This is my last speech. The House of Commons records show that I have spoken in this Chamber 9,880 times. [Hon. Members: “More!”] I have to say that, when you discover that the Prime Minister was only two years old when you were first elected, you realise it is time to move on. Every time I have spoken in this Chamber, I have had a profound sense of how important this House is, and what a great honour and privilege it is to be a Member of this Parliament. Through good times and bad, I have felt that great sense of privilege and responsibility to my constituents. The thing about being an MP is that you are your constituents’ one and only MP, and it is down to you to be standing up for them, speaking up for them, and on their side through thick and thin. I thank my constituents of Camberwell and Peckham for being on my side through thick and thin as well.
I pay tribute to all the staff I have worked with over the years. Even my brilliant members of staff cannot calculate how many times I have voted during those 42 years—many thousands of times—but I would say two things about that. First, for the first 15 years, between 1982 and 1997, I voted assiduously every night, sometimes even through the night, and did not win a single vote. Opposition is undoubtedly public service, but we would rather be in government, and I profoundly hope that the person who I hope will be elected as my successor to Camberwell and Peckham, Miatta Fahnbulleh—I think she will make a great contribution to the House—will sit on the Government Benches.
Secondly, I have never voted against the Whip. That is not because I cannot think for myself or because I am stupid or supine; nor is it because I think my party has always been perfect—far from it. Indeed, I fought for change from within my party, but I recognised that I was a Labour candidate. I was elected as a Labour Member of Parliament, and I have been proud to be that, proud to be one of the team of Labour Members in my constituency and all around the country—that great Labour family.
Towards the later years of my time in this House, I have had the great joy of working much more cross-party and of chairing Select Committees. I pay tribute to my colleagues on those Select Committees for the very important work that those Committees do. I also thank the House of Commons staff: the Clerks who do such excellent work, and all those who work in this House, whether that is the security people who keep us safe, the caterers or the cleaners, many of whom are my constituents. They are all part of our democracy, and we should be grateful for their work.
Latterly, it has been a joy and a pleasure to work with women from all sides of the House—I see some of the sisterhood sitting on the Conservative Back Benches. That has been a huge change for the better. Although it was as long as 42 years ago that I first came into this Chamber, I remember so well coming in—I was elected at a by-election—and standing at the Bar of the House. It was just ahead of Prime Minister’s questions. I remember looking at the serried ranks of men on all sides of the House, standing there in my red velvet maternity dress and feeling completely out of place. Of course, I was out of place in a House of Commons that was only 3% women and 97% men. To those people who look back through rose-tinted glasses with nostalgia and talk about the good old days in the House of Commons, I would say that the House is better now: it is more representative. The women who are in this House now—it is now 30%, up from 3%—also know that it is not that we are doing them a favour, letting them be here. They are a democratic imperative, to make this House of Commons representative. They need to have their voices heard; they will not be silenced. They are an essential part of a modern democracy.
It is indeed a great pleasure to follow the speech of the Mother of the House, who has a longer record in this Chamber than I do. I pay tribute, in particular, to the way she has championed the cause of women in this place, and women’s issues more generally, throughout her time in the House. It has been a pleasure latterly—perhaps in our early days we did not work together quite so well—to champion those issues together.
While I am talking about women in this House, may I take this opportunity to say to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the Chairman of Ways and Means, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Dame Eleanor Laing), what a pleasure it has been to have you both in that Chair, and to thank you for the good humour and kindness—but also firmness when necessary—with which you have dealt with our proceedings? I wish you both all the very best for the future.
I would like to give a few more thanks before coming to some remarks to be made before the Dissolution of Parliament. First, I want to thank my Maidenhead constituents, who at seven general elections over 27 years have elected me as their Member of Parliament. I have always put great store by the relationship between a Member of Parliament and their constituents, and I consider my Maidenhead constituents to be the best of British. They are hard-working, they are entrepreneurial and they are compassionate. In all my 27 years, I have been struck by the enormous effort that they have put into helping others and the voluntary work they do around the constituency. I have been delighted to represent this magnificent constituency. I will be the only Member of Parliament for the constituency, because I was the first and the boundaries are now changing, so there we are—that is my place in history.
