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Lord Speaker: Baroness Hayman

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Leader of the House for what he has said about the outgoing Speaker and I know that the whole House will concur with all that he has said. He has rightly emphasised her work in establishing the new post, in carrying out her work both in the Chamber and on the important committees of this House, her work on governance and transparency, and on external engagement. In all those areas, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has carried out her role and responsibilities with energy, conscientiousness and dignity in a way that commanded great respect and affection both here and in the wider world. I understand, however, that occasionally there was amusing confusion with foreign counterparts because the Lord Speaker was clearly neither a Lord nor someone able to speak in her own Chamber. Perhaps I may touch on three points in particular. The first refers to the considerable difficulty that this House and, indeed, Parliament as a whole have faced over matters of conduct. I believe that this House took the right steps to deal with these matters but in doing so the Lord Speaker had an important but difficult role. She had at once to be apart and above these issues, and, at exactly the same time in terms of her own concerns for the reputation of this House, to be fully involved in helping to resolve them. She struck entirely the right balance in doing so, at once working closely with all parts of the House and its processes, and at the same time maintaining an important detachment from the political parties and other groupings and individuals. I pay tribute to her care and carefulness in doing so. Secondly, she has been a vital catalyst in helping to improve the way your Lordships’ House does its work. The House now has before it an important set of proposals for reform of its working practices. The fact that it does so can be traced directly and specifically back to initiatives taken by the Lord Speaker. If this House updates, improves and reforms its working practices, as I hope it will, it will be a testament to the outgoing Lord Speaker that it has done so. The third area which I would mention is young people. The outreach programme which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, or Helene as she always will be and always has been for many of us on all sides of this House, has successfully established has already been mentioned. It has been of real benefit to this House and to Parliament. I also believe that it has been of genuine benefit to thousands of young people and it has been appreciated up and down this country. This is not a party political occasion. This is an occasion which is informed by politics—it is, after all, what we do—but it is not governed by them. I hope, however, that we might on this side of the House be given a few seconds of indulgence because we are particularly proud and pleased to be able to pay tribute to the first Lord Speaker. She was a trailblazer in this post of great constitutional significance but, of course, she was also a trailblazer in the other place as the youngest MP—one of only 27 women MPs and one of very, very few women in the House who had babies. The Lord Speaker has been scrupulous in her impartiality and punctilious in her application of that and all aspects of her role. At the same time, we know that she came from our Benches and from a long record of service to our party. We are proud and pleased that she has been such a credit to the whole House and, in doing so, a credit to our party too. We know that in returning to the House she now has to sit on the Cross Benches and we know that she will carry out her role there with the same impartiality and care that she has shown as Lord Speaker. We hope, however, that from time to time—just as with some of her Cross-Bench colleagues—we will be able to persuade her of some of the arguments which we will be making. We welcome the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, as the new Lord Speaker, especially on this her first day on the Woolsack. She has a hard act to follow. I hope that the new Lord Speaker will see fit to follow the example of her predecessor in writing annually to all Members of your Lordships’ House. Her letters have been models of clarity and information, and I believe that they have been widely welcomed on all sides of the House. Her scrupulousness has been applied to keeping her own thoughts and views out of these letters, but in her final letter, she does say that it has been a privilege and an honour to serve this House. The real position is the reverse. It has been a privilege and an honour for this House to have the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, serve this House as its first Lord Speaker. We thank her for all that she has done.