Order, order. Welcome Prime Minister. It's your first appearance before the Liaison Committee.
The Select Committee is a group of members from all parties, elected by their fellow members, to carry out the scrutiny function. of the House of Commons. Most of them are linked to a particular government department. They scrutinise a department, like the Treasury, like the Justice Department.
Some are overarching, like environmental audit or public accounts. But they are the scrutiny function of the House of Commons and the mechanism for exercising it. What do you say to the argument that's been made that that might be an inducement to families to break up? Reasons for break-up are pretty wide.
It's a real opportunity to get into the detail and really to look at how the laws that we're passing... will make a difference in practice to people's lives. And that's really different from a lot of the work in the Chamber, which is much more about making a political point. It's because he went too far and too fast and insisted on 20% cuts in policing. Well, he's wrong.
The Association of the Chief Police Officers aren't talking about frontline officers, so he's simply wrong about that. The debates we hold in the Chamber don't really last long enough for us to examine in any great depth. A select committee can devote several weeks, if not months, to examining a particular issue.
We also have powers that allow us to take evidence from anybody that we choose, and then we usually produce a report with recommendations which hopefully the government will take up. Most elect committees have 11 members and those 11 members reflect the party political balance in the House of Commons. The chair is elected by MPs across Parliament and then individual parties elect their own members of the committee by party so I was elected by all the other Labour MPs.
Behind the scenes the clerks do lots of preparation work for the committee and they help them to scope the inquiry to digest the evidence it's received. They help the committee prepare for the oral evidence sessions and then they help them with the drafting of their report. Everything you've said seems to argue that you put passengers first, but passenger focus, they say, quotes, a culture of looking after passengers when things go wrong is not yet second nature in the rail industry. Sometimes it's the news agenda can drive what select committees look at. Sometimes it's the legislative programme of that particular department.
But select committees can sometimes pluck things out of the air where they might want to be much more proactive, that they look at an issue the government is not planning in legislating for, but... Perhaps they think that the government should be. First of all, can I thank you for not only giving myself, but giving my deceased mum the voice that she desperately needed.
Once a committee has decided on a topic, it will draft a list of questions. Those questions are then publicised widely in a call for evidence. The main way that committees announce their enquiries is by putting out a press release and very often the specialist press will pick it up. We do have a website and I use Twitter and I use Facebook so we have moved into the 21st century in terms of trying to get it out there to people.
Some of the people who have written in and submitted written evidence will be invited to give oral evidence. There are usually half a dozen evidence sessions and they're asked questions by the committee based upon the evidence that they have submitted. Could I just begin by asking you, is Barclays too big to fail?
No, we don't think so. There's some real serious work done in select committees. It's an important part of the parliamentary system.
does provide a huge amount of information to Parliament and the broader public. The select committees are much more consensual, they work much more across parties to try to make sure that whatever we may think of the politics behind our law, that law works as effectively as it possibly can. That's very different from the way that we are when we're meeting each other in the debating chamber.
There's no doubt that whilst we will try and delay asking on any cost increases to our customers there are substantial cost pressures. They can do a lot more than a Member of Parliament can do on the floor of the House. In particular, they can get in public officials, civil servants, members of the public, people who are affected by the policies of departments, and question them in detail, as well as questioning ministers. Ministers in front of a select committee can't get away with a glib political answer.
They're being asked questions by people who have quite a bit of knowledge of the subject area, and they've got to give answers which... which deal properly with the points raised. Take George Osborne's first budget.
We made clear as a committee we were going to look at the distributional impact of the budget and in unprecedented detail. This is our first opportunity to cross-examine the Chancellor. As I say, we're grateful to you for coming along. As a result, George Osborne...
Osborne responded by giving a lot more detail, not only in the budget, but then also when he came before us. And there were some pretty vigorous and detailed exchanges about the distributional impact of the budget in that hearing. everybody gained from that experience.
It certainly enabled a wider public to find out exactly what was going on in the budget. The government was forced to explain its actions. Well, my overall objective, of course, was to create a set of measures that were broadly progressive. One of the things about the Select Committee is that we follow the evidence. We don't just pluck things out of the air.
It's not just because one person has said something that we take that at face value. We do interrogate the evidence. We do make sure that we get a range of evidence from the public.
from different opinions and we need to follow where that evidence leads us. How prepared was the government for the Volcanic Ash incident? One of the things that we looked at was how governments respond to emergency situations.
We decided we'd look for... a number of topics, swine flu, the volcanic ash issue, a cyber security attack, and the impact of solar flares. We weren't drilling down into the detail of the science. We were looking at the preparedness of government departments to deal with such an emergency and making sure that if an event did occur structures were properly in place to mitigate the effect of the emergency.
I think there was a gap because there was not a statistician member of SAGE. I was very impressed that although apparently many of the members didn't have have a direct scientific background, their grasp of issues was really very astute. How evidence-based was the government's reasonable worst case scenario for swine flu? I think the broad thrust of the report will be accepted and I'd be very surprised if there isn't a letter from the minister confirming that government is on board with most of the recommendations we're making.
The MPs are saying that scientists need to be closer. I want to tell you about a new inquiry that our committee has launched into the governance of professional football clubs to explain why we want your input. We're looking at the whole issue of the way in which football is run.
