Talk:List of people who have addressed both houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom

Suggestion
I suggest clarifying whether this includes any people who may have addressed both Houses separately. Gimmetrow 23:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Page name
I think the page could be renamed "List of people who have spoken to both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament." The word "speaker" sound very similar to a position, like "Speaker of the House" in the United States. &mdash;ScouterSig 19:08, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Even worse than that, both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament have their own official positions for speaker. The Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords. I will go ahead and move the article as no one has raised an objection since your comment. Road Wizard (talk) 17:20, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The name has now been changed from List of speakers who have spoken to both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament to List of people who have spoken to both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament. Road Wizard (talk) 20:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Revisited
I think the name could do with further tweaking. None of these addresses were made to the Parliament as such. That is, they were not made in either of the Houses, to a properly constituted and formal gathering of Members and Lords, governed by Rules of Order, and with Hansard recording of all proceedings, etc. Rather, they were addresses to the Members of both Houses who were attending in essentially a private capacity; they were not addresses to the Houses as such. When the addresses were finished, the members gathered there could not have decided to move on to other formal business, debating, voting etc, because, so far as the Parliament was concerned, they were not formal sessions of Parliament (despite the obvious "formality" with which these occasions were conducted).

That, at least, is my understanding. Comments? --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't have used the term "private capacity", but I think you're right. Also, the article name doesn't actually make it clear that members of the two Houses were being addressed at the same time; the present title could encompass people who had addressed the Commons and the Lords on separate occasions (if such a thing has even happened), and even sounds a bit as if it could refer to people who have served as members in both Houses!  I only have a partial fix, though: replace "spoken to" with "addressed" (which I think sounds better anyway), and perhaps insert "members of" before "both".  Unfortunately brevity seems to be the chief victim of clarity, though...!  Andrew Gwilliam (talk) 13:11, 18 June 2011 (UTC).

Article insufficient
This article is missing several addresses of US presidents, including two who addressed Parliament twice: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/presidents-parliament-speech-1.3656945
 * The news article above refers to speeches made by US Presidents to the Parliament of Canada - this article is about speeches made to both houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Whizz40 (talk) 10:25, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Update needed
Need to update with Felipe VI of Spain in the Royal Gallery, July 12, 2017 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.234.241.1 (talk) 10:50, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Bill Clinton
Some sources on the internet say Bill Clinton addressed both house of parliament in 1995. Well, why is he not on this list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.163.124.210 (talk) 19:14, 1 May 2020 (UTC)


 * President Clinton did indeed address Parliament on 29 November 1995, in the Royal Gallery, as documented on archives.blog.parliament.uk/2021/01/18/ ... I would put the entry in myself except that it is too technically complicated for my inexperienced self. I strongly urge a competent editor using this chart format to insert the entry. 2601:14B:C300:D500:54BF:DC23:E586:C46C (talk) 14:27, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅. This was vandalism from 2018, in which an editor also removed Ronald Reagan from the list, claiming that Barack Obama was the only U.S. president to have addressed the British parliament. Cilidus (talk) 18:41, 11 January 2023 (UTC)