A major probe into the future relationship between the United Kingdom and its overseas territories is back on track after a brush with scandal.
Conservative Member of Parliament Dame Jackie Doyle-Price was elected chairperson of the all-party House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee after the resignation of her predecessor in disgrace.
The influential committee is set to deliver its findings on the UK-OT relationship in July ahead of an expected British general election in the autumn.
The previous head of the committee, William Wragg, quit the post last month after sending compromising pictures of himself to someone he had met on a dating website.
‘Delighted’
Dame Jackie, who was elected in a ballot of MPs in the wake of the controversy, said she was “delighted” to take up the position.
“I look forward to chairing the committee’s ongoing inquiries into the important constitutional issues of the day,” she said. “I intend to use the time left in this parliament to ensure that the necessary questions are asked to uphold good governance and appropriate cultural behaviour within the institutions of government.”
Before entering parliament in 2010, the new chairperson had a background in public administration.
She served as a junior minister at the Department of Health from June 2017 to July 2019 and was also a junior minister at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in 2022.
‘Blackmailed’
Mr. Wragg previously claimed that he had been “blackmailed” into sending private information about fellow MPs and senior journalists under the threat of having “intimate” material released if he would not.
The senior MP quit the chairmanship of the committee on April 8 and the following day voluntarily gave up the Conservative whip. He now sits as an independent.
Mr. Wragg previously stood down from frontline politics for a brief period in August 2022, citing depression and anxiety issues.
This April, he told The Times of London that he had handed over colleagues’ numbers after he sent intimate pictures of himself, stating that the scam had left him“scared and mortified.”
Committee members
Despite the leadership shakeup, members of the PACA Committee have insisted that the scandal will not impact their investigation into how the UK should relate to its overseas territories.
The committee also defended the fact it has not made a fact-finding visit to OTs in the Caribbean, stating that trips to Gibraltar and Bermuda were all members could manage to accomplish.
Parliament initially announced the PACA Committee inquiry on April 20, 2023, in the lead-up to a May 2023 Joint Ministerial Council meeting in London, where the UK agreed to launch a new government strategy on the OTs.