Category: Parliament

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
Gagan Mohindra – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made to Gagan Mohindra, the Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

It is a sad honour to be called to speak in these tributes to Her late Majesty. As many colleagues have said, she was a constant throughout our lives. I have said before that I regard myself as a son of the Commonwealth; one of the proudest realisations in the past 48 hours is that while we may have lost our Queen, the world has lost “the” Queen.

The Queen visited South West Hertfordshire a few times, and the last two visits of which I am aware are emblematic of who she was. In 2010, she opened the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, in the south of my constituency; all my ex-military friends are sorrowful about her passing. Her most recent visit was in 2016, when she came to visit Berkhamsted School, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) is an alumnus. She was a patron of the school, which was celebrating its 475th anniversary. When I visited the school recently, I could still see the look of wonder in the eyes of the children who had had the honour of meeting her. I never had that honour, but when I was a lot younger, on the rare occasions when my parents used to drive past Buckingham Palace, we always looked with fondness to see whether the royal standard was up. My father, probably treasonously, used to say, “Is Auntie Liz in?”

Like most families, mine have been speaking about the Queen over the past few days. My brother-in-law mentioned that normally people have photos of their loved ones in their wallet or purse. I would argue that each and every one of us has a photo of our loved one, the Queen, by virtue of the notes. I think that that is a fitting tribute to someone I regard as an amazing woman.

On behalf of the constituents of South West Hertfordshire, may I send my condolences to the whole royal family? They have lost a loved one, and the country has lost a great champion for our values. I do not think that there will be another like her for many generations to come. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Simon Fell – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Simon Fell, the Conservative MP for Barrow and Furness, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

I rise to pay tribute, and to offer heartfelt condolences on behalf of the people of Barrow and Furness, and my family, to King Charles and his family on the death of Her late Majesty.

Her Majesty served our nation for 70 years with a remarkable and unstinting sense of duty that should inspire us all, but even with tens of thousands of hours of her life captured on film and written about in so many column inches, we knew nothing about her politics or her views on any policy debated in this place, despite what we may have thought or suspected. The fact that she held audiences with Prime Ministers through wars, pandemics and times of national crisis and kept her counsel, even with the passage of so many years, speaks volumes about her character and her sense of duty.

Her Majesty was a fixture in our lives. All my life she has been there: she has been a constant. When I was young and fell in love with books for the first time, there she was, greeting Sophie and the Big Friendly Giant at the end of Roald Dahl’s novel. What I saw in my mind was not a character in a story with a crown on her head; it was our Queen. She was so much a part of our world and my world, and so magical at the same time, that of course it was entirely possible that it was Her Majesty taking breakfast with a giant.

I am glad that that sense of wonder and magic crosses the generations. My children were delighted to see the Queen sharing the screen and her jam sandwiches with Paddington Bear. She was comfortable with herself and her role—always a steady hand on the tiller of our nation as our unflappable, constant monarch, but still aware of what she meant to people and the joy and comfort that she could and did bring.

Her late Majesty was a friend and frequent visitor to Barrow and south Lakeland. She launched HMS Dreadnought, our first nuclear submarine, and when she launched the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible a crowd of 15,000 people gathered in the drizzle to witness her blessing the ship and christening it with a bottle of elderberry wine. She visited Furness General Hospital, our town hall and the North-West Evening Mail and opened our market. Celebrating her platinum jubilee, I was struck by just how many constituents came forward with stories of times they had met Her Majesty and just how important those moments were to them. Many of those moments were fleeting, but the impact that they made was substantial.

It has been quoted a few times today and yesterday, but Her late Majesty once said:

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

We loved that remarkable lady for her service, her dignity and her unstinting dedication to the nation and to her people. In grief, we can reflect on that dedication to us and perhaps draw some comfort from her service and her life. I certainly hope that her family and His Majesty King Charles will find solace in the grace and gratitude of our nation. May she rest in peace. God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Jason McCartney – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Jason McCartney, the Conservative MP for Colne Valley, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

I rise on behalf of my constituents to pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen’s decades of service to our nation—decades of service delivered with humility, with warmth, with wisdom, and with gentle humour.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for woods and trees, I wrote to all my local schools earlier this year inviting them to take part in the Queen’s green canopy scheme—planting a tree for the jubilee. I visited many of those schools, and we planted the tree. Afterwards, we had a Q&A session. I was often asked if I knew Boris. “Yes, he is my boss,” I would say—or “was my boss”. Was I rich? I tried to not really answer that one. Then, of course, I would always be asked whether I had ever met the Queen. I would say, “Yes, a number of times—I have been very fortunate”, and the children would gasp with excitement. I would tell them about the number of times I had met her while, as a young Royal Air Force officer, I was based at RAF West Raynham in Norfolk, near Fakenham. Sandringham was just up the road, so Her Majesty was a regular visitor to our RAF station.

