Commons to elect new Speaker

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MPs will elect John Bercow's successor as Speaker of the House of Commons later in the first election for the powerful post in more than a decade.

The Speaker keeps order in Commons debates and calls MPs to speak.

Seven candidates are in the running, including ex-deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman and current deputy Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

At 14:30 GMT the candidates will make short speeches in the Commons after which MPs will cast their votes.

Speaker's election: MPs to choose John Bercow's successor

BBC News
4 November 2019

Johgn Bercow stepped down as Speaker on 31st October after 10 years in the job

MPs will elect John Bercow's successor as Speaker of the House of Commons later in the first election for the powerful post in more than a decade.

The Speaker keeps order in Commons debates and calls MPs to speak.

Seven candidates are in the running, including ex-deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman and current deputy Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

At 14:30 GMT the candidates will make short speeches in the Commons after which MPs will cast their votes.

Mr Bercow stood down on Thursday after an eventful and frequently controversial decade in the Speaker's chair. His resignation as MP for Buckingham was officially confirmed on Monday.

How will the vote unfold?

Candidates need the support of at least 12 MPs, three of whom have to be from a different party, in order to be eligible to take part.

After the candidates have made their pitches in the Commons, MPs will have 20 minutes to vote in a secret ballot. It will take about an hour to count them.

If no candidate receives more half of the votes, the individual who receives the least votes will drop out, as will anyone who obtains less than 5% of the total cast.

After each round, there will be a 10-minute period for candidates to withdraw.

MPs will then continue to vote until one candidate obtains more than half of the votes. The process will be overseen by Ken Clarke, who as Father of the House is the long-serving MP in the Commons.

Who is in the running?

Brexiteer Labour MP Sir Lindsay Hoyle is regarded as the frontrunner for the role

Labour's Harriet Harman has said she wants to put an end to "the Old Boys' Club" in Parliament

Deputy Speaker Eleanor Laing has said she would "do things differently" from Mr Bercow

The seven contenders are:

Chris Bryant - former minister and shadow Commons leader; Labour MP for Rhondda since 2001
Harriet Harman - former minister and deputy Labour leader; Labour MP since 1982, for Peckham and its successor constituency Camberwell
Meg Hillier - chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee and former minister; Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch since 2005
Sir Lindsay Hoyle - elected Labour MP for Chorley in 1997; elected deputy Speaker in 2010
Dame Eleanor Laing - elected Conservative MP for Epping Forest in 1997; elected deputy Speaker in 2013
Sir Edward Leigh - Conservative MP for Gainsborough since 1983; former chairman of the Public Accounts Committee
Dame Rosie Winterton - elected Labour MP for Doncaster Central in 1997; former Labour chief whip; elected deputy Speaker in 2017BBC parliamentary correspondent Mark D'Arcy said most observers believed Sir Lindsay - who has been Mr Bercow's senior deputy for years - was the frontrunner.

"As Chairman of Ways and Means, he chairs Budget debates and selects amendments for committee stage proceedings on bills, and has had plenty of opportunity to demonstrate his credentials," our correspondent says.

Sir Lindsay said MPs backing him included Conservative Charles Walker, who was one of Mr Bercow's key allies during his tenure, former sports minister Tracey Crouch and Brexit-backing Labour MP Caroline Flint.

He received an early boost when former Conservative minister Shailesh Vara, one of the outsiders in the contest, said he was pulling out and would be voting for his Labour colleague.

What is the Speaker's role?

The role of the Speaker has come under increasing scrutiny over the past few years - and Mr Bercow has been both praised for boosting the influence of backbench MPs and criticised for stretching parliamentary rules.

Some have also accused him of not being impartial when it comes to Brexit.

The Speaker is responsible for choosing which amendments can be voted on - a power that has proved particularly significant in the Brexit process.

He is also in charge of upholding parliamentary rules, and Mr Bercow twice angered some MPs by refusing to allow the government to hold another vote on an already rejected Brexit deal.

The Speaker can also permit MPs to ask urgent questions whereby government ministers are summoned to the House of Commons over a time-sensitive or important matter.

During his years in the role, Mr Bercow dramatically increased the number of urgent questions asked.

Analysis: Easy win or tactical battle

By Mark D'Arcy, the BBC's parliamentary correspondent

Later on Monday what one MP calls "the most duplicitous electorate in the world" will vote to choose a new Speaker of the House of Commons.

So what might MPs want? First, there seems be an appetite for a different style - an end to Bercow-esque grandiloquence and those five-minute appeals for brevity, as well as for an end to the kind of clashes with MPs that the departed Speaker was prone to.

