Category: Parliament

Christopher Chope – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Sir Christopher Chope, the Conservative MP for Christchurch, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

My constituents and I thank His Majesty the King for his words of comfort and reassurance following today’s proclamation of accession as sovereign. We send His Majesty and the whole royal family our deepest condolences on the death of Her Majesty.

The second Elizabethan age has received many references in the last day and a half of debate. Christchurch probably has more people than any other constituency who can remember the beginning of the second Elizabethan age, in 1952, and I am among those privileged to have lived throughout the late Queen’s 70-year reign. I first saw her at her coronation in 1953, when my parents were invited to watch it on a friend’s black-and-white television—I think it was the first time I had ever seen a television.

I have been lucky enough to meet Her late Majesty on several occasions, first at an investiture in 1982 and last at an investiture in 2018, but the meeting to which I shall allude took place when I was asked by the Secretary of State for Transport to host the occasion when Her Majesty opened the Queen Elizabeth II bridge across the Thames, linking the two parts of the M25. As a junior Minister, I was tremendously nervous, but Her Majesty put me at my ease. We had a long private conversation about the bridge, its construction and its funding, and I remember assuring her that the tolls would be lifted as soon as the bridge was paid for. I am pleased to say that Her Majesty kept her counsel on that, as today the tolls are still there even through the bridge has been paid for several times over. I remember that occasion distinctly.

So also do I remember the occasion when Her late Majesty attended the 80th birthday party of Margaret Thatcher. The way she showed her support and encouragement to Margaret Thatcher on that occasion was really moving, because she was not in the best of health. That is an example of the way in which Her late Majesty rose to the occasion. She was not doing something party political—I think Tony Blair was there as well—but her compassion showed through to all of us who had the privilege to be present.

The Queen encapsulated and exemplified all those qualities that make our nation the envy of the world, and make us so proud to be British. The second Elizabethan age, which has drawn to a close this week, will be revered for centuries to come. Weren’t we lucky to be part of it?

September 11, 2022
Selaine Saxby – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Selaine Saxby, the Conservative MP for North Devon, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

It is a privilege to rise, albeit with great sadness, to pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of my constituents and to send North Devon’s deepest condolences to the royal family.

The Queen has been such a constant in our lives, dedicating her life to public service as she said she would, that it is hard to imagine life without her. Her beautiful outfits and hats, her smile and her constant reassuring presence will be sorely missed. Thank you for all you have done, the joy you have brought us and the memories you leave us with.

The Queen visited Barnstaple back in 1956. The royal train arrived at the station at 10 am, and other than a slight hiccup—an official opening the wrong door—the visit went off smoothly. In our pannier market, she was greeted by 5,000 children, who cheered wildly, and I hope many of them who are still with us have recalled that day this week, and indeed still frequent our pannier market. Unfortunately, I was not there in 1956 and I have never had the opportunity to meet the Queen, unlike so many of my longer serving colleagues. One of the joys of this sad time has been to hear their fond memories and wonderful anecdotes.

Although we continue to mourn, with this morning’s proclamation we must look to the future. I have no doubt that King Charles III will follow in his mother’s fantastic footsteps—and I have met him. Twenty years ago, he was already supporting a wide range of charities and he met ladies from the Moonwalk—a breast cancer charity walk—at Highgrove. If I have the privilege to meet our new monarch again, I may remind him that I was the one in the bra decorated as two strawberries.

May the late Queen rest in peace. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Katherine Fletcher – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Katherine Fletcher, the Conservative MP for South Ribble, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

On behalf of my family, friends and the people of South Ribble, I wish to pay tribute to Her Majesty Elizabeth II. This is a sad loss and many people across South Ribble have been in touch with me, from Penwortham, Leyland, Croston, Tarleton and the surrounding villages. A theme within that, especially today, has been how deeply they have wanted to celebrate a remarkable life and a remarkable woman. If the House will bear with me, I should like to give two examples of why, to me, she was the epitome of that.

The Queen was a woman of global influence and respect, including in the Commonwealth, as my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) mentioned. In an African Commonwealth country, people were sat around the fire and in that conversation we had represented New Zealand, Zulu, Australian, Shangaan, Afrikaans, English, French and American. The conversation turned to the Queen, and it is fair to say that not everybody understands our system and many questions were asked. Ultimately, a little voice said, in a Kiwi accent, “Oh, she’s like the ultimate pressure valve on your system.” That is what our constitutional monarchy is, and the Queen bore that on her shoulders since she was 25. It was a remarkable life and she was a remarkable woman.

