Select committee meetings are less formal than debates in the House or in public bill or delegated legislation committees. You remain seated when you speak, and can refer to other MPs by name rather than constituency.
You sit around a horseshoe-shaped table, but don’t have to sit on ‘party sides’, like you do in the Chamber and other committees.
Your attendance at meetings is recorded in the formal minutes, which are published. Select committees have a minimum number of members who need to be present for a formal meeting. The general rule is that a committee quorum is a quarter of the membership, with fractions rounded up. For departmental select committees with a membership of 11, it’s three. The chair is counted in the quorum. If the number of MPs present falls below the quorum, the meeting must be suspended until a quorum can be reached, or adjourned to a later date. When more than two committees are meeting formally together, the quorum falls to two from each participating committee, unless they’re electing a chair or considering a draft report.
Most committee decisions are reached by consensus. If a formal vote is required, the clerk reads out the names of the MPs present, and they respond “Aye” or “No”, or “No vote”. The chair votes only in the event of a tie, and may vote however they choose (unlike the Chamber and other committees, where chairs are bound by particular conventions).
Formal decisions, in particular those relating to reports, involving expenditure or the use of the committee’s powers, are recorded in the committee’s formal minutes. The formal decisions relating to agreeing a report are published along with the report, and the full formal minutes are published on the committee’s website. A decision taken formally, as opposed to a course of action agreed informally, can’t be changed without a further formal decision. You must give advance notice if you want to change a formal decision.