Chair of the House of Commons Governance Committee's introductory statement

We are a committee of 8 Members of Parliament set up by the House of Commons to consider the governance of the House of Commons including the future allocation of the responsibilities for House services currently exercised by the Clerk of the House and Chief Executive. We have been asked to reach conclusions and report them to the House of Commons by 12 January 2015.

We intend as far as possible to be transparent and open in our proceedings. We will take evidence in public and publish the transcripts on this website. We will publish submissions made to us in writing except where they have been submitted in confidence. We understand that some individuals and groups will prefer to talk to us in private.

Send a submission

We are inviting anyone with an interest in this matter to send us their views via the online written submission form. If you want your submission to be in confidence, please tell us. It would be helpful to receive submissions as soon as possible and certainly by 14 November.

We have to answer the specific question of how the responsibilities of the Clerk and Chief Executive should be allocated in future, but we are also interested in:

• The role of the House of Commons Commission and its relations with other committees of Members of Parliament and the House’s Management Board
• How to combine effective decision making with transparent accountability
• How to ensure that governance in the House of Commons matches best practice in the rest of the public sector
• How to develop the skills the House needs from its most senior staff
• What preparations the House needs to make now to be ready for the challenges of the future, particularly restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster

This is a demanding agenda to tackle in the time available to us. It is likely that at some point we will have to narrow our field of inquiry to focus on what seem to us to be the key issues, but we want to do so on the basis of the best possible understanding of the broader context within which those issues sit.

Thank you for reading this.

Further information

• About Parliament: Select Committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch committees