September’s government reshuffle means that there is a new Leader of the Commons, and therefore a change to the leadership of the House’s Modernisation Committee. The new chair, Alan Campbell, might usefully study the committee’s 1997–2010 predecessor. In this post, Tom Fleming and Hannah Kelly summarise the key findings from a new article reviewing that earlier committee’s record. 

One of the lower-profile consequences of Keir Starmer’s recent reshuffle is that the House of Commons Modernisation Committee has a new chair. This new committee was set up after last year’s general election to review the Commons’ procedures, standards and working practices, and is chaired by whoever holds the post of Leader of the Commons. Starmer’s first Leader of the House, Lucy Powell, was the reshuffle’s highest-profile sacking, and she has been replaced by the former Chief Whip Alan Campbell. 

As Campbell gets up to speed with the Modernisation Committee’s work to date, he might usefully reflect on the experience of the earlier Modernisation Committee that was established under the 1997–2010 Labour government (but not retained by subsequent Conservative-led administrations). Our recent Parliamentary Affairs article revisits that earlier committee’s record, probing three common claims from previous literature. The article draws on (and extends) evidence initially presented in an earlier Constitution Unit report, and directly compares the original Modernisation Committee to the House’s usual vehicle for discussing procedural reforms: the backbench Procedure Committee. 

The article presents new evidence that largely confirms – with some additional insights – three main arguments about the record of the 1997–2010 Modernisation Committee. The remainder of this blogpost discusses each of those arguments in turn. 

The committee successfully delivered procedural change 

Past work has argued that the Modernisation Committee was a successful vehicle for delivering procedural changes, as its recommendations tended to be adopted by the House. This led to various – and sometimes significant – changes, including the creation of Westminster Hall debates, carry-over of bills, and greater use of evidence-taking in the legislative process. This record of success has been contrasted favourably with that of the Procedure Committee, which more often faces obstacles to having its proposals adopted. It is unusual for ministers to sit on select committees, let alone chair them. But as ministers largely control the Commons’ agenda, being chaired by the Leader of the House gave the Modernisation Committee more chance of parliamentary time being allocated to discussing its proposals. Meanwhile, the backbench Procedure Committee’s ideas often languish undebated. 

Our article provides fresh evidence of this pattern. We identified 350 recommendations from the Modernisation Committee (1997–2008) and Procedure Committee (1997–2022) that advocated specific procedural changes, and explored whether or not they were adopted. The resulting data shows the Modernisation Committee enjoying significantly more success, with 69.9% of its proposals being implemented compared to a much smaller (though far from negligible) 52.1% of the Procedure Committee’s proposals. Moreover, our evidence also confirms that the Modernisation Committee benefitted from greater access to the parliamentary agenda. Only 22.6% of its proposals were not put to the House for a debate and/or decision, compared to 41.2% of those from the Procedure Committee.  

This latter figure may seem surprising, given that the introduction of ‘backbench business’ in 2010 reduced ministers’ control of the Commons’ agenda and created time when backbench proposals – including procedural changes – might be debated. But even since 2010, many Procedure Committee reports have still gone undebated and unadopted. We thus explored how far backbench business has been used for discussing procedural reform, and found a notable change over time. In the 2010–15 parliament, several procedural recommendations from select committees were debated – and adopted – during backbench business. For example, in 2012 MPs agreed changes to their sitting hours through a process designed by the Procedure Committee. However, the three subsequent parliaments saw almost no attempt to use backbench business in this way. For a number of reasons that the paper explores in more depth, backbench MPs no longer appear to view this as a realistic or appropriate route for adopting procedural reforms. 

The previous Modernisation Committee therefore had a more consistent record of delivering procedural reforms than the Procedure Committee had then or since. This may be important context for understanding the government’s decision to appoint a new Modernisation Committee in 2024, given Lucy Powell’s explanation of that decision to the Committee on Standards: 

Having been a Member for 12 years, I have seen on many occasions … very good recommendations and reports of Committees go nowhere fast. The House of Commons has sometimes a tendency to work at glacial pace. If the Government of the day do not want to take the recommendations forward, they do not proceed to the Floor of the House or beyond, so this is about making me as Leader of the House more accountable to the House for recommendations that come from Committees like this, chivvying them along and making sure that they do get taken forward. 

However, it should be noted that ministers could solve that problem another way: by simply allocating time for MPs to debate Procedure Committee recommendations, regardless of whether those recommendations have government support. 

The committee did not prioritise making the Commons more ‘effective’ 

A second common claim about the Modernisation Committee – and one often meant as a criticism – is that it paid too little attention to questions of making the Commons more ‘effective’, i.e. enhancing MPs’ ability to scrutinise the government. This was often linked to the Leader of the House’s unusual role as chair, on the assumption that ministers will typically favour reforms that facilitate the swift passage of business over those that open them to more scrutiny and challenge. 

Our evidence partly confirms this picture. We found that only a minority of the Modernisation Committee’s recommendations for procedural reform – 45% – emphasised the goal of increasing effectiveness. Some might view this figure as evidence of the committee neglecting such issues. On the other hand, it is higher than the equivalent Procedure Committee figure of 29%. Moreover, the share of Modernisation Committee recommendations addressing effectiveness increased over time, from 28% in 1997–2001, to 49% in 2001–05 and then 60% in 2005–10. This variation partly reflected differences in the priorities of successive Leaders of the House during their time as chair. 

It would therefore be a mistake to assume that a government-chaired committee is an inherent obstacle to procedural changes that aim to strengthen the Commons’ capacity for effective scrutiny. Likewise, there is no guarantee that a wholly backbench committee will seek such changes. 

The committee was controversial 

Finally, past analyses have often suggested that the original Modernisation Committee became a focus of controversy (especially between the government and opposition) and that it failed to build broad support for its recommendations. This relates to the preceding argument, since much of the controversy arose from accusations that the committee pursued the interests of ministers over those of the Commons as a whole. 

We probed this argument by analysing how often the Modernisation Committee and Procedure Committee held formal votes (‘divisions’) when agreeing their reports, and how often their reports sparked divisions in the wider chamber. Our evidence strongly supports the existing view of the committees’ respective records in this area. The Modernisation Committee held divisions on 28.6% of its reports, and 53.6% of them triggered divisions in the House. The equivalent figures for the Procedure Committee are much lower, with 11.2% facing each kind of division. 

However, as we highlighted above, many reports from the Procedure Committee simply go undebated in the House, meaning there is not even an opportunity for them to be voted on. Indeed, the lack of debates is itself evidence of controversy, as it reflects a lack of government backing for the committee’s proposals. Given this, it is still reasonable to view the Modernisation Committee as more internally divided than the Procedure Committee. But in terms of wider support and disagreement, it might be more useful to view the committees as sparking different kinds of conflict. The Modernisation Committee’s access to the agenda meant it could trigger overt conflict that showed up in rows and votes on the floor of the House. Meanwhile, the Procedure Committee has often faced a subtler and less visible opposition at the earlier agenda-setting stage of the process. 

This post is a summary of a much more detailed article in Parliamentary Affairs, which is freely available to read and download here. The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), as part of the Unit’s ongoing project ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure’. 

About the authors 

Tom Fleming is an Associate Professor in the UCL Department of Political Science. He is currently leading the Constitution Unit’s ESRC-funded project ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure’. 

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

Featured image: “Committee Corridor” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by UK House of Commons.