Becoming Lord Speaker and campaigning on the Horizon Scandal

Hello, I'm John McFaul.

I'm the newly elected Lord Speaker and take up my duties in the 1st of May following Lord Fowler who has Lord Speaker for the past five years.

During that time I was Senior Deputy Speaker, Deputy Chair of the Commission to Lord Fowler and Lord Fowler and I worked very closely together on that.

So I want to take forward a number of initiatives that he was known for to develop the House of Lords and particularly to be reaching out.

Lord Speaker, welcome to the podcast.

Many people know that you were an MP before you joined the House of Lords, but they might not be aware that you were a teacher before you were elected to the Commons.

What led you into that career?

Into teaching? Well, I grew up in a community in the 60s where, in many ways in my community, a very working class community, it was a noble aspiration to be a school teacher.

Since then, things have developed and there's been a wider range of opportunities, particularly for young people.

But at that time...

It was seen as a mark of progress to go to university and become a teacher.

And I did enjoy my teaching life.

And I think one of the things I would like to engage in as Lord Speaker would be to encourage young people to understand the House of Lords.

During my time as Senior Deputy Speaker, every Thursday morning for an hour, I spoke to pupils in their schools.

So I probably got to over 2,000 young people.

And during all that time, I never heard any criticism of the House of Lords.

What I did hear was young people's interest in finding out what I did, the position of the House of Lords in the UK Parliament.

So therefore, they're interested in politics.

Perhaps...

They're not so interested in party politics, but they're interested in politics itself.

And I think during these times of doom, gloom, whatever, we've got to keep in mind that people are still interested in the society they're in and the issues that we confront in Parliament.

So did you find that they were already quite informed about Parliament or the House of Lords, or not so much?

They were informed about the issues in society, less informed about the rituals in the House of Lords and how legislation was formed, how amendments were made, how we undertook our scrutiny.

And the way I described it to them was quite simple.

I said, the House of Lords is an institution... which is secondary to the House of Commons in terms of decision making.