Modernisation Committee
9 June 2026
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Modernisation Committee House of Commons
00:00 - 00:42
Speaker 1
Well thank you and welcome to today's session of the Modernisation Committee. This is the second oral evidence session for the committee's inquiry into the Backbench Business Committee and Petitions Committee debates. And we're delighted to welcome two witnesses today. The first is Natascha Engel, who was chair of the Backbench Business Committee between 2010 and 2015. And Ian Mearns, who was the chair of the Backbench Business Committee between 2015 and 2024.
You're both very welcome and thank you for coming. I'm going to start if I may with a question to you, Natascha, which is can you tell us about the establishment of the Backbench Business Committee and what the early aims of the committee were?
00:42 - 01:52
Speaker 2
Yeah, um, thank you very much first of all for the invitation. I think this is a really, it's quite a niche inquiry but it's very, very important. So yes, so thank you for the invitation. I think the when the Backbench Business Committee was set up, the standing orders were really basic. It was really just the sort of the composition, how many people were on the committee and what the composition was and that the only thing that we weren't allowed to do was to table motions that impacted on the Backbench Business Committee.
Beyond that there was no guidance, no real idea about, you know, what the committee was supposed to be doing. And and I think also we were just going into the 2010 coalition government. So there was while the committee was being established, there was kind of still lots and lots of sort of negotiations going on. And quite a large new intake in 2010 who so nobody really knew what backbench business was. They kind of thought it was a business committee, bit sort of DTI, but um, so there were very few people who really understood what it was and what its potential was.
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