The Prime Minister (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty on the seventieth birthday of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, to assure Her Majesty of the great pleasure felt by this House on so joyful an occasion.
That the said Address be presented to Her Majesty by such Members of the House as are of Her Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council or of Her Majesty’s Household.
That a Message be sent to His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, to offer His Royal Highness the warmest good wishes of the House upon the occasion of his seventieth birthday, expressing the gratitude of the nation for his lifetime of service to the country and the Commonwealth and praying that His Royal Highness may long continue in health and happiness.
That Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister, Andrea Leadsom, Jeremy Corbyn and Ian Blackford do wait upon His Royal Highness with the said Message.
Over the past 70 years, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has played many roles in our national life. As a sailor, he commanded a minesweeper in the Royal Navy. As an airman, he gained his wings with the RAF. As the founder of the Prince’s Trust, he has worked tirelessly to help more than 900,000 vulnerable young people turn their lives around. As a farmer and entrepreneur he created and built a successful business, one that turns over more than £200 million a year and whose profits help support charitable causes. And, as heir to the throne, he has unstintingly supported Her Majesty the Queen for many decades, working with and representing our monarch and our country both at home and abroad. Binding those diverse strands together is a common thread; one that is encapsulated in the motto that, for hundreds of years, has adorned the Prince of Wales feathers: “Ich Dien”—I serve.
Throughout the Prince of Wales’s life, his commitment to public service has been total. That is true of his royal duties, which see him performing well over 600 official engagements every year. It is true of his work with the Commonwealth, in which he has played an active role for many years. The esteem in which he is held by the Commonwealth was made clear at the Heads of Government meeting earlier this year, when the member states unanimously chose to name him as the next head of the organisation—another role in which I am sure he will excel. It is also true of his wider work. First and foremost there is the Prince’s Trust and his other charities, of course. There is also his involvement with groups as diverse as the British Red Cross and the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which has helped to regenerate the historic centre of Kabul—just two of the more than 400 organisations that he serves as patron.
Yet this public work only begins to scratch the surface of the Prince of Wales’s life. He is also an author, an artist, and a sportsman. As a student, when he became the first heir apparent to graduate from university, he also displayed an aptitude for comic acting. I am told that his impression of Peter Sellers’ Bluebottle, from his beloved “Goon Show”, is particularly on point. He is, I believe, the only public figure to have appeared on both “Gardeners’ Question Time” and “MasterChef Australia”, not to mention once delivering the weather forecast on BBC Scotland. He has a great and wide-ranging love of music. Indeed, he remarked in 1974:
“If I hear rhythmic music, I just want to get up and dance.”
That is something, I am sure, that many of us empathise with.
The more one looks at the prince’s life, the more one sees a man who has spent 70 years defying expectations and refusing to be categorised. It is an approach that has seen him delivering a speech in Pidgin to an audience in Nigeria only last week, during an official Commonwealth tour; encouraging his sons to spend childhood holidays collecting litter from the local countryside; and choosing to celebrate his 40th birthday with 1,500 young people from deprived backgrounds. It is an approach that often shows him to be a man ahead of his time.
In one of his first major public speeches, in 1970, the Prince of Wales warned of the
“horrifying effect of pollution in all its forms”,
with particular criticism reserved for the “mountains of refuse” created by plastic bottles that are used once and discarded. Half a century later, the UK and the world have woken up to the plastic threat and are taking action to tackle it.
In his debating debut at the Cambridge Union, the young prince spoke about the potentially dehumanising effects of technology in the workplace—another issue that is now at the front of many minds as we consider the impact of artificial intelligence. The same foresight can be seen in his long-held views on urban regeneration, on sustainable agriculture, on inter-faith dialogue and on improving the quality of the built environment, each of them issues that, after being raised by the prince, have moved to the mainstream, becoming widely embraced and accepted.
We could not pay tribute to His Royal Highness without mentioning perhaps his most important role of all—that of father and, more recently, of grandfather. Regardless of background or resources, raising children is never an easy task. It is made all the more difficult when they suffer a devastating loss at an early age. So today, as Prince William and Prince Harry make their own way in the world and begin to raise their own families, I know that I speak for all of us when I say that they are a true credit to their father. We as a nation are immensely proud of them, and I am sure that he is too.
On behalf of the whole House, it gives me great pleasure to wish His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales a very happy 70th birthday, and to offer him our very best wishes for the years ahead as he continues his remarkable record of service to his Queen, his country and his Commonwealth.