Political Agenda: Select committees may be less potent in this Parliament

Seven weeks after the election, the Commons is getting back to normal service, albeit slowly.

This week has seen the election for the chairs of the Commons select committees, which scrutinise the work of the various government departments.

Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves, who has won kudos as a stern inquisitor when ministers have appeared, is back unopposed at the helm of the business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) committee. Ditto Neil Parish at the environment, food and rural affairs committee.

But how long the chairs remain in post is open to question. The expectation in Westminster is that Boris Johnson will conduct a wide-ranging revamp of Whitehall that could see BEIS absorb the Department for International Trade, while splitting out energy and climate change into its own ministry again.

Or the climate change brief could be folded into Defra, which already handles efforts to mitigate the consequences of global warming, such as flood defences.

Meanwhile Reeves, who quit Labour’s front bench because she didn’t want to serve under Jeremy Corbyn, is widely tipped to return if Sir Keir Starmer wins the Labour leadership contest.

The select committees may be less potent than during the past decade of small or non-existent Conservative majorities, when they had more influence over the shaping of government policy.

However, a time when a ­government with a big ­majority is facing few challenges in Parliament is just the time when effective select committee ­scrutiny can prove its worth.