Departmental Select Committees and the Next Steps Programme

Abstract

Select committees are sometimes elevated into general panaceas for all problems confronting Parliament, and are held up as the only counterweight to the burgeoning power of the executive. It is therefore not surprising that some academic commentators should suggest that select committees offer one way of ensuring that constitutional conventions and the proprieties of ministerial accountability are preserved in the face of the Next Steps programme. Some suggest that the existing departmentally-related select committees should simply add scrutiny of agencies to their existing tasks: others that some new committee should be set up. It is the purpose of this chapter to give an objective summary of the work which departmentally-related select committees have already done with respect to Next Steps agencies, to set out in detail each committee’s work (see Annex): and to make an assessment of the factors which may have influenced committees and which will do so in future. (The role of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee is dealt with in Chapter 4 and that of the Public Accounts Committee in Chapter 6.)