Impact, Engagement and Dangerous Liaisons
Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He regularly appears
before a range of select committees in the House of Lords and the House of Commons and
most recently appeared before the House of Commons’ Liaison Committee – the senior
committee consisting of all select committee chairmen – to discuss the changing relationship
between the executive and legislature. In this article he reflects upon the opportunities and
challenges offered by parliamentary engagement for social and political scientists.
The forthcoming REF’s increased emphasis on demonstrable ‘impact’ is a source of
some concern and confusion for many academics. It is, however, more of an
opportunity than a threat in the sense that the Politics and International Relations
Panel has clearly signalled its intention to adopt a broad and creative approach to
the definition and assessment of ‘impact’. The Panel Criteria and Working Methods
that were published in January 2012 also suggest that a softer approach to impact
has been adopted than might have previously been expected from some of the initial
REF documentation. The impact ‘case studies’ submitted by most departments of
politics – and indeed, most social science departments - are unlikely to focus on a
specific piece of research which can be clearly and unequivocally proven to have led
to a change in policy or law but is more likely to knit together a range of researchdriven impact-activities that, taken together, provide a compelling case that a given
research team or strand has had a significant social impact. It is in exactly this latter
vein that the ‘stimulation of public debate’ and ‘contributions to public
understanding’ are explicitly given as examples of impact within the REF2014
guidance documentation.
As such one valuable element of an ‘impact case study’ might be an appearance
before a select committee or, at the very least, the inclusion of a submitted
memorandum of evidence as part of the published evidence surrounding a report.
‘Documented evidence of policy debate (for example, at a parliamentary select
committee)’ is therefore included as a central example of ‘Evidence and Indicators of
Impact’ within the latest REF2014 panel criteria. It is in exactly this climate that
appearances before parliamentary select committees, in both the House of Commons
and the House of Lords, provide an incredibly valuable opportunity for social
scientists to influence government and policy-makers, while also disseminating their
research more broadly.
The problem is, however, that select committee clerks frequently find it hard to:
(firstly) identify academics with the expertise to help inform a specific inquiry;
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(secondly) identify academics with the relevant expertise who are also willing to
engage with an inquiry; and (thirdly) find academics with the expertise and
willingness who are also able to talk about their research in a concise and accessible
manner. The aim of this article is therefore to outline how and why more political
and social scientists can and should make parliamentary engagement part of their
‘research impact plans’ and also to provide some advice about what to expect if
called to appear in person before a select committee.
The first step in the journey towards engaging with a select committee obviously
involves monitoring the inquiries of the committees that deal with the areas of
research you are working on. There are twenty-two select committees that are
basically charged with monitoring and scrutinising a specific ministerial department.
In addition to this there are a number of cross-governmental committees (Public
Accounts, Public Administration, etc.) and specialist committees in the Lords
(Constitution, Science and Technology, etc.). The Campaign for Social Sciences
publishes a monthly Policy Monitor that lists all the current inquiries, reviews and
consultations across Whitehall, Westminster and even within the institutions of the
European Union and is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to develop their
research profile in relation to policy-relevance and impact.
Most committee inquiries will begin with the publication of an ‘Issues and
Questions’ paper on a specific topic. The aim of this document is to explain why the
committee feels this topic warrants an inquiry and also to set out the themes and
issues around which it would welcome responses (formally referred to as
‘Submissions of Evidence’) from interested experts, groups and sections of the
public. This is the main gateway through which information (including summaries
of recent academic research) will be collected by the clerks and fed into the inquiry
process. Responses to select committee calls for evidence should be short, sharp and
concise. There is no need to address questions and issues about which you know little
and the emphasis is very much on quality and not quantity. Set out in a series of
numbered paragraphs I would not expect a submission to ever be longer than three
sides of A4. One of the commonest complaints of committee clerks is that academics
tend to bombard the committee with long esoteric research papers but fail to provide
a relatively short statement about why their research relates to the topic of the
inquiry. Committees are particularly looking for responses that raise significant
issues and debates that have not been raised in the initial committee scoping
document. The convention is that all submissions of evidence will be made public on
the parliamentary website and some particularly useful submissions may be
published as an appendix to the main report. Most select committees are staffed by
just one clerk and one assistant clerk and to a greater or lesser extent these are the
individuals that, under the guidance of their chairman, will select who should be
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called to appear in person before the committee and which questions deserve to be
asked by members.
The vast majority of respondents to the initial call for submissions of evidence will
not be called to appear in person before the committee but all the evidence will be
read, reviewed and published in an auditable form (i.e. the ‘impact audit trail’) on
the committee’s website. For those who are called to appear a rather nerve-wracking,
sometimes slightly odd but always incredibly rewarding experience lies before them.
Appearances before a select committee generally take place on a Tuesday,
Wednesday or Thursday morning and most sessions last around ninety minutes and
may involve three or four witnesses appearing together. The aim of an appearance is
not for the witnesses to justify their invitation or compete with each other in terms of
contributions but is really an opportunity for members of the committee to focus on
very specific issues and themes that may have been raised in your specific
submission or by other witnesses.
