Select campus:UKDubai
University of Birmingham
Menu

How to respond to select committee inquiries

What are select committees and select committee inquiries?

Select committees are groups of parliamentarians whose role it is to examine a specific area of government or national policy. They can be formed in the House of Commons, the House of Lords, or as joint committees, and members have a range of political viewpoints. Learn more about how select committees work.

Responding to select committee inquiries is one of the most straightforward ways to demonstrate the impact of your research. Engaging in this process is a great way to get started when looking to achieve impact and influence policy making.

Finding open inquiries

  • The CoSS Public Affairs team send out relevant inquiry opportunities to academics and researchers on our radar. To receive these opportunities, please register with our academic database.
  • The central public affairs team also send a regular Influencing Policy Bulletin email with opportunities. To be added to the mailing list, contact publicaffairs@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

Ways to engage with select committees

There are two ways to engage with Commons Select Committees.

  1. Respond to a call for evidence. More details on this process can be found below.
  2. Become a specialist adviser. Committees have power to appoint specialist advisers, who provide outside advice. These positions are often academics and they support the clerk as the head of the committee’s staff. If you develop a strong relationship with a committee and are an expert in the desired area, you can proactively ask a committee clerk if they would consider you as an official adviser.

Submitting written evidence

  1. Once you’ve found an inquiry relevant to your research, review the list of questions the committee has published. Note: Only respond to the questions that are relevant to your work. It is fine to leave some questions blank!
  2. Make note of the closing deadline and ensure you have enough time to format your response.
  3. Ask clarifying questions. If you need any clarification on the scope of the inquiry or the questions, you can contact the committee clerk who will be able to provide advice.
  4. Write your responses and reach out for a second set of eyes if needed (hint: CoSS Public Affairs is always happy to help!)
  5. Submit your response before the deadline, then let the CoSS Public Affairs team know and send a copy of your submission to H.Bradley.3@bham.ac.uk or n.j.i.brown@bham.ac.uk.

Tips and tricks for submitting written evidence

  • Be direct and succinct: Answer questions directly, include references/footnotes with hyperlinks where possible, and keep answers as succinct as possible.
  • Write for the public: Your response may be published and shared, so be sure that anything you write is suitable to be released to the public.
  • Mirror the inquiry’s language: Maximise the impact of your responses by using the same terms and mirroring some of the language used in the inquiry outline. This helps to show the relevance of your work.
  • Select committee inquiries receive a lot of responses. Make your response stand out by:
    • Considering which elements of your research are most relevant to the questions and ensuring relevance is clear within the first few sentences. Frame what you write in terms of how it relates to the questions.
    • Offering practical, achievable recommendations that demonstrate the impact of your research or findings.
    • Write clearly, succinctly and accessibly. Avoid acronyms and jargon and use words and phrases found in a National broadsheet newspaper where possible.

Giving oral evidence

After submitting written evidence to a committee, you may be called to provide oral evidence to the committee in Westminster. Not all those who submit written evidence will be called to, however, to have a chance to do so you must provide written evidence first.

If you are interested in giving oral evidence, you can be pro-active and contact the committee clerk shortly after you submit your written evidence letting them know you would be happy to be called to give oral evidence.

Prior to attending
  • Double check the exact location of your meeting. Committee meetings can take place in the Houses of Parliament or in Portcullis House.
  • Prior to attending, rehearse your key messages and an opening statement which gets these across in under a minute. Assemble all the written material you may need to refer to during the session. You may also want to research the members of the committee in advance so you are familiar with who will be questioning you. You can rehearse with colleagues, or ask a member of CoSS Public Affairs to rehearse with you.
  • Bring a staff member for support. You can ask a member of CoSS Public Affairs or another colleague to attend the meeting with you.
During the meeting

A Select Committee takes place with the Parliamentarians seated in a horseshoe shape. You will sit at the front and will be asked a series of questions by the Chair and the other Parliamentarians.

At the beginning of your session, you can ask the Chair for permission to give a few opening remarks and then give your opening statement. The members of the committee will take turns to question you – please keep answers on topic and succinct while getting your key messages across. Some committee members may be supportive of your research, others may not. Always keep calm, even in the face of tough questioning. Some committee members may have a deep understanding of the subject, others may not and this may come across in the questioning.

Committee meetings are recorded and there may be journalists in the audience as well as other interested parties – such as constituents, NGOs and campaigning groups. There is a possibility that your contribution may be featured in the media. Operate on the basis that everything you say is on the record.

If you do not know the answer to a question or do not have data with you, it is acceptable to ask the Chair for permission to come back to them with additional written information following the committee.

The committee proceedings will be written up and published online. If you believe this transcript misrepresents what you said you can ask the clerk to make factual corrections.

Examples

You may find the following useful to refer to while preparing your response.

Examples of oral evidence:

Examples of written evidence:

Next steps

After taking evidence, the committee will publish a report with their recommendations. If relevant, the Government will make a response to a Select Committee report, either publishing it itself (as a Command Paper) or sending a memorandum to the committee, which can be published as a special report. The committee can publish the response with further comments or take further evidence.

If your research is featured as published evidence in committee recommendations or Government responses, its inclusion in the process could help to demonstrate impact.

Contact

The team is happy to advise on responding to select committee inquires and any other policy engagement queries you may have.

Dedicated CoSS team: