Thank you for calling me to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is the last time that you will be able to call me. It was a great privilege working with you when we were doing opposite jobs, as Chief Whip and Opposition Chief Whip.
I first saw inside the House of Commons in about 1972. In 1970, Cannock elected a Conservative Member of Parliament, Patrick Cormack, with one of the biggest swings in the country in that general election. Like any new Member of Parliament, he went round the local schools and invited us to come down to the House of Commons to have a tour. I came down in about 1972, and I remember it well. I was overwhelmed by the atmosphere, the beauty of the place and the history of the building—so much so that I remember saying to one of my best friends at the time, John Beresford, “I’ve decided what I want to do in life.” He said, “What’s that, Patrick?” and I said, “I want to come back to the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament.” I will always remember him saying to me, “If I was you, I’d keep that a secret.” It was not the kind of place that a comprehensive schoolboy from Cannock would end up.
Leaving school at 16, I became involved in the youth wing of the Conservative party, and I fought my first general election in Wolverhampton South East in 1983. It was a great campaign but an unsuccessful one, when the Conservative party overall was doing incredibly well. I made several unsuccessful attempts at winning other seats, and I began to think that my friend John was right. But as we all know in politics, things happen suddenly. All of a sudden, a by-election was called in West Derbyshire, and I was selected as the candidate, when Matthew Parris, who has been a lifelong friend since then, decided to pursue a career in TV.
I would like to pay tribute to the officers of the West Derbyshire Conservative association in those days, particularly Geoffrey Roberts, who is sadly no longer with us, but his wife Josie still lives in Bakewell. They took a bit of a gamble in 1986, selecting a 28-year-old who was hardly a typical Tory—somebody who left school at 16, had not been to university and had gone through 12 months of a coal strike. With our successful campaign in that by-election, and with my charm and personality, I managed to take a very safe Conservative seat with a majority of 15,500 to one with a majority of 100 votes.
I came into the House of Commons on 13 May. My mother came down, and my pregnant wife was with me, and we were invited to have tea with the then Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. My mother was not overwhelmed at all by meeting Mrs Thatcher. She had never met a senior politician of any description. We met her in the Prime Minister’s office here in the House of Commons, and within a few minutes, it was almost as if I did not exist. My mother and Mrs Thatcher were talking away like two old fishwives. After 30 minutes, a note came in for the Prime Minister saying that she had to go to her next meeting. She looked at my mother and said, “I’m very sorry, but I have to go to my next meeting.” I will always remember my mother tapping her on the knee and saying, “Yes, my dear, you are busy, aren’t you?” to which Mrs Thatcher said, “Well, I am today. It’s just one of those days.”
It has been a privilege and a pleasure to serve in this House with my right hon. Friend, but will he give the House a pledge that he will not write his memoirs, or if he changes his mind and does decide to write his memoirs, that he will make no reference at all to what happens in the Whips Office? Does he agree with me that whipping, like stripping, is best done in private?
I agree partly with what my right hon. Friend says. If he does not mind, I shall say something in a few moments about the Whips Office that may or may not get his approval, but let us see.
Less than a year after I entered the House of Commons, we faced a general election. I have to say that it was an unusual election as far as West Derbyshire was concerned because two parties got what they wanted. My Liberal opponent had posters up and down the constituency saying, “100 more votes this time”. I am very glad that he got his extra 100 votes, and I was even more pleased that I got an extra 10,000. Let us leave that to the side, but we should be careful what we wish for.
In 1989, I was invited by Margaret Thatcher to join her Government, and I went as a junior Minister to the then Department of Transport. One of the first issues that landed in the area I was responsible for, within a few weeks of my being at the Department, was the terrible Marchioness disaster on the Thames. As we have done in the previous debate, dealing with people who have suffered such tragedies is one of the more difficult parts of life in government, as it is when, as Members of Parliament, we have people who are hit by tragic circumstances and incidents that often cause the loss of life and the like. I think most Members of Parliament go out of their way to do whatever they can to help.
I served in several Departments before John Major appointed me to the Whips Office in 1995. I spent 17 years there, becoming one of the most long-serving and perhaps, as far as my party is concerned, long-suffering Whips. When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative party in 2005, he made me the Opposition Chief Whip, and then he made me the Chief Whip in the coalition Government in 2010. There, I was really ably assisted by John Randall, who is now in the other place, as my Deputy Chief Whip—really a man of great and outstanding ability and high principle—and by the right Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). I see in his place the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who was also in the Whips Office.
I have to say that I never dreamed for one minute that I would ever serve under the right hon. Gentleman in any capacity in this place, but I found myself doing so and I found myself enjoying it and respecting his leadership, so I thank him for that.
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I think, with the problems we inherited, that there was a lot the coalition Government did of which we can rightly be proud.
