Seasoned MPs Are Annoyed By The Number Of Newbies Bidding To Chair Committees

MPs will today hold votes to decide who should chair numerous House of Commons select committees covering a range of policy areas.

Labour Government ministers and the the Tory shadow front bench are barred from standing, meaning it is a competition between back benchers. The results are set to be published as soon as Wednesday, but some announcements may spill over into Thursday.

As well as holding evidence sessions and producing reports in their policy areas, committees are one way in which Parliament can hold the Government to account by questioning ministers.

Heading into the votes on Wednesday, there is annoyance among more senior back benchers, particularly those on the Labour benches, at what they see as an abormally large number of newly-elected MPs putting themselves forward to chair committees despite being in Parliament for a matter of months.

Of the Labour MPs elected for the first time on 4 July, David Pinto-Duschinsky is vying to chair the work and pensions committee and Alice MacDonald is hoping to lead the international development committee. Similarly, Mike Tapp is going for the justice committee and Marie Tidball is bidding to chair the education committee.

“The newbies are all very sharp elbowed, we'll see if any of us get a look in at any,” a long-serving Labour MP complained to PoliticsHome.

One MP on the Labour left believed select committees could be used as a vehicle to shoehorn government loyalists to chair positions, shielding Prime Minister Keir Starmer from proper scrutiny. 

The principle of select committees is to reflect the broad position and composition of the Commons.

More than half of current crop were elected for the first time at the July General Election. With this in mind, new MPs with ambitions of chairing committees may argue it is perfectly reasonable for them to put their names forward.

But some more seasoned back benchers believe new MPs should wait their turn and gain experience of being a parliamentarian before going considering a bid to be a committee chair.

Those new MPs who are vying for the chair roles will argue they have relevant experience which goes beyond being in the House of Commons.

Pinto-Duschinsky, for example, who is hoping to chair work and pensions committee, was previously a Treasury adviser on poverty, jobs, benefits and disability. Tapp, a former veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who is going for the justice job, worked at the National Crime Agency.

MacDonald, who has international development in her sights, has worked for charities like Save The Children. Tidball, meanwhile, believes she can bring personal experience to the role of education committe chair having missed three years of her own education because of surgeries she needed.

Hannah White, Director of the Institute For Government think tank, told PoliticsHome having new MPs serve as committee chairs can be a "very good thing" for Parliament.

"As Sarah Wollaston and Rory Stewart [then Tory MPs] demonstrated in the 2010 parliament, there is no reason why a first term MP cannot be an effective select committee chair," she said,

"Although a new MP chair would be well advised to reflect and learn from the experience of his or her predecessors, it can be a very good thing to have an injection of energy and new thinking into the select committee system at regular intervals.”

Labour’s 167-seat majority mean it will head 70 per cent of all committees (18 of the 26). The Tories will get five and the Liberal Democrats three. Reform UK will not hold a single position on any select committee despite winning four million votes on 4 July. The Greens, likewise, will be excluded from the chair roles.

The leaders of five committees have already been confirmed as they went uncontested.

They include Tonia Antoniazzi for Northern Ireland, Caroline Dinenage for culture, media and sport, Alistair Carmichael for environment, Layla Moran for health, and Dame Meg Hillier for the Treasury.

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