September 16, 2026
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Select committees work. We just do not let them finish.

The inquiry that produced this week's evidence began in 2023. It will report into a parliament that may not exist by then.

directorautven@gmail.com1 min read
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There is a particular kind of waste in British public life that nobody defends and everybody tolerates: the inquiry that runs out of parliament before it runs out of questions.

Committees do the unglamorous work. They read submissions, recall witnesses, and notice when a figure moves. They are also the only part of the system with the patience for a question that takes two years.

Dissolution ends all of it. Evidence survives on the record; the thread does not. A successor committee, differently composed, starts again or moves on.

The fix is not complicated and has been proposed repeatedly: allow an inquiry to carry over, with its evidence, into the next parliament. It requires no new money and no new powers.

It requires only that the people who would benefit from an unfinished inquiry are not the same people who decide whether it finishes.

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