---

Clerk of the Parliaments

My Lords, I am delighted to wholly endorse the sentiments of the noble Baroness the Leader of the House in her characteristically elegant and generous remarks. In fact, I feel rather nervous in stepping forward. After all, when Sir Paul entered the service of the House, I was all of four years old. In the subsequent 43 years, I have progressed from a toddler to what someone very unfairly called a waddler. But I am told that Sir Paul carried himself with the same upright dignity in 1964 as he does today at 65 years young. We all know that Sir Paul really does look the part, and he has played the part. He seems to have grown from the very fibre of the place. If Pugin had drawn the ““Clericus Parliamentorum””, surely he would have looked exactly like Sir Paul. Indeed, well over 70 per cent of the House will be unable to recall when he has not been one of the senior Clerks sitting at the Table; and not 70 per cent but 100 per cent of us, even the old stagers, will miss him. As a young Clerk, as the noble Baroness explained, he was in the Leader’s office in the days when your Lordships were resisting the nationalisation of the aircraft and shipbuilding industries. It seems now an entirely different world. But in this, as so often, we were ahead of the time and could see that nationalisation was not quite the coming thing. In fact, in the Sessions when Sir Paul was on watch in the Chief Whip’s office in the usual channels, there were 291 Divisions and the Government lost 267 of them—a success rate for Sir Paul of 9 per cent. So I say to the younger Clerks who have succeeded him in this role, don’t get too depressed. Knowing Sir Paul to be a great enthusiast for modernisation, I turned to the internet for information on him. I was surprised, but not incredulous given his many interests, to discover that on the quiet and without telling your Lordships, a certain Paul G Hayter had recently filed an international patent for test strips for blood and urine samples. Biometric testing, no less. I had not known that he was listening so closely to our debates on the Identity Cards Bill, while musing on the commercial possibilities of retirement. Then I noticed that it was Paul G Hayter of Mountain View, California, not Paul G Hayter of Charlton, Oxfordshire. But they are a talented lot, these Paul Hayters. After all, Sir Paul began his career, winning perhaps the most competitive scholarship of all, as a Kings’ scholar at Eton; and he has ended as one of Her Majesty’s foremost public servants. On an occasion such as this we are reminded of the long service given by the Clerks to your Lordships’ House and that theirs is a career service requiring immense ability, professionalism and a high sense of duty, which Sir Paul has always displayed. He has always given crystal clear and well founded advice in a manner that we have instinctively trusted because he is a person that the House has felt it can absolutely trust. He has piloted the House through a period of considerable change, particularly in procedure. Not all of us have welcomed all of those changes but, all in all, the workings of our House have improved and that is greatly to his credit. The Leader of the House has told us of Sir Paul’s remarkable range of interests; he is a man of many parts. He is an artist, a gardener, an archer and a musician, with a large instrument that I’m sure he plays with the greatest gusto. So he will not be twiddling his thumbs in what I hope will be long years of retirement. We wish him and Lady Hayter rich and rewarding years—and may they always be fun. I hope we will see him often back here in the years ahead. We thank him most sincerely for the years that are done.