Parliamentary Select Committees have never been more important in shaping policy, nor as accessible to organisations who have the expertise and insights most needed by Government.

Social distancing has presented a perfect storm of challenges in Westminster. The traditional emphasis on face-to-face engagement in the chamber and tea rooms combined with a long-held resistance to incorporating new technology into proceedings has meant that the institutions of Government have had to evolve quickly or cease to function.

Credit then to the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, and his office who by in large were able to ensure the technological capabilities were in place for remote voting and digital debate during a time of national need. Controversially though, Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, mandated MPs to return in person to Parliament from June – putting to an end the hybrid virtual working model. Some MPs are now put in the invidious position of having to choose between representing their constituents and putting their health – and indirectly that of their families and local communities – at risk by continuous visits to the Capital City.

There is some relief then that Parliamentary Select Committees, the bodies that scrutinise each Government department’s work have been granted permission by the Speaker to continue to work and hold sessions remotely – at least until September. There is agreement that this will assist Committees to operate in the most effective way possible. Bernard Jenkin MP, chairman of the influential Liaison Committee, has said that it would ensure all MPs could participate “on a fair and equal basis during the current pandemic.”

Importance of Select Committees & how they have adapted during COVID-19

It is important that these Committees are supported to operate as effectively as possible within the circumstances because, as GK has outlined previously, the profile and independence of Select Committees is increasing, as is the volume of inquiries they undertake. The pandemic appears to be accelerating not reversing these trends. GK has seen first-hand how effective Committees have been in scrutinising the Government’s response and even influencing its policy agenda.

Virtual Inquiries are the most obvious change to the work of Select Committees, and this has influenced the behaviour of MPs and their interactions with those giving evidence. Circumstances dictate that MPs need to be focused and economical with their questions. Furthermore, there seems to be less time and opportunity for political grandstanding and point-scoring. However, this is also no doubt influenced by the sense of unity that comes from a national crisis – perhaps a manifestation of the more constructive tone being championed by the new leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer.

However, it is clear that not having to appear in person has lessened the fear factor for Ministers being questioned by Committee members. The ability to claim a Ministerial scalp or get the headline-grabbing ‘gotcha’ moment has been diluted.

For instance, the Prime Minister’s first appearance in front of the Liaison Committee last month exposed a lack of detailed knowledge, and his inability to take some subjects seriously, e.g. female representation on senior decision making bodies. He used a mixture of charm, diversion and bluster to get through some of the trickier moments.

Overall, he came through it relatively unscathed. However, the session would have been significantly more awkward with a higher likelihood of negative press had the Prime Minister been physically in front of the Committee, where they could see the whites of his eyes and be less constrained by time and internet connectivity.

How external organisations should engage

COVID-19 has demonstrated that the Government does not always have the in-house expertise to devise a strategy and ensure practical delivery of the solutions that will manage the virus and lessen the disruption. This has been demonstrated by the uneven success of antigen testing roll-out, coordinating test, track and trace and the availability of PPE.

The Government has consulted and asked for help because they have not had all the answers to this new and unfamiliar adversary. No.10 and Cabinet Office have worked overtime to understand how non-government bodies can support with solutions and triage their submissions. This refreshing openness from Government is now extending to medium and longer-term plans and solutions. Direct award of contracts also means that public-private collaboration can be agreed faster.

The proactive listening mode has also extended to Select Committees who have a duty to focus on the impact of COVID-19 within their remit. To do this effectively, they need to be briefed on the latest issues and challenges within sectors and to consult for potential solutions. As an example, The Education Select Committee has just finished collating responses on their mammoth inquiry into how “COVID-19 is affecting all aspects of the education sector and children’s social care system.”

The Committee is seeking views on short and long term disruption and the range of stakeholders who impacted and feeding in submissions is enormous – from nurseries to apprentice schemes and local authorities to care providers.

This pressing need presents golden opportunities for trade associations, the third sector and commercial organisations with the appetite to engage. Never has Parliament been so keen to learn and be advised by such a diverse range of stakeholders.

Organisations should be ambitious about making representations to Select Committees. GK recommends monitoring the most relevant Committees to your sector, taking advice at the earliest indication of a relevant inquiry or call for submission being announced. This allows time to liaise with committee clerks about the scope of an inquiry and provides sufficient time to agree on key messages, draft a written response and – if called to give evidence – begin developing Q&As and taking an assessment of the characteristics of the Committee.

