By Stephen Holden Bates, Caroline Bhattacharya and Stephen McKay
Just like in Family Fortunes[i] but by chance rather than by design, 100 people responded to our survey[ii] about the prestige of different select committees (SCs) in the UK House of Commons (HoC).[iii]
From a score of one to five (with five being the most important), respondents were asked to rate the prestige of UK HoC SCs, permanent oversight committees of three main types: (i) Departmental, which scrutinise corresponding government departments; Domestic/Administrative, which are concerned with various aspects of the internal workings of Parliament; and Other Scrutiny, which focus on issues that cut across government departments.
The average committee received a prestige score of 3.03 with Departmental SCs receiving an average of 3.21, Domestic/Administrative 2.96, and Other Scrutiny 2.74. The highest ranked committee was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Treasury SC (4.48) with the lowest being the punctuationally-anachronistic Consolidation &c. Bills Joint Committee (1.94), which considers Bills that “bring together a number of existing Acts of Parliament on the same subject into one Act without amending the law”.
Figure 1 ranks SCs from most to least prestigious according to the results of the survey. There are perhaps some results which deserve greater attention than others. For example, we may wonder whether the Standards and Privileges SCs would be ranked so highly if the survey hadn’t taken place in the aftermath, or at the same time, as their high-profile inquiries into the behaviour and probity of various MPs, such as Chris Pincher, Matt Hancock, Margaret Ferrier and the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. We may also be a little surprised at the lowly rankings of the Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh Affairs SCs, perhaps not in relation to other Departmental SCs but maybe in relation to some of the Other Scrutiny and Domestic/Administrative SCs. Finally, those of us who are concerned about the climate crisis (which, let’s face it, should be all of us) may be perturbed by the fact that the three environment-related committees all appear in the bottom half of the table.
Table 1 shows the difference between a committee’s overall ranking and the ranking by different types of respondents. Results with a green font colour indicate a committee which is at the top of the list of those ranked higher by that type of respondent than the overall rankings; those with a red font colour indicate a committee which is the top of the list of those ranked lower. As can be seen, when it comes to departmental and other scrutiny SCs, MPs and their staff who answered the survey think that the International Trade, International Development, Scottish Affairs and, especially, the Levelling Up, Housing & Communities SCs are more prestigious than the average respondent, whereas Work & Pensions, Women & Equalities and the Human Rights Joint Committee are less prestigious. In addition, the Exiting/Future Relationship with the EU Committee is considered more prestigious by parliamentary staff and less prestigious by academics. Some interesting results can also be observed with Domestic/Administrative SCs. Both academic and parliamentary staff respondents believe the Procedure and Petitions SCs are more prestigious than MPs and their staff do, whereas the situation is reversed when it comes to Backbench Business.
| Overall Ranking | Committee | Difference between overall ranking & ranking by | ||
| Academics | MPs & their Staff | Parl. Staff | ||
| 1 | Treasury | 0 | -1 | 0 |
| 2 | Foreign Affairs | -2 | 1 | 0 |
| 3 | Public Accounts | 1 | -2 | 0 |
| 4 | Home Affairs | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 5 | Defence | -1 | 1 | 0 |
| 6 | Liaison | 1 | 0 | -1 |
| 7 | Health & Social Care | 0 | -1 | 1 |
| 8 | Privileges | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 9 | Standards | -4 | -4 | 0 |
| 10 | Public Administration & Constitutional Affairs | -1 | 0 | -1 |
| 11 | Education | 2 | -4 | -4 |
| 12 | Business & Trade | 0 | 1 | -1 |
| 13 | Exiting/Future Relationship with the European Union | -6 | 1 | 3 |
| 14 | Human Rights Joint Committee | 4 | -11 | 2 |
| 15 | Justice | 0 | -2 | -1 |
| 16 | National Security Strategy Joint Committee | 0 | 7 | -2 |
| 17 | Work & Pensions | 0 | -6 | 0 |
| 18 | Procedure | 4 | -8 | 4 |
| 19 | Culture, Media & Sport | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| 20 | Backbench Business | -2 | 2 | -3 |
| 21 | Energy Security & Net Zero | 1 | 0 | -1 |
| 22 | Transport | 1 | 2 | -4 |
| 23 | International Trade | -4 | 4 | 2 |
| 24 | Levelling Up, Housing & Communities | 0 | 10 | -1 |
| 25 | Environment, Food & Rural Affairs | -3 | 3 | 1 |
| 26 | Petitions | 3 | -5 | 6 |
| 27 | Science, Innovation & Technology | 2 | 0 | -1 |
| 28 | International Development | 2 | 4 | -3 |
| 29 | Women & Equalities | 0 | -8 | 0 |
| 30 | Environmental Audit | 0 | -6 | 3 |
| 31 | Administration | -7 | 3 | 1 |
