Gibraltar-Spain Border Checks

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am disappointed by the tone of the right hon. Gentleman’s claims, particularly given his interest in historical and particularly military matters. I hope that he is aware, although perhaps he is not, that Gibraltar was ceded by the Crown of Spain to the Crown of Great Britain under article 10 of the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. That is in contrast to the history of BIOT, which is completely different. BIOT was established by the UK’s initiative as a colonial power, and the modalities of that establishment have long been contested. The United Kingdom is steadfast in its commitment to Gibraltar, its people and its economy. The right hon. Gentleman should surely be aware of that.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

Negotiations on Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status are well advanced but are not without their hurdles. One such hurdle relates to the stationing of armed and uniformed Spanish border officers at Gibraltar’s air and seaports—a proposal that Gibraltarians understandably cannot tolerate. Can the Minister assure the House on Gibraltar Day that the wishes of Gibraltarians will always be paramount in the ongoing negotiations; that the Government have taken the opportunity to remind all parties that the lives and livelihoods of Gibraltarians and others should never be used as leverage in the negotiations, however inadvertently or locally applied they may be; and that, for the sake of the people and communities of Gibraltar and La Línea, this will never be allowed to happen again?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his question. First, he asked about whether the interests and concerns of Gibraltarians will be paramount. They absolutely will be. We remain steadfast in our support for Gibraltar and will agree only to terms that the Government of Gibraltar are content with in a deal. Furthermore, the kind of leverage that he discussed would never be accepted by the UK Government. One of the objectives of having a treaty is precisely to remove border checks between Spain and Gibraltar.

Security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Okay.

First of all, the DRC is almost the largest country in Africa and it certainly has the largest amount of unexploited mineral resources. The sale of mineral wealth could have made it an incredibly wealthy place by now, but it is not. It is a desperately poor and divided country. It has been my pleasure to visit the DRC on two occasions: once as an election observer in 2006 and another time on a human rights delegation to Goma and elsewhere in the east of the country, where I met many women victims of rape, which was being used as a weapon of war.

The history of the Congo is long, brutal, sad and complicated. It was not taken as a European colony until the mid-nineteenth century, when Belgium—or rather King Leopold—took over in 1885 as a result of the Congress of Berlin, which divided up Africa in the interests of European powers. The Congolese people were not represented in any way there; they were merely chattels to be fought over by the rival European powers. For the next 20 years, Leopold ran the country as his own personal fiefdom in the most brutal manner possible, and there were the most appalling abuses of human rights, with enforced rubber collectors and enforced miners, as well as the continuation of the slave trade, which had gone on for certainly the previous two centuries.

The atrocities were eventually recognised globally, partly through the work of Sir Roger Casement, a British diplomat who was later executed for his part in the Easter Rising in Ireland, and of E. D. Morel, a shipping clerk in Liverpool who observed what was going on through his company Elder Dempster. The latter eventually became a Labour MP and a Minister in the Labour Government of 1922. Before that, the global objections to Leopold’s excesses were such that the Belgian Parliament effectively nationalised the Congo and took it for itself, and it was then run as a Belgian colony until its independence in 1960. During that time, Belgian mining companies made an enormous amount of money out of the Congo and did not invest very much in its infrastructure other than in railways to take the minerals to the sea and in shipping lines to take other minerals, timber and other products down the rivers. It was very much an exploitative and extractive economy.

On independence in 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Prime Minister and made a very strong declaration of independence, including at the United Nations, but he was assassinated a few months later. The country then deteriorated into a degree of war, with the involvement of both big powers—the Soviet Union and the United States; it almost became a cold war by proxy. The background is pretty bad all around. There is not time to go into all of the history of the Congo, but I want to set the scene, with that as the background to all of the other Governments since 1961—Mobutu and others: the huge corruption that went with those and, all the time, the continuing poverty of many of the Congolese people.

The country now faces devastating levels of insecurity. Since 1996, some 6 million people have been killed in conflicts in the Congo. Just think about that figure again: 6 million have died since 1996. That is barely mentioned; we would have to dig hard to find any reference to the Congo in most of the world’s media.

Issues of illegal mining and mass displacement continue, with more than 7 million people being displaced in the eastern region alone. There are also endemic diseases such as mpox, malaria, tuberculosis and cholera, and the limited hospitals and health services are overwhelmed. There is food insecurity, malnutrition, gender-based violence, and a lack of access to clean water and necessities. There are very large numbers of refugees, either internally displaced or in Angola or other neighbouring countries.

