Places filled
Several senior MPs have been elected unopposed to an assortment of select committee chairs.
So congratulations to John Whittingdale, re-elected to ; to Sir Alan Beith, re-elected to ; to Malcolm Bruce, re-elected to ; to Greg Knight, re-elected to the Committee; Louise Ellman, re-elected to , and to Laurence Robertson, re-elected to .
Ian Davidson takes and David TC Davies (the initials are to distinguish him from the other David Davis, the former Tory leadership contender) is the chair of the .
The remaining results will be announced tomorrow by Mr Speaker, after what could be lengthy AV counts. There are six candidates slugging it out for the chair of the powerful public spending watchdog, the . This post goes to an opposition member, and the rivals are: Hugh Bayley, Brian Donohoe, Margaret Hodge, Michael Meacher, Austin Mitchell and Iain Wright.
There's also quite a smackdown for the , where Christopher Chope, Bernard Jenkin and Ian Liddell-Grainger are the candidates. The chair is being contested by two heavyweight committee members from the last Parliament - Michael Fallon and Andrew Tyrie - and with wide-ranging welfare reform promised by the Coalition, the , contested by Anne Begg and Karen Buck, could emerge from its torpor and become genuinely important.
As the designers of the new system doubtless hoped, most of the major committees are hotly contested - but will it be horse trading or promises of rigorous scrutiny that win the day? I'll offer my thoughts when the results are out tomorrow...
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
Comments
or to comment.