GK are specialists in preparing organisations for the unique and challenging experience of providing evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee. Our training package is tailored for each client depending on their needs, objectives, and the scope of the inquiry. You can find out more about our offer here.

Only a year ago, British politics was dominated by the debate about Brexit. It says a lot for the impact of COVID-19 that since early March the virus and its huge economic, health and social impacts have relegated Brexit news to a few paragraphs on the inside pages of one or two Brexit-focused newspapers. But Brexit has in no sense gone away. The end of the transition period on 31st December 2020 looms ever closer, and Boris Johnson has made clear that in spite of COVID, he is not willing to contemplate an extension of this transition period. Boris Johnson may not wish to disappoint the Eurosceptic voters he was able to win over in the December 2019 election, and he may also be calculating that pushing Brexit through during this period of extraordinary economic turbulence will both mask any negative impacts and also put pressure on other EU member states (more nervous than ever about the state of their economies) to strike a pragmatic deal

To download the paper click here: Brexit Where next

“Some reshuffles are about changing policy directions. Others are about chopping out the Cabinet “dead wood”. This one was about control – specifically, increasing the control over government from 10 Downing Street, including Boris Johnson’s powerful adviser, Dominic Cummings. Out went some senior ministers who Number 10 didn’t consider to be sufficiently “on side”. But the most significant move to “take control” was the insistence that Chancellor Sajid Javid should either consent to joint policy making between Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street, or leave his post. Mr. Javid chose the latter option.

“Boris Johnson is not the first PM to discover in office that the Treasury can be far more powerful than the centre of government at Number 10. Number 10 has few human resources compared with the mighty Treasury, and limited direct options to shape economic and social policy. There are only three ways of resolving the power imbalance – for the PM to support a Chancellor he completely trusts and works with closely (Cameron/Osborne); for the PM to cede economic policy to the Chancellor but make occasional bids for influence (Blair/Brown), or for the PM to try to create a mechanism to force the Treasury to work hand in glove with his own advisers. The latter is now the option being pursued with the new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak.

“Just how much will the change in Chancellor result in a big change in policy – with extra public spending, and more borrowing to fund it? I doubt that the policy consequences will be quite as big as now predicted by many – Javid was already committed to extra borrowing to fund infrastructure spending, and the new Chancellor’s  CV hardly indicates that he is likely to turn into a big spender or pursue fiscally incontinent policies. What Mr. Cummings and Mr. Johnson clearly hope is that there will now be a much closer working relationship between Numbers 10 and 11 – and though Mr. Johnson cannot afford to lose another Chancellor anytime soon, the ruthlessness that he has demonstrated in this reshuffle will concentrate the minds of all senior ministers.

“What else is worth noting from the reshuffle? Certainly the appointment of Suella Braverman to the post of Attorney General – serious friction between the government and the judiciary seems likely. And while the fate of junior ministers usually doesn’t matter much, the departure of universities minister Chris Skidmore looks interesting. Skidmore was well respected by the universities sector, and appeared to take their “side” on many policy issues. Can we now expect a more radical approach to higher education policy and a revisiting of some of the Augar Review recommendations? This should be watched closely.”

As we wait for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats to complete their respective leadership elections, some other significant elections have taken place within the House of Commons recently. The chairs of the Commons select committees – the prominent cross-party groups of MPs that scrutinise the activity of each government department and other political issues – were confirmed at the end of last month. Alongside frontbench opposition MPs, committee chairs are some of the highest-profile politicians outside of the Government.

With a majority of the committees chaired by Conservative MPs, how important are these committees, and how will their new make-up affect how policy is made?

A chance for Tory sceptics to find a new outlet…

Of the 16 Conservative MPs who will chair a select committee in this parliament, only one – Julian Knight, the newly-elected chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee – supported Boris Johnson in last year’s Conservative leadership election. While that is not to say that all of the others are necessarily opposed to Johnson’s political project, it is an opportunity for well-known chairs such as Jeremy Hunt – the former Health Secretary and Johnson’s leadership rival, now chair of the Health and Social Care Committee – to challenge the Government, and sustain their influence and profile within the party and across the Commons.

