Tory MPs angered by select committee decision

Conservative MPs are up in arms over a whips' decision to allow Labour to chair the Commons Select Committee on Trade and Industry - covering, throughout this Parliament, Michael Heseltine's high-profile department and the planned coal privatisation, writes Nicholas Timmins.

The committee of selection is due to decide the final membership of select committees today, but Sir Anthony Grant, a former trade minister and senior member of the trade and industry committee, has written to Richard Ryder, the Tory Chief Whip, protesting at an 'inexplicable' decision.

Members of the committees, which act as watchdogs over the executive, are meant to choose their own chairmen, he said, not have the whips make the decision.

Senior Tories on the old committee are protesting that with the public accounts committee traditionally chaired by the Opposition, and with Labour expected to retain the employment committee, three out of the four senior economic committees will be chaired by Labour. One said: 'It is scandalous that they have handed over to Labour chairmanship of the committee covering the second most important economic department.' With the economy in the doldrums the media would soon realise there was a select committee chairman willing repeatedly to criticise the Government.

The job is likely to go to Doug Hoyle, unless he becomes chairman of the Labour parliamentary party in tomorrow's ballot, or Dr John Gilbert. One Tory described both as 'shrewd political operators who could give us a lot of trouble'.

With Labour - under the unwritten rules that govern these things - entitled to chair one more committee now that the Government's majority is smaller, the deal appears to have been done to protect for Tory chairmanship of the new select committee covering William Waldegrave's Citizen's Charter and open government activities - and because Labour was willing to give up chairmanship of the transport committee. That committee will be watching the BR privatisation plans, and Government whips see that as a coup, perceiving rail privatisation to be much more politically sensitive than coal privatisation.

Meanwhile, Nicholas Winterton, the deeply independent Tory MP for Macclesfield, looks likely to retain chairmanship of the health committee, put there, as last time, by Labour votes. Labour whips refused an offer to take back the chair, telling the Government side that if they did not want Mr Winterton they should ensure he was not on the committee. Conservative whips appear not to want the public row that decision would produce.