The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, in a moment, the Leader of the House will begin today’s solemn business and lead the House of Lords in making tributes to Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I will first offer a short contribution from the Woolsack.
Her late Majesty, whom we mourn today, was, for over 70 years, a loyal and steadfast presence in the national life of the United Kingdom. Her strong sense of public duty and her devotion to the welfare and happiness of her people served to bind our nation together during an epoch of unprecedented societal and technological change. Her unique record of public service, deep sense of faith and commitment to her role ensure that she will be regarded as a supreme example of a constitutional monarch.
Today, my thoughts, and indeed those of the whole House, go out to members of her family, especially His Majesty the King, for whom this feeling of loss will be profound. I offer my devoted sympathy, as well as the thoughts, prayers, commitment and dedication of this House and its Members.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, this is an appropriately dark and dreary day, and one we prayed would never come. These are words that I hoped never to hear spoken, let alone to have to speak.
I ask myself how people will conceive of life without Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the heart and focus of our nation’s love and loyalty. For millions of people, she was the mother of our nation and the literal embodiment of the United Kingdom, which she so cherished. The shock will be immense and the grief unmeasured—as we already see. Even people in their 70s have never known life without her. She was our anchor of stability in a changing world and our exemplar of conduct and courtesy—one who, from the highest position in the land, showed us day by day the virtues of dignity, civility, humility, truthfulness and service.
“The Queen”: two little words that identified her instantly in seven continents and 100 languages. Can we conceive never again hearing that voice—that kindly, gentle voice, as we heard it from that very Throne at our State Openings—giving, in her royal broadcasts at Christmas or lately during lockdown, her unvarying message of faith and hope? Her voice was warmly encouraging to so many people on her myriad daily visits to hospitals, schools and factories and all the public places in cities, towns and villages here and across all her realms and territories—indeed the whole world. No one ever questioned her work ethic; she was Queen for everyone, every place and every generation.
In a moving and unusually public remark—because Her Majesty had that diamond among virtues, discretion—Her Majesty said of the husband that she so loved, our late lamented Prince Philip, that he was quite simply her
“strength and stay all these years”.
So was she to us, and to all the countries and peoples of the great Commonwealth that she herself, beyond all others, nurtured, and to which she was devoted. She was our strength and stay for 70 years—firm in her duty, wise in her counsel, reassuring in her smile and gracious in her every act, whether in stretching out the hand of reconciliation in Ireland or encouraging a timorous child hovering with a bouquet that he dared not present.
How many tens of millions of people over 70 long years have travelled, sometimes hundreds of miles, to see her, the most famous woman in the world—although that was the very last thing she would ever have sought to be? Having seen her, they were touched by her warmth and went home with joy in their hearts, secure that there was a sparkle of goodness and a spirit of good humour in the world—and, my goodness, Her Majesty had humour and wit. People were just glad that she had come to their little corner of the world; frankly, people were just glad that she was there. For as they loved the public Queen, they also loved the private Queen, with her dogs and horses and her joy in Scotland’s countryside, wherein she died. Many who came to see her were from other nations, not her subjects, on her state visits or on their visits to this country. She was our nation’s greatest magnet and our finest diplomat. None will ever have forgotten that day when they saw her, however long it was ago.
All of us, whether we knew her or not, felt that we knew her and were glad that we knew her. Of all the different things we felt we knew, the one thing we all surely knew lies in that one word: duty. Hers was a life given to duty, to the service of her peoples, service to others: unceasing, utterly selfless service given with resilience and forbearance even in the difficult times. From that moment in her 21st birthday broadcast when she declared that her whole life would be devoted to our service, through her sacred coronation oath, to what we witnessed this last week, when this quite extraordinary woman summoned the last drops of her strength to say farewell to her 14th Prime Minister and appoint her 15th, it was duty, my Lords—duty. Many of us make many promises, and we all fall short of them. In 1947 and 1953, Her Majesty made one great and solemn vow of lifelong service, and she honoured it without flinch or blemish for 75 years.
Therein was another quality of Her Majesty: constancy and courage—the courage that we saw when, at Trooping the Colour, a demented man fired shots at her that no one then knew were blanks. That consummate horsewoman steadied her horse and just got on with it, as her generation did. She displayed that courage this last week too, even unto the threshold of death.