…and for new MPs to make a name for themselves…

Being active on a select committee is one of the ways in which ambitious new MPs can begin to carve out an identity for themselves. Whether loyal Conservatives with an eye on junior ministerial posts later in the parliament, critics of the Government wanting to build their profile, opposition members looking to catch Ministers out or subject-specialists wanting to contribute their experience, committee membership is one of the best opportunities for new MPs to make themselves known and advance their parliamentary careers. If you are looking for a parliamentary advocate for a particular cause or interest, understanding these dynamics is important.

Will select committees provide meaningful parliamentary opposition to the Government?

As well as chairing many of the committees, a large majority for the Conservatives means that they also hold sway over the broader committee memberships, as each party’s share of committee members is proportionate to the overall size of their parliamentary party. This means that while all MPs will take their committee responsibilities seriously in terms of providing scrutiny of government policy, in many cases it may be reasonable to assume that a significant proportion of members of any given committee are likely to be at least sympathetic to the aims of the Government.

There is also one important committee chairmanship that is yet to be decided: that of the Liaison Committee, membership of which comprises the chairs of all other committees and frequently calls the Prime Minister to give evidence on a range of areas of government policy. Outside of Prime Minister’s Questions, this should be one of the main ways in which MPs can scrutinise Johnson, but he has not yet appeared in front of the committee during his time in Downing Street and its new chair is unlikely to be elected for several weeks, further delaying the Prime Minister’s debut in front of the committee.

Select committees can be powerful and influential stakeholders in the policy-making process but, like many other political and parliamentary actors, their role is likely to be different with an executive that has a large Commons majority. For businesses thinking about engaging with MPs and the parliamentary process, understanding these changes is essential.

The 2019 general election has led to several big changes in how Parliament and Government will do business over the next five years. What are they, and what do they mean for businesses affected by policy and regulatory change who want to make their voice in Westminster and Whitehall?

The Conservatives’ victory in December – securing them the largest parliamentary majority of any single-party government for more than a decade – means that the way in which businesses engage with government and Westminster politics has to evolve. While ‘getting Brexit done’ is a natural priority for Boris Johnson, there is a host of domestic policy issues that his administration has the political capital to address over the course of the next five years. This will be dictated to some extent by the shape of the Conservative majority, having taken seats in the North and Midlands that the party has not won for decades; there will be a prioritisation of these parts of the country as they seek to retain these seats at the next election, including further discussions about devolution and new infrastructure, as well as relating developments in education, health and other areas to the concerns of voters in these constituencies. The emerging policy responses to this will be at the forefront of the minds of savvy businesses who are engaging with government and political stakeholders.

While accounting for the importance of new MPs’ priorities, the scale of the Conservatives’ victory last month also means that the overall balance of power between Government and Parliament shifts again. A minority administration attempting to push through contentious Brexit-related bills had meant that Parliament had effectively seized control of the legislative agenda a much greater extent than in recent times; with a healthy majority, the Government will rarely have to worry about finding the path of least parliamentary resistance and will instead feel emboldened in putting radical policies before the House of Commons. Individual parliamentary champions for specific causes might still hold some sway around issues that chime with the Government’s own priorities; there may be less space for opposition MPs to influence the agenda, but there are likely to be ambitious new Conservative MPs with designs on junior ministerial posts speaking up from the backbenches. If seeking to engage with MPs and peers, this new dynamic will be an important consideration for businesses.

It is not only the size of the majority in Parliament that will influence the Prime Minister’s policy agenda and approach to governing. Johnson’s very different style of leadership from his predecessor will come to the fore over the coming months, with Secretaries of State and junior ministers taking more direct responsibility for leading the charge on their respective policy areas and less of a ‘command and control’ approach from Downing Street. Alongside this, there is also the possibility of wider changes to how the machinery of government works as consequence of Johnson’s victory. Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s key aide, and Rachel Wolf, author of the Conservative election manifesto, have both called for radical structural changes to be made to the civil service – not just in Downing Street and the cabinet, but across Whitehall. These ongoing shifts in decision-making and accountability within government will mean that businesses need to find new and different ways of engaging as they seek to understand where individual ministerial priorities lie and how a reshaped civil service will deliver them.

GK has worked for more than a decade with businesses to help them understand and engage with policy-makers. For more information on how we could help your business, please get in touch emma@gkstrategy.com.