Removal of the Speaker (2019)
Request
The procedure and rules for the removal of the House of Common Speaker and Deputy Speaker during mid term.
Response
Some information is held by the House of Commons.
The Speaker, after being elected and approved, continues in that office during the whole Parliament, unless in the meantime they resign or are removed by death. This rule, and the procedure for the election of a Speaker during the session, is laid out in Erskine May, which is a record of the rules on parliamentary procedure and constitutional conventions affecting Parliament. Erskine May is already publicly available and can be found in the online edition of the publication on our parliamentary pages.
As the information you request is reasonably accessible to you otherwise than under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), your request is refused. In refusing your request the House is applying the exemption set out in section 21 (1) and (2) (a) FOIA. This is an absolute exemption and the public interest test does not apply.
Each Deputy Speaker is elected to serve until the end of the Parliament. The House holds no record of a rule relating to removal of the Deputy Speakers during mid-term. However, if the Chairman of Ways and Means resigns the Chair during the sitting of Parliament, they either personally announce their retirement to the House, or address a letter to the Speaker making the announcement. This information can be found in Erskine May on our parliamentary pages. It may also be of interest to you to know the rules around election of the Deputy Speakers which can be found in Erskine May also on our parliamentary pages.