| 32 | Finance | -2 | 3 | -1 |
| 33 | Selection | 2 | 1 | -4 |
| 34 | European Scrutiny | 2 | 4 | -1 |
| 35 | Northern Ireland Affairs | 2 | -3 | 3 |
| 36 | Statutory Instruments Joint Committee | -4 | 2 | 2 |
| 37 | Statutory Instruments | -4 | 4 | 1 |
| 38 | Arms Export Controls | 3 | -2 | 0 |
| 39 | Scottish Affairs | 4 | 5 | 0 |
| 40 | Regulatory Reform | -4 | 0 | 0 |
| 41 | Welsh Affairs | 2 | -1 | 0 |
| 42 | European Statutory Instruments | 5 | -1 | 0 |
| 43 | Consolidation &c. Bills Joint Committee | 1 | 2 | 0 |
Table 2 compares the rankings and scores of female and male respondents. A positive number indicates that female respondents scored/ranked that committee higher than male respondents and a negative number that they scored/ranked that committee lower. As can be seen from the lists, all committees which scrutinise policy areas stereotypically seen as feminine are ranked/scored higher by female respondents than male correspondents – Women & Equalities most notably – and only two committees which scrutinise policy areas stereotypically seen as masculine (Business & Trade and Environment, Food & Rural Affairs). Although, of course, no firm conclusions can be drawn from our survey results, they do contribute in a small way to important debates about who gets to define which committees are prestigious. For example, Franchesca Nestor is currently undertaking interesting work about whether influential measures of committee prestige used to rank US congressional committees fail to take into account the fact that different groups of legislators may have systematic differences in their views of which committees are prestigious and that, consequently, prestige is understood in relation to what the majority group (i.e. white, middleclass, male representatives) do and think. It would be intriguing to delve into this issue more deeply this side of the pond…
| Committee | Difference between Female & Male Ranking | Difference between Female & Male Scores |
| Women & Equalities | 8 | 0.87 |
| Energy Security & Net Zero | 6 | 0.61 |
| Northern Ireland Affairs | 6 | 0.6 |
| Human Rights Joint Committee | 4 | 0.58 |
| Levelling Up, Housing & Communities | 4 | 0.56 |
| International Trade | 4 | 0.53 |
| Regulatory Reform | 4 | 0.5 |
| Culture, Media & Sport | 4 | 0.45 |
| Welsh Affairs | 3 | 0.51 |
| Scottish Affairs | 3 | 0.44 |
| Finance | 2 | 0.47 |
| Business & Trade | 2 | 0.42 |
| Privileges | 2 | 0.38 |
| Health & Social Care | 2 | 0.36 |
| Education | 2 | 0.36 |
| Arms Export Controls | 2 | 0.32 |
| Petitions | 1 | 0.48 |
| Environment, Food & Rural Affairs | 1 | 0.43 |
| Public Accounts | 1 | 0.12 |
| International Development | 0 | 0.53 |
| Science, Innovation & Technology | 0 | 0.5 |
| Selection | 0 | 0.32 |
| European Statutory Instruments | 0 | 0.31 |
| Work & Pensions | 0 | 0.27 |
| Consolidation &c. Bills Joint Committee | 0 | 0.24 |
| Standards | 0 | 0.2 |
| Home Affairs | 0 | 0.09 |
| Treasury | 0 | -0.04 |
| Environmental Audit | -1 | 0.48 |
| Exiting/Future Relationship with the EU | -1 | 0.17 |
| Foreign Affairs | -1 | -0.06 |
| Liaison | -1 | -0.07 |
| European Scrutiny | -2 | 0.26 |
| National Security Strategy Joint Committee | -2 | 0.19 |
| Defence | -3 | -0.15 |
| Statutory Instruments Joint Committee | -4 | 0.17 |
| Transport | -5 | 0.18 |
| Public Admin. & Constitutional Affairs | -5 | -0.08 |
| Justice | -6 | 0.07 |
| Statutory Instruments | -6 | 0.05 |
| Procedure | -7 | 0.07 |
| Administration | -8 | -0.01 |
| Backbench Business | -9 | 0.14 |
[i] Or Family Feuds in the US, or Familien-Duell in Germany.
[ii] The survey was run as part of Stephen Holden Bates’ 2021-22 Parliamentary Academic Fellowship, which was funded by the UKRI/ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, and is part of on-going work looking at the impact of membership patterns on the work and outputs of select committees.
[iii] 100 people answered our online survey between 22nd May and 18th July 2023. The survey was aimed at experts, although we allowed anyone to answer, and was distributed via Twitter, the newsletter of the UK Political Studies Association’s Parliaments Specialist Group and through email contacts. Of the 100 respondents, 30 were parliamentary staff in the House of Commons, 15 were academics, 13 were MPs, 12 worked for MPs, and 10 were parliamentary staff beyond the HoC, with the other 20 compromising members of the public, journalists, people who work for think tanks, and ‘other’. Overall, 30 respondents were female, 63 were male and seven preferred not to say; no respondent said their gender was not the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. Seven respondents said they belonged to a group which was considered an ethnic minority in the country in which they worked, 86 said they did not belong to such a group and seven preferred not to say. Four respondents were removed for the analysis presented in this blog, as there were problems with their answers and/or they did not complete the survey properly.