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Accountability

Select commitees

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Page 1: Select commitees

Accountability

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Learning Objectives

• To understand how parliament holds the government to account

• To investigate the roles and powers of parliamentary committees

• To assess whether committees hold the government to account

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Committee System

• A large part of the work of the House of Commons and the House of Lords takes place in committees, made up of around 10 to 50 MPs or Lords.

• These committees examine issues in detail, form government policy and proposed new laws, to wider topics like the economy.

Select CommitteesJoint CommitteesGeneral CommitteesGrand Committees

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Select Committees

• Select Committees work in both Houses. They check and report on areas ranging from the work of government departments to economic affairs.

• The results of these inquiries are public and many require a response from the government.

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Joint Committees

• Joint Committees are committees consisting of MPs and Lords.

• They have similar powers to Select Committees. • Some are set up on a permanent basis, like the

Joint Committee on Human Rights. • Other appointments are for specific purposes,

such as examining draft proposals for Bills on subjects ranging from gambling to stem cell research.

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General Committees

• The main role of General Committees is to consider proposed legislation in detail.

• They include all committees formerly known as Standing Committees.

• This committee system allows faster processing of Bills and is unique to the House of Commons; the Lords meet as a whole House in this function.

• The committees reflect the political makeup of the House. The government always has a majority.

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Grand Committees

• Grand Committees give MPs the opportunity to debate issues affecting their region.

• The Commons has three Grand Committees which look at questions on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Grand Committees in the Lords debate Bills outside the Lords Chamber.

• The Committees function in a similar way to the Commons Chamber, with ministerial statements and an opportunity to question the Ministers.

• Every MP representing a constituency in the region is entitled to attend Grand Committee meetings.

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Task:

In your groups of 4 you will be assigned one type of committee. You must examine;• How do they work?• Membership• Roles & Powers• Examples

You will be expected to feed back your information to the rest of the class.

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Analysis & Evaluation

How effectively do Select Committees hold the government to account?

• Introduction• Effective because…• Not effective because…• Any other issues?• Conclusion

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Introduction

• Definition of Select Committees• Roles• Powers• Link back to question• Direction of argument

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Introduction

Select Committees scrutinise government departments; including their polices, activities and spending. They conduct enquires and publish reports, to which the government must respond. They can call for any witnesses and any documents. This, in theory, makes them a very powerful body with some arguing that Select Committees are the single most effective way in which parliament holds the government to account.

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Effective because…Ministers arguably become more accountable.

Regularly embarrass the government over things they’d rather were not brought up. They have produced a no of scathing reports including

The “Westland Affair” and “Arms to Iraq”They generate more information for MP’s and Parliament as ministers and civil servants can be forced to attend.

MP’s often work across party lines so there is more cooperation here.

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Examples:Arms to Iraq

• The Arms-to-Iraq affair concerned the uncovering of the government-endorsed sale of arms by British companies to Iraq, then under the rule of Saddam Hussein. The scandal contributed to the growing dissatisfaction with the Conservative government of John Major and may have contributed to the electoral landslide for Tony Blair's Labour Party at the 1997 general election.

• Following the first Gulf War of 1991 there was interest in the extent to which British companies had been supplying Saddam Hussein's regime with the materials to prosecute the war. Four directors of the British machine tools manufacturer Matrix Churchill were put on trial for supplying equipment and knowledge to Iraq, but in 1992 the trial collapsed, as it was revealed that the company had been advised by the government on how to sell arms to Iraq. Several of the directors were eventually paid compensation.

Westland Affair• The Westland affair was a British political controversy

of the 1980s which rocked the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. It related to the troubled British helicopter manufacturer Westland. Faced with economic difficulties, Westland was forced to contemplate accepting a buyout from another company or group of companies. An initial offer was made by the American firm Sikorsky, and another followed from a European defence consortium.

• The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the Westland board of directors favoured the American offer but some members of the cabinet, including Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, were concerned about increasing Britain's military dependence on the United States and supported the European offer in the hope that a substantial European defence industry could be sustained.

• These divisions within the government led to the resignation of Michael Heseltine as well as fellow cabinet member Leon Brittan. The dispute foreshadowed later more substantial divisions within the Conservative party over European integration and the party's traditional Atlanticist outlook

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Not effective because…Diverted attention away from the Commons, the Chamber has become lacking in numbers.

Select Committees often lack the time, resources, staff, expertise, and perhaps above all, the will to be more than a mild irritant to the government.

Often the government just ignores the criticisms and recommendations of the committees

2000 a joint report criticising arms sales to Zimbabwe

They cannot force people to speak

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Examples:Arms Sales to Zimbabwe• The government broke its own and the European Union's arms sales rules

by granting seven licences for the sale of Hawk aircraft spares to Zimbabwe in February 2000. The breach is regarded as so serious that the committee report recommended that future arms sales licence applications should be subject to prior scrutiny by four committees. The proposal, rejected by the Foreign Office, embarrassed the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who was battling to retain his ethical foreign policy within Whitehall.

• The granting of the licences undermined an EU resolution on arms sales to Zimbabwe - of which Britain was a co-sponsor - instituted because of the country's instability and its intervention in the Congo civil war. The committee's report said that the Hawks were used in Congo and that "there remains a clear risk that they might be so again".

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Any other issues?

The balance of party power on the committees reflects that of the Commons as a whole and so backbenchers of the governing party are usually the majority. They generally want to become front-benchers and so may be unwilling to fully criticise and make accountable the executive.

Reformers say they need bigger budgets, stronger powers, and more capacity to conduct research.

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Conclusion

How effectively do Select Committees hold the government to account?

Not effectiveRarely effective

Often effectiveMostly Effective

Somewhat effective

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EXAM FOCUS

What are Departmental Select Committees?How effectively do they preform their role of

scrutinising the Executive? (10 marks)

This is a 10 mark question: You will be awarded up to 7 marks for Knowledge and Understanding (discussion of a range of issues and quality of explanation) - You will be awarded up to 3 marks for your intellectual skills eg: ability to explain the nature of the arguments and ability to link them to the question asked