A New Parliamentary Institution? The Mother of the House & the Retirement of the Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP

By Professor Sarah Childs

She didn’t point out it herself; but it surely was as Mom of the Home that the Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP was referred to as to open the Valedictory debate, on the twenty fourth of Might 2024, by Madam Deputy Speaker, Dame Rosie Winterton. The UK’s second lady Prime Minister and fellow retiree, the Rt Hon Theresa Might, MP who adopted Harman, talked about this function explicitly, stating: ‘it’s certainly a fantastic pleasure to observe the speech of the Mom of the Home’. Labour’s Lucy Powell MP in winding up the talk once more referred to as consideration to how the Mom of the Home had been a ‘political mom to many people’. 

There isn’t a such factor because the Mom of the Home on paper, nor certainly is there a Father of the Home in Standing Orders. But the longest constantly serving  Member of the Commons (and who shouldn’t be a Minister), has change into extensively recognized, not because the Elder of the Home, however as its Father. Their sole formal obligation is to take the Chair of the Home for the election of the Speaker (Kelly and Priddy 2019, 7-8). No lady MP has to-date been the longest constantly serving MP, in itself a legacy of ladies’s historic under-representation within the Home.  

The primary use of the title Mom of the Home dates to 1920, when Noel Billing MP spoke of Girl Nancy Astor, the primary lady MP to take her seat within the Commons the earlier 12 months; Astor herself used it in 1945 as did Harman for the primary time in 2015. However it’s the intervention by then Prime Minister, Theresa Might in June 2017 when the thought of a Mom of the Home actually took maintain. Having welcomed Kenneth Clarke, because the Father of the Home, Might makes a transparent, gendered intervention: 

It might not shock my proper hon. and realized Buddy that I intend to be troublesome at present and break with custom by welcoming not solely him because the Father of the Home, however the returning Mom of the Home. (emphasis added, https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2017-06-13/debates/EC97CC8B-CEAB-4D1D-8AEE-12D83E9E0253/ElectionOfSpeaker.) 

Might’s naming of Harman because the Mom of the Home within the Commons Chamber was not pre-meditated, however she most undoubtedly needed to acknowledge Harman’s file because the longest constantly serving lady within the Commons.[1] She additionally referred to as consideration to Harman’s longstanding advocacy of ladies’s political illustration.

In turning into Mom of the Home, Harman deployed this title on her Commons stationery and in her Twitter deal with, and made claims in its title in quite a few parliamentary debates and within the media. In Harman, the Mom of the Home is undoubtedly a feminist: in first claiming the function, Harman had critiqued rule by fathers (patriarchy) in favour of rule by moms and dads. And he or she would take her feminist function significantly to enhance the lives of ladies in society in addition to in parliament. In respect of the previous, and following the excessive profile homicide by a serving police officer of a younger lady, Sarah Everard in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, Harman demanded that the Conservative ‘Govt should now conform to work cross-party to make new legal guidelines to maintain girls secure’; and with fellow girls MPs she ‘pledge(d) help for Afghan girls MPs’ within the face of the ‘Taliban takeover’. In respect of the latter, she would play a number one function within the introduction of proxy voting for MPs on babyleave, at first a short lived and later a everlasting change to Standing Orders in 2019 and 2020, respectively. It was throughout this 2016-19 marketing campaign for proxy voting that references to the Mom of the Home grew to become normalized.

In The Good Parliament Report (2016), I really useful auditing gendered nomenclature and queried using masculinized phrases, implying that the Father of the Home was an outdated relic, reflective of the historic exclusion of ladies from the UK Parliament. At the moment, I’m much less positive. Harriet Harman entered the Home of Commons dedicated to appearing for ladies and on a feminist agenda. And he or she did so all through her profession at Westminster. But as Mom of the Home, Harman gained unprecedented authority and legitimacy, talking not simply as a person on behalf of ladies MPs and making feminist claims for ladies, however talking because the consultant of ladies MPs – of their title – for feminist ends. 

Along with her retirement, what of the establishment Harman made actual? Establishments are extensively acknowledged to be related to sanctions. On this case, the establishment of the Mom of the Home depends on the extent to which the subsequent occupier fulfils, and is thought to be fulfilling, the expectations created up to now. On July fifth, all different issues being equal, and regardless of the inelegance of her choice (to place it mildly), the mantle of Mom of the Home passes to the Rt Hon Diane Abbott MP, the primary black lady MP ever elected in 1987. In her personal latest phrases on the steps of Hackney City Corridor, Abbot spoke of her function as an advocate of some 40 years on race, gender, and homosexual rights; talking up for equalities. Whether or not the Mom of the Home constitutes however a short lived establishment is then an empirical query for the subsequent parliament. 

[1] Private dialog with the Rt Hon Theresa Might MP.