The Lord Speaker (or Lady Speaker) will be a new position in the British Parliament created once the Constitutional Reform Act's provisions about the Speakership of the House of Lords comes into effect. The Bill modifies the office of the Lord Chancellor who currently is the Speaker of the House of Lords. Once the Act comes into effect, the Lord Chancellor will not automatically be the speaker in the Upper House, and the House of Lords will have to come to new arrangements about their speakership. The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative institution in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories (it alone has parliamentary sovereignty). ... The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 (2005 c. ... The Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, or Lord Chancellor and in former times Chancellor of England, is one of the most senior and important functionaries in the government of the United Kingdom. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the British House of Lords. ...

The office will be analogous to the Speaker of the House of Commons. Jump to: navigation, search In the United Kingdom, the Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, and is seen historically as the First Commoner of the Land. ...

Title

The House of Commons has a "Mister/Madam Speaker" as their speaker and the House of Lords is now expected to have a similar position (although the speaker in the House of Lords has generally a lesser role in debates) and a committee of the House of Lords in 2004 recommended that the new speaker be named the "Lord/Lady Speaker". They also recommended that the current arrangement of deputy speakers will have to be reformed too. In some bicameral parliaments of a Westminster System, the House of Commons has historically been the name of the elected lower house. ...

There has been opposition to the title from some in the House of Commons who feel that it will cause confusion between the House of Commons' Speaker and the House of Lords' Speaker. The title therefore has not yet been decided (the Constitutional Reform Act gives the office the title of Speaker of the House of Lords), although the Lords will have the final say on their rules and speakership.

Role

The reform of the office of Lord Chancellor raises issues relating to ceremonial duties, such as the State Opening of Parliament, as well as the question of the Lords Commissioners. It is expected that the Lord Speaker will assume most of the duties of the Lord Chancellor that relate to his Parliamentary role. There also remains decisions on what the Lord Speaker shall wear. Sergeant-at-arms Gus Cloutier holding the ceremonial mace to open a sitting of the 38th Canadian parliament with Prime Minister Paul Martin in background (10/4/04) In the United Kingdom, the State Opening of Parliament is an annual event held usually in October or November that marks the... The Lords Commissioners are Privy Counsellors appointed by the Monarch of the United Kingdom to exercise, on his or her behalf, certain functions relating to Parliament, including the opening and closing of Parliament, the confirmation of a newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons and the granting of Royal...

The Lord Chancellor will remain as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. The Great Seal of the Realm is a British institution by which the monarch can authorise official documents without having to sign each document individually. ...