The general approach is that each of the MPs on the committee has a number of prearranged questions that they have been allocated and there are usually, after some
generic introductory questions by the Chairman, specific questions for specific
witnesses. The Palace of Westminster, and even Portcullis House, are intimidating
buildings and for many academics having a panel of well-known politicians and
former ministers in front of them and a host of clerks, officials, journalists and other
observers taking notes behind them can be a daunting experience. One way of making
this experience slightly less stressful is to stay in close contact with the committee
clerk in the days before your appearance. It is quite normal to be given a list, or at
the very least a fairly detailed account, in advance of your appearance of the
questions you are likely to be asked by the committee. It is also well worth spending
a little time reading around any previous reports by the committee on (or related to)
the topic of your appearance (the clerk will be able to send you these documents)
and also very quickly familiarising yourself with the biographies of the MPs on the
committee. All select committees work around a set of eight ‘core tasks’ and produce
an annual report at the end of each parliamentary session to explain how they have
fulfilled each of the tasks. These annual reports (available on the committee’s
website) are an incredibly quick and easy way of getting up to speed with the work
of a committee.
That said, select committees are curious beasts and one of the most frequent
frustrations for witnesses is the manner in which MPs tend to constantly walk in and
out of hearings. This reflects the fact that MPs are often expected to be on several
committees (select, standing, all-party, etc.) at the same time and will therefore
sometimes need to jump in-and-out of sessions. It is also not unusual for some
evidence sessions to be held with a fairly small number of MPs present due to the
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pressure of overlapping commitments. There is also the unfortunate fact that on
some occasions and depending on the topic, context and timing of the hearing, some
MPs will use select committee hearings to try and either boost their own media
profile or to draw witnesses into party-political debates. If faced with a rather
aggressive line of questioning - or a question that you feel is for one reason or
another inappropriate - the best response is generally to suggest that the question is
possibly one for the committee rather than witnesses. In reality, however, the
professionalization of select committees has increased significantly in recent years
and committee chairmen (the term used to describe both male and female
incumbents) are generally grateful to and protective of academics who appear before
their committees. It would, however, be naïve to suggest that an appearance before
a select committee does not involve at least a little risk on behalf of those called to
appear – they can be dangerous liaisons. Not least for the simple fact that evidence
sessions take place within a highly charged political context and sometimes
witnesses can become lightning rods for broader tensions. One experienced
committee clerk recently admitted how remarkable he still found it when the
atmosphere of an evidence session suddenly ‘turned’ almost without warning. The
aim of making this point is not to deter academics from engaging with Parliament
because the benefits of doing so far outweigh the risks but there is much to be said
for ‘playing it safe’ in terms of following some of the tips outlined below.
Ten Tips for Engaging with Parliament
1. Review the landscape - Monitor the work of the select committees regularly and
build it into all stages of the research process. Building some means of
continuous engagement with a committee throughout a research process can
be an incredibly attractive feature for funders.
2. Be Creative – Select committees are constantly looking for new pools of
expertise, fresh ways of looking at perennial topics and innovative ways of
engaging with new audiences. Political theorists have much to offer
Parliament.
3. Be Proactive – If you feel an important topic is being overlooked then write to
the chairman or clerk of the relevant committee and explain why the topic
warrants investigation. Horizon scanning is a critical element of any
committee’s work.
4. Build Relationships – A lot of parliamentary communication and engagement
takes place through informal channels so do spend time talking to members
of the committee, liaising with the clerks or even offering to hold informal
evidence sessions (or to host committee visits).
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5. Hold Realistic Expectations – Parliamentary engagement is very much a slowburn activity that very rarely delivers direct results. It is about feeding into a
broader consultative process and being willing to liaise with a range of
bodies.
6. Expect Momentum – The great thing about engaging with select committees is
that it very often leads to completely unexpected opportunities simply due to
the fact that your name, research or department has ‘bleeped’ on the
Whitehall/Westminster radar. This might involve media requests, invitations
to participate in departmental reviews or simply calls to work with other
select committees.
7. Do Your Research – Read around the topic of the inquiry and try to ensure that
your evidence reveals an awareness of the bigger picture. It is also worth
knowing if the committee has investigated the same topic before, whether the
government has made any recent announcements or commitments and which
members of the committee are driving the inquiry.
8. Stay Close to the Clerks – If it is the role of the chairman to ‘steer’ their
committee then it is most certainly the role of the clerks to do the day-to-day
‘rowing’ in terms of research and administration. Parliamentary clerks tend to
possess not only the strongest intellectual minds in Whitehall and
Westminster but also the sharpest political antennae. Stay close to your clerk.
9. Thick Skins Helps – A small number of MPs do take the adversarial and
combative style of questioning that is customary in the Chamber up onto the
Committee Corridor. If you feel that at an MP is deliberately twisting your
answers, is being overly-aggressive in style or is clearly intent on using your
appearance to make a party political point simply stay calm, look to the
Chairman for support and don’t take it too personally.
10. Enjoy the Experience – Give yourself plenty of time to get through security,
make sure you know exactly where you are going but then simply enjoy the
experience. Parliamentary engagement can be one of the most rewarding and
worthwhile elements of an academic’s job.
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