Bid to get rid of wigs

Jan 21 2009 by Neil Atkinson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

HUDDERSFIELD MP Barry Sheerman has urged the House of Commons to modernise – by getting rid of the wigs.

On the day the US swore in its first black President, the Labour MP said Parliament should also embrace change.

He said he could find no rules that enforced the wearing of wigs and Commons Speaker Michael Martin did not wear one himself.

But the Speaker said he liked to see the clerks wearing them.

Raising a point of order, Mr Sheerman said: “There is no rule in this House that I can discover that actually dictates that our clerks sitting in this chamber wear wigs.

“You yourself Mr Speaker no longer wear a wig.

“Would it on this day of modernisation in another political system not very far away from here in the US, to show that we are modernising and that our clerks, who work so hard for us, no longer have to wear wigs?”

The Speaker ruled: “Order! I don’t wear a wig but I prefer the clerks to wear a wig.”

The wig was abandoned by Mr Martin’s predecessor Dewsbury’s Betty Boothroyd and the last Speaker to wear one was Bernard Weatherill, Speaker from 1983 to 1992.