Some 20 years after that, as an MP, I was invited to Buckingham Palace, as MPs are, for an audience with Her Majesty. She was asking me about my constituency, and I told her that the market town of Holmfirth was in my patch. I said, “Your Majesty, it is where they film ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ on BBC One”, and her face lit up with a big smile. I do not know whether she watched it or not, but to this day I have a lovely image of her sitting down in an armchair on a Sunday teatime, after a busy week, turning on BBC One, and enjoying the gentle antics of Nora Batty, Compo and Cleggy—not that Cleggy! [Laughter.] And—relax.

The past 48 hours have been a very emotional time for our nation, but having listened to my constituents today, I know that they were greatly comforted by His Majesty the King’s reassuring and deeply personal address to the nation last night. I look forward to heading back to Yorkshire this evening so that I can be at Huddersfield town hall tomorrow for the royal proclamation. Let me end by simply saying this: God bless Her Majesty the Queen, and God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Jo Churchill – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made to Jo Churchill, the Conservative MP for Bury St Edmunds, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your indulgence in allowing the Whips to speak and pay tribute.

I rise to give thanks for the wonderful, long life of Her Majesty, our Queen Elizabeth, on behalf of myself, but also the people of the Bury St Edmunds constituency. As many others have said, she was ours—for each and every one of us. She was special to us individually, young and old, in this great country, in the Commonwealth and beyond. We have relied on her to be there, and on her constancy, her service, her humour and her love.

Many in this Chamber, as others have said, have recounted amusing tales of those twinkling eyes resting on them and that sense of fun. She has visited my constituency, like others, many times, the final occasion being for the Maundy service in our cathedral, and she left her mark.

But as I sat in this Chamber and we listened to the King yesterday, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) said, I wanted to say this: that our thoughts and prayers are with her family and her friends, who, for their entire lives, have had to share with us their mother, their grandmother, their great-grandmother, their friend or, for her dear late husband, his wife. May they now be comforted by us, and by our expressions of gratitude and love for the late Queen, as they carry on, as she did, with duty and stoicism, constantly and consistently showing us the way. So to her we say thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, although it feels not enough. As her faith took her through her life, may it take her on her final journey, and may she rest in peace.

Finally, earlier this week I was truly honoured to be appointed Vice-Chamberlain, so I say with feeling, in anticipation of having to write to His Majesty the King daily, God save the King.

September 11, 2022
Aaron Bell – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Aaron Bell, the Conservative MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.

It is a sad privilege to rise to speak on behalf of my constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme, to offer our condolences to His Majesty and the whole royal family, and to give thanks for the life and service of Her Majesty.

As Britons, we are lucky to live in a constitutional monarchy, but to have had the Queen as our constitutional monarch we were more than lucky; we were blessed. I believe that she is the greatest public servant this nation has ever seen. Through 70 years, she has led this nation through profound challenges and seen profound change, not just in this nation but throughout the world and across the Commonwealth. She has led and guided us throughout with her grace, her wisdom and her example. She visited us in Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1973 for our octocentenary. Constituents of mine of a certain age will remember that, and as we prepare to celebrate 850 years next year, those memories will now be all the more poignant.

As we remember Her Majesty, I would like to pay tribute to the way that she has led this nation. Only earlier this week we had the transfer of power. She continued to take her constitutional responsibilities with the utmost seriousness to the end, and I am sure the Prime Minister was extremely grateful for her advice only on Tuesday.

I have sat in the Chamber and listened to much of the debate, both yesterday and today. There have been some very fine and moving speeches, and some very funny ones, on all sides. I think the finest speech I have heard was not from the Dispatch Box or from these Benches, and it was not even from the Opposition Benches. It was from the monitor screens in here yesterday, when we listened to His Majesty address the nation. It was a profoundly fine and moving speech, and it confirmed to me what I already knew from his many years of service as the Prince of Wales: that the Crown is in very safe hands and that we can look forward with confidence as we go through yet another trying time for our nation. He will follow his mother’s example, leading us into a new era. God save the King.

September 11, 2022