The Business and Trade Select Committee is a select committee of the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, 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 ...

in the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace ...

. The remit of the committee is to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Business and Trade, 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 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. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

Gordon Brown James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. Previously, he was Chancellor of the Ex ...

's replacement of the

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

with the

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) was a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It was created by the Gordon Brown premiership on 5 June 2009 by the merger of the Department for Innovation, Uni ...

on 5 June 2009. Following the merger of the

Department of Energy and Climate Change The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the government of the United Kingdom created on 3 October 2008, by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take over some of the ...

and the

in July 2016, the name of the committee was changed to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee in October 2016 to reflect the name of the new department.

Membership

Members are as follows:

2019–2024 Parliament

The chair was elected on 27 January 2020, with the members of the committee being announced on 2 March 2020.

Changes 2019–2024

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. 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
* {{Department for Business and Trade British economic policy Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Department for Business and Trade Select Committees of the British House of Commons United Kingdom industrial planning policy