In my last OSCOLA blog, I looked at how to reference Hansard and Parliamentary reports. This time, we will be covering a very similar area of law that is also a report series, which is the debates for Select and Joint Committees of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. We will be looking at what Select and Joint Committees are, how they are reported on and how to reference them using OSCOLA.
Firstly, we will consider what the committees are. As usual, feel free to skip past the introduction if you are already familiar with this topic and go straight to the section on referencing.
What are Select and Joint Committees?
Select Committees from the House of Commons are usually focused on examining the work of the government, whereas Select Committees from the House of Lords are focused on six specific areas: Europe, science, economics, communications, the UK constitution and international relations.
There are House of Commons Select Committees for each governmental department that examine three aspects: spending, policies and administration. These committees have a special remit to investigate their particular department and are made up of a minimum of 11 members, taken from across the different parties. The committees have roughly the same ratios as the House of Commons as a whole, so whichever party has a majority there will likely keep it in the committee.
Each committee will also have a chair, with the total number of chairs across Committees allocated to the parties in the same way as the committee members are. The chair does not actually have many powers but can cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie. They are also responsible for organising the committee’s work and most Select Committee’s chairs will receive an additional salary to reflect this. Chairs are now chosen by a secret ballot of all MPs rather than being chosen by the committee.
The members of a committee will decide on a line of inquiry and gather written and oral evidence about it. Once all of the evidence is gathered, it will then be published in a report, which is taken to the House of Commons, printed, and published on the Parliament website. Once the report is made, the department in question has 60 days to respond to the report and its recommendations.
Not all House of Commons Select Committees are focused on a government department. Some may cover issues that span multiple departments, such as the Environmental Audit Committee. Others may be focused on ongoing investigations, such as the conduct of another MP.
The House of Lords Select Committees do not shadow particular departments like House of Commons ones. Instead, they focus on the six areas stated above: Europe, science, economics, communications, the UK constitution and international relations. This allows for more thematic committees which consider all departments of government at once and still focus on that committee’s particular area.
The House of Lords uses the expertise and experience of its members to create these more focused committees. Many Members of the House of Lords are appointed to the Upper House due to the knowledge and skills they bring, whether this is from years of experience or having strengths in a particular area. The Members of the House of Lords also have more time than ones of the House of Commons, meaning that they can investigate some issues more thoroughly and with greater expertise.
Joint Committees are like Select Committees but are made up of both MPs and Members of the House of Lords. The chair is then appointed out of the chosen committee and can be either an MP or a Member of the Lords. Joint Committees follow similar procedures and have similar powers to Select Committees.
Joint Committees may exist on a permanent basis, like the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Others may study a particular area, such as a draft Bill or House of Lords reform. They may also carry out investigations into issues ranging from modern slavery to stem cell research.
The details of the committees are written by the Commons and Lords Hansard, which gives the transcripts of the evidence-taking sessions of the Select Committees and of Joint Committees of both Houses.
How Do You Reference Reports of Select and Joint Committees?
The basic format for referencing a report of a Select Committee is:
Committee name | Report title | (HL OR HC | Session, | Paper number–Volume number)
For example:
Science and Technology Committee, Genomic Medicine (HL 2008–09, 107–I).
Looking at each part in turn:
Committee name
This is just the name of the committee that wrote the report.
Report title
Again, this is simply the title of the report, in italics.
HL OR HC
Write either HL for a House of Lords Select Committee or HC for a House of Commons one.
Session
This is the Parliamentary session in which the Bill was heard and will be the year range that made up that particular session. In this example, we can see that the session is given as 2008–09, so this Bill was heard somewhere in the 2008–09 Parliament. If you would like to know how to cite a range of numbers, there is more information in my blog OSCOLA Referencing Introduction and Quick Summary.
Sometimes, there is more than one session in a single year. If this happens, the sessions will be cited as, for example, “1841, sess 1” and “1841, sess 2” to distinguish between them.
Paper number–Volume number
This is the number of the paper, followed by an en-dash (–), then the volume number in Roman numerals. There should not be a space before or after the en-dash.
To reference a report from a Joint Committee, you should use a similar method but cite both the House of Lords and House of Commons paper numbers, with the HL one first:
Committee name | Report title | (Session, | HL Paper number | HC Paper number)
For example:
Joint Committee on Human Rights, Legislative Scrutiny: Equality Bill (second report); Digital Economy Bill (2009–10, HL 73, HC 425).
Any pinpoints such as page or paragraph numbers should be written at the end of the reference, after a comma:
Joint Committee on Human Rights, Legislative Scrutiny: Equality Bill (second report); Digital Economy Bill (2009–10, HL 73, HC 425) 14–16.
Wrapping Up
I hope that this has helped you to reference reports of Select and Joint Committees and that you know more about them and how they operate now. Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!
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