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Speaker John Bercow made history yesterday when he became the first Speaker of the House of Commons to speak at a press gallery lunch.
Here is his speech in full:
Thank you very much for that introduction. I believe that I am indeed the first Speaker of the House of Commons to have the honour of addressing this august audience as every single one of my 156 predecessors has had the good sense politely to decline such an invitation.
I am pleased, and you may well be yet more pleased, that my wife is attending this occasion as well, a time-out from her single-minded struggle for international socialism.
If she had not been able to come, I would have sought out Mrs Rory Bremner instead. Sally has, though, promised me faithfully that even in private conversation she will not say anything that inverted commas "interesting" this lunchtime.
The sole compensation that I can promise you in return is that this will be a relatively short speech by my standards. For while I have identified Nelson Mandela as my political hero, the brutal truth is that when it comes to oratory my role model is Fidel Castro. To discipline myself, and perhaps assist you, I will, unusually, stick to a set text today.
It is a special pleasure to be the guest at what is George Parker's first public outing as the Chairman of the Press Gallery. I should stress I mean “public outing” in its traditional sense, not anything personal or intrusive.
It must be a real novelty and joy for you, George, finally to find yourself in a post – this one – which does not involve being told what to think on a daily basis by Peter Mandelson.
I am grateful, to be candid, George, that you are present at all today. This is partly because it means that you have taken a break from training in your dedicated if slightly improbable attempt at inclusion in the England squad for the World Cup finals in South Africa. It is mostly, nonetheless, because I am told that you can have a somewhat erratic sense of direction.
This manifested itself spectacularly at the G8 summit last year in Italy. I am informed by what this crowd would consider "a reliable Westminster source" that while at this international jamboree George fell into conversation with someone described to me as a "not unattractive" female reporter, surely discussing the finer points of the Tobin Tax or some other aspect of macroeconomic policy, and as a consequence boarded the wrong press bus and found himself approximately 100 miles from where he was supposed to be and where the rest of the British press contingent was billeted.
All I can say George is that Silvio Berlusconi would have been proud of you.
I would like to travel on one more brief tangent before outlining some thoughts on the House of Commons and the media. The person concerned is not here today but I hope these sentiments can be directed to him by Ann Treneman and others.
This month marks the end of Phil Webster's period as Political Editor of The Times after a tenure even longer than one of my speeches. I know that Phil is held in the highest possible esteem and is a man of huge integrity, immense professionalism and great distinction.
He is said to be a legendarily good colleague. I am sure he will be an enormous success as Brussels Editor, even though I find this move a little strange as Belgium is not exactly famous for its golf courses. I will miss him, not least because who else could I rely upon as a store of embarrassing yarns about George Parker?.
I would wish now to offer some observations about the House of Commons and the media. It may surprise you to discover that I have come largely to praise Caeser and not to bury him. There are three criticisms of the media which are often heard within the parliamentary estate, most notably from MPs, with which I want to take this opportunity to disagree.
The first and most recent is to blame the media, notably the Daily Telegraph, for the expenses scandal and the subsequent sharp decline in Parliament's reputation. To my mind this is nonsense.
The media, and obviously the Telegraph, brought to an end something which should never have been allowed to exist in the first place. The expenses arrangements were an unexploded bomb which the House itself should have defused and not waited for others to detonate.
The Daily Telegraph might sometimes – as I myself am aware – appear to be dancing on the grave of that through whose heart it first drove a stake, but in the longer term the House of Commons should come to recognise that what occurred was a mercy killing.
The second popular protest about the press is that it no longer covers parliamentary proceedings properly. Many of my colleagues yearn for a return to the days when page after page in national newspapers would essentially be an edited version of Hansard. More verbatim accounts of the House of Commons would, of course, be cheering, but I fear that certain MPs mistake cause and effect.
Almost all of those Members who have served here for many years will concede that the chamber has been in decline as an institution for much of that time and many of them will use language as direct as “the chamber is dying”. If that is true, then it is entirely logical and inevitable for media attention to move elsewhere as well.
The third and most sweeping argument made is that the media is a rival to Parliament and thus an implacable opponent of it. You lot, it is implied, are less the fourth estate than a fifth column, an enemy within at the Palace of Westminster.
At its most hardline, those who hold this view assert that the press are a cancer on the parliamentary body politic and that the House authorities should do everything practical to make your working conditions as miserable as possible.
