Facing a select committee can be daunting – and those who are best prepared are most likely to come out with their pride and reputations intact. Joshua Chambers hears survival tips from both interrogators and past victims

Ask a chair of a select committee whether they aim to put officials at their ease. I did, and the response was simple: laughter, followed by an emphatic “Certainly not!”. Anne Begg is chair of the work and pensions select committee, and she believes that “If they’re feeling ill at ease, there might be a reason and we have to think: ‘Why is this?’”

Yet tough questions should not be taken the wrong way. Television snippets are unrepresentative of what committees try to achieve. Most of the time they are a forum where policy is properly scrutinised and where lessons are learned.

The important thing is to approach committees in the right way, and to learn the tricks of the trade from those who have gone before, such as other civil servants, parliamentary clerks and external trainers. Many have sage advice, presented here in our brief guide to surviving a select committee.

Advance warning

Key to the select committee process are the parliamentary clerks. Although arrangements vary for different committees, the role of a parliamentary clerk is to work inside government departments, liaising between the committees and the civil service to ensure that the right person appears before the right committee. Should you be called, they will ensure that you know when you will appear, and that you have a broad overview of what the committee will want to know.

Once the details of a select committee appearance are confirmed, a useful port of call would be the committee clerks – staff working in the House of Commons for the select committees. The clerks assist select committee members with research and provide them with suggested questions, along with material explaining the context.

Sir Ian Magee, former second permanent secretary at the Department for Constitutional Affairs (now part of the Ministry of Justice), is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government. He advises that: “If you’ve got arrangements with the clerks, they may give you an idea of the questions in advance.” However, “some are more helpful than others”, he cautions.

Committee clerk of the education committee, Dr Kenneth Fox, says that “Most committee staff have a telephone conversation [with an official] before the meeting to give a gist of the elements that will be discussed. There is an informal briefing.” This conversation can either be with the civil servant appearing, or with the lead official within a department managing the overall contribution – the process varies across departments.

The committee clerk may provide more specific information if it is required. “If it’s a very detailed question, asking for particular figures which officials might not otherwise bring to the meeting,” Fox says, “it makes sense to ensure that an official brings what they require.”

Proper preparation

This briefing will be helpful, but the key to preparation is to fully grasp all aspects of the policy area or issue. “There’s no substitute for knowing your subject,” Magee says. And in his experience, “it doesn’t take all that long to prepare. It’s a question of focus.”

Knowing your subject also means knowing how to present it, but this should not become a preoccupation. An official is not a politician, and so Magee advises against practiced soundbites. “Prepared lines can be too stunted,” he says.

Instead, a civil servant should know how to talk about their topic in lay terms. The former welfare minister Tony McNulty had a long ministerial career and appeared before a number of committees. He advises that “The last thing a select committee wants is to be issued with lexicons and dictionaries to cut through the jargon.”

Not only should the language used be basic, but explanations must assume only a basic level of policy understanding. “It sounds wrong to assume people’s ignorance,” McNulty adds, “but while you might be utterly imbued with this policy every day of your working life, the select committee is not as richly enthused by it as you would be.” Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security, however, McNulty is careful to add that “they’ve done their homework”.

For a first committee hearing, many officials look for people outside their departments to assist them. “Get some training,” Magee advises, “whether it be in-house or externally.” The National School of Government provides bespoke courses, as do private contractors. George Oliver runs courses for private trainer Westminster Explained – part of Dods, publisher of CSW. Oliver says that he tries to ask questions that the civil servant hadn’t thought of preparing for, and advises civil servants to attend other hearings to get an idea of the atmosphere and approach of the committee.

However, although Magee thinks training is a good idea for the first appearance, he cautions against taking too much. “It doesn’t take a long period of time – just half a day or so, and don’t spend a lot of money. It’s something you would do the first time you were [appearing], but you wouldn’t need to repeat that.”

Training can provide a one-off confidence boost, but insight and practice can also come from within a department. As education minister, Parmjit Dhanda used to have an elaborate method of preparing for each committee. The former Labour MP, who now runs media consultancy Painswick Public Affairs and Media Guidance, would hold mock hearings, with officials playing the parts of committee members.

“I would want to be at one end of the table to physically recreate the environment, and would give different roles around the table to get them to give me as tough a time as possible,” he says.

