The House of Commons has voted to establish a new Modernisation Committee. Tom Fleming and Hannah Kelly explore the opportunities and challenges facing this new committee, drawing on their recent Constitution Unit report on past approaches to delivering House of Commons reform.

Last week MPs voted to establish a new select committee, the Modernisation Committee, ‘to consider reforms to House of Commons procedures, standards, and working practices’. This proposal was brought forward by the Leader of the House, Lucy Powell, and was promised in the Labour manifesto.

The name implies similarity with the previous Modernisation Committee, which was appointed under the last Labour government between 1997 and 2010, and which we analysed in our recent Constitution Unit report, Delivering House of Commons Reform: What Works?. This blogpost therefore draws on that research to evaluate the opportunities and potential pitfalls facing the new committee.

A new Modernisation Committee

The committee will have 14 members – nine Labour MPs, three Conservatives, and two Liberal Democrats – to be nominated via a future motion from the Leader of the House. It will include the Leader of the House herself (who expects to chair the committee) and the Conservatives’ Shadow Leader, Chris Philp. Though Powell wasn’t explicit in last week’s debate about how other members of the committee would be selected, Philp indicated that they would be chosen by their parties’ whips.

The committee’s composition will therefore be unusual in two ways. First, House of Commons select committees usually only include backbench MPs. Second, since 2010 the members of most select committees have been chosen by their fellow MPs via intra-party elections, not by party whips.

Reviving an old approach?

This new committee has been modelled to an extent on the example of the 1997–2010 Modernisation Committee, which the Leader praised last week. One key similarity – beyond its name – is that the previous committee was also chaired by the Leader of the House, and included frontbench members of the two largest opposition parties (then, as now, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats).

However, the government’s plans for the new committee also indicate some quite important differences from its earlier namesake. First, the Leader of the House has particularly emphasised its role in reviewing the regulation of MPs’ standards of conduct and parliamentary working practices. This has been a prominent theme in press coverage, and in the Leader’s own explanation of the committee’s work. But this topic did not receive much attention from the old Modernisation Committee, which focused more on issues like the legislative process, sitting hours, and committees.

Second, and perhaps more significantly, the Leader has suggested that the new Modernisation Committee will not work like a typical select committee, instead acting more as a ‘clearing house, drawing on all the good work of other committees’. Quite how the government expects this to work in practice is still rather unclear, as we discuss below. But it seems to suggest a largely reactive, convening role. This contrasts with the original Modernisation Committee, which operated more like other select committees – while it of course drew on ideas from elsewhere, it held its own inquiries on topics of its choosing, gathered evidence, and regularly issued reports and recommendations.

An opportunity for delivering reform

This new committee offers one key opportunity for achieving procedural reform: its potential ability to get proposals agreed and implemented. Being chaired by the Leader of the House was a valuable asset for the previous Modernisation Committee, increasing its proposals’ chances of getting some kind of government backing. This can be crucial for securing reform, given that ministers control most parliamentary time in the Commons, and are backed by a majority of MPs (notwithstanding the convention for procedural decisions to be unwhipped).

Beyond this, combining frontbenchers and backbenchers from both sides of the House could allow the committee to become a venue for constructive discussion between all different parts of the Commons. This might help it to produce a package of reforms that can command broad support among MPs. But doing so will require the committee to navigate some significant challenges.

Potential pitfalls

The previous Modernisation Committee was controversial, largely due to its composition. Being chaired by a Cabinet minister was not just unusual; it also meant that the committee was criticised – particularly by opposition members – as being a vehicle for rubber-stamping proposals that came from, and so primarily benefitted, the government.

Our report therefore argued that the key challenge for any new Modernisation Committee would be to earn a reputation as an arena for genuine discussion across different parts of the House, rather than for simply approving government proposals. The Leader of the House has made a clear commitment to the committee building consensus, suggesting she understands the importance of this challenge.

However, the government’s early choices about the committee’s composition and role may make this consensus harder to achieve. Three issues in particular could hamper the committee’s ability to build broad support for its work and its eventual recommendations.

