Promoting Parliamentary Oversight through Mini-Publics: An Analysis of UK Cases

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

Abstract

The case has been made that Parliamentary Committees could make effective use of mini-publics to enhance their epistemic, representative, scrutiny, and deliberative functions. The idea being that the recommendations from the mini-publics feed into the committee process in order to enhance their oversight of government departments (Hendriks & Kay 2017; Setala 2017). Hendriks and Kay (2017) argue that because committees identify and frame policy issues they are an ideal venue for public engagement. Furthermore, they are ‘the principal mechanism through which the House of commons holds the executive to account’ (Brazier & Fox 2011: 354). Public trust in select committees is also higher than for other Parliamentary bodies due to them being evidence-based and less partisan (Brazier & Fox 2011: 368). Indeed, Setala (2017) argues that linking Parliamentary Committees with mini-publics could make them even less partisan. Some of the suggestions for committee reform in the UK include greater transparency and accountability (Brazier & Fox 2011: 361) and more mechanisms to enable citizens to contribute to (The Speaker’s Digital Democracy Commission 2015) which mini-publics could facilitate. Currently, they tend to receive evidence from quite a narrow range of sources (Pedersen eta al. 2015). Linking mini-publics with Parliamentary Committees could diversify the evidence base and facilitate public scrutiny of the inputs and outputs of the committees. This paper analyses two cases of mini-publics used by Parliamentary Committees from the UK, from the House of Commons and the Scottish Parliament based on interview data with relevant members, staff, and government officials to assess the extent they contributed to enhanced oversight.

Author

• Stephen Elstub, Newcastle University