The Lord Privy Seal (Viscount Cranborne)My Lords, it is my duty to notify your Lordships that I have received the following letter from the Clerk of the Parliaments, Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth:
Dear Leader of the House,I write to ask you to convey to the House, after consultation with the Lord Chancellor and yourself, that I have asked the Prime Minister to submit to Her Majesty the Queen my resignation as Clerk of the Parliaments with effect from 4th January 1997, and that Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to accept it. I will have served six years in that office.I take leave on the view that it is in the interests of the House that there should be continuity in the office during the coming months, with the certainty of a General Election and uncertainty about the House of Lords as now constituted thereafter. I am now sixty-two and will leave in the confidence that the Parliament Office is in a condition to give good service to the House and provide a satisfactory succession at the Table. By going now, it will give my successor an opportunity to establish himself fully before the Election.I would be grateful if you would convey to the House my gratitude for the kindnesses received from all quarters. I have enjoyed my thirty-six years of service to the House, of which the last nearly six years as Clerk of the Parliaments have been especially memorable and enjoyable.I cannot imagine a happier institution in which to work, which it has been my privilege to serve.Yours ever,Michael Wheeler-Booth.It is my further duty to notify your Lordships that the Queen has been pleased to appoint Mr. Michael Davies to succeed Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth from 4th January next year.Following that announcement it will, I am sure, be your Lordships' wish in due course to pay tribute to the services of Sir Michael in this House. I am advised that the proper manner of doing that is for the Leader of the House to table a Motion recording the House's appreciation of Sir Michael's services.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will in a few moments announce his appointments to the vacancies at the Table consequential upon Sir Michael's retirement. I should like to say for myself and on my noble and learned friend's behalf that extensive consultations have been held with representatives of all sides of the House over these important appointments. This is in accordance with undertakings given by my predecessors as Leader of the House and previous Lord Chancellors that appointments to the Table should be the subject of wide consultations. Those undertakings 432 have on this occasion been honoured to the full. I should also report to the House that the result of the consultations was unanimous.