At the start of a new Parliament, the newly-elected Speaker informs the political parties how many elected chairs each of them is entitled to, depending on the number of MPs they have in the House.
The party leaders then put a motion to the House to allocate the chair of each committee to a specific party. If the party leaders fail to table a motion within two weeks of the King’s Speech, any other MP can instead. Once the House has agreed the motion, the Speaker will announce the date of the elections, which will normally take place between seven and 14 days later.
STANDING AS CHAIR
You can’t stand for more than one chair post and it must be a post allocated to your party. Nominations must be submitted to the Table Office. The deadline for nominations will be announced when the date of the election is announced.
You need to write a short statement declaring your willingness to stand and sign it. There is a nomination form you can use if you wish. Your nomination needs to be signed by 15 MPs from your own party, or 10 per cent of the MPs elected to the House from your party — whichever is lower. The signatures need to be physical signatures, not photocopies. If you gather more signatures than you need, the extra names won’t be printed, but this can still be useful as signatures will be declared invalid if someone has signed more than one nomination for the same committee.
You can also collect signatures from up to five MPs from other parties, but this isn’t compulsory.
For the Backbench Business Committee, you need signatures of between 20 and 25 MPs (including no fewer than 10 Government MPs and 10 MPs from an Opposition party or no party).
You should declare any relevant interests with your nomination. You can also submit a supporting statement of up to 500 words.
You will be able to find a list of candidates:
- in the Vote Office in Members’ Lobby
- on Parliament's website
VOTING
On the day of an election, a voting station is usually established in one of the committee rooms on the Committee Corridor in the Palace.
To vote, go to one of the temporary division desks where you can get a ballot paper. There will be a separate ballot paper for each position, as part of a booklet of papers. The ballot paper gives the names of candidates in alphabetical order. Complete the ballot paper at one of the stations in the room and put it in one of the ballot boxes at the exit. Vote by ranking as many candidates as you wish in order of preference, marking 1 by the name of your first preference, 2 by the name of your second preference, and so on. You can indicate as few or as many preferences as you wish.
The votes are counted under the alternative vote system. Any candidate who receives more than half the first preferences is elected. Otherwise, the candidate with the lowest number of first preference votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed among the remaining candidates according to the preferences on them. If no candidate has more than half the votes, the process of elimination and distribution is repeated, until one candidate has more than half the votes.
RESULTS
The results, including any unopposed places, are announced by the Speaker in the Chamber and published as soon as possible after the ballot has closed. This may be the day after the ballot.
Once the Speaker has declared the results, the successful candidate becomes the chair-elect of the relevant committee. They only become the chair when the House has appointed the other committee members, which may be several weeks later.