Abolishing the role of Lords Speaker

TL;DR The role of Lords Speaker no longer serves a useful purpose in the Quadrumvirate, we should abolish it and merge the jobs of Lords Speaker and Commons Speaker into one unified “Westminster Speaker” who oversees both Houses.

I’d like to start out by saying that this is no slight to Christos (the current Lords Speaker at all). He’s a good friend and a fine Lords Speaker, and the Lords have functioned perfectly well under him. However, it’s also worth nothing that he, the Lords Speaker and a member of the Quad - supposedly one of the most important roles in the sim - has done very little in his time as LS. I would guess, as an active Lord and Deputy Lords Speaker, that I’ve seen Christos do a LS job maybe once a month? And this is not a criticism of him - this isn’t because he should have been doing stuff and hasn’t been, it’s because the job of LS simply doesn’t have much workload associated with it at all. It’s not enough to justify a Quad position.

I’m aware that I as a very long-serving DLS and former Speaker know more than most about what the LS actually does, so here is a quick run-down:

• Hire Deputy Lords Speakers
• Resolve disputes in the Lords that can’t be handled by a DLS
• (sometimes) Discuss lengths of long bans in Quad chat
• (sometimes) Help grade campaigns at the General Election

That’s pretty much it. Hiring DLSs happens maybe once every 2 months, major disputes in the Lords are equally rare. All the rest of the day-to-day (e.g. scheduling bills in the Lords, assigning woolsacks, answering community questions, managing the committees, answering modmail) is handled by the Deputies, usually the senior DLS (currently known as the Chair of Committees).

As a side note, some people will be questioning: “Do we need to abolish the LS? Can’t we just give them more jobs like the events team or the Supreme Court?” This is a valid suggestion which I’d also be happy to discuss, but for me this is definitely the wrong answer for the simple reason that we’ve tried it before, and it hasn’t worked. The events team tends to do its own thing (when it’s not fading in and out of existence), and largely works with the Commons Speaker not the Lords Speaker anyway (e.g. specific issue polling when that was a thing). If they’re doing anything that effects the main Westminster sim, it all goes by the Commons Speaker or Head Mod, not the Lords Speaker. The Supreme Court likewise fades in and out of existence, definitely not doing enough work to justify a Quad position, and typically again answers to the Head Mod or sometimes the Commons Speaker or occasionally a dedicated “head of the Supreme Court”. These jobs don’t require a quad role, they’re currently successfully overseen by the CS and Head Mod, and every attempt to get the LS more involved has failed (and there have been many attempts at this idea!).

So you can see, the LS is needed very infrequently, and the Chair of Committees (Senior DLS) effectively runs the Lords. My proposal is therefore as follows:

• When Christos resigns, abolish the position of Lords Speaker, leaving 3 members of the Quadrumvirate (more than enough to run elections and ban people) - and I’d tentatively suggest renaming it the Triumvirate.
• Merge the roles of Commons and Lords Speaker into one job - Westminster Speaker. This essentially means the Commons Speaker will pick up one or two extra jobs (hiring DLSs and resolving disputes that the DLSs need to escalate). In my opinion, this is long overdue - when I was Commons Speaker, I often found that any changes I wanted to make to ping-pong meant that I needed to alter the bill process in both Houses, and so I often was treading on the LS’ toes. It also has benefits of ensuring consistent standards for accepting bills, ruling amendments wrecking and so on. Again, this is long overdue, as I already find that as a DLS I tend to ping both the Commons Speaker and Lords Speaker on issues like this (or sometimes the senior DLS). This won’t prove too much work for the CS - as I’ve already said, it isn’t much that they’re not already doing, and in fact I think the CS will find it helpful to be the single point of contact for both teams rather than anything getting mixed up between the Houses.
• Increase the responsibility of the senior Deputy Speaker in both Houses - with the new Westminster Speaker largely handling big picture stuff, elections, polls, and escalated disputes, it would be unfair to have them running all the day-to-day. Fortunately, we already find that almost all of the day-to-day (scheduling bills, modmail, assigning people to jobs etc.) is something that can be or already is handled by the senior Deputy Speaker in both Houses, so this wouldn’t really be much extra work for them either. In recognition of this additional duty that they’re doing, I would suggest that both of these positions are not handed automatically to the Deputy who has been in speakership the longest - the Westminster Speaker should select whoever is the most capable of managing everything (currently it’s sometimes the oldest, sometimes the most competent, it varies). These positions should also then have a Vote of Confidence in them (rather than just a unilateral appointment). Potentally we could also consider renaming the senior DLS “Lords Speaker” rather than “Chairman of Committees”, but this could potentially be confusing given it’s a different role to what was previously called Lords Speaker (e.g. it no longer implies a non-partisan member of Quad), so would appreciate feedback on this.

I’d suggest that all of these changes happen when Christos steps down, so if we should happen to have a Commons Speaker election before then, they should be aware that they may end up eventually becoming Westminster Speaker not just Commons Speaker - the past several Commons Speakers have all been very well acquainted with both Houses, so maybe brush up on your Lords knowledge if need be!

I’m aware that I probably have significantly more thoughts and experience on DLSs and Commons and Lords Speakers that many members in the community, so I would welcome any questions below on any details of the implementation of this change, or anything where I’ve inadequately explained why change is necessary/beneficial.