I was Chief Whip for a considerable time, and I have to say that I was greatly assisted at the time by two people in the Whips Office to whom I want to refer—Sir Roy Stone and Mark Kelly. Roy Stone is basically the usual channels, as you well know, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is true that there have been only four people to hold the position of principal private secretary to the Chief Whip in the last 100 years, and Roy himself has been doing it since November 2000. The House, the Government and the Opposition have a great servant in Roy, and I really want to say a big thank you to him for the work he does. I think he would say that there is never a dull moment in what he does.
I would like to say a few things about the Whips Office, which I think is quite often misunderstood both inside and outside this place. Contrary to some of the wilder stories, it is the personnel department of any parliamentary party, dealing with a wide range of issues both personal and political.
Well, everybody is allowed to have their views. All I can say to my right hon. Friend is that she ought to have to deal with some of the people the Whips Office has to deal with.
I would like to say something to all people who come into this House of Commons. Whatever they think about the Whips Office and about the party system, very few people would get into this House on their own ability; they get here only because they belong to a major political party or a political party, and I think that is sometimes forgotten by them when they get here.
In 2012, David Cameron gave me the option of becoming Secretary of State for Transport. As Chief Whip, I was aware of the offer just a little time in advance of the reshuffle, so I had time to reflect on it. It was a big step to move from the back office of politics to the front office, or to the frontline, as it so often seemed, particularly in those first few weeks at the Department for Transport, where I had of course started as a junior Minister some time before.
I remember very well, Madam Deputy Speaker, you coming to me on that Monday afternoon, when I knew what was going to happen to me, and you told me that the Opposition day debate on Wednesday was going to be on rail fares. I did try to say to you that I did not think this was a very good idea and could you not find a different subject to take on. The next morning you realised why I might have suggested that, but as usual you stuck to your guns, and I found myself responding to such a debate that week.
I found my four years at the Department for Transport one of the most fascinating periods that I spent in government, and it was a huge privilege to be the Secretary of State and head of a major Department such as that.
I would just like to put on record that during the right hon. Gentleman’s spell as Secretary of State for Transport, a company—it will be unnamed—came to me in desperate straits over a problem that involved the Department for Transport and other countries, and it would have gone out of business within 10 days had it not been resolved. I took it to the right hon. Gentleman, we had a discussion, he did what was necessary and that company was saved, with about 120 jobs, and I would just like that to go on the record.
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. As I said, it was an incredibly rewarding period.
Within a few days or weeks of being there, I found myself having to phone Richard Branson to explain why his company was going to keep the franchise for the west coast main line, although he had previously been told that Virgin had lost it; that conversation I remember well. I would like to say at this point that it is fair to say that people such as Richard Branson and Brian Souter have done more for rail passengers in this country than many Secretaries of State, and they have improved our railways in a very dramatic way. I hope that, whatever plans come in the manifestos, we do not lose the involvement of the private sector in the railways. They have transformed our railways, and I think that is partly as a result of the private investment we have seen.
I would like to take this opportunity, if I may, to pay tribute to some of the superb civil servants who supported me in my role. Among them, in my private office were Mark Reach and Rupert Hetherington, as well as Philip Rutnam, who was the permanent secretary for all the time that I was there, while Phil West was my principal private secretary for the entire four years I was at the Department. I had excellent special advisers—another often misunderstood role—in Ben Mascall, Simon Burton and Tim Smith, as well as a constituent of mine, Julian Glover, who knew more about the railways than anybody I have come across and would give me the history and everything else. He has written and had published not so long ago a book on Thomas Telford, “Man of Iron”, and it is great authoritative writing. People like them who bring outside expertise straight into the political arena are really very important.
I was encouraged by the unswerving support of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, who were both great infrastructure enthusiasts—so much so that one of my problems as Transport Secretary was that, when visiting a construction site, I was always third in line to get a hi-vis jacket and a hard hat. In 2015 I was reappointed by the Prime Minister. I remember him saying, “Patrick, you’ve been going up and down the country promising all these schemes.” I pointed out that I had only done so after he had promised them in the first place, and that it would have been difficult to row back on promises made by the Prime Minister.
I rise to make my final contribution after more than 36 years in this House. As I said when I announced that I was standing down, it has been the honour of my life to represent Rother Valley, a constituency that I first moved to at the age of eight, when my father, a Durham miner, moved to the south Yorkshire coalfields.
Having been elected in 1983, my baptism came very shortly after, when 4,500 miners went on strike for 12 months. With the Orgreave coke works in my constituency, I was kept on my toes. That was followed by three years as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then Leader of the Opposition. I learned quite a lot of things that I will not be sharing this afternoon—I am not even tempted to talk about the Whips Office, as the right hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin) has just done.
