Founded 1923 | Website conservatives.com | |
Headquarters Palace of Westminster, London, United Kingdom Key people Graham Brady,
Chairman
Cheryl Gillan, Charles Walker,
Vice-Chairs
Bob Blackman, Nigel Evans, Secretaries
Stewart Jackson,
Treasurer | ||
The Conservative Private Members' Committee (known informally as the 1922 Committee) is the parliamentary group for the Conservative Party in the UK House of Commons. The committee, consisting of all Conservative backbencher MPs meets weekly while the parliament is in session, and provides a way for backbenchers to coordinate and discuss their views based on their constituents' and personal views, independently of frontbenchers. Its executive membership and officers are by consensus limited to backbench MP's only, although since 2010 frontbench Conservative MPs have an open invitation to attend meetings. The committee can also have an important role in choosing the party leader (and thus Prime Minister when the Conservatives are in government). The group was formed in 1923, but first became important after 1940. It is generally closely related to the leadership, and under the control of party whips.
Contents
Committee constitutional matters
The 1922 Committee has an 18-member executive committee, the chairman of which must oversee any election of a new party leader, or any Conservative party-led vote of confidence in respect of the current one; such a vote can be triggered by 15 percent of Conservative MPs writing a letter to the chairman asking for such a vote. This process was invoked most recently on 28 October 2003, when 25 MPs requested a vote of confidence in Iain Duncan Smith by writing to the chairman, then Michael Spicer. Duncan Smith lost the vote the next day.
Origins
The committee was formed in 1923 but takes its name from the 1922 general election. The name does not stem from a famous 19 October 1922 meeting at the Carlton Club in which Conservative MPs successfully demanded that the party withdraw from the coalition government of David Lloyd George. The resolution passed at that meeting triggered the general election which the Conservative Party won — the many new Conservative MPs elected for the first time formed the Conservative Private Members' Committee to discuss and influence political events.
The MPs who founded the Committee were not the same as those who had taken the decision to end the 1916-22 Coalition government. It began as a small dining group of new members in 1922, then moved on to be a ginger group of active backbenchers. After the 1923 and 1924 elections, the membership expanded as more new Conservative MPs were elected, and in 1926 all backbench MPs were invited to become members. Consequently, it became a platform for the majority rather than a focus for discontent.
2010 changes
On 19 May 2010, shortly after the Conservatives had formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, Prime Minister David Cameron suggested altering the Committee to involve ministers (frontbenchers) in the recommendation forming process, angering some backbench MPs. On 20 May 2010, Committee members voted to approve the change, with 168 votes in favour and 118 against. Many backbench party members criticised the move and voted against it, while ministers had argued such a change would be necessary to continue operating coherently as a party during its membership of a coalition government.
However, under its new chairman Graham Brady, it was clarified shortly after that vote that although frontbenchers are now able to attend meetings of the Committee, only backbenchers would be able to vote for its officers and executive committee, similarly to the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Recent media coverage
In July 2011, after addressing the House of Commons in the wake of James and Rupert Murdoch's parliamentary testimony in the News International phone hacking scandal, Cameron was reported to have been received enthusiastically by the Committee, later that night.
A second Guardian report on this supportive reception stated that "reporters ... outside" were a probably intended audience for the show and that Cameron's support amongst Tories was still at least to some degree shaken by the News International-related events. Without naming names, the report asserted:
"Many [party members in Commons] complain that they cannot use the 1922 Committee ... without being briefed against for doing so."
On 20 December 2012, The Spectator seemed to cast little doubt on backbenchers speaking their minds at meetings. At the party leader's end-of-year address to the Committee, one MP freely said his party needed to learn a lesson from what had happened regarding Andrew Mitchell, other members in Committee meetings earlier in the year having "expressed concerns about Mitchell that contributed to his decision to resign".
Current executive committee
As of 3 June 2015, the executive committee comprised: