Betty Boothroyd calls for Lords Speaker chair
Baroness Betty Boothroyd has called for an independent Speaker’s chair in the House of Lords.
The life peer – the first woman to become a Speaker in the Commons – said peers ought to seize the opportunity of reforming the second chamber, as Labour appeared to have shelved his constitutional reform agenda.
She said it was the responsibility of peers themselves to carry out much needed reforms in the other place.
“I believe the Prime Minister started this reform without knowing the end result,” she told BBC’s Breakfast With Frost.
“Now we have to take care of it ourselves and make the best of it.”
Lady Boothroyd said it was no longer right for the Lord Chancellor – currently Lord Falconer of Thoroton – to act as the speaker in the Lords, given his ministerial and judicial briefs.
“I would really like to see a Speaker of the House of Lords,” she said.
“I don’t go for the idea of somebody – a Lord Chancellor – who is head of the judiciary, a senior cabinet minister and speaker of the Lords.
“I want somebody there who is going to look after that house and do a job there.
“The House of Lords likes to think that it regulates itself. To some extent it does, but to a large extent it doesn’t. There is a good deal of decent work to be done there.”
The Government removed all but 92 of the 750 hereditary peers from the Lords in 1999 in the first stage of its modernisation drive.
The Lord Chancellor told the same programme the Government would unveil a new drive to reform the second chamber in its party manifesto.
“I think we need to look very carefully at the relationship between the Lords and the Commons,” Lord Falconer said.
“How it interacts with the Commons is a very, very important issue.
“We need to address the issue in the manifesto, but you will have to wait for when the manifesto comes.”
