The Wright Committee Reforms, Select Committee Elections, Pre-Legislative Scrutiny, Public Bill Committees, Delegated Legislation and Its Inadequate Oversight, and the Gap Between What Parliament Should Do and What It Does
Parliamentary Scrutiny: The Function That Is Always Being Strengthened and Is Never Strong Enough
Parliamentary scrutiny of the executive — the process by which Parliament examines what the government is doing, why, and with what effect — is simultaneously the most important function that Parliament performs and the one that the government, which controls the parliamentary timetable, has the most structural interest in limiting. The history of parliamentary scrutiny reform is therefore the history of a continuous negotiation between those who want Parliament to be a genuine check on executive power and an executive that is constitutionally committed to the principle of parliamentary scrutiny while being practically committed to managing its inconveniences. The negotiation has produced genuine improvements. It has not produced a Parliament that holds the executive to account at the level the constitution theoretically requires.
The Wright Committee Reforms: The Most Significant Scrutiny Improvement of the Modern Period
The Reform of the House of Commons Select Committee, chaired by Tony Wright MP and reporting in 2009, produced the most significant changes to parliamentary scrutiny in decades. Its principal recommendations — that chairs of select committees should be elected by the whole House rather than appointed by party whips, and that committee members should be elected by their party groups rather than chosen by whips — were implemented from 2010. The effect on select committee independence was substantial: elected chairs, whose positions depend on the whole House rather than party patronage, proved significantly more willing to pursue lines of inquiry that party leadership found inconvenient. The Public Accounts Committee, the Home Affairs Committee, the Treasury Committee, and others produced reports and hearings under the post-Wright system that would have been considerably less challenging under the whip-appointed system they replaced.
The House of Commons committees website provides access to all committee reports and hearings. The post-Wright select committees have produced some of the most significant accountability journalism in British public life — the PAC’s examinations of tax avoidance by multinationals, the Home Affairs Committee’s examination of the Windrush scandal, the DCMS Committee’s examination of the Azeem Rafiq affair in cricket — in ways that the pre-Wright system, with its whip-managed membership and less independent chairs, would have been less likely to produce.
The Delegated Legislation Problem: Where Scrutiny Goes to Die
If select committees represent the improvement in parliamentary scrutiny since 2010, delegated legislation represents its most persistent failure. Approximately 3,000 statutory instruments are made each year — more than a hundred times the number of Acts of Parliament — and the vast majority receive scrutiny that ranges from minimal to non-existent. The negative resolution procedure — the most common form, under which an SI takes effect unless Parliament votes against it within forty days — essentially inverts the principle that Parliament should approve law: Parliament must vote against rather than for, and the government, controlling the timetable, can ensure that there is rarely sufficient time and attention for a vote against to be organised. During COVID-19, the government used statutory instruments to impose the most significant restrictions on civil liberties in peacetime British history with parliamentary scrutiny that the Joint Committee on Human Rights described as inadequate — measures affecting everyone’s daily life made with less parliamentary oversight than the statutory instrument changing the speed limit on a particular road.
Pre-Legislative Scrutiny and Its Selective Application
Pre-legislative scrutiny — the examination of draft bills before they are formally introduced — produces consistently better legislation than the process of amending bills on the floor of the House after introduction. This is one of the most robust findings in the academic and practitioner literature on legislative quality. Governments apply pre-legislative scrutiny selectively: bills whose policy complexity genuinely benefits from early examination and whose political timetable allows it; and not bills whose political urgency, controversial content, or desire to limit amendment opportunities makes early scrutiny inconvenient. The pattern of its application tells you more about the government’s political priorities than about its assessment of which bills need most improvement.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
The Wright Committee (2009) recommended and achieved elected select committee chairs and elected committee members — the most significant scrutiny improvement of the modern period. Post-Wright committees have produced substantially more independent scrutiny, including the PAC on tax avoidance, the Home Affairs Committee on Windrush, and the DCMS Committee on the Azeem Rafiq case. Approximately 3,000 statutory instruments are made annually, most receiving minimal parliamentary scrutiny; the negative resolution procedure inverts the approval principle. COVID-19 restrictions were imposed through SIs with scrutiny the Joint Committee on Human Rights described as inadequate. Pre-legislative scrutiny produces consistently better legislation but is applied selectively based on political rather than policy criteria.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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