How to Submit Evidence to a Select Committee

Select committees are among the most open parts of the parliamentary system. Composed of backbench MPs (in the Commons) or members of the House of Lords, they scrutinise the work of government departments and conduct inquiries into matters of public concern — and they routinely ask members of the public, organisations and specialists to give evidence.

The kinds of committee

The Commons departmental select committees shadow individual government departments — there is one for health, one for the Treasury, one for the environment, and so on — while a handful of cross-cutting committees, such as the Public Accounts Committee, examine matters that span the whole of government. The House of Lords runs its own committees, which often take a longer-term or more specialist view. Each works in the same broad way: it chooses a subject, publishes terms of reference, gathers evidence, questions witnesses and reports. Identifying which committee owns a subject is the first step to addressing the right inquiry.

Finding an open inquiry

Each committee publishes the inquiries it currently has open, together with the specific questions it is seeking views on and a deadline for written submissions. The first step for anyone wishing to contribute is to read the inquiry’s terms of reference closely: a submission that answers the questions actually being asked is far more useful to a committee than a general statement on the topic.

Writing a submission

Committees publish guidance on the form written evidence should take. The recurring expectations are consistent:

• Be relevant and focused. Address the inquiry’s questions directly. Material outside the terms of reference is unlikely to be used.
• Be evidence-based. State the basis for claims. First-hand experience, data and specific examples carry more weight than assertion.
• Be original and concise. Committees prefer original material to forwarded campaign text, and short submissions to long ones.
• Follow the format rules. Submissions are typically made through the committee’s online portal and may be published, so they should not contain anything the author would not want on the public record.

From written to oral evidence

Most contributions take the form of written evidence. From the written submissions, and from its own research, a committee selects a smaller number of witnesses to give oral evidence in person at a public session. A clear, well-targeted written submission is therefore not only valuable in itself but is also the principal route to being invited to appear.

Oral evidence sessions are held in public, usually broadcast and later published as a transcript. A witness is questioned by members of the committee, often for an hour or more, on the basis of their written submission and the committee’s own lines of inquiry. The exchange is on the record and forms part of the evidence the committee weighs when it writes its report, so a witness is effectively contributing to a public document rather than to a private conversation.

Why it is worth doing

Committee inquiries feed directly into reports that the government is obliged to respond to, and that inform debate and legislation. Evidence from outside Westminster is one of the main ways the system draws in knowledge it does not otherwise hold. An inquiry typically concludes with a published report and a set of recommendations, to which the government is expected to respond in writing, usually within about two months. For an individual expert or an affected organisation, a submission is among the most direct ways to put knowledge formally on the record — and a submission that shapes even a single recommendation can reach further than its length suggests.