Remember his red-faced finger-jabbing clash with the then Chief Whip Patrick McLoughlin, or this week's spat with long-time Bercow critic Andrew Bridgen?

Then there's the much more important concern about the Speaker's sweeping powers to make the rules in the Commons, a power which saw him permitting amendments to Business of the House motions which were supposed to be taken "forthwith" - which many MPs believed meant they could not be amended.

Given no one party has a majority in the House, the winning candidate will be the one most capable of reaching across party lines, and building a majority out of factions of the main parties, the members of the smaller parties and their personal supporters.

Those seen as party gladiators first and foremost may find that hard to do.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50283826

 

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Lindsay Hoyle leads after first Speaker ballot

House of Commons
Parliament

Former Conservative MP Ken Clarke announces the result of the first ballot in the election of John Bercow's successor as Speaker.

No one has secured more than half the votes - so there will have to be a second ballot.

Labour's Meg Hillier and Tory MP Sir Edward Leigh have been eliminated from the contest.

Dame Rosie Winterton (Lab) – 46
Chris Bryant (Lab) – 98
Sir Edward Leigh (Con) – 12
Dame Eleanor Laing (Con) – 113
Meg Hillier (Lab) – 10
Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Lab) – 211
Ms Harriet Harman (Lab) – 72

 

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Lindsay Hoyle continues to lead Speaker election

The results of the second ballot in the Speaker election candidate are in – Labour MP Sir Lindsay Hoyle remains in the lead with 244 votes.

However, he didn’t get more than half the votes, meaning unless all the other candidates withdraw there will have to be a third ballot.

As she received the fewest votes this round, Dame Rosie Winterton has been eliminated.

Here are the results in full:

Chris Bryant (Lab) – 120
Ms Harriet Harman (Lab) – 59
Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Lab) – 244
Dame Eleanor Laing (Con) – 122
Dame Rosie Winterton (Lab) – 30

 

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Good riddance to Bercow, by the way. The worst Speaker ever. He's displayed not one iota of the impartiality he is supposed to display, as Commons referee, over Brexit, being completely biased towards the Remainers.

He's also managed to escape an investigation into his alleged bullying of staff - well he has Remainer Establishment friends - and managed to prevent his friend Keith Vaz from being deselected as a Labour MP for paying rent boys.

So him going is another huge blow to the Remainers.

I'd like to see Sir Lindsay Hoyle take up the role. He's been a very good Deputy Speaker since 2010. He seems to be a Brexiteer and, unlike Bercow, hasn't let the Remainers have everything their own way when he's been sat in the Speaker's Chair.

He's also a local guy, too, hailing from Adlington, just six miles from Bolton.

 

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Harman has pulled out of the contest meaning only three remain going into the third round of voting: Lindsay Hoyle, Eleanor Laing, Chris Bryant.

Two Leavers and one Remainer (Bryant).

 

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Sir Lindsay Hoyle retains lead in third ballot results

The results of the third ballot in the Speaker election are in.

Here are the results in full:

Chris Bryant (Lab) – 169
Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Lab) – 267
Dame Eleanor Laing (Con) – 127

Dame Eleanor Laing has therefore been eliminated from the contest.

The fourth and final round of voting will start in about 15 minutes, Ken Clarke said.

As the longest-serving MP, Mr Clarke is presiding over the process .

 

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Sir Lindsay Hoyle elected new Commons Speaker

BBC News
4 November 2019

Labour MP and deputy Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has been elected by MPs as the new Commons Speaker, after John Bercow stepped down.

He was dragged to the chair by MPs, where he pledged to be a "neutral" and "transparent" Speaker.

Sir Lindsay also paid tribute to his daughter, Natalie, who died in 2017, saying she would "always be missed".

He received 325 votes to Chris Bryant's 213 in the fourth and final round of voting.

Paying tribute to the new Speaker, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was sure Sir Lindsay would "stick up" for backbenchers and show his "signature kindness and reasonableness" in the chair.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told Sir Lindsay he would need "eyes in the back of your head" in his role as Speaker.

He said Sir Lindsay had taken the welfare of Commons staff and MPs "very, very seriously" and would continue to do so.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50293505

 

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Lancastrian boomer with parrot named after the PM and a tortoise called Maggie: ANDREW PIERCE profiles new Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle

By Andrew Pierce for the Daily Mail
5 November 2019

With his booming Lancastrian voice and unashamedly working-class credentials, Sir Lindsay Hoyle couldn't be further removed from his preening predecessor John Bercow.

In fact, that's principally why he won the race to be the 158th Speaker so comfortably last night.

