Nicky Morgan lost no time in seeking to put her stamp on the role after being elected as chair of the powerful Treasury Committee, catching the eye with her call for an “expansion” of its remit in an interview with the BBC’s Today.
She noted that “the committee has in the past few years very much focussed on the financial services sector, banking, the city of london”.
However: “I'm also really keen that we should expand into looking at the wider Treasury remit. So obviously the management of the economy, public spending decisions. We’ve got a budget coming up and issues like household debt, tax policy, investment infrastructure, all the things that actually our constituents who put us in the house of commons are interested in.”
Morgan had good reason to set out her stall early. In taking over from Andrew Tyrie, she has to fill some of the biggest shoes in public life.
His committee provided great theatre. It was a delight to watch city miscreants squirming under the disapproving gaze of the nation’s headmaster.
However, in addition to that, the committee, and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards which drew heavily from its membership, had a record of achievement under Tyrie that few other institutions can match.
The banking industry alone is safer, smaller, and somewhat chastened as a result of his work, and Britain is the better for it.
Faced with following that, Morgan’s decision to chart a different course looks sensible.
However, while she talked of an “expansion” of her committee’s role, Tyrie’s actually considered a number of the subjects she mentioned. It regularly held hearings on the budget, public spending, interest rate decisions, and the like. They just tended to get less attention than when he was busy handing out detentions to the bad kids at the back of the City.
What Morgan outlined would be better characterised as a shift in the committee’s emphasis away from the City. The financial centre might therefore join Remainers in cheering the election of this former corporate lawyer who has been one of their most vocal Tory supporters.
The impact of interest rate rises on consumer finances, austerity, the public sector pay cap, the possibility of Britain following a neo-Trumpian economic policy by borrowing to invest in infrastructure, are, however, worthy subjects all.
They’re just not necessarily the sort of subjects that are going to get headlines. They didn’t for Tyrie’s committee when it touched on some of them.
What most certainly will is Brexit.
“We are obviously going to be very interested in the shape of the Brexit negotiations particularly around the relationship with the single market, said Morgan.
That is where the sparks are going to fly. That is where she could make her committee’s name too.
The National Audit Office’s report on the preparedness of customs, that I highlighted yesterday, is just one of the live Brexit related issues to which Government has paid far too little attention as the slow moving train crash it has embarked upon starts to enter the really scary stages.
Morgan was at pains to stress that “as a constituency Member of Parliament, I receive a barrage of views on both sides of the EU debate all the time, so I am very conscious, even if it may not be my own personal position, of what other people in the country and my constituency are thinking”.
Perhaps a nod there to the fact that she has to manage a bi-partisan committee whose members hold wildly different views.
However, if she follows the example of the NAO in highlighting uncomfortable Brexit related facts, but also follows the example of Tyrie in asking the difficult questions that flow from them, her committee could become as much of a force as his was in its heyday.
She may also be seen as just as much of a thorn in the Government’s side. Here’s hoping.