I also thank my Maidenhead Conservative association, including all the officers over time and all the activists. We all know how those who deliver the leaflets, knock on the doors and raise the funds are an important part of our democracy and our politics. I also join the Mother of the House in thanking the House of Commons staff, both those who are seen and the many who are unseen and unheard. I thank in particular the police and security staff who keep us safe. It was brought home to us on the sad day of the Westminster Bridge attack, when PC Keith Palmer lost his life, that there are those who are willing to put themselves forward to ensure that we can be safe and that this Parliament and this part of our democracy can continue.
It is a great privilege to be able to speak today as the longest-serving Labour Member of Parliament. I made my maiden speech on 3 July 1979, and here we are heading for a 4 July general election. I have been here a darn long time—nearly always on the Back Benches, although, in the mists of time, I sat on the Front Bench for 11 years under various Labour leaders.
I have had the privilege of doing a range of jobs in this House. I have been thinking back in order to give advice to Harpreet Uppal, who will be the Labour candidate in Huddersfield and would be coming to this place for the first time. I was thinking this morning what advice I would give new Members, and it echoes some of the things said by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who has been a good friend of mine over the years. We can be friends across the political divide. She might remember that when she stood down as Prime Minister, I said, “Do not just disappear; stay on the Back Benches.” And she has done, because, as she had said, it is a wonderful thing to do.
I was so privileged to be elected in Huddersfield. I had had a hard time. The first seat I fought was Taunton, against Edward du Cann, and surprisingly I did not win—although I think I was the last Labour candidate to come second there. However, when I arrived in Parliament, I felt that I was representing the classic town—I cannot say the average town—of Britain.
I am an economist. I was at the London School of Economics with some very difficult people—one of whom is sitting right in front of me here. I learned to use the tools of the economist to assess the sort of job that I was going to do. The first thing that I did as a young Member of Parliament was to assess, as far as I could, the strengths and weaknesses of my constituency. Indeed, I raised some money to get Terence Conran to come to Huddersfield and assess the future of its once-vibrant manufacturing industry. We knew that there would be fewer manufacturing jobs, that the world was changing, and that, in order to maintain the high-quality, well-paid jobs that Huddersfield had had for 100 years, we had to have a diverse economy that did other things. One of the great things that his report said was, “Make sure that you expand that polytechnic into a university, because that is the future for the skills that this country needs.”
We do not have time for me to share all my anecdotes about my experiences during my 19 years of being a Member of Parliament. I could tell the House about my trip to Iran with Jeremy Corbyn and Jack Straw, which was like something out of Monty Python—I turned out to be the most pro-European of the three, and it was a certainly an extraordinary experience—or about the touching and important time when, as the Security Minister, I joined the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) on a visit to a mosque in her constituency. She has campaigned against antisemitism for years and years, and she has represented the very best of Labour’s position on Jewish communities and the Jewish members of her party for many decades. As an MP, those kinds of things touch you and go with you in your memories.
I would first like to thank my family. The people who make the real sacrifices for us to be in this House are not us; they are the wives, the husbands and the children, who put up with bullying, separation and all sorts of concerns. In today’s world of social media, they put up with hate as well. Without them, none of us could be here at all.
I will mention the staff in my office. I am very privileged that Zoe Dommett has worked for me since three weeks after the day I was elected 19 years ago. Some of us have colleagues who seem to get through staff like a rotating barrel but, luckily, Zoe, Alf Clempson, Susan Hunt and Una Frost have worked for me for many years. Alf Clempson was my sergeant in the Army, and he is still working for me today.
I turn to the staff of the House. Without the Clerks, the waitresses, the maitre d’s and the Doorkeepers, none of us would be able to our jobs. Long after the debates have got interesting, they still have to hang around this House when many of us can go home or elsewhere. They are absolutely key. They do everything for all of us, without judgment or party political bias, and, in my experience, they are never anything other than polite and supportive. I thank them all the way.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
The right hon. Gentleman is making an outstanding speech. I thank him for the role he played as Defence Secretary and the courtesy he showed to Members across the House, including the Leader of the Opposition, the then leader of the Liberal Democrats and myself. He was gracious enough to ensure we were briefed on a bi-weekly basis, because there are times when the House must come together over matters of national security. What an example the right hon. Gentleman set, and I thank him for the role he played during that time.
