Alistair, Layla and Jamie, our three new Select Committee Chairs

So the new Chairs of the three Lib Dem led House of Commons Select Committeeshave been announced They were all elected unopposed.

Alistair Carmichael will chair the Environment, Food and Rural Affaiirs Committee.

Alistair said on his election:

I am honoured to be confirmed today as the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee. I look forward to meeting with the EFRA committee team in the coming days and indeed with the different organisations and experts with a role to play in this sector as we begin our work.

Whether on fishing, farming, water quality or pollution, there is no shortage of issues for the committee to tackle in the coming months. It will take some time for the remaining members of the committee to be appointed and our “to do” list is going to be lengthy, but I intend for us to hit the ground running.

Jamie Stone will head the Petitions Committee which holds debates on those Parliament e-petitions which get more than 100,000 signatures.

He said:

I am very honoured indeed to have been elected unopposed to be the Chair of the House of Commons Petitions Select Committee.

The work of this cross-party committee is important. When citizens add their names to a petition, they need to be confident that it will be properly considered and, if appropriate, raised in debates with the necessary Government Ministers. If citizens don’t have this confidence, then I suggest that this undermines trust in the way democracy works in our country.

Having chaired a committee in the Scottish Parliament in the past, I believe that I have the experience to help make the Petitions Committee work in the best possible way. I am very much looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to work in a field that is intrinsic to the proper functioning of democracy in the UK

Finally, Layla Moran follows up her highly successful period as Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus by becoming the Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee.

She said on her election:

With millions stuck on waiting lists, doctors and nurses overstretched and far too many elderly people trapped in hospital without a care plan. the role of the Committee as a critical friend of the Government has never been more important.

We look forward to seeing the work that our three Committee Chairs do. Having run an election campaign majoring on health, social care and clean water, it’s great that our MPs now have positions in which they can carefully scrutinise the Government’s work in these areas.

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2 Comments

  • Mark Frankel 11th Sep '24 - 8:55am

    Congrats all round. As Layla says, the committees act as a critical friend of the government. They concentrate the minds of ministers and civil servants. They play a vital role in upholding the reputation of Parliament.

  • Simon Horner 11th Sep '24 - 10:26pm

    The Guardian today (11 September) has an article by Tom Ambrose entitled: “Near clean sweep for Labour MPs in parliament select committee elections”. There is no mention of any of the three LibDems featured above, not even in the “Full List of Successful candidates” at the end of the article. Publishing a “full list” which is nothing of the sort is eseentially a lie by omission. It is very sad to see the Guardian succumbing to Trumpian values.

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