More personal for me is the fact that in the 1980s, when I was growing up, we had a female Prime Minister, a Queen and even a lady in the Speaker’s Chair, and it did not occur to seven-year-old me that women were anything other than in charge. I am sure that given her famous sense of humour, which has come across in many of the contributions made here today, the Queen would have enjoyed my surprise at discovering, when I had grown up a little more, that it was not the norm for women to run everything. From a global icon to an inspiration for a little girl, wow, this was the one and only Queen. I might even say that she was the original Spice Girl. Was she the originator of girl power? It is possible. On behalf of all of us, what I can simply say is: thank you for everything. May she rest in peace and rise in glory. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Jonathan Gullis – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Jonathan Gullis, the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

It is with great sadness that I stand today, on behalf of the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, to share in our collective grief at the loss of the grandmother of the nation, Her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Like the constituencies of many across this House, Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke was blessed to host Her late Majesty the Queen on a few occasions. This went all the way back to 1949, when the then Princess visited the potteries, in the mother town of Burslem. She returned in 1955, visiting 30,000 excited schoolchildren at the old home of Stoke City football club, the Victoria Ground. She visited again in 1999, when she came to the Dudson Centre, meeting members of the touring Hallé orchestra.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) was right when he said that we allowed ourselves to believe Her late Majesty the Queen to be eternal. In preparation for this speech, I reflected on some words from the famous Stoke-on-Trent author Arnold Bennett, who said

“We shall never have more time. We have, and have always had, all the time there is.”

Bennett is right, in that we shall no longer have Her late Majesty the Queen as a physical presence in our lives—I have tried to explain that to my daughter Amelia, who, only on Tuesday, was on FaceTime to me while I was lucky enough sit here in this Palace of Westminster and was saying, “Daddy meet the Queen”—but Her late Majesty’s legacy will continue to live on forever, in generations yet to come. Her dedication to public service and duty, her national pride and her unwavering personal faith provide lessons for us all to pass down to our children and grandchildren, enabling us to help support her successor, our King, in taking us forward into the future, unsure of what lies ahead but collectively empowering us to stand shoulder to shoulder, undeterred in our love and belief in our United Kingdom. The people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, including me, give our heartfelt condolences to His Majesty King Charles III and his family at this time, for they have lost not only their Queen, but a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. As we pray that Her late Majesty the Queen lies in eternal peace and happiness, myself and the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke wish to bear our true faith and allegiance to His Majesty King Charles III, as she would have wanted. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Mark Logan – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Mark Logan, the Conservative MP for Bolton North East, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

It is a sorrowful privilege to rise to pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen on behalf of Bolton North East. We are faced with the indescribable loss of the guardian of our traditions and the soul of our nation, but Her Majesty was more than that: for evermore, she will be the United Kingdom. We are feeling this loss, achingly so, in Bolton. You only had to be there during the platinum jubilee celebrations to get a sense of the adulation felt for the Queen in our town. Bolton was, on many occasions, the preferred destination of Her Majesty. In 1953, not long after taking the throne, the Queen’s first-ever football match was the FA cup final between Blackpool and Bolton Wanderers at Wembley stadium. Wanderers lost 4-3—though that was later remedied in 1958 when the Duke of Edinburgh awarded them the FA cup after they beat Man United 2-0.

Her Majesty first visited Bolton in 1954 where the royal train pulled up into Trinity Street station, and in 1968 she visited St Paul’s church in Halliwell. In 1988, Queen Elizabeth II visited Bolton to celebrate the town’s 150th birthday, witnessing investment into the town centre, and 30 years on, the town is being revamped once again. Her last visit was to Warburtons, where the rock that was forever by her side—the Duke of Edinburgh—joked with factory workers. I was going to say, “Imagine being a fly on the wall for some of those jokes”, but Warburtons has a great hygiene regime in place and therefore no flies.

We MPs may think we are busy running around our constituencies, but Her Majesty was able to see so many people and places in each of our respective areas. She was there all along, as our living environments and country went through inevitable change. We can learn from her integrity and live up to higher standards—for she was the standard. The wave of her hand, the comfort of her words at 3 pm on Christmas day and the steps she took on every footpath across the kingdom and the Commonwealth kept us all on the one road. We will never cease to miss and cherish her. As Her Majesty said during June’s celebrations,

“I hope this renewed sense of togetherness will be felt for many years to come”.

