Summer lull

When will the Commons network of select committees be up and running and scrutinising ministers?

Tonight another piece of the jigsaw will fall into place when Labour MPs elect colleagues to places on the various committees (the Conservatives have already done so) - but then the House will have to go through the formalities of setting the committees. A motion will have to go on the Order Paper and will probably be waved through without debate.

So far, so simple.

But the Commons rises for its summer recess in three weeks' time, and before any of the new committees can hold a hearing, the members have to hold a meeting and decide who they want to summon and what they want to talk about. Now, some of the more on-the-ball committee chairs may have plans in place to convene their members informally, even before the Commons has made them official, and maybe work out what they would like to do.

But they can't take actual decisions and instruct their clerks to summon witnesses and so forth, until that Commons motion is passed. If that is done this week, the committees can meet next week and start holding hearings in the backwash of the budget, where quite a number of them have irons in the fire.

The Treasury Committee, for example, routinely holds an inquiry into every budget, starting with expert commentators and the Office for Budget Responsibility, and working up to a visitation by the Chancellor.

But even minor dithering by the government in putting down that vital motion could derail them. Almost every committee chair I've spoken to has plans for a getting-to-know-you session with their particular secretary of state, and some have detailed ideas for joint inquiries with other committees (Education and Business are considering a joint look at the UK's Productivity Gap).

But if there's much delay, the sheer logistics of setting up those hearings becomes very difficult and in that event, the committees can't do anything much before the holidays are upon them.

So in scrutiny terms, it might as well rain until September.