Research indicates that select committees have considerable policy influence, and are important mechanisms in the dissemination of evidence as part of their scrutiny work. They also play an important role in engaging the media about the work of Parliament and involving the public in parliamentary processes.

Geddes’s research on select committees identifies two types of chair leadership style:

• catalysts: who seek to work collaboratively with other committee members and to develop policy influence; and

• chieftains: who seek to develop their own strategic priorities and focus on setting the media agenda and public debate.

It therefore matters what kinds of chairs get elected, as it will undoubtedly affect how parliamentary scrutiny is conducted. Since 2010, committee chairs have been elected by secret ballot by the whole House. This time those elections took place on 11 September.

The number of chairs of select committees allotted to each party reflects their strength in the House following the general election. The allocation of committees to each party is then decided through behind-the-scenes negotiations between the 'Usual Channels'. However, there are a few exceptions: Standing Order 122B.8.f states that the Public Accounts Committee and the Committee on Standards are to be chaired by an opposition MP and it is an unwritten convention that the Treasury Committee is chaired by an MP from the governing party. Conversely, the Backbench Business Committee chair must be held by an MP from one of the opposition parties (not necessarily the Official Opposition).

Following the inter-party negotiations in July the Labour Party secured the chairs of 18 committees, the Conservatives five and the Liberal Democrats three. The Conservative share of committee chairs subsequently rose to six when one of their number, Bob Blackman MP, was elected unopposed as the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.

So what do the results, and the candidates who stood for election, tell us about the new Parliament?

The electoral process for committee chairs appears to have been particularly competitive this time. Candidates submit supporting statements and seek nominations from other MPs. Those statements often emphasise the experience and expertise of candidates, as well as their priorities for the committee. This year many nominees also publicly and privately campaigned for support, through leaflets, social media posts, and phone canvassing. With 52 MPs competing for 27 positions, it meant their colleagues received a lot of phone calls and paper through their doors!

So much so that Cat Smith MP's successful bid to chair the Procedure Committee was premised on the idea of reducing the level of electioneering that candidates would be permitted to do in future. Her nomination statement declared:

"STOP THIS NONSENSE - Are you feeling bombarded with WhatsApps? Have all these ‘diary invites’ clogged up your Outlook? Have you slipped on all the leaflets under your office door? Let’s stop this nonsense."

30% of the elected positions (eight out of 27 chairs) were elected unopposed. Although this may seem quite a high proportion, this is the lowest percentage since the election of chairs began in 2010, suggesting that these elections might be becoming more competitive.

What might explain this?

The chairs of all three committees chaired by the Liberal Democrats were nominated unopposed. This is not unusual since the SNP, when it was the third largest party, also ran candidates unopposed, suggesting that there are perhaps some limits to the electoral process for chairs from smaller parliamentary party groups. Parties with a relatively small number of MPs have to balance frontbench concerns with their parliamentary commitments, which may help explain this trend. Moreover, it may well be that the Liberal Democrats are using their chairships not only as an opportunity to scrutinise the Government, but also to amplify their message on politically salient policy areas. It is notable, for example, that the Liberal Democrats mentioned their select committee chairs when announcing their new frontbench team and that two of the three committees – Health and Social Care, and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – cover policy areas which were key focuses during their recent General Election campaign.

The chair of the Treasury Select Committee was also elected unopposed. This is unusual given that this committee is often seen as one of the most prestigious committees in the House of Commons but was likely due to the nominee, Dame Meg Hillier MP’s track record as chair of the Public Accounts Committee in the last Parliament.

The lack of incumbent chairs standing for re-election (there were only three: Liam Byrne MP, Dame Caroline Dinenage MP and Sarah Champion MP) and the number of committees switching parties (mainly from the Conservatives or SNP to Labour or the Lib Dems) may also have been factors in the relatively low number of unopposed positions.

The most competitive election was for the Transport Committee with four candidates nominated, while four other committees were contested by three candidates (the Education, Procedure, Public Accounts, and Work and Pensions committees).

One of the most notable developments in the 2024 elections is the increased representation of women and ethnic minorities among the candidates (and, as noted below, among the winners), compared to the last select committee chair elections in 2019.

This year, 46% of candidates (24 out of 52) were female (in 2019, this figure was 31.5%), which is slightly higher than the proportion of female MPs in the House of Commons overall.

