The two men who preside over the island’s legislatures have been to Canada to meet others in similar positions.

The President of Tynwald, Steve Rodan MLC, and the Speaker of the House of Keys, Juan Watterson SHK, went to the 25th Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers of the Commonwealth (CSPOC) in Ottawa.

The five-day conference provided an opportunity for speakers and presiding officers from 37 Commonwealth parliaments to discuss and share experiences.

At the opening ceremony held in the Senate of Canada, the Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada, Anthony Rota MP said that the aim of the conference was ’to maintain, foster and encourage impartiality and fairness on the part of speakers and presiding officers of parliaments, to promote knowledge and understanding of parliamentary democracy in the various forms and to develop parliamentary institutions’.

The programme for the conference included a workshop on parliamentary engagement, openness, transparency and accountability chaired by Mr Watterson, while Mr Rodan chaired a session on parliamentarians as effective legislators and constituency representatives.

Additionally, in a CSPOC first, a one-hour session of five-minute presentations followed by five minutes of questions was trialled to allow for relevant and quick discussions on a wide variety of topics.

Mr Rodan said: ’This was a great opportunity for the Isle of Man to connect with parliaments right across the Commonwealth. The working discussions and sharing of best practice with other presiding officers by Mr Speaker and myself were very useful indeed. It’s important that the Isle of Man is promoted internationally and this conference is an excellent occasion to establish and renew valuable contacts.’

Mr Watterson said: ’Speakers and presiding officers have a key role in parliamentary leadership, which covers a wide variety of responsibilities such as making parliamentary accessible, creating development opportunities for members and prioritising parliamentary resources. This biennial conference offers a rare opportunity to get together and discuss constitutional and parliamentary developments, best practice and new ideas.

’During this conference we discussed all of the above as well as securing the financial independence of parliament from government, self-assessment tools for parliament - such as the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association benchmarks for democratic legislatures and sustainable development goal self-assessment toolkit - and how these operate in the face of everyday challenges.

’It is easy in this day and age to read things on the internet, but it gives no feel for how things work in practice, especially under stress and in the environment of limited staff and resources. This, along with developing contacts, is the real value of face-to-face meetings.’

Details of travel and accommodation costs will be published on the Tynwald website in due course.

They were accompanies by the Clerk of Tynwald Roger Phillips,

The next hosts for the biennial CSPOC conference are Australia in 2022 and Uganda in 2024, with additional CSPOC standing committee meetings to be held in Guernsey in 2021 and Trinidad and Tobago in 2023.