During a debate on the Green Paper: “Rights and Responsibilities: developing our constitutional framework”, John Bercow calls for the House of Commons to appoint the members of Select Committees that are set up to scrutinise the Executive, rather than the current situation where the members are appointed by the Executive itself.

John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con): Surely one of the fundamental rights of the British people is to a Parliament that has the freedom independently to scrutinise the Executive. On the assumption that the Secretary of State can agree to that rather prosaic proposition, when will the Executive stop appointing the members of the Select Committees that scrutinise them and instead allow right hon. and hon. Members to elect the members of those Committees for themselves?

Mr. Straw: The process of the Committee of Selection is subject to the endorsement of the House. We thought about this when I was Chairman of the Modernisation Committee, and the honest truth is that the only other possible system would almost certainly produce the same results. There are plenty of individual Members who have particularly strong views and still sit on Select Committees.

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