The reason the inquiry came about... out is because there is a great deal of concern, particularly at the number of clubs that are suffering from high levels of debt, many have got huge financial problems and the government itself had said at the election that it wanted to try and encourage more supporter involvement and so our inquiry... very much is what improvements could be made and how the government can take forward its commitment that it made.
Obviously we're centred in Westminster, but I've always felt that it's important, if possible, that select committees should get out and visit other parts of the country, both so that we can demonstrate what we're about and also because you do get a different point of view. So we've come to Burnley, which is a representative club in the Football League. What happens is it gets November, December in the last year of a contract. Hmm. the aid and said it's just down on here, you can walk away for nothing.
Our organisation Supporters Direct represents 170 supporters trusts who are interested in supporter involvement in football clubs, football governance, football finances, we've been campaigning on these issues for 10 years and the committee invited us to give oral evidence after we submitted our own written evidence and so it was our chance to get the fans view over to the committee as they consider these issues. From a players perspective would that be attractive or would it be risky? Well I think if you look at the current turnover a large proportion of it is obviously made up in salaries. I thought their questions were with integrity, I thought they were with interest, I think they genuinely care about the game, they have a passion about football which was very good from grassroots to the very top of the game. I actually enjoyed it immensely as an experience because if you're passionate about these issues you've been given a platform to speak to some very important people who can make some pretty big decisions and it's your opportunity to...
to make your point. It's all very well saying we want to leave it to the discipline of the club to manage its own risk. The record says that English football clubs collectively are pretty appalling judges of risk. You know these are influential individuals and the fact that they are talking about this area it means that it's something that they consider to be important.
We are going to be making recommendations to government. We've already had the sports minister say that he's waiting to see those before making up his mind what he should do. So I hope that they will prove very influential.
The price of coming to give evidence here today, the clerks were very helpful. They told us a long time in advance when the meeting we would be likely to be called before so you can clear your diary. They were very good at making it clear what the expense and remuneration was so you don't have to worry about how much it's going to cost.
cost you to get there and that's quite reassuring for often small organisations with not very big budgets. And then nearer the time the clerks gave us an indication as to what the committee's line of questioning to us specifically might be. So the support was extremely helpful for someone like myself who's never done anything like this before.
before. A good witness is someone who comes knowing what he wants to say, says it, and then when he's asked questions, answers them directly and with precision, rather than flannelling or playing for time or hoping to get through the two hours if that's how long they're up for. It's not courtroom questioning, and doesn't need to be.
You may be simply trying to find out from people who work in a particular area what it's like for them. So you don't want to treat them like hostile witnesses. It was an experience that I welcomed, I enjoyed.
I think clearly the committee members were well informed and were very measured, very calm, very informal in their questioning. If you're a witness, I think the thing to think about is what would I like this committee to remember I had said when I've walked out of the room? What's the thing I would like them to go away having become aware of that perhaps they hadn't really thought about before? I prepared in the sense of trying to get down the points that I wanted to make to a single sentence or at most two sentences and and I knew which points in advance I wanted to try to to get in as part of the answers. It's a tremendous opportunity for people who've got something to say to say it to the people who can actually make a difference and to get it on the record and if you're invited to give evidence I'd always say to witnesses grab it with both hands.
you After the report is published, the government have to respond to the committee's conclusions and recommendations within eight weeks. That response is published, it's put in the public domain, and depending on the nature of that response, the committee can decide whether or not... wishes to investigate any issues further. Well thought through enquiries can go a long way to setting the agenda around which decisions are taken.
I like to think that the Treasury Select Committee which I chair... has had a hand in influencing the structure of the legislation for the creation of the new body called the Office of Budget Responsibility. Rather than wait for the government to produce their legislation, we sat down and worked out what we thought it should contain and published a report. And I'm pleased to say that in large measure, the legislation that the government finally came out with reflects the proposals that we made in that report. I know that the Treasury Select Committee have raised a number of concerns one of those being the location of the OBR, and also whether the veto over the chairmanship that the Select Committee has will be on the face of the Bill.
Yes, the veto which is given to the Treasury Select Committee, I think this is the first of its kind in this Parliament, is one that will be enshrined in the legislation. I've always found it amazing just how often people from the dispatch box refer back to Select Committee reports and see what some of the recommendations might be. and you can get people on the back benches, even from the government side, saying, you know, if it's a good enough recommendation, why is the government not doing that?
So it can be used to push the government in the right direction. Some time ago, the committee which I chair issued a very critical report about CAFCAS, which is the body that is meant to support children when they're involved in court proceedings about family law. And the result of that very critical report was that...
the entire board was asked to resign and a fresh start was made. So you can get quite a dramatic response to a committee report. Committees are good for government when government is forced to explain its actions and when by doing so they improve their act.
If they're not accountable to anybody, then in the end you'll get poor quality government, slapdash government. They show the parliamentary process at its best. Thorough, thoughtful, reasoned, not all about political point scoring, really concerned for the real-life impact of the laws that we pass in Parliament. A lot of the time there is a rewarding sense that some things are changing because of the work that the committees do.
In terms of the scrutiny of the executive, select committees are vital. I think they do a really important job and I think Parliament would be poorer without them and the government might go off the hook easier if they didn't exist.