Parliamentary Select Committees: some case studies in contingent influence

Abstract

The system of departmentally-related select committees which was introduced in the House of Commons in 1979 has, in the decade of its existence, seen committee activity grow significantly, both in the public consciousness and in the influence which backbenchers exert over government policy. However, attempts to measure influence, whether through quantitative or qualitative approaches, inevitably meet problems with those outcomes which are unacknowledged or delayed, unanticipated or simply unannounced; identifying modifications of policy where the ability to trace origins back to a committee report are minimal, can rely heavily on the intuitive and interpretive insights of those directly involved. In this paper an attempt is made to examine examples of policy recommendations made in select committee reports which were initially rejected by government but produced subsequent policy change, and others where the very fact of a committee investigation appears to stimulate action or change difficult to establish through formal measuring techniques.

Legislation Under Review: An Assessment of Post-Legislative Scrutiny Recommendations in the UK Parliament

“…However a number of researchers and authors have noted the problem of using a simple assessment of the acceptance of recommendations as an indicator of impact (Baines, 1985;Drewry, 1985;Giddings, 1985). Such problems include: weak recommendations skewing the results as they are more likely to be accepted (Aldons, 2000); the government agreeing to accept but then not implement; and finally the government initially rejecting recommendations only to go on an implement them anyway (Hawes, 1992).…”

95/01111 Whose utility: The social impact of public utility privatisation and regulation in Britain

“…Each of the Directors General are technically accountable to Parliament, but beyond the presentation of their annual reports to Westminster, no mechanisms have been established to ensure that this actually takes place. The Select Committee system in the House of Commons is one obvious arena where the regulators might be made to account for their actions (Hawes, 1992), but outside the Energy Committee's examination of the Director General of Electricity Supply as part of its inquiry into the consequences of electricity privatisation, the regulators have been generally immune from investigation through this means.…”