One of the lessons I learned when I was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 1999—it was a bit like being behind enemy lines for a Conservative; there were 13 of us out of 123—was that it was a surprise who was nice or helpful. I remember Dennis Canavan, a former Member of this House, who never quite made it past the Tony Blair vetting system to be a Labour Member in the Scottish Parliament, and who was hard-left in definition, was extremely supportive and kind to me as a new Member of Parliament. Members never know where they might get support, and they should be open to it. It is amazing how people’s politics are often separate to their kindness or their need for support for what they want to do.
We are all in this House to do the best job for our constituents, who are the people I would like to thank finally: my constituents in Lancaster and Wyre and then in Wyre and Preston North. I won a seat in 2005 and I won in opposition. I remember sitting in the Cabinet of Liz Truss and realising I was the only member of the Cabinet who had been in opposition. When I stood down last September, I was the last Minister appointed by David Cameron who had continued to be a Minister throughout. I have served five Prime Ministers, which I think is a record, although probably self-inflicted by the Conservative party. Nevertheless, to serve five Prime Ministers as a Minister uninterrupted is not only an experience but shows the times of change we are living in.
I do not think any party is going to be insulated from those types of changes. Our public, our discourse, our media and the social media pressures are changing our society and not for the better. People are not wanting to take time in making decisions; people are trying to do things at a rush. There is a lack of stability in our society, there is disinformation, there is division, there is aggression, and I fear very much, as someone who has studied the threat every day for seven and a half years both as a Security Minister and a Defence Minister, that we are moving into a period where the world is less stable, less secure and more anxious—and that is also the case here at home on these beautiful shores. It saddens me, because as a young man and indeed as Defence Secretary I often or sometimes would have to inflict violence on behalf of the state to defend others. It is no easy thing to do and we should never celebrate it, but we have to do it to keep ourselves safe. Yet I always think of the victims or the consequences of those actions that we take.
Order. Before I hand over the Chair to Nigel Evans, I hope the House will forgive me if I indulge myself slightly by taking this last opportunity to thank everyone for the kind remarks that have been made over the past day or so about my stepping down.
I was deeply touched by what Mr Speaker said this morning, and I thank him for all the support he has given me over the years, as well as my fellow Deputy Speakers. It has meant so much. We have had some difficult times in this Parliament, and Mr Speaker’s leadership and that of his team have essentially got us through it. Despite those pressures, however, we have managed to have quite a lot of fun and laughs, and it has been a great team to be part of.
It has been a privilege to be in this Chair and to witness at first hand the work that Members of this House do on behalf of their constituents and on behalf of the country. Yes, it can get a bit argumentative, and yes, it can get rather passionate sometimes—as I witnessed recently myself—but that is the price of our democracy, and, as others have said, we are lucky to have it. I am proud to have been able, as Deputy Speaker, to play a part in that.
I also want to thank, once again, all the staff of the House for—as others have said—making the House work so effectively. I thank the excellent Clerks for their wise and calm advice, and, of course, I thank the utterly magnificent Doorkeepers who look after us all so well. This really is water in my glass, by the way; it is not gin and tonic, as someone suggested to me yesterday.
Like others, I have been extremely lucky to have had a brilliant team in my constituency office, and excellent advisers here in Parliament. I have also been very lucky with my local Labour party, whose members have worked so hard and so diligently over the years. I wish all right hon. and hon. Members well for the future, whether or not they are standing for election again. Finally, I want to thank the people of Doncaster: I have been honoured to serve as their representative in Parliament for 27 wonderful years.