The former minister also found that it was just as important to prepare for “a hostile environment” as for the questions themselves. He says that the role play would force him to think through his answers, and would also make the committee appear less daunting.

The best way to prepare for the questions is to anticipate them. Begg, who also has experience of the Scottish affairs committee, explains that select committees call officials close to the end of a longer inquiry, with the minister being the last person to be called.

Civil servants should therefore look at the published transcripts of previous sessions to see what other people are saying, she advises. Then, a civil servant can “be in a position to counter if other people have got something wrong. Inevitably, they’ll be asked very similar questions,” she says.

Knowing their aims

Not all hearings have the same aims, and neither do all committees. Magee notes that “Departmental committees will be different in their questioning to the public accounts committee (PAC).”

The PAC is seen as the most formidable committee because it exists to scrutinise spending on projects and seek out waste in the public sector, says Begg. She says that officials are “going to get a hammering from the PAC because that’s their job”.

Yet the reputation for PAC toughness may change slightly over the next few years. In a recent CSW interview the chair Margaret Hodge accepted that civil servants need to take risks – a point emphasised by both David Cameron and Sir Gus O’Donnell. Hodge wants to change the confrontational reputation of PAC and build a constructive dialogue, in which the intelligent taking of risks is accepted and even praised. Civil servants will, of course, have to prove that those decisions were intelligent ones.

On the other hand, departmental committees are concerned with the motivation behind a policy and the context of the decision-making, Begg says. This context is viewed through the lens of credibility, not partisanship. McNulty explains that the departmental committee will not be interested in the political factors shaping a decision, but will “really dig deep and stress-test the process and development of policy objectives”.

The makeup of each panel will affect the questions asked, because MPs have disparate interests and backgrounds. Magee suggests that civil servants should not only research policy, but committee members’ political interests too. “It’s important to know whether the people on the other side of the table have particular interests or focuses,” he says.

The temperament of committee members will also make a difference. Dhanda says that “some characters will want to scrutinise in a polite and observant way. Others will be far tougher, like bulldogs in their approach, so you have to be ready for all of it – and not just for tougher questions, but a change of tempo. It depends on whether they sense blood or not.”

The bloodshed is only metaphorical, of course. The role of the committee is to get answers, and the role of the official is to provide them. Understanding the committee’s role is relatively easy: they will do what they need to get the most out of a witness. To avoid being wounded, a civil servant must persuade a committee that they are doing their utmost to be helpful.

How to perform

When it comes to the hearing itself, a civil servant must be polished and ready to perform. According to Oliver, an official is seen not as an individual but as a representative of the government. Therefore, a committee appearance calls for competence, not flamboyance.

It is crucial to engage with the committee and build a conversation. “Treat it as an opportunity, not a threat,” Magee advises. “There is an opportunity to get a case across and still answer the questions.” Particularly with the PAC, people “can feel threatened”, he thinks, “but be robust in putting your point across.”

Officials may choose to present an opening statement, as long as the committee allows it. Magee’s advice here is simple: “Don’t go on too long.” Non-verbal indicators are also important – a good performance requires an official to appear confident in the answer they give. Magee says that he has learned “not to go in there with stacks of briefing notes. If you have properly prepared just go in with any report the committee may have written, or with the PAC, they’ll [be working from a] report by the National Audit Office. You can write your notes on the back.”

If it appears that you don’t know your subject, he warns, “they start to get annoyed and take a dim view of the evidence.” Begg adds that recalcitrance or evasiveness can irritate a select committee. “We don’t like it if we think civil servants are not being upfront or honest,” she says. “If there’s obfuscation in what they say we think they’re hiding something from us.”

Another problem is a common complaint levied at the civil service: that of a departmental mindset, rather than a holistic approach. Begg, the work and pensions committee chair, complains that: “While DWP officials take the committee seriously, others don’t.” Predictably, “that annoys us intensely”; if officials seem arrogant, flippant and inaccurate that will be reflected in the end report. A bad result for policy; a bad result for those officials’ reputations.

Throughout the process it is important to remember that the civil service will always make mistakes, as will the serving government of the day. Therefore select committees will always put officials under pressure, and will always appear a daunting prospect. The key is to take them in your stride and ensure they get what they need: answers.

Written by Joshua Chambers