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Rifkind, Rt Hon. MalcolmRobathan, Andrew
Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn
Robertson, Raymond (Ab'd'n S)
Robinson, Mark (Somerton)
Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)
Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela
Sackville, Tom
Sainsbury, Rt Hon Tim
Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas
Shaw, David (Dover)
Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)
Shephard, Rt Hon Gillian
Shersby, Michael
Sims, Roger
Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)
Soames, Nicholas
Spencer, Sir Derek
Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)
Spink, Dr Robert
Spring, Richard
Sproat, Iain
Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)
Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John
Steen, Anthony
Stephen, Michael
Stern, Michael
Streeter, Gary
Sweeney, Walter
Sykes, John
Taylor, Ian (Esher)
Taylor, John M. (Solihull)
Temple-Morris, Peter
Thomason, Roy
Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)
Thurnham, Peter
Townend, John (Bridlington)
Tracey, Richard
Trend, Michael
Trotter, Neville
Vaughan, Sir Gerard
Viggers, Peter
Waldegrave, Rt Hon William
Waller, Gary
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)
Waterson, Nigel
Watts, John
Wells, Bowen
Wheeler, Sir John
Whitney, Ray
Whittingdale, John
Widdecombe, Ann
Willetts, David
Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)
Wood, Timothy
Young, Sir George (Acton)
Tellers for the Noes :
Sir Anthony Grant and
Mr. Peter Bottomley.
Question accordingly agreed to.
Main Question, as amended, put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That Miss Betty Boothroyd do take the Chair of this House as Speaker.
Whereupon Sir Edward Heath-- left the Chair, and Miss Betty Boothroyd-- was taken out of her place and conducted to the Chair by Mr. John Biffen-- and Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody--.
Madam Speaker-Elect (standing on the upper step) : Before I take the Chair, I wish to thank the House for the very great honour that it has bestowed on me. I pray that I shall justify its confidence, and I pledge that I shall do all in my power to preserve and cherish its traditions.
4.12 pm
The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major) : Madam Speaker-Elect, I rise to offer you my congratulations and, as you have just seen in a most remarkable fashion, those of the whole House, on your election as our Speaker.
Many people will remark that you are the first hon. Lady to assume the awesome responsibilities of Speaker. I shall not dwell on that point, except to note that you have made history today. It seems to me, however, that the question of why you have made history is relevant. You have become our Speaker-Elect because the House trusts you. It believes that you enjoy in abundance the qualities necessary to protect and sustain the House, and to safeguard its rights. For those reasons and no other, you have become our Speaker, and I offer you my warmest congratulations.
Will you also permit me to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) on chairing our proceedings so skilfully, on becoming Father of the House, and on the signal honour of becoming Knight of the Garter? I hope that he will play many more distinguished roles as Father of the House and Knight of the Garter.
Today was historic for another reason. This was only the third contested election for the Speakership this
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century and only the sixth since 1800. The fact that it was a contested election adds to your success and in no sense detracts from it. It will enhance your authority in the House and it reflects also the richness of experience available to us in choosing our Speaker. I pay tribute to those right hon. and hon. Members who were also prepared to place their wisdom and experience at the service of the House.The election of Speaker has been a House of Commons occasion and those of us who were privileged to be present will not readily forget the occasion. Members from the longest serving to the most newly arrived have expressed their individual preferences. So they should, because you, Madam Speaker- Elect, have now become the guardian of the rights of the House and of each and every Member within it. The holder of the office of Speaker needs a vast array of talents and virtues. She must know when to turn a blind eye and when not to do so. She needs a quick mind and a ready wit and must be unfailing in her impartiality. She will sometimes need the wisdom of Solomon and, if I am strictly honest, she will sometimes need the patience of Job. I suspect, Madam Speaker-Elect, that all your predecessors found their patience sorely tried from time to time, not least of course Sir Fletcher Norton, Speaker in the 1770s, who was apt to cry out during a tedious debate :
"I am tired ! I am weary ! I am heartily sick of all this !" I suspect that on some days, Madam Speaker-Elect, you may know precisely how he must have felt.