There are notable party differences here: while the majority (55%) of the Labour Party candidates were female, just 18% of the Conservative candidates and 33% of Liberal Democrat candidates were female.

Six out of 52 (11.5%) candidates were from an ethnic minority, which is slightly lower than the overall presence of ethnic minority MPs in the House of Commons, but a notable increase from 2019 when the figure was only 3.8%.

Sixteen out of 27 committees (59%) will now be led by female MPs. This is the highest ever proportion since these elections were introduced in 2010, and significantly more than the previous record of 32% after the 2019 General Election.

Much of this is due to the number of chairs held by the Labour Party, which has a high proportion of women in its parliamentary party: 72% of their chairs are female (13 out of 18), compared to one third each for the Conservatives (two out of six) and Liberal Democrats (one out of three).

This means that since the election of select committee chairs was introduced in 2010 only two committees are yet to have a female chair: the Defence Committee and the Justice Committee.

Five out of 27 (18.5%) of the new chairs are from an ethnic minority, outperforming their overall balance in Parliament (14%) and addressing concerns about a lack of ethnic minority chairs in the previous Parliament.

Looking at wider characteristics, the new chairs of select committees are an experienced group. Only 2 of the 27 chairs (7%) have no frontbench experience (as a minister or shadow minister) at all. Moreover, over half of the chairs (52%) have frontbench experience in a relevant policy area, compared to just over a third of candidates (37%), suggesting that this experience was a supporting factor for the winners.

While much was made of the eight newly elected MPs that sought to become chairs, none of them – bar the candidate for the Scottish Affairs Committee – made it through. The Scottish Affairs Committee was a special case because all the candidates who stood were newly elected MPs: the chair of this committee was allocated to the Labour Party and the only Scottish Labour MPs on the party's backbenches were from the 2024 intake.

Indeed, if you look at the results for the other contested elections, the MPs standing from the 2024 intake were defeated by considerable margins. In contrast, the intakes that saw most success were from 2010, 2015 and 2017 with five chairs each. If the two chairs who were elected to the House of Commons following by-elections in 2011 and 2012 are included in the calculations, then the members elected in the 2010-15 Parliament were the most successful cohort, securing seven committee chairs.

Just over a quarter of the new chairs (26%) have a background as a committee chair. Three chairs were re-elected to the same committees they chaired in the last Parliament (as noted above, Liam Byrne MP, Dame Caroline Dinenage MP and Sarah Champion MP). Four candidates were elected to lead a different committee: Dame Meg Hillier MP moved from Public Accounts to the Treasury, Karen Bradley MP moved from Procedure to Home Affairs, Cat Smith MP moved from Petitions to Procedure, while Simon Hoare MP, elected to chair Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee was previously chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

Four other former chairs lost out, failing to win a chairship: Sir Bernard Jenkin (previously chair of Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs from 2010 to 2019 and Chair of the Liaison Committee in the last Parliament); David Davis (previously Chair of Public Accounts from 1997 to 2001); Derek Twigg (previously Chair of the Statutory Instruments Committee from 2015 to 2018) and Sharon Hodgson (previously Chair of the Finance Committee from 2023 to 2024).

Other notable runners up included Barry Gardiner, a former shadow minister and long-serving member of several committees and Stella Creasy, who ran to be chair of the Procedure Committee after several high-profile procedural campaigns since she was first elected in 2010.

It will be important to watch how MPs use the role of a select committee chair to develop their profiles in Parliament and beyond. There is some evidence that MPs use chairships to (re)launch ministerial careers and Keir Starmer in opposition had a track record of promoting select committee chairs to the frontbench. It will therefore be particularly interesting to see whether, and if so how MPs use their positions as a ministerial launch pad or for a re-launch of stalled frontbench careers. For example, Chi Onwurah is now Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and Emily Thornberry is Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee: neither made it on to the Government frontbench despite long-service as shadow ministers in opposition. In the last Parliament Jeremy Hunt's service as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee was sandwiched between frontbench roles as Health Secretary and then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Now that the chairs are in place, they will start working with the committee staff and considering how to enact the priorities that many identified in their supporting statements. Each chair will develop their own style and approach but, no matter how strong their personalities or preferences, they must do so knowing that they lead a committee of (usually) 10 other MPs from across the House, all of whom will also have opinions about the committee's scrutiny priorities.

Elections for those select committee members will take place within individual political parties when Parliament resumes after the party conference recess and only then can the committees get fully up and running.