The House of Commons Backbench Business Committee was established in 2010, following recommendations from the ‘Wright Committee’ on reform of the Commons. At this 15-year point the committee is reviewing its operation, and in this post Meg Russell and Hannah Kelly summarise their submission to the review, which is due to be published shortly. They conclude that the Backbench Business Committee was an important innovation, but that changes are needed to get back to the Wright Committee’s vision of it helping facilitate a more responsive and independent House of Commons.

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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.

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House of Commons procedure combines formal rules with conventions and precedents, providing the framework for conducting business and making decisions. Hannah Kelly, Lisa James and Meg Russell explain why it matters, how it evolves, and what future changes have been proposed.

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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.

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How can House of Commons reform be delivered in the next parliament? A new Constitution Unit report explores past approaches to developing and delivering changes to the Commons’ procedures, and the implications for current advocates of reform. Tom Fleming and Hannah Kelly summarise the report’s findings and conclusions. 

Background 

House of Commons reform is likely to be on the political agenda in the next parliament. Recent years have seen a growing number of books and reports highlighting problems with how the Commons works, and arguing that at least part of the solution lies in reforming its internal procedures. These reform proposals come against a backdrop of deep public dissatisfaction with parliament that suggests a need for MPs to explore ways of enhancing their collective reputation. The election of a new parliament on 4 July may therefore open a window of opportunity for Commons reform. 

Given this context, there has been surprisingly little recent discussion of how such reforms might actually be delivered. This matters, because a number of different institutional vehicles can be used for developing and drafting proposals for procedural change. Moreover, past experience suggests that how the reform process is organised matters for the outcomes of that process. Politicians with an agenda for Commons reform should therefore be giving serious thought to the mechanisms for delivering that agenda. 

Goals of the report 

Our new report therefore provides an evidence-based assessment of four different previous approaches to developing and delivering proposals for Commons reform: 

• Government initiative. Reform can come directly from government proposals, drawn up under the authority of ministers. Those ministers might respond to suggestions from elsewhere, and informally consult relevant MPs or select committees. But under this approach, the initiative for developing and bringing forward reform proposals lies wholly with the government. 
• Permanent backbench select committee. Proposals can instead be developed by a permanent select committee of backbench MPs with an ongoing remit to investigate procedural questions. The primary past and current case of this approach, and the one we study in our report, is the House of Commons Procedure Committee, which has existed in more or less its current form since 1997. 
• Temporary backbench select committee. The Commons can also appoint a backbench select committee with a temporary remit to report on a particular area or areas of procedure. We study the most recent such committee: the 2009–10 Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, better known as the ‘Wright Committee’ after its chair, the Labour MP Tony Wright. 
• Government-chaired select committee. The final approach is something of a hybrid: appointing a select committee to review Commons procedures, but having it be chaired by a government minister. The key template for this is the Modernisation Committee which existed from 1997 to 2010 under the last Labour government. This committee combined backbench MPs with frontbench spokespeople from the three largest parties, and was chaired by the Leader of the House. Having a cabinet minister chair the committee was unusual, and sometimes controversial, given that Commons select committees usually only include backbench MPs. 

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