We are looking at a very serious situation. There are more than 100 armed groups fighting for control of natural resources in the eastern region, most notably the M23 movement—Mouvement du 23 mars—which is financially backed by and has received training from Rwanda and other Governments. More than a third of the children of the Congo have no school to go to.

That is the background, which I wanted to summarise before I go into more detail. I will take a quote from Adam Hochschild’s brilliant book, “King Leopold’s Ghost”:

“On the whole continent, perhaps no nation has had a harder time than the Congo in emerging from the shadow of its past.”

He wrote that some time ago, but it still applies today. We have issues to deal with, with the conflict that got worse and was heightened during the Rwanda genocide of 1994.

Basically, the DRC is both blessed and cursed with an abundance of natural resources. That includes cobalt, coltan, diamonds, copper, tin and gold, as well as the other, more obvious natural resource of vast amount of timber from one of the world’s largest and most pristine rainforests. I once took a flight from Goma to Kinshasa, and we were flying seemingly for hours just over forest. It is incredibly beautiful—pristine and beautiful—but then we look underneath it and we see the levels of poverty and malnutrition. I think the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin), has probably also taken the same journey and had the same experiences.

The minerals taken from the Congo are the main factor in the present conflict. Congo has 70% of the world’s cobalt reserves. Cobalt is essential to almost every lithium-ion rechargeable battery, such as those used in phones and laptops, as well as in innovations such as solar power, which we see as necessary to deal with climate change. Therefore, our mobile phones and so much else are actually run with minerals that come from the Congo. In fact, much of the western economy simply could not work without the minerals that the Congo is forced to export. The armed rebel groups that have terrorised much of the country are actually usually involved in the mineral trade in some way or another. We have to face up to these issues.

Only two days ago, for example, the Congolese Government buried 200 internally displaced people who had died in various camps around Goma in North Kivu. They died in different circumstances, usually from hunger and diseases, but sometimes from violence. There has been heavy fighting between the Congolese army and the armed groups and the World Health Organisation has now declared mpox an epidemic in Africa.

A brief ceasefire in the summer was extended until August. There are, however, allegations of violations, and the situation in North Kivu remains very volatile indeed. The continuation of the ceasefire agreement signed in Luanda under Angola’s auspices, between the DRC and Rwanda, is significant. I hope the Minister will be able to shed some light on the possibility of that ceasefire being made permanent and of the establishment of an accountable force that could control what is at present a dangerous situation.

The resolution also authorised the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to continue operating in the eastern DRC, where it has been for quite a long time. Although the UN missions in the Congo have a rather chequered history, and are not universally popular there, most people recognise that without a UN mission life would be even worse than it is at present. This is the country that has suffered the worst sexual violence in war of almost any country in the world—a terrible thing to have to say. The number of victims of sexual violence is absolutely huge.

I have never forgotten arriving in Goma on a human rights visit with a colleague from Parliament. We arrived in the evening; it was more or less dark when we got there. We went to a refugee centre that was entirely populated by women who were victims of rape. They said, “Thank you for coming. It is great you are here. You are welcome. Thank you for telling the world about the plight we are in. Can you now give a speech to us?” What on earth can a western European man say to a meeting of 500 or 1,000 women, all of whom were victims of rape and many of whom had been made pregnant because of the rape they had suffered? What can we say to them other than that we want to give them all the support and comfort possible and try to understand the horror of their situation? Rape is being used as a weapon of war.

The health concerns are serious and getting worse. As Ebola, mpox, covid and others have shown, health concerns are impossible to isolate. If one part of the world suffers from a serious contagious disease, every part of the world is at risk because of the levels of transport and communication we now have. It is in everybody’s interest to provide healthcare and health support to the people of the Congo to get through the epidemics that they are facing. An act of charity it may be; an act of necessity it certainly is.

I turn to the future. Education in the Congo for most children is non-existent. For those who can get to schools, the schools are very limited. For many years the teachers have been paid sometimes, but sometimes not. Most of the education is done via the Church, but many children are simply not receiving any education at all. Again, that is in a country with vast mineral resources through which vast profits are being made all around the world. Those children are not getting an education, and too many become involved in the next thing I will talk about: illegal mining and the export of its products.

Conveniently, the products of the illicit and illegal mining in the Congo miraculously appear in another country, such as Rwanda or somewhere else. Those products are bought by global mining corporations, such as Glencore and others, and then appear on the world market, ending up in our mobile phones and batteries. Children as young as five are often forced to work in brutal conditions. In his very good book, “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives”, Siddharth Kara writes:

“As of 2022, there is no such thing as a clean supply chain of cobalt from the Congo. All cobalt sourced from the DRC is tainted by various degrees of abuse, including slavery, child labour, forced labour, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, pathetic wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm.”