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People sometimes ask me, “What would you say to a young woman now, given all the difficulties, the threats, social media and so on? Would you really encourage her to go into politics?” I say, “Absolutely, yes. Although it is hard, if you feel that you can make a change—and you can—it is really important that you come into this House of Commons.” At times it has been hard for me, but I do not regret a single day of being here.
When I was first introduced to the House 42 years ago, my husband, Jack Dromey, was sitting up in the Public Gallery, beaming down his 100% support on me, as he always did. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Obviously he is not here today, but my three children are in the Public Gallery, beaming down their 100% support. I am so grateful to them for that.
In a few hours’ time, these Benches will be cleared and the House will fall silent until July. Then, they will be absolutely packed with new, freshly elected MPs from 650 constituencies across Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. Those Members of Parliament will hold our democracy in their hands; they will hold in their hands the future of our country. Now it is time for me to pass that responsibility on to them. So, no pressure.
I would like to thank my staff in my office, of whom I have had a number over the years. Currently, they are Cameron Bradbury, Ryan Loveridge, Emma Willis and, in particular, Jenny Sharkey, who has been with me for 23 years, through all the thicks and thins of my time in Parliament. I say a huge thank you to them. Most members of the public do not realise the enormous job that the staff of Members of Parliament do, and the significance of their role, but we owe them a great debt.
My final thanks, before moving on to other comments, are to somebody I think I should describe as my best canvasser-in-chief—he is quite a good leaflet deliverer as well—who has been alongside me and supported me for every one of those 27 years in this place, and for my time standing beforehand and as a councillor in the London borough of Merton, who was also there when I was Prime Minister, in the evenings, when he had to make the beans on toast and pour the whisky when the day had not gone quite as well as I had expected. That, of course, is my husband Philip. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
It will be a great wrench to leave this place. I wanted to be a Conservative Member of Parliament from the age of about 12. I was always a Conservative; I have never been a member of another party. I have always been a Conservative in the room, and I will continue to be a Conservative in the room. Being in this place is a huge privilege, but it also brings with it significant responsibilities, and I want to take a serious moment to comment on some of those responsibilities.
Our responsibility, first of all, is to democracy. Democracy has raised living standards and led to the betterment of people in so many parts of the world. But sadly, democracy today, I fear, is under threat. While it is easy to answer the question, “What is the greatest threat to democracy?” by saying, “Well, an autocratic state like Russia or China,” actually, we should never forget the dangers to democracy from within. The most recent United Nations human development report showed that, for the first time ever, more than half the global population support leaders who may undermine democracy. There is polling evidence that an increasing proportion of young people do not think democracy is the way to run a Government.
We, in this mother of Parliaments, should do all that we can to show the value and importance of democracy, because it is democracy that enables people to have the freedom, to be the best they can be, and to do what they want to do, rather than what the state tells them they must do. So we have a real job, both politicians continuing in this House and politicians leaving, to ensure that we do everything we can to maintain democracy. Sadly, we saw in 2021, in the 6 January attack on the Capitol—that great bastion of democracy—that our democracy is actually more fragile than we had thought over the years. So I urge everybody to champion that cause.
This place is also important because it enables us to be a voice for the voiceless. Earlier this week I was able, as were a number of Members of the House, to attend the funeral of the late Frank Field. He was a man who spent his life in this place giving voice to the voiceless, ensuring that truth was told to power, and we should never shy from doing that. It is important, powerful as this place is, and powerful as they may feel they are, that MPs should always recognise there are those who do not have that power. MPs should be there for everybody and should give that voice to the voiceless. There has been work on a number of issues across the House to do just that over the years, and I am pleased to have been able to help in some of that work.
My final comment about responsibility is about the job of being a Member of Parliament. I think it is the best job in the world. Of course, it has its frustrations. It particularly has its frustrations when you are in government and people, on your own side, do not vote for your legislation. [Laughter.] Three times! But there we are. We get over these things, we carry on and we come back. But it is a really important job, and the key to it is to represent constituents. I worry—I have said this elsewhere, and I will say it here in this Chamber—that too many people in politics today think that it is about them, their ambitions, their careers, and not about the people they serve. Being a Member of Parliament is a public service. We are here to serve our country and our constituents.
