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The parliamentary committees of the United Kingdom are committees of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Each consists of a small number of Members of Parliament from the House of Commons, or peers from the House of Lords, or a mix of both, appointed to deal with particular areas or issues; most are made up of members of the Commons. The majority of parliamentary committees are select committees. The remit of these committees vary depending on whether they are committees of the House of Commons or the House of Lords.
Select committees in the Commons are designed to oversee the work of departments and agencies, examine topical issues affecting the country or individual regions or nations, and review and advise on the procedures, workings and rules of the House.
Committee | Chair | Responsibility | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Name | Since | |||
Environmental Audit Select Committee | Toby Perkins | 2024 | Examines the contribution of government policies to environmental protection and sustainable development | |
Liaison Committee | Examines the work of select committees in general, as well as hearing annual evidence from the Prime Minister | |||
Public Accounts Select Committee | Geoffrey Clifton-Brown | 2024 | Examines government and parliamentary expenditure to ensure honesty and fairness | |
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee | Simon Hoare | 2024 | Examines the work and administration of the Civil Service, as well as reports from the Parliamentary Ombudsman | |
Arms Export Controls Committee | Composed of members of the Business, Defence, Foreign Affairs and International Development committees, examines exports of arms from the UK | |||
Regulatory Reform Committee | Examines draft legislative reform orders as proposed under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, as well as regulation in general | |||
Select Committee on Statutory Instruments | Examines all statutory instruments laid before the Commons | |||
Petitions | Jamie Stone | 2024 | Oversees petitions submitted to Parliament |
Committee | Chair | Responsibility | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Name | Since | |||
Administration Committee | Examines the services offered to members of the Commons, as well as services offered to the public | |||
Backbench Business Committee | Bob Blackman | 2024 | Determines business to be debated at certain times set aside for backbenchers | |
Finance Committee | Examines the budget and expenditure of the House of Commons, including the administration budget | |||
Committee on Standards | Alberto Costa | 2024 | Oversees Parliamentary standards and members' interests and conduct | |
Committee of Privileges | Considers specific matters relating to privileges referred to it by the House | |||
Procedure Committee | Cat Smith | 2024 | Examines the practice and procedures of the Commons in dealing with public business | |
Committee of Selection | Jessica | 2024 | Recommends the appointment of members to parliamentary committees |
The House of Lords appoint Sessional select committees to examine and explore general issues such as the constitution or the economy; the European Union Committee scrutinises EU action via its sub-committees; each session Special Inquiry committees are appointed to examine specific issues.
Joint Committees are committees formed to examine a particular issue, whose membership is from both the Commons and the Lords.
Occasionally, committees will be discharged. This occurs when existing committees are no longer required or have their responsibilities transferred to a different committee, effectively rendering the original committee void. It is more common, however, for committees to be discharged as a result of the abolition of government departments, for example the abolition of the Department of Education and Skills in June 2007 resulted in the abolition of the Education and Skills Select Committee shortly afterwards. [2]
All five domestic committees were abolished in 2005 and replaced by a single committee – the Administration Committee.
The House of Commons set up eight regional select committees in November 2008, whose members were first appointed on 3 March 2009. The committees were formed of five Labour members, as opposed to the nine members from various parties as was agreed in the original motion, due to the refusal of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to nominate any members as a sign of their opposition to setting up the committees. [5] The resolution that formed the committees expired at the end of the 2005/10 Parliament. The succeeding coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats chose not to renew it. [6]
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest institutions in the world, its origins lie in the early 11th century and the emergence of bicameralism in the 13th century.
A statutory instrument (SI) is the principal form in which delegated legislation is made in Great Britain.
The Lord Chancellor, formally titled Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. The lord chancellor is appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the prime minister. Prior to the union of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain, there were separate lord chancellors for the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. There were Lord Chancellors of Ireland until 1922.
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In British politics, parliamentary select committees can be appointed from the House of Commons, like the Foreign Affairs Select Committee; from the House of Lords, like the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; or as a joint committee of Parliament drawn from both, such as the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Committees may exist as "sessional" committees – i.e. be near-permanent – or as "ad-hoc" committees with a specific deadline by which to complete their work, after which they cease to exist, such as the Lords Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change.
The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, relevant to UK constitutional law. It provides for a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to take over the previous appellate jurisdiction of the Law Lords as well as some powers of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and removed the functions of Speaker of the House of Lords and Head of the Judiciary of England and Wales from the office of Lord Chancellor.
The reform of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, has been a topic of discussion in UK politics for more than a century. Multiple governments have attempted reform, beginning with the introduction of the Parliament Act 1911 by the incumbent Liberal Government. When the Labour Party came to power in the 1997 general election, the Blair government passed the House of Lords Act 1999. On 7 November 2001 the government undertook a public consultation. This helped to create a public debate on the issue of Lords reform, with 1,101 consultation responses and numerous debates in Parliament and the media. However, no consensus on the future of the upper chamber emerged.
The National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya is one of the two Houses of the Parliament of Kenya. Between 1966 and 2013, it served as a unicameral house. In 2013, it became the lower house when the Senate was reestablished.
The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 (LRRA) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was enacted to replace the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 (RRA). The Act was and remains very controversial, because of a perception that it is an Enabling Act substantially removing the ancient British constitutional restriction on the Executive introducing and altering laws without assent or scrutiny by Parliament, and it has been called the "Abolition of Parliament Act".
The Education & Skills Select Committee was a committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The official name was the House of Commons, Education and Skills Committee.
The European Union Committee was a select committee of the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Its terms of reference were "to consider European Union documents and other matters relating to the European Union", as well as "to represent the House as appropriate in interparliamentary co-operation within the European Union".
The Business and Enterprise Select Committee was a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the committee was to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and any associated public bodies.
The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee was a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the Committee was to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, any associated public bodies and the government office for science.
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The Business and Trade Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the committee is to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Business and Trade, and any departmental bodies.
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The Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
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Following the 2010 United Kingdom general election, the UK Government under the Cameron–Clegg coalition announced plans to curb public spending through the abolition of a large number of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations (quangos). This was styled in the national press as a "bonfire of the quangos", making reference to Girolamo Savonarola's religiously inspired Bonfire of the Vanities.
Federalism in the United Kingdom aims at constitutional reform to achieve a federal UK or a British federation, where there is a division of legislative powers between two or more levels of government, so that sovereignty is decentralised between a federal government and autonomous governments in a federal system.