Today the Speaker of the Commons, Michael Martin, resigns as an MP. Kind of.
It is actually not possible for an MP to resign, instead they are merely appointed to a new position that profits from the Crown.
Members of Parliament sitting in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom are technically forbidden to resign. In order to circumvent this prohibition, a legal fiction is used. Appointment to an "office of profit under the Crown" disqualifies an individual from sitting as a Member of Parliament (MP). MPs are commonly appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to one of the two following offices in order to allow MPs to effectively resign their seats:
- Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham and
- Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead
A number of offices have been used for this purpose historically, but only the Chiltern Hundreds and the Manor of Northstead are used today.
The offices are only nominally paid. Generally they are held until they are again used to effect the resignation of an MP. The Chiltern Hundreds is usually used alternately with the Manor of Northstead, which makes it possible for two members to resign at exactly the same time. When more than two MPs resign at a time, as for example happened when 15 Ulster unionist MPs resigned in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement on 17 December 1985, the resignations are in theory not simultaneous but instead spread throughout the day, with each member holding one of the offices for a short time. The holder may subsequently be re-elected to Parliament.
In 1623 a rule was declared that said that Members of Parliament were given a trust to represent their constituencies, and therefore were not at liberty to resign them. In those days, Parliament was weaker, and service was sometimes considered a resented duty rather than a position of power and honour. However, by a provision in the Act of Settlement 1701 (repealed in 1705 and re-enacted in modified form by the Place Act 1707), an MP who accepted an office of profit under the Crown was obliged to leave his post, it being feared that his independence would be compromised if he were in the King's pay. Therefore, the legal fiction was invented that the MP who wished to give up his seat applied to the King for the post of "Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds" or "Steward of the Manor of Northstead", obsolescent offices of negligible duties and scant profit, but in the King's gift nonetheless. The Chiltern Hundreds were first used as a pretext for resignation on 17 January 1751, by John Pitt, who wanted to vacate his seat for Wareham and stand for Dorchester. The Manor of Northstead was first used as a pretext for resignation on 6 April 1842, by Patrick Chalmers, Member for Montrose District of Burghs.
The prohibition was on an MP accepting an office of profit under the Crown, but it did not disqualify someone with such an office being elected to the House of Commons. As a result this meant a by-election when anyone became a government minister, including the Prime Minister. The law was partly changed in 1919, and finally in 1926, to end the need for members of the government to undergo re-election.
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