I have enjoyed my time—although, as I have indicated, it has had its up and downs. I spent 13 years in opposition, and I say to all Members on the Conservative Benches: “You do not want to do that. Go out there and fight to ensure that a Conservative Government are re-elected.”
I wish all the very best to my successor in the new Maidenhead constituency, and to all those who return to this Chamber after the election. I ask only that they remember the importance of our democracy, that they can be a voice for the voiceless, and that their job here is not to advance themselves but to serve the people who elected them.
I had Sir John Major in my constituency recently, giving the Harold Wilson lecture. I reminded him that, thanks to him and Ken Clarke, another old friend of mine, Huddersfield transcended from having a polytechnic to having a university, which is absolutely crucial. I think all Members are aware of just how vital universities are in the towns and cities of our country. Indeed, the only partially political thing I will say today is that we urgently need to address the threat to the long-term stability of the higher education sector in our country. When I chaired the Select Committee on Education and Skills, we produced a very good report on the challenges for higher education worldwide. It became clear that we have to invest in the future of our universities and ensure that they have the diverse income streams they need be viable. We are at a critical point. It is now for all parties to assess that and do something radical about it, because it is so important.
I want to refer also to the role of a Member of Parliament in Parliament. Let us get the message out more, as the former Prime Minister did, about what a wonderful job this is. I am well known on these Benches as a bit of a troublemaker—the Speaker and Deputy Speakers sometimes have a really interesting expression on their faces when they are not quite sure what I am going to say on a particular topic. After my 10 years as a Select Committee Chair, I decided that I would just do Parliament—that I would be here, raise the issues and campaign. Much of the success that I have achieved has come not from just doing the party political job.
The House might not know that, as a young university teacher, I was involved in a head-on crash as I was coming back from our second daughter’s baptism, when someone on wrong side of the road drove into our family car. I thought at one stage that my wife was dead, but she actually was unconscious, and we all survived—the children, myself and my wife. When I got into this House, I was determined to make sure that wearing a seat belt would become the law of the land. It had been defeated 13 times, but we worked together on an all-party basis. My only successful private Member’s Bill was one that banned children from being carried in the front seat of a car without a restraint. Ken Clarke more or less helped me with that, although I think only on the basis that I would stop pushing for mandatory seatbelts.
It was a difficult job. As many people know, back in the day, Margaret Thatcher was against it and Michael Foot was against it, and the Whips would try to stop it happening. We had to bounce the legislation out of the House of Lords at a critical time, the night before the royal wedding of Charles and Diana. Because of the public holiday, a lot of people thought, “What a lovely weekend. We’ll get away on Thursday and we won’t have to come back till Tuesday,” so we hid our all-party troops all over the House, and when the Lords amendment came back down here, we managed to get seatbelts.
A wonderful friend of mine in the World Health Organisation said the nicest thing that anyone has ever said about me, at a conference three years ago, just before covid: “Barry Sherman, with his obsessive interest in transport safety, has probably saved more lives worldwide than any other politician on the planet.” That is rather nice—I do not believe it, but it is nice that it was said.
There was a time where people said that all-party groups were dangerous or disreputable. Some of the best things that I have done in this House have been on a cross-party basis: campaigning on the environment, campaigning for educational change and campaigning for clean water—all the things that we are passionate about. I spent my life as a social entrepreneur looking for people who want to do a little conspiracy—not 36 barrels of gunpowder in the basement but a conspiracy to do something that needs doing. The only criteria I used, and still use, were to attract people with experience, knowledge, passion and courage. We can do that on an all-party basis, and we have. I hope more of that will happen in future, because it is essential to this House that we identify what needs to be done and use those sorts of little plots and plans to make things happen.
We also need to involve people from outside—I am looking at the Chairman of the Justice Committee, the hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) when I say that, because when we started looking at miscarriages of justice, we found there was a whole world of senior King’s counsel, probation workers and others who wanted to work with us to do something about the real inadequacies of the justice system. The hon. and learned Gentleman and I have become friends over the years, campaigning on a number of things in the justice sector.
