SIR Lindsay Hoyle has emerged victorious in the election to replace John Bercow as House of Commons Speaker.
The Labour politician received more than 50% of votes in the fourth ballot of MPs, defeating his party colleague Chris Bryant.
Hoyle, formerly a deputy to Bercow, received 325 votes to Bryant’s 213.
Speakers must be politically impartial, meaning Hoyle will be required to resign from the Labour Party in order to carry out his duties.
Hoyle paid tribute to Ken Clarke’s role in presiding over the Speaker’s election as well as the other candidates.
He said: “I stand by what I said, I stand firm, that I hope this House will be once again a great respected House, not just in here but across the world. It’s the envy and we’ve got to make sure that tarnish is polished away, that the respect and tolerance that we expect from everyone who works in here will be shown and we’ll keep that in order.”
After being dragged to his seat by MPs, as is traditional, the new Speaker paid tribute to his daughter Natalie Lewis-Hoyle, who took her own life in 2017.
He said: “There is one person who’s not here, my daughter Natalie. I wish she’d have been here, we all miss her as a family, no more so than her mum. I’ve got to say, she was everything to all of us, she will always be missed but she will always be in our thoughts.”
He added: “I want to hopefully show that the experience I’ve shown previously will continue. As I’ve promised, I will be neutral, I will be transparent.”
Standing to congratulate Hoyle, Boris Johnson said he was confident the new Bercow’s replacement would “stand up for backbenchers”.
“Mr Speaker, in congratulating you on your election I observe that you have prevailed over an extremely strong field and that every other candidate earlier on spoke forcibly and well,” the Prime Minister said.
“Speaking for myself, after long, happy years of dealing with you, I think I know what it is – and let me say, whenever any of us is preparing to speak in this Chamber, we all know there is a moment between standing up and when the Speaker calls you when your heart is in your mouth.
“And in that moment of anxiety, about whether you’re going to make a fool of yourself and so on, and indeed at the moment when we sit down amid deafening silence, the kindliness of the Speaker is absolutely critical to our confidence and the way we behave.
He added: “And Mr Speaker, over the years I have observed that you have many good qualities, and I’m sure you will stick up for backbenchers in the way that you have proposed, and I’m sure that you will adhere to a strict Newtonian concept of time in PMQs.”
Congratulating the new Speaker, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Sir Lindsay will “stand up for the principle” of parliamentary democracy.
“The job of Speaker is not just a ceremonial one. It is about the rights of backbenchers to be able to speak up,” he said.
“It is about the power of Parliament to hold the government to account. That is the whole principle and point of a parliamentary democracy, that we have a strong Parliament that can hold the executive to account. And I know you will stand up for that principle because that is what you believe in.”
Corbyn also made a quip after a photo emerged at the weekend of him watching the Rugby World Cup Final but not facing the television.
“You’re going to need back in the eyes of your head. It’s a difficult job, you don’t know what’s coming at you next and so I realised you’ve actually been in training in this,” he said.
“So I’ve been looking at a photo of you at the weekend apparently watching the rugby cup final whilst at the same time not watching the television. So the only conclusion I can draw from this is that you literally do have eyes in the back of your head.”
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