Parliamentary committees of the United Kingdom


The parliamentary committees are sub-legislative organizations each consisting of 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.

House of Commons

Select committees

Select committees in the Commons are designed to oversee the work of departments and agencies, examine topical issues affecting the country or individual regions, and review and advise on the procedures, workings and rules of the House.
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.

Sessional

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.

Commons

Departmental

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. 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.

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