Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Debate between Lord Stephen and Lord Balfe

Saturday 10th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, we have lost a remarkable monarch. As I see it, there has been no one like our late Queen in the history not only of Britain but of the rest of the world.

As many of your Lordships know, I spent many years in the European Parliament and came across many Heads of State, although none as respected or as well informed as Her late Majesty. Of course, she built on a long tradition. My late grandmother, who was born during Queen Victoria’s reign, always held that Stanley Baldwin and George V were responsible for Britain being in the state that it was: they held it away from revolution because they understood the necessity of dealing with all the people and not being overidentified with any class or group. Her Majesty succeeded in that as well. One of the things that struck me first when the sad death was announced was that the trade union movement called off its strikes and very early the next day, the TUC called off its annual congress. We often forget that when the country faces tragedy and difficulty, it comes together, and it does so regardless of class. It is incumbent on this Government to remember that in the very difficult times ahead, when we are facing a major economic crisis that is not going to be easy to solve. There is no easy solution. However, our new King Charles is adequately briefed and will be good at the tasks that lie ahead of him.

I want to give just one anecdote about the Queen. She was not overkeen on the European Union, although she kept it well to herself. I was there for 25 years and for the first few, they were trying to persuade her to visit Strasbourg. It was only when she became the last Head of State not to have visited Strasbourg that she agreed to do so, and I must say that she carried off the visit with enormous panache and feeling. At one point during the visit we were all invited to meet her, and in order to make things easy—because of all the back-biting about precedence and so on—we were lined up alphabetically. Therefore, I met her very early on, and she whizzed down the line, saying, “Hello, good to meet you; you’re doing a good job”, until she got to the letter L and Alf Lomas, who was probably the most left-wing member of the British delegation and was the only one in the line who was not wearing a tie. She stopped, and it was obvious that they were having a great conversation, until she was virtually pulled away by her courtiers and whizzed down the rest of the line and off. At the end I went up to him and said, “Well, Alf, is she in the campaign group now?” He said, “No.” I said, “What on earth was it about?” He said, “Oh, I knew what to say, so I greeted her with the words, ‘Ma’am, we’re both racehorse owners, aren’t we?’” All she wanted to talk about was the horse he had a part share in, her horses and where they were stabled, what they were fed, how they chose which races they went into, and whether he always bet on his horses in the race. He said that in the end, they had to more or less tear her away.

That was typical of Her Majesty, who was very capable of relating to all her subjects without distinction as to how important or unimportant they were. I am not saying that Alf Lomas was unimportant; he had been leader of the group, but he was not exactly the British vice-president of Parliament or a committee chair. In fact, at that time he was the ex-leader of the group and very much in the doghouse with a certain Mr Kinnock—God bless his memory—who was the leader of the Labour Party at that time.

I believe that the new monarch will do an excellent job, and I have no difficulty at all in saying God save the King.

[Lord Stephen (LD)]

My Lords, it is impossible to do justice to such an amazing and astonishing person and such an amazing and astonishing life. I am also conscious of the hour, so I will keep my reflections light but give some memories from Scotland, Royal Deeside and Balmoral.

I was once the Member of Parliament for Balmoral, but my reflections go much further back and my memories start much earlier. I used to stand each year in the village of Bieldside, which is at the beginning of the journey up to Balmoral Castle, with my grandmother and mother. We knew this spot where the Queen’s car—one of the high-top cars with lots of glass—would slow down because the Queen knew there was a particularly beautiful garden there, and she would ask the driver to stop to have a look at it. We would stand there and she would give us her big smile, which has been mentioned a lot, and the kind of wave that I had never experienced before in my life as a young child.

We did that every year, until one year she slowed down and the beautiful garden had been completely removed and replaced with climbing frames and swings, because a young family had moved into the area. Sadly, her habit of slowing down stopped after that. She would continue on that journey up to the castle, and I think everyone knows just how much she was loved and respected in Ballater, Braemar and the village of Crathie. All the talk in my early years was about the possibility of bumping into the Queen or another member of the Royal Family in a shop or on a country walk, and just how important it was to respect them and allow them to have as close to a normal life as possible when they came, at this time of year, to Royal Deeside.

Fast-forward to the State Opening of the new Scottish Parliament, where I was one of the new Members. It is important to remember that the Queen played a very positive and central role in the early days of the Parliament and its establishment. After the ceremony, my two year-old daughter Mirrhyn was the first to go down the steps of the new Chamber and to sit on the Queen’s chair. We told her that it was a throne, but in truth it was the best-looking chair that parliamentary officials could find for that day.

When we went outside for the fly-past from Concorde and the Red Arrows, my daughter was still very excited by it all and insisted on knowing which of the dignitaries was the Queen. She was too young to recognise her, and nobody was wearing a crown that day. We said, “Can you see David up there in the Royal box—David who was feeding you crisps in our dining room the other week?” This David was Lord Steel of Aikwood, the new Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament. She said, “Yeah, I can see him, dad.” We told her, “Well, the Queen is the lady sitting next to David.” Of course, David liked this story a lot and dined out on it for quite some time. He even managed to tell the Queen the story. He confirmed that she laughed a lot when she heard it.

I saw the Queen at so many sombre occasions, very often in churches or at official ceremonies. I remember being quite nervous and intimidated when I was asked to be Minister in attendance at one of her Holyrood garden parties. My wife was standing in the tea and cucumber sandwiches tent with the Countess of Airlie, the Queen’s very good friend and one of her most senior ladies-in-waiting, when up to the two of them came the Earl of Airlie, who accidentally knocked my wife’s hat clean off. When this story was duly recounted to the Queen, she laughed out loud and gently scolded the Earl with the biggest of smiles. It was a different side—something lighter and closer to normality in a life less normal.

Of course, in this place it was the exact opposite. Here in front of us, the Queen’s Speech, the Crown, the orb, the sceptre, Black Rod marching on her no, through to summon the Members of Parliament—there is nothing normal in any of this; it is pomp and ceremony at its peak. However, even on these grand and sparkling occasions, there were insights. The Queen and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, were determined in their 90s to walk up the staircase from their ceremonial carriage to the Royal Gallery, under the glare of television cameras and completely unaided, and then into the Robing Room, which always looks so immaculate—except, you work out, when the Queen is there. All those tables and chairs from the Royal Gallery are piled high and it looks cluttered and chaotic, like backstage at a theatre.

Then there is that classic story about the Queen and Prince Philip leaving in the lift with Black Rod. He pressed the button to go down to the ceremonial carriages and instead the lift went up to the second floor. When the doors opened, there was a young lad with his paper cup of canteen coffee, waiting to step into a lift which he quickly realised contained Black Rod, Prince Philip and the Queen. I suspect that in the midst of Black Rod’s huge embarrassment, she was stifling mischievous laughter.

She was the quintessential Queen, unquestionably, the like of which we will never see again. Tomorrow, her journey through Bieldside will not be to Balmoral. Instead, she will go slowly in the opposite direction. Hundreds will stand there in sombre sadness but also in a show of their love. May she rest in peace.