Royal approbation of the Speaker elect

8.20Both Houses meet on the following day. In the Lords the House adjourns after prayers to allow the Lords Commissioners to robe. They then instruct Black Rod to summon the Commons. In the Commons the Speaker elect takes the Chair and awaits the arrival of Black Rod from the Lords Commissioners. When that officer has delivered the message, the Speaker elect, accompanied by the Clerk and followed by Members of the House, goes up to the House of Lords, and acquaints the Lords Commissioners, ‘That in obedience to Her Majesty's command, Her Majesty's most faithful Commons have, in the exercise of their undoubted right and privileges, proceeded to the election of a Speaker and that their choice has fallen upon myself. I therefore present myself to your Lordships' Bar and submit myself with all humility to Her Majesty's gracious Approbation.’1

In reply, the presiding Commissioner assures the Speaker elect of Her Majesty's sense of their sufficiency, and ‘that Her Majesty most readily approves and confirms [the Speaker elect] as the Speaker’.2

Footnotes

  1. 1. HL Deb (14 June 2017) 783, cc 3–4.
  2. 2. The only instance of refusal of the royal approbation was in the case of Sir Edward Seymour in 1679, an impasse which was ended only by a prorogation. The Journal record was expunged but is to be found in ed W R McKay Observations, Rules and Orders (House of Commons Library Document No 12, 1989), pp xxxiii–iv.