PITCHED straight into the sharp end of a Parliament in turmoil, Robert Rogers has a part to play in history.

Robert, from Blakemere, was this week confirmed as a man at the top as the House of Commons moves towards far-reaching reform.

From October, Robert takes charge of chamber and committee services at the Commons - where he has worked for more than 30 years - and the near 600 staff providing advice and support for all the proceedings of the House.

For Robert, who entered Parliament as a 22-year-old clerk fast-streamed into Westminster fresh out of Oxford, it is the ultimate privilege in an institution he says it has always been a privilege to serve in.

The demeanour and discretion required of Robert’s new role mean he can’t be directly drawn into comment on current events at the Commons.

But with a host of stories about the challenges some of his predecessors have faced, he puts his faith in the “terrific endurance” of Parliament over the ages as seeing it into the future.

Clerks to the Commons are specialists in parliamentary law and practice.

Robert, 59, steps up from his current role as Clerk of Legislation having held some of the House’s most senior posts including Clerk to the Defence Committee and of Private Members’ Bills, Principal Clerk of Select Committees, and Principal Clerk of the Table Office.

Think of any groundbreaking parliamentary moment of the past 30 years and Robert was there or thereabouts.

The book that came out of all that some five years ago was no salacious memoir but a guide to how parliament works that even fellow long-time Commons insiders hailed as invaluable.

Born at Blakemere House in the Golden Valley with an ancestral line that straddles the Marches, Robert also lends his procedural expertise to Herefordshire Council as the independent head of the authority’s standards committee and chairs the Hereford Cathedral Perpetual Trust.