Celebrating the Deputy Speakers of the UK House of Commons

For the first time in its history, the UK Parliament has an all-female team of Deputy Speakers in the UK House of Commons. To mark International Women’s Day, Natasa Pantelic interviews all three Deputy Speakers for the CPA's Journal, The Parliamentarian.

Natasa Pantelic is a founding member of the Labour Women’s Parliamentary Staff Network in the UK Parliament and has worked for a number of UK MPs.

All photos copyright Maria Unger / UK Parliament.

Article published 3 February 2025. 

International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate the roles and rights of women everywhere. This year, I wanted to highlight the three women who serve as Deputy Speakers in the UK House of Commons: Nusrat Ghani, Judith Cummins and Caroline Nokes.

There have only ever been 693 women elected to the UK Parliament. Following the 2024 UK general election, 263 of the 650 current seats (40%) in the House of Commons are now held by women.

The UK is now 10th in the top ten Legislatures for the number of women in national Parliaments, with Rwanda, Australia and New Zealand in the top three respectively. However, there are only 6,085 women serving as Parliamentarians across the Commonwealth out of an estimated 18,000 Members of Parliament.

On 23 July 2024, following the UK general election, MPs cast their vote (in secret) for three Deputy Speakers following the re-election of Rt Hon. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, MP as the Speaker of the UK House of Commons. The job of a Deputy is to assist the Speaker in their duties in the chair, exercising their authority while doing so. Once elected, Deputy Speakers remain in office until the next general election, unless they resign or cease to be an MP. They also stop being politically active and can no longer speak in debates in the chamber on behalf of their constituents, as a backbencher would.

Only eight women have ever served as Speaker or as a Deputy Speaker in the UK Parliament. The first was Betty Harvie Anderson, MP who represented Renfrewshire East from 1959 to 1979, serving as First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means from 1970 to 1973.

The formidable Rt Hon. Betty Boothroyd, the MP for West Bromwich and West Bromwich West from 1973 to 2000, was the second woman to sit in the Speaker’s Chair and is the only woman to have served as Speaker of the UK House of Commons from 1992 to 2000. She would often say that she “loved every minute of it.”

These women serve as role models to encourage more women to put themselves forward for elected office and for senior positions such as Speaker or Deputy Speaker. Our democracies are richer with more women in the room where decisions are made and as Speaker Betty Boothroyd once said: “Go for gold”.

Hon. Nusrat Ghani is the Conservative MP for Sussex Weald and was first elected to the UK Parliament in 2015. In the last Parliamentary term, she held Ministerial positions in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Department for Business and Trade.

She was elected as the Principal Deputy Speaker and the Chairman of Ways and Means with the most votes cast, elected from the opposite side of the House to the Speaker. By convention, she chairs the Budget debate and has a number of responsibilities including supervising the arrangement of business in Westminster Hall and overseeing the Panel of Chairs (responsible for chairing Parliamentary Committees such as the Public Bill Committees). She is the first woman of colour to serve in the role, describing it as “hugely humbling.”

Read about her experiences in the role ->

Hon. Judith Cummins is the Labour MP for Bradford South and was first elected in 2015. She is known as a dedicated local champion for her constituency and has been involved in politics since she was 16 years old.

In the last Parliament, she was on the Panel of Chairs and has previously chaired debates in the House of Commons. She serves as the Second Deputy in the team. She is a value driven person and describes her role in protecting our democratic process as her “greatest responsibility as a Deputy Speaker, and the greatest privilege of the role.”

Read about her experiences in the role ->

Rt Hon. Caroline Nokes is the Conservative MP for Romsey and Southampton North and has been an MP since 2010. She was the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, well known for working constructively with Parliamentarians across the House on issues such as tackling Violence Against Women and Girls and campaigning for more support for women with the menopause.

She has previously held Ministerial positions and served as a Home Office Minister. She is one of the most courageous and inspiring people in the House. She serves as the Second Deputy in the team and says that the Deputy Speakers are “a great team.”

Read about her experiences in the role ->

Article written by Natasa Pantelic who has worked in politics for 20 years and is a founding member of the Labour Women’s Parliamentary Staff Network in the UK Parliament. She has worked for a number of Labour politicians, most recently as Senior Parliamentary Assistant to Lewis Atkinson, MP. Natasa has served in local government for 15 years between 2008 and 2023 as an elected member in England and was also a UK parliamentary candidate in the Chesham and Amersham by-election in 2021.

This blog article first appeared in the CPA's Journal, The Parliamentarian (2025 Issue One).

Download this issue below or click here to read online.