Scenes of Scrutiny: How Evidence Practices Shape Oversight Capacity in the UK House of Commons

• In Event: Holding the Executive to Account in the 21st Century: lessons from the US Congress and the UK House of Commons

Abstract

The past two decades has seen a significant growth of the idea that policy decisions should be ‘evidence-based’ (OECD, 2015). These efforts by government, civil service and arm’s-length bodies (ALBs) have stimulated a wealth of studies explicitly concerned with better understanding the relationship between research, knowledge and policy. One often overlooked arena, however, are legislative institutions. While there has been a very recent interest in scientific advice to parliaments (e.g. Kenny et. al., 2017; Goodwin, 2015; Turnpenny, 2013), many questions remain unanswered – and even unasked. In the UK context, this is despite the fact that the UK Parliament has considerable influence on decision-making (Russell and Gover, 2017). Specifically, select committees are increasingly well-regarded and with increasing media coverage (Dunleavy and Muir, 2013; Russell and Benton, 2013), who publish reports following an evidence-gathering process. And yet, our knowledge of these processes and their influence remains thin. This paper explores this gap by asking how evidence practices in the House of Commons shape select committee inquiries and what factors affect the evidence-gathering process. It draws on extensive qualitative research, including participant/non-participant observation, over 43 interviews with MPs and staff, key texts, and a focus group with staff. The paper finds that evidence is crucial for the development of inquiries, but that everyday practices considerably constrain the diversity of witnesses (Geddes, 2018). Most importantly, there is fertile ground to further develop analysis of the relationship between knowledge claims and legislatures due to the key political, policy and public engagement roles that parliaments play.

Author

• Marc Geddes, University of Edinburgh