As we are brought together here to mourn our collective loss, I say, God bless the Queen. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Nigel Evans – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Nigel Evans, the Deputy Speaker, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

I want to put on the record my appreciation and that of the people of Ribble Valley for the Queen. She had a strong relationship with Ribble Valley. I met her there and was honoured to meet her here in London as well. It was rumoured by a lady-in-waiting that if ever Her Majesty retired, she would want to retire into the Ribble Valley, but we all know she never intended to retire, because hers was a lifetime of service for which we are incredibly grateful. We will miss her. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Paul Beresford – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Sir Paul Beresford, the Conservative MP for Mole Valley, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

I was visited by a number of my constituents yesterday. I had forgotten what we were there to discuss and so had they. All they could talk about was the Queen. They were sad to begin with and then they moved on to positive things. Their condolences were combined with really positive feelings for her.

At the end of 1953, the Queen and the Duke visited New Zealand—New Zealand is as far away as you can get from Buckingham Palace without coming back. It is still heavily royal, and it certainly was at that time. Public reaction to the visit was so positive that I suddenly realised—even though I was only knee-high to a grasshopper—that there was a very important person called “the Queen”. The Queen and Prince Philip had a really positive following when they arrived just before Christmas, which they had greatly engendered as a result of their sympathetic and instant positive reaction in response to the Tangiwai disaster. What happened was that the royal couple arrived in New Zealand on 23 December, and, the following day, Christmas eve 1953, a railway bridge over the Tangiwai gorge collapsed, and it collapsed just as a heavily loaded express train rolled onto it. The locomotive and the first six carriages were derailed and went into the river, killing 151 people. The tour stopped. The royal couple were involved in all the sympathy, the memorials, and meeting the people—those who had lost relatives and those who had survived. Their position in New Zealand rose higher than you could possibly imagine. What happened really solidified the very strong standing that they had in the eyes of the New Zealand public—whether they were Pākehā or Māori. They charmed their way across the country. Many Members have talked today or yesterday about the Commonwealth, and that was the way the Queen became the linchpin of the Commonwealth. She charmed her way with Presidents, Prime Ministers and the people of those 56 nations and the 2.5 billion people who make up the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is vital to our position and to some sanity on this Earth. We now look to our new King to continue the Queen’s success. It is a huge job. I wish him well because he is filling some huge shoes that were worn by a very small, but enormously successful, lady. I wish him well and pray that it works as well as it did with his mother.

September 11, 2022
David Rutley – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by David Rutley, the Conservative MP for Macclesfield, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

Many great tributes have already been made—it is great to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling), and I hope his mother was able to overcome that experience—and an honour to be able to add to them with the great tributes of the people of Macclesfield constituency, who are in mourning with a deep sense of loss, like so many others across the nation.

Her Majesty’s life was a beacon, the embodiment of the principle of public service and unfailing duty. We are all grateful for her example. It will be cherished for the rest of our lives and throughout history.

My wife, Rachel, and I were fortunate to meet Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace with a number of other colleagues, including several from Scotland, from the Opposition Benches. The Queen loved Scotland. She loved the Union and she loved the Commonwealth. What impressed both of us the most was the sincere interest that Her Majesty showed to those whom she met. She showed genuine love and concern to all those she worked to serve, and we are most grateful for that.

On that occasion, Prince Philip talked of his fond memories of carriage driving in Henbury and enjoying services at St Alban’s Church in Macclesfield. The Queen visited Macclesfield as a young 23-year-old princess to celebrate the town’s unique silk heritage at Hurdsfield mills, and then again in 2002 as part of the golden jubilee tour, visiting King’s School. Sadly, she was not able to visit the iconic Jodrell Bank telescope site to celebrate it receiving UNESCO world heritage status in 2020 because of the pandemic. She would have been so very proud of its new First Light Pavilion that had just opened.

We all think we know our constituencies well, but the Queen really understood the communities and geography that she served throughout the entire nation. Historians will write about Queen Elizabeth as a statesman, a diplomat, a defender of all faiths and a much-loved and respected monarch through 70 years of dedicated service, but it was also about what she wrote in our hearts. Millions of people across the country and in the Commonwealth family of nations will be her real lasting legacy. With her sad passing, we all now have the responsibility to live up to that legacy, to renew and recommit ourselves in our service to others and, in so doing, we will show our true gratitude to this wonderful servant who, although only a little over 5ft tall, was a towering figure in our nation’s history. May she rest in peace.