When I heard the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) and my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) speak about the remarkable expectations of the new Speaker, I wondered whether any of the candidates would remain. Thankfully, they did. I have no doubt that you, Madam Speaker-Elect, meet the necessary and demanding qualifications because we have seen you display them in your five years as a Deputy Speaker. In some respects your job will be different from the jobs of your distant predecessors. You no longer have to face the personal physical dangers that existed for them nor, I promise you, the rough treatment meted out to the Speaker of the rump Parliament by the then Member for Huntingdonshire. But new perils and burdens have grown up. Day after day you will be heard and seen by millions of listeners and viewers. You must deal with the steady growth and complexity of parliamentary business. The halcyon days of Mr. Speaker Popham are long gone. In Francis Bacon's words :
"When Mr. Popham was Speaker in 1581, and the Lower House had sat long, and done, in effect nothing, coming one day to Queen Elizabeth, she said to him : Now, Mr. Speaker, what hath passed in the Lower House ?' He answered : If it please your Majesty, seven weeks'." I cannot promise that you will be able to give such an answer in the coming Session, Madam Speaker-Elect.
I warmly welcome you, Madam Speaker-Elect, to the Chair of the House. I have no doubt that your Speakership will be long and distinguished, underpinned by adherence to the principle so eloquently proclaimed by Mr. Speaker Onslow who stated :
"I have loved independency and pursued it. I have kept firm to my original principles and upon conscience have never deviated from them to serve any party course whatsoever."
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The election for Speaker is over and the House has chosen you by vote and then by acclaim. As you embark on your historic role, you do so with our warm good wishes and sincere congratulations.4.18 pm
Mr. Neil Kinnock (Islwyn) : Madam Speaker-Elect, I share with the House delight at your election. If there was any form of reservation in any part of the House, surely it must have been removed entirely by the way in which you stood at the point of your election, a time when you could have been expected to be overwhelmed by a certain emotion, and gave instructions that the Mace should be put in its appropriate position. That is what my children would call very cool. I think that that coolness has stood you in good stead over many years and will be of great benefit to the House during what I hope will be a long period of office.
My pleasure comes in part, Madam Speaker-Elect, from the respect and affection in which you are held throughout the House. I say that on the basis of a personal friendship, which shall not cease despite the fact that our political relationship has obviously been severed within the past 10 minutes or so. Respect and affection for you are widely held and have been so well earned.
I celebrate your election also because of the fact that you are a woman. After six centuries and 154 previous Speakers, your elevation to the Chair could hardly be described as an overnight success for women's rights. I heed, however, the admonition in your brilliant speech, which was that you should be judged on what you are and not on what you were born. Without differing in any way from you, Madam Speaker-Elect, I regard your election by an overwhelming majority to the Chair of this honourable House to be a step forward for the majority of the people of the United Kingdom who, after all, share your gender.
Whatever the basis upon which you were chosen by that large majority, Madam Speaker-Elect, it is clear that all Parliaments will want the qualities which you possess in abundance : good humour, determination, patience and endless stamina. You come to the Chair with special assets. Your previous careers have in more ways than one equipped you with balance and poise, as I am sure Baroness Castle would be the first to testify. Anyone who was a secretary of hers had to have a certain steely gracefulness. Let us put it no higher than that. You have a clear-headedness and precision which are widely recognised in the House. I saw those qualities manifested frequently in the testing environment of the national executive committee of the Labour party some years ago.
Most of all, Madam Speaker-Elect, you have full possession of the powers that are necessary for the Speakership of the House. They are not, of course, powers that are to be found in any formal rules or standing orders. They are powers of instinct, judgment, wit and fairness that form the knowledge that you have of the nature of human beings and particularly from the understanding that you have of the psychology and, dare I say it, neurology of the subspecies of homo sapiens to which we all belong in the House--political animals. It requires a special skill and experience to have a full awareness and knowledge of this subspecies and I am sure that the House has done itself a considerable favour in electing an expert to the Chair.
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First, Madam Speaker-Elect, you have the power to distinguish between genuine passion and mere posturing, between authentic outrage and synthetic anger. Secondly, you have the power to recognise when opinions have great significance even though they are held by a small minority, and sometimes a minority of only one. Thirdly, you have the power to maintain the decorum that is appropriate to this democratic House without wanting docility, which--I share your view--should be impossible. Most important of all, you have the power of discernment that permits you to understand the difference between rumbustious behaviour and riotous conduct.We know, Madam Speaker-Elect, that you have these gifts of sagaciousness, which you share with 650 other Members. Doubtless you will occasionally have the benefit of their advice, and from time to time you can expect one or two Members generously to offer their help with one of those points of order that we all know to be motivated entirely by a cherubic desire to be constructive. You know how to deal with those points of order, Madam Speaker-Elect ; of that I have no doubt. I for one will simply put my trust in your qualities and your sense of responsibility rather than to depend upon the sporadic counsel of others. When it comes to guiding the House, I say, better the Speaker whom we have elected than the talkers who are self- appointed or, if I may be permitted one very last familiarity, Betty, the Speaker we know than the devils we know only too well. I congratulate you, Madam Speaker-Elect, and wish you a long and fruitful time in the Chair. I say with the greatest warmth and sincerity, may all your points of order be little ones.
