The Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, the lower house and primary chamber of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The current speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was elected Speaker on 4 November 2019, following the retirement of John Bercow. Hoyle began his first full parliamentary term in the role on 17 December 2019, having been unanimously re-elected after the 2019 general election.
The speaker presides over the House's debates, determining which members may speak and which amendments are selected for consideration. The speaker is also responsible for maintaining order during debate, and may punish members who break the rules of the House. By convention, the Speaker is strictly non-partisan; accordingly, a Speaker is expected to renounce all affiliation with their former political parties when taking office and afterwards.
The speaker does not take part in debate or vote (except to break ties; and even then, the convention is that the speaker casts the tie-breaking vote according to Speaker Denison's rule which results either in further debate or a vote for the status quo). Aside from duties relating to presiding over the House, the speaker also performs administrative and procedural functions. In addition, they remain a constituency Member of Parliament (MP), are part of the Privy Council, and represent the Commons to the monarch, the House of Lords and other authorities. The official residence of the Speaker is the Speaker's House at the Palace of Westminster.
History
Early history
The office of speaker is almost as old as Parliament itself. The earliest year for which a presiding officer has been identified is 1258, when Peter de Montfort presided over the Parliament held in Oxford. Early presiding officers were known by the title parlour or prolocutor. The continuous history of the office of speaker is held to date from 1376 when Sir Peter de la Mare spoke for the commons in the "Good Parliament" as they joined leading magnates in purging the chief ministers of the Crown and the most unpopular members of the king's household. Edward III was frail and in seclusion; his prestigious eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, terminally ill. It was left to the next son, a furious John of Gaunt, to fight back. He arrested De la Mare and disgraced other leading critics.
In the next, "Bad Parliament", in 1377, a cowed Commons put forward Gaunt's steward, Thomas Hungerford, as their spokesman in retracting their predecessors' misdeeds of the previous year. Gaunt evidently wanted a "mirror-image" as his form of counter-coup and this notion, born in crisis, of one 'speaker', who quickly also became 'chairman' and organiser of the Commons' business, was recognised as valuable and took immediate root after 1376–1377.
On 6 October 1399, Sir John Cheyne of Beckford (Gloucester) was elected speaker. The powerful Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, is said to have voiced his fears of Cheyne's reputation as a critic of the Church. Eight days later, Cheyne resigned on grounds of ill-health, although he remained in favour with the king and active in public life for a further 14 years.
Although the officer was elected by the Commons at the start of each Parliament, with at least one contested election known, in 1420 (Roger Hunt prevailing by a majority of just four votes), in practice the Crown was usually able to get whom it wanted. Whilst the principle of giving this spokesman personal immunity from recrimination as only being the voice of the whole body was quickly adopted and did enhance the Commons' role, the Crown found it useful to have one person with the authority to select and lead the lower house's business and responses to the Crown's agenda, much more often than not in the way the Crown wanted. Thus, Whig ideas of the Commons growing in authority as against royal power are somewhat simplistic; the Crown used the Commons as and when it found it advantageous to do so, and the speakership was one means to make the Commons a more cohesive, defined and effective instrument of the king's government.