The major work that I have done in the House is with Select Committees. When I was first elected, I served on the Energy Committee, and then for a short time, I was a member of the Environment Committee. I chaired the Health Committee for five years, from 2005 to 2010. One of the earliest things that Committee did was to secure a free vote in the House on bringing in a comprehensive ban on smoking in public places. Some people said at the time that it would be the end of the world as we knew it, but now people say that it is the most popular piece of public health legislation that the House has ever introduced. I spent eight years chairing the Committee on Standards, until September last year. We did not have quite as great a result as we did with the smoking ban, but my intention all along was to ensure that this place was better thought of by the people outside who elect and send us here. I think that to some extent we were moving along quite nicely on that, until something happened in 2016 that seems to have knocked us back quite a bit. Select Committee work is something that I have enjoyed.
With regard to local achievements, clearly there are many, but the main achievement that I and my staff have had over many years is dealing with individual casework, for the people who come along and need help, perhaps because they have been unable to communicate their concerns. I have always said that I have been a voice for the voiceless in Rother Valley, speaking up on their behalf. Another thing I have been involved with in the constituency is coalfield regeneration. The advanced manufacturing park is now in the Rotherham constituency, but it used to be in Rother Valley when it was first put in by a Labour Government. It shows that we are recognised as having some of the finest manufacturing anywhere in the world. That came out of the old Orgreave coke works and the coalmine site. Such developments have transformed parts of south Yorkshire, and my voice and that of the Government were there for that on many occasions.
I am grateful to have an opportunity to take part in this debate and to pay tribute to so many colleagues who are moving on. It is a particular honour to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin). Indeed, it was a telephone call from him that first heralded my appointment as a Minister. I could hear the deep reluctance in his voice, verging on disbelief, as he announced that the Prime Minister had appointed me. He then had a moment of fun at my expense when he told me—he obviously knew me very well—that I was off to the Ministry of Agriculture, before revealing that I was in fact going to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. In fact, things went from bad to worse after that phone call, because my sole contribution, apart from irritating the Chief Whip during my first five years in this place while on the Opposition Benches, was to write a blog in which, with the oncoming age of austerity, I recommended that the first thing we should do as a Government was to get rid of Government cars. Straight after my right hon. Friend put down the phone, my new private secretary at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport rang me—I felt tremendously important— and said, “Minister, would you like to come into the Department?” I said that, yes, of course I would. They said, “Minister, shall we send your car?” I paused for a moment. I thought of myself, as I have always been in this place, as a man of great principle and then said, “Yes, please send a car.” [Laughter.] Two minutes later, there was another phone call: “Minister, the Secretary of State has read your blog and he has cancelled your car.” I never had a car for the six years that I was in the Department.
My right hon. Friend’s speech also reminded me of my own glittering political career in this place. I have always wanted to do the Queen’s Speech address, so that I can recount to the House some of my great political successes. Standing in 1997 in Bristol East, I managed to turn a 5,000 Labour majority into a 17,000 Labour majority. Then, when I was selected to succeed Robert Jackson in the seat of Wantage, he and I worked hand in glove together for three years—father and son, Laurel and Hardy—with never a moment apart. After working with me for those three years, Robert Jackson turned around and defected to the Labour party.
That is how I came to represent one of the most beautiful constituencies in England. It is a constituency dominated, to a great degree, by the Peak District national park. The Peak district is within an hour’s drive of 60% of the UK population, and some weekends it feels like they all come. The Peak District national park is a very important part of our country. Obviously it has strict planning rules and regulations, but I want to see people living in the national park and not priced out of it. We must bear that in mind.
We have a number of important market towns in Derbyshire Dales, not least Wirksworth, Ashbourne, Bakewell and Matlock. They are thriving market towns, but at the moment their high streets are under tremendous pressure. I do hope that the new Government will think very carefully about how they can support our market towns and our high streets—that is incredibly important—and avoid putting extra unnecessary costs on them, or if costs are put on business, make sure they are across the board, including for the internet companies, which at the moment do not quite share their full burden.
Talking about infrastructure, one of the fascinating aspects of returning to the Department where I began my ministerial career was that I could appreciate fully just how long and difficult these major projects are. Crossrail is a good example. When I was first in the Department, in 1989, I remember the then Secretary of State saying, “We’re going to build Crossrail.” It is now being built. It has been delayed and gone over budget, but it will make a tremendous difference to London once it is finished.
That brings me to High Speed 2. HS2 is not about speed; it is about capacity. It is about building a modern railway that is fit for our times and for a modern country. I could spend a long time talking about HS2, but I think that might try the patience of my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Sir David Lidington), which I do not want to do. I accept the problems that he and his constituents face as a result of HS2, and those concerns must be listened to. However, I will find it ironic if I can take a high-speed train from London to Brussels or Paris, but not to Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds. It is absolutely essential that we increase our capacity.
