House of Lords

• Election of a new Lord Speaker: 2026 (Library briefing)

• Election of the Lord Speaker 2026 - timetable, eligibility to vote, voting system

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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D’Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And we are devoting this admittedly longer than usual special episode to the race for the Lord Speakership, the presiding officer of the House of Lords.

Unlike their Commons opposite number, the Lords Speaker doesn't get to shout "Order. Order", but they are still an important player in the world of Westminster.

Ruth Fox: And on behalf of the Hansard Society, I chaired the official hustings for the election between the Conservative Peer, Lord Forsyth, and the Crossbench Peer Baroness Bull, which took place last week in the House of Lords Robing Room, the place where the King, normally dons his robes before the State Opening. And here, exclusively for Parliament [00:01:00] Matters listeners, is what happened.

Welcome everyone to the Hustings for the election of the Lord Speaker, organised and hosted by the Hansard Society, at the invitation of the Procedure Committee of the House. We were invited to organise the hustings for the first time in 2011 for the election of the Lord Speaker, and subsequent elections. And it's an honor to do so again.

I see many familiar faces in the audience in so far as I can see in the semi-dark. But for those of you who may not know me, I'm Ruth Fox, I'm the Director of the Hansard Society.

In terms of how we're going to organise things today. the candidates are going to make an opening statement of no more than five minutes, and we will then proceed to your questions. Following a coin toss a few minutes ago. Lord Forsyth is going to speak [00:02:00] first. We've received dozens and dozens of questions. So I'm afraid some of you are going to be disappointed tonight. But there were some very clear themes, which we've grouped together to bring about what I hope will be a coherent discussion, and also to avoid duplication.

As well as those of you here in the Robing Room there are Peers watching the live feed in the over spill room and also online. Now, a consequence of having, in effect three audiences is that, you know, we have to manage the audio in terms of the recording so we ensure that everything is picked up for the purposes of the recording. So the plan is that I will put the primary question that we've selected from those that you have submitted, and then the candidates will be invited to respond. There will be opportunities for them to respond to each other. And time allowing towards the end, if there are is enough time, we [00:03:00] will also put some supplementary questions from you. We've got two roving microphones. We'll see how we go for time and how things are with the, with the recording. If you're invited to speak I'll give you instructions at that point about how we will deal with that in terms of the microphones. I've not set formal time limits for the responses from the candidates. We want this to be a dialogue and to be as informal as possible.

But I have got a card saying 30 seconds, so that if they are droning on, I will, I will use it. I have asked them to be mindful of the time so we can get through as many questions as possible and then at the end, each candidate will have a few minutes to, to sum up. So with that, can I invite Lord Forsyth to go to the lectern to make his opening remarks. Full transcript →