AFTER 42 years at the heart of the House of Commons,  Sir Robert Rogers gets to be a “new boy”  in  the Lords.

The Prime Minister’s office confirmed Sir Robert’s peerage today (Tues).  He will sit as a cross bench peer, reflecting the apolitical nature of his appointment for meritorious public service.

Sir Robert told the Hereford Times he found the prospect of engaging with an entirely new environment “refreshing”.  He is to take advice before deciding on his title.

In August, Sir Robert stood down from the House he has called home for 42 years as one of parliament’s ultimate insiders.

Sir Robert, from Blakemere, retired having reached the top “insider” job – Chief Clerk to the House of Commons.

The title belies one of the biggest jobs in Britain, heading up Parliament’s 1,600 strong backstage team while having the ear of all its players – leads and supports alike.

Think of every major drama in the Commons over the past 40 years and, as one of the specialist clerks advising on parliamentary law and practice, Sir Robert ready and waiting in the wings.

For the past 10 years he’s been a familiar face at the Commons table during televised debates.

In 2011 it was Sir Robert’s turn to step into the limelight with an uncharacteristically public confirmation of his appointment as Clerk of the House, itself a piece of parliamentary history, being the first time in 648 years that the clerk was chosen from a competitive field.

This was the culmination of a life Sir Robert has been steeped in since his early 20s, having worked his way to the top through corridors he first walked fresh out of Oxford, following in the footsteps of his grandfather.

His grandfather was a Commons clerk, too, and had told the budding backroom boy – born at Blakemere House not far from the banks of the River Wye to lengthen an ancestral line straddling the Marches – of the “agreeable life” those footsteps lead into.

For Sir Robert, the Houses of Parliament has always held a magic beyond the passing phases of politics, he speaks of working there as a “parliamentary privilege” of his very own.

If life in the House has brought him three books documenting parliamentary practice and history, his retirement tome next will not be any kind of salacious memoir.

Discretion and rigid impartiality are the foundations upon which Sir Robert and his fellow subject specific clerks build credibility with Governments and MPs alike.

While intending to be an active member of the Lords, retirement from the Commons has, he says, allowed him ample opportunity to “enjoy Herefordshire.”