The deputy speaker has just congratulated 13 new committee chairs who were successfully reappointed unopposed. The full list are:
- Backbench Business Committee – Ian Mearns
- Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy Committee – Rachel Reeves
- Education – Robert Halfon
- Environment, Food & Rural Affairs – Neil Parish
- Brexit – Hilary Benn
- Home Affairs – Yvette Cooper
- Housing, Communities & Local Government – Clive Betts
- Public Accounts – Meg Hillier
- Scottish Affairs – Pete Wishart
- Standards – Kate Green
- Treasury – Mel Stride
- Wales – Stephen Crabb
- Womens & Equalities – Caroline Noakes
The rest of the elections will take place on Wednesday afternoon, with results announced later that day…
Poring over the Order Paper as he always does, Guido spotted a fascinating Standing Order vote coming up later today and being pushed by the government – to abolish Committee Chairs’ term limits. Very Putinesque. Paving the way for grandees like Bernard Jenkin and Clive Betts to stay on past their impending term limit…
There are many luxuries to having a large majority, but few anticipated rule changes like these coming up. Guido understands the Tory old guard have been banging on about seeing such a change for a while, feeling some select committee chairs have been shortchanged by the term limits because of the successively short parliamentary sessions since 2015. Will we see further parliamentary reforms from the government like this over the next five years?
A new Parliamentary term means new Select Committee Chair elections, and the races are already hotting up. Two of the more interesting battles are shaping up to be the Health and Social Care Committee, vacated by Sarah Wollaston, and the Transport Committee, which switches from Labour to Tory due to the size of the Government’s stonking majority. The formerly Lib Dem Science and Technology Committee is turning Blue too…
On the Health Committee, Guido hears that Jeremy Hunt is angling for the top job, but is facing a strong challenge from Dr Dan Poulter who has been sounding out colleagues about standing for the role.
Guido understands that former Transport Minister Robert Goodwill will be standing for the newly Tory role of Transport Committee Chairman, against Tory wet Huw Merriman.
Crispin Blunt is also staging a re-match against Tom Tugendhat who beat Blunt to take the role in 2017.
With every Government bill almost guaranteed to pass, Committee Chair races are set to become the biggest source of scrutiny…
Whoever wrote this news article for the BBC website about Vote Leave’s Facebook adverts is going to have some explaining to do to their editor. The article talks about how Vote Leave and BeLeave “micro-targeted” adverts during the referendum, “with 252 of them seen fewer than 1,000 times”. Just one problem: it’s total nonsense. The adverts were never requested by Vote Leave or BeLeave. They never ran. That is why they appear in the “0-999” impressions box in the DCMS select committee’s numbers. The true number is zero. A glaring factual error completely demolishing the BBC’s story that Vote Leave “micro-targeted” adverts to data sets of fewer than 1,000 people.
This fake news has come about because the DCMS select committee refused to publish evidence that would have clearly explained what happened. Aggregate IQ wrote to the committee with the explanation back in May. The committee refused to publish the letter, and now off the back of that the BBC has ended up publishing nonsense. Yet more evidence of Damian Collins’ Remoaner select committee, which is supposed to be impartial, losing touch with reality as they peddle their conspiracy theories about Vote Leave…
UPDATE: Carole is going on about there being no imprint – on the ads that didn’t run – “That look completely illegal”. There is no legal requirement for imprints on online adverts. This is not a “whole new massive can of worms”. It is Carole showing her complete lack of knowledge of the rules.
The reason online adverts don’t require an imprint is because generally they are too small and when viewers click they will in any event be taken to a site that generally says clearly who the advertiser is by advocating a vote for them.
UPDATE II: The BBC has issued a correction:
Another great success for Damian Collins: his DCMS committee has published Arron Banks’ passport number and ID details in breach of data protection legislation. The personal information was released in a volume of evidence uploaded to parliament’s website, for all to see. Under data protection rules it should have been redacted…
Collins says the error was amended – but as off midday Monday the original link is still live and Banks’s personal data is still being widely shared on social media. The Information Commissioner’s Office is aware of the breach. After last week’s embarrassing charade, hardly a display of competence from Collins’ committee…
After running rings around Damian Collins and his dire DCMS committee all morning, Arron Banks then left them completely humiliated by standing up, telling them he had a lunch to go to and walking out. Nothing the impotent Collins could do. Watch to the end to see his face – a picture of total defeat. That’s how you take grandstanding select committee chairmen down a peg or two…
UPDATE: Guido hears their lunch date was with DUP MPs Ian Paisley and Sammy Wilson.