Our thoughts and prayers remain with the royal family and with our new King Charles III as he takes forward his new duties. We pray that he will be granted strength, wisdom and the enduring influence of his much-loved mother. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Giles Watling – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Giles Watling, the Conservative MP for Clacton, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

It is a great honour to stand here representing the people of Clacton, who I know from what I have heard and seen and read loved our Queen and are in deep mourning now. She was an incredible woman, and I had the honour of meeting her on a couple of occasions, as well as many members of her family. She had that one now not-so-secret weapon, which was the devastating smile that she would unleash mercilessly and bring people to her. In many ways her personality shone through that smile. She was my Queen, she was your Queen, she was each individual’s Queen. She was the people of Clacton’s Queen, she was the UK’s Queen and she was the Queen of her realms overseas. She was the Queen to so many people around the world, and I read only yesterday that 93% of the world’s population have known no other monarch. She is the Queen—she is gone and we mourn her deeply.

I would like to tell a brief story about my father’s relationship with the Queen. He had the unenviable task of having to introduce her to 25 members of the board of the Royal Theatrical Fund. On a good day, my father, although he was a great actor, had difficulty remembering his own name, so it was with great trepidation that he faced this task. He came up with this wonderful scheme, saying “I shall remember one in five of you, so I only have to remember five names. I will introduce Tom, and Tom will introduce Bert, George, Harry and Fred, and so on.” That worked tremendously, except that on the morning of the meeting everybody brought their husbands and wives with them, so the room was full and crowded, and my mother was there too. However, my father’s scheme still worked. He introduced Tom, who introduced Fred, Harry, Jane and Sheila, and so on, but he forgot to introduce my mother. The Queen said, “And who is this?” and my father could not remember her name, so he said, “At home we call her mother.” [Laughter.] To say that the Queen was amused is a vast understatement. She immediately went to the bar and asked for a drink.

My father had many happy memories of the Queen, as do I. May she rest in peace. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Laura Farris – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Laura Farris, the Conservative MP for Newbury, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

It is with profound sadness that I rise to pay tribute to Her late Majesty the Queen on behalf of my constituents in west Berkshire. She was the lodestar of our national life, and in west Berkshire she was treasured for her passionate engagement in racing, our signature pastime. She was a frequent visitor to Newbury racecourse, sent multiple champions for training in Lambourn and even purchased her own racing stables in West Ilsley. The legendary Lambourn trainer Nicky Henderson told me that when a foal of particularly promising parentage was born in the spring of this year, she said, “Nicky, when this one runs for the first time as a four-year-old, I’ll be 100, you’ll be 75 and we’ll be the oldest owner-trainer combination in the world.”

In the end it was not to be, but it was at Newbury racecourse that Her late Majesty saw some of the greatest triumphs of her racing life. In April 1958, six years into her reign, she was there when Doutelle gave her a first winner in the John Porter stakes. It was the year when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister, Sputnik 1 was launched into space, Elvis topped the charts with “Jailhouse Rock” and Vietnam stood on the brink of war.

She saw victory again in August 1967 with Hopeful Venture in the Geoffrey Freer stakes. It was the era of Harold Wilson and the Beatles, when NASA was putting the finishing touches to its preparations for launching man on to the moon. Just after Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election landslide, she was there again with Rhyme Royal, which came home for her in the London gold cup. It was the year of the Iran hostage crisis and the assassination of Lord Mountbatten at the hands of the IRA. She saw Phantom Gold cruise to victory in 1996—the year of the Dunblane massacre and just months before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Her last visit to Newbury was in 2017. She entered the winners enclosure just one day after her 91st birthday, when Call to Mind was victorious in the Dubai Duty Free maiden stakes. The country was in the midst of a general election campaign, and was reeling from terrorist attacks in Westminster, London Bridge and Manchester.

Through her reign—war and peace, triumph and disaster, Presidents and Prime Ministers—she was our strength and our comfort, and we in Newbury will always be proud that she derived moments of pure joy from the place that we call home. I send my sincere condolences to the royal family, and also to the family of the Princess of Wales, who are my constituents. May she rest in peace.

September 11, 2022