The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee is a

select committee Select committee may refer to: *Select committee (parliamentary system) A select committee is a committee made up of a small number of parliamentary members appointed to deal with particular areas or issues originating in the Westminster system o ...

of the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

in the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...

. The remit of the committee is to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is a department of His Majesty's Government. The department was formed during a machinery of government change on 14 July 2016, following Theresa May's appointment as Prim ...

, and any departmental bodies. The committee came into existence as the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee on 1 October 2009, replacing the Business and Enterprise Select Committee, which was dissolved on 30 September 2009. The House of Commons agreed to the committee's establishment on 25 June 2009, following

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

Gordon Brown James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tony ...

's replacement of the

Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) was a United Kingdom government department. The department was created on 28 June 2007 on the disbanding of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and was itself disbanded ...

with the

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills , type = Department , logo = Department for Business, Innovation and Skills logo.svg , logo_width = 200px , logo_caption = , picture = File:Лондан. 2014. Жнівень 26.JPG , seal = , se ...

on 5 June 2009. Following the merger of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the

in July 2016, the name of the committee was changed in October 2016 to reflect the name of the new department.

Membership

The committee's chair until the 2017 general election was Iain Wright, elected on 18 June 2015. The other members of the committee were formally appointed on 8 July 2015. On 12 July 2017, Rachel Reeves was elected chair of the committee until her elevation to the Shadow Cabinet, when

Darren Jones Darren Jones may refer to: * Darren Jones (footballer) (born 1983), Welsh footballer *Darren Jones (politician) Darren Paul Jones (born 13 November 1986) is a British Labour politician serving as Chair of the House of Commons Business, Energ ...

was elected her successor. As of 29 November 2022, the membership is as follows:

Changes since 2019

2017-2019

The chair was elected on 12 July 2017, with the members of the committee being announced on 11 September 2017.

Changes 2017-2019

Previous changes

Occasionally, the House of Commons ordered changes to be made in terms of membership of the select committee, as proposed by the Committee of Selection. Such changes are shown below.

Notable reports

In July 2022, the committee published its report "Energy pricing and the future of the energy market" which examined the turmoil in retail energy arising from unusually high wholesale gas prices, leading to the collapse of several suppliers and the need for government support of

Bulb Energy Bulb Energy Ltd., trading as Bulb, is an energy supply company in the United Kingdom which was acquired by Octopus Energy in 2022. Founded in 2013, the company attracted venture capital from DST Global and Magnetar Capital, and ran at a financi ...

. The committee found that the industry regulator Ofgem had been incompetent in its supervision of the finances of supplier companies, and that the government overlooked this lack of supervision because it prioritised competition over market regulation. The report also criticised Ofgem's design of the energy price cap, recommending that the government consider introducing a social tariff; stated that the government's May 2022 support package for customers was no longer sufficient; and criticised the absence of a home insulation programme. In response, Ofgem accepted that its previous financial resilience regime was not sufficiently robust, and had contributed to some of the supplier failures since August 2021.

References

External links

Records for the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee (2009-2016) are held at the Parliamentary Archives
* {{UKParliamentCommittees Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committees of the British House of Commons United Kingdom industrial planning policy