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Election of Chair of Backbench Business Committee

22 June 2010 (updated on 22 June 2010)

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The ballot to elect the Chair of the House of Commons Backbench Business Select Committee will take place between 9am and 11am on Tuesday 22 June 2010. Nominations for the Chair of the Commons Backbench Business Select Committee closed on Monday 21 June 2010.

The Commons agreed to establish the Committee on 15 June 2010 following the report, 'Rebuilding the House', published in the previous Parliament and produced by the Reform of the House of Commons Select Committee.

Nomination Process

MPs seeking nomination must secure the signatures of not fewer than 20 nor more than 25 MPs, of whom no fewer than 10 shall be members of the candidate’s party and no fewer than 10 shall be members of any other party or no party. 

Election Process

The ballot will be counted under the Alternative Vote (AV) system.  MPs will receive a ballot paper with names of candidates listed in alphabetical order. They can then vote by ranking as many candidates as they wish in order of preference, marking one by the name of their first preference, two by the name of their second preference, and so on.

Any candidate who receives more than half the first preferences shall be elected. If no candidate is so elected, the candidate or candidates with the lowest number of first preference votes is excluded and their votes distributed among the remaining candidates according to the preferences on them.

If no candidate has more than half the votes, the process of exclusion and distribution is repeated, until one candidate has more than half the votes.

Election of Committee Members

The remaining seven members of the Committee will also be elected, with nominations being taken on Monday 28 June and the election held on Tuesday 29 June. This ballot will be counted under the Single Transferable Vote system.

Further information