Time to increase MPs' power in Parliament - Parliamentary Affairs article now available online - Dec 15, 2009
New Public Bill Committees can improve legislative scrutiny
Parliamentary Affairs article now available online
Discounted rate for Hansard Society members
In a forthcoming issue of Parliamentary Affairs - now available online- Jessica Levy, parliamentary researcher to Dr Tony Wright MP, outlines the potential of new Public Bill Committees to revitalise Westminster's legislative process.
The article, Public Bill Committees: An Assessment - Scrutiny sought, scrutiny gained, examines the changes to the Commons committee stages, and suggests further reforms to increase their effectiveness. The author highlights the potential of these reforms to contribute to a cultural shift in the attitude of MPs towards scrutiny.
Public Bill Committees (PBCs), introduced in the autumn of 2006, replaced standing committees and have:
- Power to receive written and oral evidence form outside experts
- Power to decide frequency of their sittings
- Power to divide their sittings between witness sessions and line-by-line scrutiny
The PBC system is notably distinct from the overtly adversarial standing committees it replaced. By conducting evidence sessions during the course of bill scrutiny, the reformed committee system is opening up the legislative process to the public and informing debate on the bill's clauses and schedules as well as its merits and problems. In doing so, it is improving the quality of parliamentary scrutiny.
However, further improvements are needed if the PBCs are to realise their full potential; to empower Parliament to provide effective scrutiny of the government:
- More time must be scheduled for PBCs to complete their work
- All members of a PBC must be involved in decisions on evidence giving
- PBC membership should reflect the balance of views across the House of Commons
- The chair of the PBC should determine the committee's programme
Jessica Levy, author of the Parliamentary Affairs article, commented: ‘Our political system needs to change the culture within Parliament towards more effective scrutiny of the executive. Public Bill Committees represent a notable step in this direction and have the potential to achieve much more if further reforms are introduced.'
For further information, contact Virginia Gibbons, Head of Communications at the Hansard Society on mediaprog@hansard.lse.ac.uk or 020 7438 1225
Editors Notes
- Parliamentary Affairs is a long-established journal published by Oxford University Press in association with the Hansard Society. Individual subscriptions cost £57 a year; special reduced subscriptions for Hansard Society subscription members cost £26 a year (UK), €39 (Europe), US$52 (rest of the world).