4.24 pm
Mr. Peter Brooke (City of London and Westminster, South) : I cannot guarantee, Madam Speaker-Elect, that every speech that I make under your Speakership will be as brief as this one. However, I want to be among the first of the Back Benchers to congratulate you on your elevation to the Chair. It is very moving to take part in history. I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart. I am not a man given to disorder, but I shall do my best to obey your every instruction. 4.25 pm
Mr. James Molyneaux (Lagan Valley) : May I first pay tribute, Madam Speaker-Elect, to the efficiency with which the Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), secured your election in a democratic way, which is not surprising, given his consistent attitude to the position of women in authority. On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends on this Bench, may I congratulate you, Madam Speaker- Elect, most warmly. Over the years we have experienced your scrupulous fairness and your protection of minorities. As you have already pledged yourself to look after the interests of the United Kingdom, I know that you will bear in mind the fact that, although there are some of us who are minorities in this House, we have a different status in the various component parts of the United Kingdom that we were sent here to represent.
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4.26 pmMr. Paddy Ashdown (Yeovil) : On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I take great pleasure in welcoming your election to the Chair, Madam Speaker-Elect. The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition commented on this being an historic day. Of course it is, in all sorts of ways. My colleagues and I--and, I suspect, quite a few others--will cherish in particular the fact that at least the first vote that we cast in this Parliament was a winning one, even if others may not be.
There are three other good reasons for us to be particularly pleased that that was a winning vote and that we have your skills and abilities in the Chair of the House. First, we know that those skills and abilities, which we have learnt to respect and admire over the last few years, will be carried forward in the service of the House. Secondly, for reasons alluded to also by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, you were right, as were others, to say that this is not an occasion on which we should have voted for you or against you on the ground that you are a woman. We voted for you on the grounds of your skills, your abilities and your qualities. Nevertheless, it is a matter of considerable welcome and some rejoicing that we now have our first lady Speaker in the House of Commons.
Lastly, it is a matter of some pleasure to me and, I suspect, to many others that after an election which has put the same party back in government for the fourth time, on the basis of only 40 per cent. of the vote, the Speaker of the House, by the will of the House, should be drawn from the Opposition Benches. That is a good thing. If permitting that denotes a more pluralistic attitude by the Government, it is a doubly good thing. We on these Benches believe that the voice of dissenters and of minority parties in the House has not been sufficiently heard over the last number of years. It is our hope that you will, as your predecessors have before, act as a bulwark and safeguard to ensure that those voices are adequately heard. The skill and fairness that you have shown in the past give us good reason to hope that that will continue to be the case.
Another point bears mentioning and it was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace). In this Parliament, special consideration must be given to the position of Scotland where the Government are a minority party, as is the case in Wales. The Liberal Democrats, and others as well, hope and believe that you, Madam Speaker- Elect, will ensure that the voices of those who represent those two nations of the United Kingdom are heard adequately and properly when the occasion arises.
You, Madam Speaker-Elect, will need all your skills, all your judgment and all your sense of fairness in the job that you now have. My party believes that those qualities will be deployed to the benefit and service of the House and of the nation. We wish you well in the task ahead of you.
4.30 pm
Rev. Ian Paisley (Antrim, North) : I congratulate you, Madam Speaker -Elect, on your election to this high office today. I convey to you the warmest congratulations of my hon. Friends.
It is well known to the House that I have run foul of many Speakers. I am in the unique and honoured position of having been excluded, with my whole party, from the
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House. I am happy that you have been elected, Madam Speaker-Elect, because I believe that a woman has a tenderness that some males do not have.My right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux), who leads the Ulster Unionists in the House, does not have any womenfolk to go home to. I have four womenfolk to go home to. How could I have faced them if I had voted against you, Madam Speaker-Elect, this afternoon? I hope that you will keep that in mind and be indulgent to the voice of Ulster in the House.
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