House votes to elect select committee chairs
17 June 2015
Members of Parliament are voting today to elect the Chairs of the 27 select committees of the House of Commons.
MPs will vote by secret ballot, using the Alternative Vote system.
This is only the second time in the history of the House of Commons that Members of the whole House have voted to elect select committee Chairs. The ballot opens at 10am and closes at 5pm today, with the results posted here tomorrow. Nominations for the posts closed at 5pm on Wednesday 10 June.
The full list of candidates can be found below, with links to each committee page where you can find further information on the candidates. Sole candidates listed below will be elected Chair.
Nominations received
- Sarah Champion
- Ian Mearns
- Barry Sheerman
Business, Innovation and Skills Committee
- Adrian Bailey
- Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods
- Iain Wright
Communities and Local Government Committee
- Clive Betts
Culture, Media and Sport Committee
- Damian Collins
- Damian Green
- Jason McCartney
- Jesse Norman
- Graham Stuart
- Richard Benyon
- Dr Julian Lewis
- Bob Stewart
- Neil Carmichael
- Tim Loughton
- Caroline Nokes
Energy and Climate Change Committee
- Angus Brendan MacNeil
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
- Neil Parish
- Huw Irranca-Davies
- Barry Gardiner
- Dr Alan Whitehead
- John Baron
- Crispin Blunt
- Richard Graham
- Daniel Kawczynski
- Nadhim Zahawi
- David Tredinnick
- Dr Sarah Wollaston
- Fiona Mactaggart
- Keith Vaz
International Development Committee
- Fabian Hamilton
- Albert Owen
- Yasmin Quereshi
- Stephen Twigg
- David Burrowes
- Jonathan Djanogly
- John Howell
- Sir Edward Leigh
- Robert Neill
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
- Laurence Robertson
- Helen Jones
- Nick Smith
- Charles Walker
- Helen Goodman
- David Hanson
- Meg Hillier
- Gisela Stuart
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
- Bernard Jenkin
Science and Technology Committee
- Nicola Blackwood
- Dr Philip Lee
- Stephen McPartland
- Stephen Metcalfe
- Dr Daniel Poulter
- Pete Wishart
- Kevin Barron
- Louise Ellman
- Andrew Tyrie
- David T.C Davies
Women and Equalities Committee
- Maria Miller
- Frank Field
- Kate Green
- Teresa Pearce
The next step after the election of Chairs will be the election of the other members of each select committee, also by secret ballot, by the parties which have an allocated number of seats on each committee. The number of seats each party gets on each committee is allocated in proportion to their representation in the House of Commons as a whole.
Background
The 2010-15 Parliament was the first which saw select committee Chairs elected by a secret ballot of all Members of the House of Commons, following the recommendations of the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons set up in 2009. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee report, on the Wright Reforms as they have come to be known, cited broad support for the idea that the introduction of election for committee members and chairs has been particularly important in reinforcing committees' credibility, authority and legitimacy