor, took up the baton with enthusiasm and his encouragement and guidance have been very helpful in completing my task. Dr Robert Saunders’ perceptive comments on a late draft were very important and Dr Peter Catterall gave me valuable support and encouragement at an earlier stage. Professor Gavin Drewry and Professor Michael Rush have taken a positive interest in my work, and I am grateful to them both, as well as other fellow members of the Study of Parliament Group. My experience as a clerk of a number of Commons select committees has been very important to me in this research. I owe a great deal to the support and companionship of colleagues in the Department of Chamber and Committee Services, some of whom also provided valuable evidence about life on select committees in the 1970s and 1980s. My special thanks go to Paul Evans, Andrew Kennon, Phil Larkin, Liam Laurence Smyth, David Natzler, Crispin Poyser, and Jacqy Sharpe. I am very grateful to Lord Lisvane, KCB DL, who first gave me the chance to work in Parliament, and to Bill Proctor. 5 I would like to acknowledge the help of a number of former select committee members, including Rt Hon Lord Baker of Dorking CH, Rt Hon Lord Jopling DL, Dr Edmund Marshall and Rt Hon Lord Radice. Dr Tony Wright was the inspirational Chair of the first committee I worked on, Public Administration, and he made me realise what an effective select committee could do. Like many others, I owe him a great debt of gratitude. Former civil servants who gave me valuable advice and evidence included Lord Armstrong of Ilminster GCB CVO, Sir Douglas Wass GCB and David Faulkner. I am especially grateful for the helpful and efficient work of the staff of the Members’ Library and of the Senate House Library at the University of London. I have also made use of manuscripts at the National Archives and I am grateful for the assistance of the staff there. Without the warm support, love, patience and forbearance of my wife, Anne, this thesis would have been impossible, and I am deeply grateful to her, and to Chris and Sophie, my children, who have sometimes had a slightly distracted father for the last six years. 6 Introduction The public reputation of the House of Commons suffered many setbacks during the late twentieth century. Speeches in the House no longer shaped political careers as they once had; performances in TV and radio studios became more important to the ambitious MP. The ‘cash for questions’ scandal suggested that some Members of Parliament could not be trusted to represent the interests of their constituents with integrity. 1 The media took less and less notice of serious Commons debates, increasingly reporting instead on the partisan noisiness of Prime Minister’s Questions. But there was one bright spot in this otherwise sombre parliamentary landscape: select committees. This thesis explores the reasons why House of Commons select committees came to be seen as something of a success. In particular it examines the development of investigatory select committees in the twentieth century, with a special focus on the period between 1960 and 1990. But the thesis first sets the scene by assessing some key developments in select committees throughout parliamentary history, demonstrating that they were important from an early date. A major theme of the thesis is the significance of the establishment in 1979 of a number of select committees, each responsible for scrutiny of a government 1 See Standards in Public Life, First Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Chairman Lord Nolan, 1995, Cm 2850, pp. 19-45 7 department. This has been widely judged to be a decisive moment in the history of select committees, and, for some commentators, of twentieth century relations between Parliament and government. The thesis challenges this proposition, drawing attention to the impact of earlier developments in the political landscape and in parliamentary procedure and practice. A review of the literature on Parliament, the Executive and select committees Parliamentary select committees have a long history at Westminster, but in recent times it was the series of mid-1960s reforms associated with the name of the Labour politician Richard Crossman, and then the creation of the system of House of Commons ‘departmentally-related’ select committees in 1979, that brought them to greatest public prominence. This section reviews the literature on the history of constitutional relationships between Parliament and the Executive, and asks what that might tell us about the role of parliamentary select committees. Prompted largely by the radical constitutional reforms introduced by Tony Blair’s Labour Government from 1997, the public and academic debate on the nature of constitutional change expanded considerably in the early years of the twenty-first century. But this interest was not new. Generations of constitutional theorists have seen Parliament as playing a central, though never independent, role in the workings of the constitution. Reviewing the work of commentators from the 1850s to the 1950s, Vernon Bogdanor concludes that the British Constitution could be described at that time as ‘What the Queen in Parliament enacts is law’. He continues ‘It was because the sovereignty of Parliament has been seen as the central principle of the British 8 Constitution that it appeared pointless to draw up a codified constitution.’ 2 Anthony King identifies six writers, from Walter Bagehot in the 1850s to Leo Amery in the mid-twentieth century, as key commentators on the British constitution. 3 He calls them his ‘canonical sextet’, describing them as ‘classical writers’ who in his view came to ‘define for the British, over a long period of years, what their uncodified constitution was and what it meant’. 4 King describes their general view as being that the British constitutional system was characterised by ‘the existence within it of a single, solitary locus of power and authority’. 5 For Bagehot this single locus was the Cabinet, and for Dicey it was Parliament; Low situated it in the office of the Prime Minister and his inner Cabinet. 6 Wherever it was to be found, this single locus of power used Parliament as its main public ‘arena’, but this was a Parliament whose chief function was to produce and support the government of the day.

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