Procedure and House Affairs committee  Obviously, because of the need to respect the secrecy of the ballot we didn't let any students look at them to do that sort of analysis. What was made public was a chart showing the progress of the count as candidates were eliminated. As Mr. Reid implied, I suspect most of that i

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was no problem coming back a week later. Should you think of any more factual information that would be helpful to the committee, if your clerk lets me know I'll do my best to help.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  And you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't know whether they gave any consideration to going to the alternative vote system. Historically, it was always done in the Commons by having someone propose the name of a candidate and debating that in the usual way and voting on that, so I guess to move to the Lords syste

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The thinking is that five years is a suitable term for a Speaker, and actually in five years we'd have a fair amount of turnover in the sense that we've had a lot of new members in the last five years.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The election in which there were 81 candidates wasn't a speakership election. That was the first of our byelections when one of the hereditary peers.... Basically 10% of the hereditary peers stayed on after the reform of the House in 1999, so these were candidates from outside th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't see any disadvantages in the sense that I could think of another system that might be preferable in some way. As I mentioned, I think it could be improved if members better understood the importance of casting all their votes. As far as I'm aware, the first-past-the-post

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That was certainly my impression. I mentioned it was a first for us in 2011. It's perhaps worth adding that the Hansard Society was following an innovation in 2009, when Michael Martin stepped down as Speaker of the House of Commons and there was a mid-parliament process, when th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can see why you might prefer to go for a non-open model. I think in the House of Lords that would be a non-starter. There would be suspicions about the process. I think the openness of it is probably essential to retaining the confidence of members in the system. I can speak fo

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I believe I've been connected to the interpreters' translation, but if not, provided that you speak slowly enough, I hope I will be able to understand.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Let me start by saying that it turns out that I had the English translation feed, so I hope that captured your question correctly. This isn't an issue for the House of Lords, because the deputy Speaker is appointed separately by a simple motion in the House. There's typically an

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that's essentially right. I think a reason for the 75-word statement recommended by our procedure committee was perhaps to try to reduce the amount of individual campaigning that members would be subjected to, and to make it more structured. But, essentially, you're right

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's quite high, but not everybody did. In 2011, the most recent one, there were 770 members eligible to vote, of whom 644 did vote. The percentage was somewhere the high 80's.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As far as I'm aware, I have not had any negative feedback. It may have been helpful—and I think this is something Mr. Reid has drawn attention to in your deliberations—that in both cases the candidate who was finally successful was ahead at every stage of the count. Nobody overto

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's correct. Our Speaker, and, before her, the Lord Chancellor, sits on a woolsack rather than a wooden chair, as in almost every other Westminster-style Parliament.