As we prepare to leave the European Union, I well recall the Cabinet meeting on the Saturday morning after David Cameron had returned from the negotiations —given that he has written about this in his book, I can now break the rule not to speak about Cabinet discussions. I said in that meeting, “I would love to live in Utopia, but the trouble is that I would wake up and find that the EU was still there.” We have to be realistic about what we want from Europe. We are leaving the European Union, and it is right that we do so—we said that we would be bound by the result of the referendum, and I strongly believe that—but it is the European Union that we are leaving, not Europe. We must make sure that we get a good trading relationship with the rest of Europe as quickly as possible.
I will still be living in Derbyshire Dales. I shall miss tremendously being its Member of Parliament and being at the centre of things there. I am sure that I will still enjoy the company of so many good people, but it will be a different relationship. After 33 years, it is time to move on.
One of my greatest supporters and helpers has been my wife. It is fair to say that she has always been my strongest supporter in public—in private, she has often told me the truth, and I have been the better for it. I first entered the House in a by-election, and it was chaotic; after six weeks of campaigning, I arrived here in the thick of it. I decided only last week not to seek re-election, and I have to say that my departure feels the same. One of the best pieces of advice that my wife ever gave me was when she was helping me with a speech that I was preparing. After typing it up, she looked at me and said, “Patrick, I’ve never known you to make too short a speech.” On that note, I want to end by thanking everyone, including all the officers and staff, for their help.
Finally, I want to say a few words of thanks to some individuals. For the last eight general elections, my friend and colleague Alan Goy has been my political agent. All Members will know how important it is to have a good relationship with their political agent. I also want to thank the staff who have supported me during my tenure. I will thank, in particular, my current staff, Sheena Woolley, Jacquie Falvey and Natalie Robinson, who support me in the constituency, and Kate Edwards and Michael Denoual, who work here in Parliament.
As the right hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales said, your wife is a massive support in this job. Sadly, I lost my first wife Carol in 2008, but Andree, who I married a few years ago, has been a pillar of support. It would be difficult for anybody to do this job without that type of support at home.
I do not want to turn this into a full-scale Oscars speech, so I will end by thanking the people of Rother Valley, who I have been honoured to represent. Whoever wins the seat at the election, I hope that they will feel the same satisfaction representing it that I have felt for many years.
I was lucky enough to succeed Robert Jackson in 2005 to become the Member of Parliament for Wantage and Didcot, and it is a tremendous privilege. I rechristened the constituency Wantage and Didcot, although I can never get that past the Boundary Commission. Didcot is the largest town in the constituency, which also includes Wantage, Faringdon and Wallingford. I sensed from my right hon. Friend’s speech that all of us in this House believe that we represent the best constituency in the country. The great advantage of Wantage is that it literally does have everything, from an ancient white horse to a 21st century space cluster with 90 start-up companies. It has Europe’s leading business park, Milton Park, a technology business park with life sciences, the European Space Agency, the Satellite Applications Catapult, Williams Formula 1, farming, small businesses and a huge sense of community. I think the one thing we all learn in this place as Members of Parliament, if we did not learn it beforehand, is the tremendous power of community and social organisations in our constituencies. Again and again, we know the tremendous amount of work that volunteers do in every part of society in our constituencies to make things happen and to make them work, often with very little thanks or recognition.
My constituency—I hope this does not sound arrogant or come out in the wrong way—suffers in different ways from other constituencies, in that it suffers from the problems of success. The issues that come across my desk relate to economic success: concern about the growing number of houses and whether there is adequate infrastructure, such as roads and schools, to support it. There are other important issues, such as reopening a provincial railway station, Grove station, to provide better commuting for all my constituents, and sorting out the problems at Wantage community hospital. The biggest issue that faces us is how to cope with the impact of economic success in this area.
I just want to touch on two other topics before I sit down. I probably should not bring up Brexit—we were all having such a lovely time before I did—but I just want to put on record, as someone who has got into a bit of trouble on this issue, what happened. I supported the Prime Minister’s position when he first became Prime Minister, to leave with a deal; otherwise we would leave with no deal. Funnily enough, I thought the no-deal threat was better aimed at this Parliament, rather than at Europe. It was only the out-of-the-blue Prorogation that made me feel that Parliament should have a moment where it put in an insurance policy to ensure that we did get a deal, but once a deal came back I was very happy to support it. I was happy to support the programme motion, and I hope that if the Prime Minister comes back with a majority, he brings the deal back and rams it through. I would certainly support him in that. I am not a remainer or a remoaner; I am a leaver-with-a-dealer. I hope that that is what can happen after the election.
Although I lost the Whip, I am a fan and an admirer of the Prime Minister. I have known him for many years. Generally, every single political prediction I make is wrong, but I did predict two years ago that he would become Prime Minister. I also said that, looking at his record as Mayor of London, he would make a fine Prime Minister. I think he will. As I look at my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan), I can see him nodding in agreement.