Small party representation

First, the committee will not include members of any of the smaller parties in the House, as was highlighted by several MPs during the debate on establishing the committee, and by subsequent news coverage. This raises the risk that smaller parties’ distinct procedural interests may not be reflected in the committee’s deliberations, and also means no MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies will be included in the committee. But as Lucy Powell highlighted, this is a consequence of the House’s usual approach to allocating committee places proportionately among parties. That approach is not set in stone, and could be slightly relaxed to add a member of at least one of the small parties (likely the SNP, as the fourth largest party) without making the committee an unwieldy size. Even so, the number and diversity of the smaller parties makes it unlikely that the SNP could speak for all of them. Given this, it is important that the Leader has committed to ‘regular and meaningful engagement with any and all parties represented in this House’.

Relationships with other select committees

Second, another prominent theme in last Thursday’s debate was how the committee will relate to other existing select committees, particularly the Procedure Committee and Standards Committee. Several MPs – including the Shadow Leader – raised concerns about the possibility of the Modernisation Committee cutting across the work of these specialised bodies. Lucy Powell sought to reassure the House that the committee’s role as a ‘clearing house’ for ideas from elsewhere will help to avoid this. However, it is not entirely clear how far the committee will be reactive (triaging others’ work), proactive (carrying out its own reviews, or commissioning work from other committees) or some combination of the two. On the one hand, the Leader has said that the committee ‘do not expect to be doing that work ourselves, or duplicating it’. But on the other hand, press coverage and the Leader’s own remarks suggest that ministers do have a quite specific agenda that they want the committee to investigate. Clarifying this ambiguity will be an important part of the committee’s early work.

These different potential approaches would each present distinct challenges for the committee. If proactively conducting its own reviews or commissioning work from others, it would need to avoid ‘turf wars’, and establish a constructive division of labour with other committees. If it is purely reactive, the committee will need to outline clearly its benefits as a ‘clearing house’. Otherwise, the existing committees may question why their proposals should be filtered through a new body (especially one chaired by a minister), rather than just being put to MPs for a prompt decision. After all, a key past obstacle facing the Procedure Committee has been the government’s unwillingness to schedule debates on its proposals. Ministers could remove that obstacle without setting up a new committee.

Selection of backbench members

Third, the way backbench members of the committee will be chosen may turn out to be a significant source of controversy. As noted above, it seems that the government expects members to be chosen by their parties’ whips, not by their fellow MPs in intra-party elections. Selection by the whips was the norm until select committee elections were introduced in 2010 with the goal of reducing the influence of party machines over the House’s committees and ensuring independent-minded voices were not shut out. Some kind of hybrid model would always have been needed for the Modernisation Committee, to directly appoint the parties’ frontbench spokespeople. But there is no clear reason why elections could not be held for the remaining backbench spaces.

The risk for the committee is that this approach gives it exactly the reputation that we warned about in our report, by making it seem more like a government-controlled (or frontbench-controlled) vehicle than an arena for genuine discussion. This could in turn make it harder for the committee to achieve the Leader’s goal of building a broad consensus for its reform proposals.

However, last week’s debate on establishing the committee featured almost no discussion of this point. This may be partly because the means of selecting members was not explicitly indicated in the motion put to MPs, or in the Leader’s explanation. MPs might reasonably assume that the Modernisation Committee will be included among the committees elected in the autumn, as only a passing reference in the Shadow Leader’s closing speech suggested that this might not be the case. If the committee is indeed to be appointed, ministers have therefore not explained their reasons for choosing this approach. One argument might have been speed, if appointing members allowed the committee to start work sooner. However, its members were not nominated before the House rose for the summer recess. Hence, these appointments could come at the same time as the election of most other select committees, highlighting to MPs the contrasting approach being taken for the Modernisation Committee. This could spell controversy ahead.

About the authors

Tom Fleming is a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics at UCL. He is currently leading the Constitution Unit’s ESRC-funded project ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure’.

Hannah Kelly is a Research Assistant at the Constitution Unit, working on the ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure’ project.

Featured image: Lindsay Hoyle (CC BY-NC 2.0) by UK Parliament.