His trenchant impartiality – unlike Bercow, he's never pontificated on the merits or pitfalls of Brexit – will undoubtedly have won admirers, too.

Born in Adlington in Chorley, Lancashire, where he went to the local state school, he's lived in the town all his life. The Hoyle household was a political one. He is pictured with his pets (all named after political figures) above

In 2010 he (pictured in the Commons today) became the first Deputy Speaker to be elected by MPs, rather than by the nomination of the Leader of the House

Easy-going and avuncular, Hoyle is no stranger to the Commons spotlight.

He has sat in the Speaker's chair for every Budget since 2010, when he was elected Chairman of the Ways and Means, an ancient but obscure Commons title which makes him the main of the three Deputy Speakers.

On every occasion, he has presided over the affair with a seemingly effortless ability to maintain order, deploying humour to deadly effect to rein in wayward MPs.

And as last night's votes demonstrated, Hoyle's parliamentary colleagues don't begrudge him for it.

Indeed, MPs – always keen to rush off to lunch – have praised Hoyle's insistence on keeping Prime Minister's Questions to its scheduled half-hour when he's stood in for Bercow.

Mr Hoyle's daughter, Natalie Lewis-Hoyle (pictured left), was found dead in 2017. He is pictured right with his wife

Lindsay Harvey Hoyle, 62, was named after Australian cricketer Lindsay Hassett, who was in the 1948 'Invincibles' team which toured England. 'Most people who meet me expect a woman – you can see the shock on their faces,' he said.

Yet Hoyle didn't have any qualms when choosing his pets' unorthodox names. He has a parrot named Boris, after the Prime Minister, who has already mastered the words: 'Order, order.'

He has a Patterdale terrier called Betty after Baroness Boothroyd, the first woman speaker.

The Hoyle pet menagerie also includes a Rottweiler called Gordon, named after the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown, a cat called Dennis – after Dennis Skinner, the longest-serving Labour MP – and a tortoise called Maggie. 'She's got a hard shell and isn't for turning,' he says.

Australia's Lindsay Hassett

With his booming Lancastrian voice and unashamedly working-class credentials, Sir Lindsay Hoyle couldn't be further removed from his preening predecessor John Bercow, pictured above

Born in Adlington in Chorley, Lancashire, where he went to the local state school, he's lived in the town all his life. The Hoyle household was a political one.

His mother served on the council until his father, Doug, became a Labour MP in 1974 – the same year Hoyle married his first wife, Lynda, with whom he had two children. They divorced in 1982.

Doug retired as MP for Warrington in 1997 and now sits in the House of Lords and still going strong at 89.

The new Speaker became a councillor for Chorley aged 22 – then the youngest to have done so in the local authority – though few in his party had given him much hope. 'I thought, well, I like that challenge.'

When he was elected the MP for Chorley in 1997, his second wife, Catherine Swindley, succeeded him as a Labour councillor.

As a backbencher he often clashed with Tony Blair, notably over the self-determination of Gibraltar and introduction of student tuition fees.

He said of their differences: 'I'm not anti-Tony; he made us electable and won three times. But there are principles and promises you don't break.'

In 2010 he became the first Deputy Speaker to be elected by MPs, rather than by the nomination of the Leader of the House.

His time as Deputy was largely spent trying to disassociate himself from the bombast and bluster of his predecessor.

The new Speaker became a councillor for Chorley aged 22 – then the youngest to have done so in the local authority – though few in his party had given him much hope. 'I thought, well, I like that challenge'. He is pictured being dragged to the Speaker's chair in a special ceremony

Hoyle was, however, tragically thrust into the spotlight on a number of occasions.

In March 2017, it was Hoyle who was sitting in the Chair when a knife-wielding terrorist launched an attack on Westminster. Hoyle knew that his wife, who works for him, was on her way to the parliamentary estate but continued to oversee matters for the hour or two it took for him to be notified she was safe.

Just nine months later, his second daughter, Natalie, whom he fathered with a Conservative councillor before he met Catherine, tragically died aged 28. She had been in a 'toxic' and 'troubled' relationship before she was found dead in her bedroom in December 2017.

In the two years since, Hoyle continued to carry out his duties as Deputy Speaker in an admirable fashion.

Indeed, it's no surprise that Hoyle now believes he knows what it takes to be successful in the Chair. 'It's about having humour, the skills and the ability to hold the House, and it's about getting the temperature right… it's about complete fairness and independence,' he says.

Let us hope that those values, sorely missing under the reign of Bercow, are returned to the Commons once more.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ofiles-new-Commons-Speaker-Lindsay-Hoyle.html

 

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