The Lord Mayor of the City of London has a seat in the Peers' Gallery in the House of Lords at the State opening of Parliament by the King. He is designated "Right Honourable."
The only other person in England and Wales who is entitled to use the prefix (outside the peerage and the Privy Council) is the Lord Mayor of York.
At the death of the Sovereign the Lord Mayor of London is summoned to the meeting of the Privy Council, which is at once held, and he signs the Proclamation of the new Sovereign.
The two members of the City of London have the right to appear on the Treasury Bench with the Ministers on the opening day of each Session. They sit at the gangway corner of the Bench, and wear their hats, or, to use the old Parliamentary word, are "covered," so that they may be distinguished from Ministers, who are bare-headed.
It is sometimes said that this privilege was given to the City in recognition of the protection it afforded to the five members from the displeasure of Charles I., but although no record of the origin of the custom is to be found at Guildhall or at the House of Commons there is authority for saying that it was exercised in the reign of Elizabeth.
Hooker, the antiquary, who wrote in 1568 a report on the Procedure of the English Parliament, describes the representatives of the City of York, as well as those of the City of London, as sitting on the Front Bench to the right of the Speaker. Probably the privilege was conferred upon London and York as being the first and second cities of the kingdom.
In 1910 the then representatives of York, Rowntree and John Butcher, claimed a revival of the privilege for York. After a full consideration of the matter, Mr. Speaker Lowther decided that, assuming the right once to have existed, it must be considered, in the absence of any evidence of having been used in modern times, to have lapsed, and could not now be properly exercised by the representatives of York.