Publisher's Synopsis
In 1979 the House of Commons replaced most of its all-party select committees with 14 new bodies that were charged with overseeing the policy and administration of the major government departments.;A team of senior academics, assembled by the Study of Parliament Group, monitored the work of the new committees over the lifetime of a complete Parliament, from 1979 to 1983. Based on extensive analysis of the material produced by these committees, and numerous interviews with the participants, this book provides a wide-ranging survey of the nature and importance of various parliamentary reforms.;For this revised and updated second edition, the editor has added a new chapter which covers the work of the committees since 1983 and chronicles the increasingly significant role that they have played in their second Parliament.