This is emphatically not my outlook. I do not think you are a cancer on the House of Commons – a nasty little rash from time to time maybe, but never a cancer - and it should instead be our ambition to make it easier for you to fulfill your role, not harder.
The Press Gallery is aware that I am most willing to listen to your concerns about the rules and regime under which you operate here. It is my opinion that if both sides sincerely strive to make it happen (a theme to which I will return) then the media and Parliament can be amicable partners and not bitter rivals.
So what do I think needs to be done and what am I seeking to do? This again is three-fold.
The first is that there can be no half-measures when it comes to reform of the expenses system. I have supported and will continue to support, publicly and privately, the work of Sir Thomas Legg and now Sir Paul Kennedy when it comes to reparations for the past and Sir Christopher Kelly and now Sir Ian Kennedy when it comes to preparations for the future.
The collective reputation of the House depends on their deliberations. I am well aware that there are many MPs who would prefer that I was much more of a shop steward in defence of their short-term interests. I have to say that I will no more don a cloth cap in the spirit of Jack Jones than I would entertain wearing a full-blown wig in the chamber.
The second element involves dealing directly with the sense that the chamber of the House of Commons is in decline, even dying. I am attempting to bring the chamber back to the centre stage by conducting business more efficiently, by making it clear to ministers that they should be making statements in the House of Commons first and that they will be compelled to do so if they err in this respect, and by employing more urgent questions – I have allowed 16 so far - so that the House is talking about the sorts of issues which the rest of the country is debating, be it the terrible earthquake in Haiti, international terrorism or the adequacy of preparations for adverse weather.
I intend to be a cheerleader for change that will strengthen the backbench MP as an individual political actor, reinforce the combined authority of backbenchers through a more rigorous select committee system and embrace reforms which will enhance the legislature as a whole against the executive. My aim, frankly, is to create a House of Commons which the media must monitor.
Finally and briefly there is my zeal for every aspect of the parliamentary outreach initiative. Much excellent work has been done but it has been knocked for six by the expenses debacle.
I want to redouble our efforts and am investing every hour of my spare time to this cause and once again I believe the media can be an asset in that enterprise. We need to get many more people to come into this building but also get some of us, not least myself, out of it and addressing organisations across the range of civic society. We have to make our case, not assume that we will be universally acclaimed automatically. Outreach is not an optional extra for Parliament but an indispensable feature of its pitch to the public.
I want to end, though, with a concern and to throw out something of a challenge. It is not one aimed particularly at the people in this room whom I know to be a collection of parliamentary advocates and seekers after truth without peers, the Jedi Knights of journalism.
I am sure that I can count on your approval for the crusade that I am undertaking. But there is, as we are all aware, a dark side of the force, an invisible army of less rounded souls than yourselves, an evil empire which goes by the seemingly innocent sounding name of “newsdesks”.
My concern is this. Just suppose we manage to make real progress on the fronts that I have outlined.
Imagine that we reach an intelligent settlement and what should be closure on the expenses catastrophe, allow for the possibility that reforms aimed at reviving the House of Commons actually take root and conceive of an outreach agenda that is seen to deliver.
Will newsdesks choose to designate this a set of events worthy of serious reporting and incisive comment or will it be deemed far less fun than moats, bathplugs or bell towers? The precedent that disturbs me is the way in which the national press now treats Northern Ireland.
During the Troubles coverage was, understandably, enormous and during the most testing times for the peace process it was intense as well. Since devolution has been restored, however, politics in the Province has been treated as desperately dull, with column inches only to be devoted in the event of stories such as the sad saga of the First Minister and the private life of his wife emerging.
Yet anyone with any sense of the history of Britain and Ireland over more than eight hundred years would have to conclude that the political understanding that has been reached in Belfast of late is by miles the most significant domestic political event of the past decade but this is scarcely acknowledged in the attention which it is acquiring. I believe that the genuine revival of the House of Commons, were it to occur, would be the most important domestic political outcome of the coming decade, but I have to ask in advance: "would it be covered?".
Thank for very much indeed for your hospitality. There are many areas where the Speaker and the Press Gallery should co-operate fruitfully and it is my aim to do so. George, you especially need to know that my door is always open.
And just to make sure that you find it, if you tip me off that you want to arrive at Speaker's House I will post a "not unattractive" young woman outside of it. Thank you again for listening.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd