Before the summer recess the Chairs of the various parliamentary select committees were elected, with the Transport Select Committee getting a new Chair in Lilian Greenwood, the Labour MP for Nottingham South.
As I said at the time, this is a good appointment. Having been both Shadow Transport Secretary and a junior Labour spokeswoman on transport, with specific responsibility for bus policy, she does at least have a solid understanding of the issues.
In the short parliamentary session (5-14 September) before parliament rose again for the party conference season, time was found to appoint the members of the Select Committees.
It’s pretty much all change for the Transport Committee. Of the 11 members, only four remain from the previous parliament – Huw Merriman, Martin Vickers and Iain Stewart for the Conservatives, and the veteran Graham Stringer for Labour.
None inspire me, although Iain Stewart is quite solid and well informed.
I despair at the reappointment of Graham Stringer, simply because he won’t bring any fresh thinking to the Committee’s work or to his own attitudes towards transport policy which haven’t moved on for decades.
The remaining six are all new to the Committee. Along with Lilian, only Daniel Zeichner (Labour, Cambridge) has any obvious background in transport having sat alongside Lilian in the Labour shadow transport team. All the others – Steve Double (Conservative), Luke Pollard and Laura Smith (Labour), Ronnie Cowan (SNP) and Paul Girvan (DUP) are complete unknowns and have no evident interest in transport.
Moreover, two (Double and Cowan), were only elected as MPs in 2015 while three (Girvan, Pollard and Smith) were only elected for the first time in June, although Girvan was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (2010-17).
So to say that this is a rooky Committee is putting it mildly. I have no expectation it will make much of an impact, nor can I see witnesses quaking in their boots as they are summonsed before it. The Committee is, yet again, altogether rather lightweight; I’m being polite.
Gone are the days when witnesses were genuinely grilled, and occasionally reduced to quivering wrecks, by the late Gwyneth Dunwoody. But for those of you who enjoy a touch of nostalgia, the appointment of Laura Smith did catch my eye.
She’s the new Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, having defeated Edward Timpson by just 48 votes in June’s election. And it was Edward Timpson who gained the seat for the Conservatives when Gwyneth Dunwoody passed away in 2006.
If Laura Smith can hold her seat – and my hunch is she will – who knows, perhaps she may turn out to be a rising star, in due course filling Gwyneth Dunwoody’s shoes eventually becoming Committee Chair and return it to the glory Dunwoody days.
