His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is with profound and humble sympathy that I express my sympathy for Her Majesty the Queen, in her tremendous loss, as she approaches her birthday. I also wish to convey my similar sympathy to all the rest of the family. I believe each one—the whole family—has suffered a tremendous loss.

It was my privilege to meet the late Duke, when I was the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates and he was a member of the faculty, in 1978. On behalf of my wife and myself, I would like to say how thankful I am for all the kindnesses that he showed us since then—tremendous kindnesses in many different ways. It is just possible for me to say something about one or two of these.

The first is that he was a person who delighted in trying to help and see that all was right, and I found that that repeatedly happened in our meetings together. It is also a source of great pride to me that the Duke was called the Duke of Edinburgh, because that is where I was born, and it makes it a very worthwhile place. There are many other things that make it worth while too, but he is a very worthwhile person to have emerged with that title. The Duke of Edinburgh made it clear to us that he wanted to help in any way that he could, and we certainly found that. When I was Lord Chancellor, we had the privilege of seeing him quite often, and my wife had the privilege of taking his arm into a dinner for a foreign sovereign.

It is also important to remember the number of different societies to which he was connected, some of which I have some connection to. The first was the Royal Society of Edinburgh; he usually presented the royal medals, until he retired and Prince William took over that function. He was also in the service of Trinity House as master for many years and was chancellor of the University of Cambridge. It was very interesting for me to know that he was particularly interested in science during his time as chancellor of the University of Cambridge, as has been said several times. He sometimes found matters being discussed in science that were of value to Trinity House, so he took them over from one of his functions to another. I am extremely glad that the Princess Royal has succeeded him as master of Trinity House. It shows his connection with the Navy—which the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, referred to—as a very important aspect of the matters that Trinity House has to deal with.

The nature of his work across the world has been tremendous and in many ways it has been acknowledged only more fully—not yet fully—for the first time since his death. It was a great shock and a great sadness, and we are very thankful that he gave us so much in the course of his life, which we hope we used in the way in which he would have wished.