By representing a constituency, we learn so much about its problems. If we are doing our job, year in and year out, we learn about child poverty, unemployment and employment. We learn what is happening in the economy. By looking at our constituency, we can see what the need will be not just tomorrow and the next day but over the next five or 10 years.
I sometimes get irritable, and I do not want to criticise too many people who are or have been Members of this House, but people waft in here and have a go at being a Minister or shadow Minister. They think, “I have done that,” and off they go to do something else. I do not believe that is the right spirit. Being a parliamentarian is a sacred trust. Once a person is elected, they have a sacred trust and responsibility to the people who live in their constituency, and they should make them their priority. Members should not try to become famous or try to find a nice little niche somewhere. Their primary responsibility is to their constituency and its future welfare. I am sure that Harpreet Uppal, who will very likely replace me on 4 July, will carry that standard.
I will now say something about the bigger issues. Like my fellow Members who attended the London School of Economics, I have always sought “to know the causes of things”, which is the LSE’s motto. Why is this happening? What has changed socioeconomically?
I have been in the House when really good things have happened and when absolutely disastrous things have happened. I am a totally committed European, but I have not always been. When I was a very young candidate for a council in south Wales, somebody asked me to speak to the local women’s Labour party because the local Labour MP was much too enthusiastic about Europe, and I spoke against Europe. And then I grew up. I saw the huge benefits of being linked with Europe, both for our common defence and for the future of our economy.
My constituency has a high level of exports in top-quality fashion, womenswear and menswear, and top-quality engineering. Everything top quality in Huddersfield depends on the export market, and we have had some very severe cutbacks since we left the European Union. Huddersfield is like everywhere else. Two of the Kirklees constituencies just voted to remain, and two constituencies just voted to leave—the picture was very mixed.
I finish by saying that not only should we all be looking to our constituencies, listening to the voices of our constituents and campaigning, but we should not get too depressed about life. Many Conservative MPs are desperately envious of me, because I was taught at the London School of Economics by Michael Oakeshott, who some people regard as one of the greatest conservative philosophers. I did not only his history of ideas course, but his special subject: for two years, a group of eight of us studied Machiavelli—what a privilege. Because I was interested in the history of ideas, I used to lecture on the subject, and I was always absolutely struck by the work of Thomas Malthus, who was the rector at Bath. He wrote the theory of population, which held that so many people were breeding so quickly that the country would not be able to feed its people, suggesting that it was the end of the civilised world. As I lecture on Malthus, I think about the present concern with global warming and climate change, which is the existential challenge that we all face.
I want to end on this note: I am an optimist. Malthus was wrong, because he underestimated how clever human beings are. We revolutionised agricultural production with the crop rotation system. We developed fertilisers. We invented not only canals, but railways. We transported goods and people. We changed the whole basis of the Malthusian project. Today, there is the existential challenge of climate change and global warming—it is going to happen. I recently helped to launch “Here Comes the Sun”, a book on this issue by Professor Steve Jones, and the fact of the matter is that that challenge is coming, but we humans are clever. Through our universities, businesses and Members of Parliament, we will get the answers so that our planet does not start to fry and life does not end. That is my message today.
It has been a privilege and an honour to be here. I have wonderful staff in Yorkshire and wonderful staff here. I have given hundreds of young people the chance to get into politics through all the internship programmes that we have had with the LSE, Cornell University and so on. Thank goodness that I have had the chance to be here all these years. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; thank you, fellow parliamentarians. I love you all.
I was going to list all my civil servants—not all 240,000 from the Ministry of Defence. I have been very privileged in this House to serve in government and to govern. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for giving me the chance to be her Security Minister. Our job is to represent all our constituents, but it is to govern on their behalf as well. That is a true privilege and it is also luck.
I used to see colleagues who would think it was their right to govern and that only they were the special people. We are chosen by Whips and Prime Ministers, often at random, but we are not special, not “the one” and should never take it personally. We may have months or years—although, let us face it, in the past few years in this Government, it could be weeks. I felt incredibly lucky to govern on behalf of my constituents and the constituents of this Government, alongside the team that is the Government—that is what it is: a team. I never voted against the Government—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] There are the Whips. Luckily, the smoking ban legislation never made it or I might have been voting against that part of the Bill, so my unblemished record will remain.
