How are House of Commons Select Committees created?

Publications / Guides

How are Select Committees created in the House of Commons?

Committee corridor, House of Commons. ©House of Commons/Jessica Taylor

House of Commons Select Committees are created by Standing Orders of the House. This means that in order to establish Select Committees, or make changes to their line-up, the House must agree a motion to amend Standing Orders.

In theory, a motion to amend Standing Orders could be moved by any MP who has the opportunity to put a substantive motion before the House for decision. For example, Labour used an Opposition Day in January 2023 to move a motion to establish a ‘Fair Taxation of Schools and Education Standards Committee’.

However, as long as the Government commands a majority in the House of Commons, there is no prospect of the House agreeing any motion to amend Standing Orders which the Government does not support. In practice, therefore, outside situations of minority Government, Select Committees are created and their line-up changed only by Government motions. Such motions are normally tabled by the Leader of the House. They may be moved at any point during a Parliament (with notice), and are amendable.

The House is most likely to create a Select Committee after a new Department has been created in a machinery-of-government change. Such changes are themselves most likely to take place after a General Election or change of Prime Minister.

What decisions are involved in creating a new Select Committee?

To create a new Select Committee, a number of decisions must be made about its features. These features must be specified in the relevant Standing Order. They include:

Permanent or temporary?

Unless otherwise specified, a Select Committee is established as a permanent body of the House, which will exist indefinitely unless and until Standing Orders are amended again to abolish it.

However, sometimes the House establishes a Select Committee for only a specified period. This might be because it wants to trial a new Committee before establishing it on a permanent basis (as occurred with the Women and Equalities Committee, which was originally created in 2015 for one Parliament only), or because the Committee’s task is time-limited (as occurred with the Exiting the European Union Committee, and its successor, the Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union, both of which existed under a succession of time-limited Orders).

A time-limited Select Committee may be established by a Temporary Standing Order. These are published at the end of the list of regular Standing Orders.

How many Members?

Most House of Commons Select Committees have 11 Members but the House sometimes provides for a larger membership, to allow representation of small parties or a wider-than-usual range of opinion. (This occurred with the Exiting the European Union Committee, for example, which was established in October 2016 with 21 Members.)

What remit and powers?

The relevant Standing Order must specify what the House wishes the Select Committee to do and what powers it grants it to carry out its task(s).

Chair elected by the whole House or by the Committee?

Since 2010, most House of Commons Select Committees have Chairs who are elected by the whole House. A smaller number of Select Committees continue to choose their own Chairs. A Standing Order (No. 122B) lists most of the Committees which have Chairs elected by the whole House. When the House establishes a new Select Committee, therefore, it must decide whether to add it to this list or otherwise provide that its Chair is to be elected.

To make it more straightforward to use and amend Standing Orders, the departmental Select Committees (DSCs) – which scrutinise Government Departments – are created and listed together in Standing Order No. 152, and then treated and referred to elsewhere as a single group. For example, all the DSCs have Chairs who are elected by the whole House, so the list of Select Committees with Chairs who are so elected (in Standing Order No. 122B) includes as a single item all the Select Committees appointed under Standing Order No. 152.

Last updated and citation

Last updated

13:00, 24 April 2023

Cite as

Hansard Society (2023), How are Select Committees created in the House of Commons? (Hansard Society: London)

Latest / Highlights

News / Parliament Matters Bulletin: What's coming up in Parliament this week? 9-13 December 2024

Peers will begin scrutiny of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, while MPs focus on the Finance Bill. At Justice questions Suella Braverman will ask Ministers about the International Criminal Court, and Pat McFadden will give evidence to a Select Committee about the work of the Cabinet Office and the civil service. Lord Arbuthnot will question plans to overturn convictions of sub-postmasters affected by the faulty Capture accounting system, the predecessor to Horizon.

News / Football governance, fair elections, and fantasy reforms: Parliament Matters goes live! - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 59

Is the Football Governance Bill being filibustered in the House of Lords? Did the House of Commons just vote for electoral reform and proportional representation as the Liberal Democrats claim? And what are your fantasy parliamentary reforms? Welcome to a landmark episode of Parliament Matters - for the first time, we are recording in front of a live audience at the 60th anniversary conference of the Study of Parliament Group.

News / How a British student has schooled the US Congress - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 58

In this special episode, we dive into the fascinating world of US congressional procedure with Hansard Society member Kacper Surdy, the once-anonymous force behind the influential social media account @ringwiss. Despite being a 20-year-old Durham University student, Kacper has become a go-to authority on Capitol Hill’s intricate rules, earning the admiration of seasoned political insiders. With Donald Trump hinting at bypassing Senate norms to appoint controversial figures to his cabinet, Kacper unravels the high stakes procedural battles shaping Washington.

Briefings / The Assisted Dying Bill: A guide to the Private Member's Bill process

This briefing explains what to watch for during the Second Reading debate of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29 November. It outlines the procedural and legislative issues that will come into play: the role of the Chair in managing the debate and how procedures such as the 'closure' and 'reasoned amendments' work. It looks ahead to the Committee and Report stage procedures that will apply if the Bill progresses beyond Second Reading. It also examines the government's responsibilities, such as providing a money resolution for the Bill and preparing an Impact Assessment, while addressing broader concerns about the adequacy of Private Members’ Bill procedures for scrutinising controversial issues.

News / What's the point of petitioning Parliament? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 56

It’s Parliament Week, and Ruth and Mark are joined by researchers Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Richard Huzzey to celebrate an unsung hero of Westminster: the petitioning system. Once on the verge of irrelevance, this mechanism has seen record levels of public engagement, sparking debates and inquiries on an avalanche of citizen-driven issues. Together, they explore how petitioning adds value for both petitioners and MPs, and what has driven this surprising revival of a centuries-old tradition in the digital age.