It is a team; we should not forget that what allows us to govern are our civil servants—hundreds of them. My private offices and my private secretaries put in hours and hours, unknown, unnamed and often blamed by some colleagues and the media for things not going right. If it does not go right in government, it is because the Minister is not governing right, is not a good Minister, is not doing the extra hours needed, is not making themselves clear and is not taking an interest in how they govern. We govern not just by brand, declaration and policies; Ministers govern by using process, the right people and policies, and by communicating. Those who are good govern across the House as well.
The House was at its best during discussions about Ukraine. It was at its best when I worked with colleagues in all parties, including the then leader of the Scottish National party at Westminster, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), and when I could sit down and talk to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) about secrets and threats to our constituents. It was at its best when we had a Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, who knew security, and took the hours and days needed to read the intelligence and treat it with the severity it needs.
People do not realise that the sole authority in Government for the use of lethal force lies with the Secretary of State for Defence and that it can be vetoed by a Prime Minister. They are the only two who in the end make decisions that often affect people’s lives and deaths and that send people into harm’s way on behalf of the state. That is a very important responsibility and I know that whoever, from whichever party, does that job next will be well supported by the men and women of the armed forces and the civil servants and the security services, who absolutely put sacrifice and duty first and should be an inspiration to us all.
At Sandhurst I was taught the motto “Serve to lead”: that the way we lead people, whether our troops or the public, is to give up ourselves, to sacrifice ourselves for their service, and that means sacrificing our ego and sometimes our ambition and, sadly, sometimes costs our private life as well. Ultimately, if we in this House do not realise that duty and service are how we serve this country, I do not know who else will. We must maintain those standards and maintain that principle for eternity, because as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead said, across the world people are not believing in democracy or the rule of law, and people look to Britain. When going around the world as Defence Secretary or Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary or representing the Opposition, we learn that people look to Britain still for tolerance, for democracy, for the rule of law. We must recognise that that is part of our DNA and our core.
I am sad that we will have another general election, although of course that is the nature of this wonderful democracy. It will be my sixth general election, but I will not be fighting it, and I know that across this House many of our colleagues of different parties will lose their seats through no fault of their own. They will have done everything in their time here: they will have served their constituents, sacrificing family time; they will have done their very best. They will have tried to answer the email from the impossible constituent, they will have put up with threats, and they will lose their seat because on polling day someone will decide they do not like their Prime Minister or their leader, and that is the way of things. People should not take it personally, and I say to colleagues present who may not return to this House that, in my experience, “If the boundaries don’t get you, the electorate one day will. Don’t take it personally—you are loved by all of us and you will remain so.”
So, Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you: thank you to this House, which I used to dream about joining when I was a young boy at school. Politics was the only A-level I actually enjoyed; I was inspired by a teacher. I got a D in it I am afraid to say; my children laugh at that whenever I tell them. Nevertheless, politics is about people and when we forget that we are in trouble and the worse for it.
The final thing I would say as an election is approaching—we are almost already in it—is that I always tried to make sure that defence was a core part of Government, not a discretionary spend stuck on the end. We hear, in all parts of the House, lines such as “Defence does not win elections.” Well, it can lose them. I live in the north-west of England and I am not trying to be party political, but loyal, patriotic Labour voters rejected the Labour party in 2019 because they felt that the leader at that time did not care about defence and about them. Defence matters. It is not an add-on after health and education.
When we come to writing our manifestos, let us please include investment in defence. Let us ensure that it is core, and let us not allow leaders to say things like “when economic conditions allow”. We do not say that about health, and we do not say it about education. Having read so much intelligence for so many years, I am frightened to think that by the end of this decade, if our armed forces and our security services are not match-fit for the threat that is coming our way, we will have only ourselves to blame. It is our children who might have to go and fight for us, and they deserve to be as protected as possible, with the best equipment and the best allies.