I advise anyone interested in the Congo to read the two books I have mentioned: Hochschild’s book “King Leopold’s Ghost” and Kara’s book on cobalt.

Al Jazeera recently published an article, “Blood and minerals: Who profits from conflict in DRC?” Its writers managed to speak to miners, a trafficker, an undertaker and a prostitute to understand the way of life in the mineral region. I will read from it. A 16-year-old miner called Inocence walked an hour to the largest coltan mine post in the country. As he was guiding the journalists to the mine post, they encountered several men carrying the body of a miner on a makeshift stretcher. Inocence told journalists,

“Sometimes the mountain caves in. The miners are buried for ever and people forget about them.”

The trafficker later explained that many miners work for 14 hours a day and get paid only about $1. The trafficker collects his merchandise from the miners by the river and goes on to sell the goods, earning around $2,000 a month. Traffickers who buy already screened minerals at the foot of the mine end up multiplying its value when they leave it at the border with Rwanda and Uganda. By the time the coltan arrives in the manufacturing districts of Shanghai, Ciudad Juárez in Mexico or other places around the world, the market price is between $470 and $540 per kilo. So we can see the multiplier effect: a child gets almost nothing to mine those vital products, which end up on the world market where they sell for enormous amounts of money.

Mining companies such as Glencore, which is based in Switzerland, have exploited the conflict for their own benefit. It was recently found guilty under Swiss law of “inadequate organisation” that led to corrupt mining deals, which included the bribing of officials. Public Eye filed a criminal complaint with the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland following the publication of the Paradise papers, which shed new light on the purchase of cobalt and copper mines in the DRC.

Glencore commissioned the services of a businessman, Dan Gertler, who is on the US sanctions list, to secure favourable mining deals. He brought about a staggering price reduction on behalf of Glencore in 2008 during negotiations with Kabila’s Government about the Katanga Mining company, and in 2011 acquired shares in the Mutanda and Kansuki mines from the Congolese state mining company at far below their market value. Four years of investigation by the OAG found that around $26 million had been paid from Swiss bank accounts to a close associate of the then President of the DRC. Glencore ultimately benefited financially from the deals, as the OAG’s judgment states.

Glencore had been ordered to pay $150 million, which is nothing compared with the loss that the Congolese people have suffered. There needs to be much sterner action taken by all Governments globally concerning this horrifying supply chain of vital minerals, which are mined at the expense of the living conditions and poverty of many people in the Congo, and could provide so much in the way of education and so much more for other people in the Congo.

The purpose of my debate today is to try to draw attention to the history of the Congo and the plight that many people are suffering at present, and to try to hear what the new UK Government’s view is on this and how we can take matters forward. The UN is involved, endorsing Security Council resolution 2717 in 2023, and experts are concerned that if MONUSCO withdraws, key components of early warning systems of human rights violations will no longer be operational, significantly limiting human rights monitoring, reporting and investigation. The UN has asked the Congolese Government to ensure the consolidation of the handover of security responsibilities in South Kivu. I hope those assurances will be forthcoming.

Lack of logistical and military support for troops and groups to defeat the M23 is hampering efforts. We have huge investment in groups in order to make other people very, very wealthy indeed. The role of the Rwandan Government, in facilitating M23 activities, has also been called into question. What action is going to be taken?

I will conclude with one point and a couple of questions. The UK ambassador to the Congo, James Kariuki, said in a statement to the UN Security Council only a few months ago in April,

“We also emphasise our commitment to a gradual, responsible and sustainable withdrawal. We call on the DRC government, through close coordination with MONUSCO, to assume its protection responsibilities for the civilian population in line with the joint disengagement plan.”

Can the Government elaborate on how they will emphasise this commitment to a sustainable withdrawal? While we have condemned the continued advance of UN-sanctioned M23 forces, external actors must withdraw as well, because they are part of the problem.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the destructive effects and consequences of commercial organisations such as Glencore, and I think that can be traced through other commercial interests in France, Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere. Does he acknowledge the disruptive implications of other external military forces such as the Wagner Group, which I recently encountered in north Sudan and which is prevalent in the Congo? It was once a proxy organisation of the Russian state but is of course now much more closely involved.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

It is to the bedevilment of the Congo that so many proxy groups turn up there to benefit from mineral exploitation, and it is the people of the Congo who suffer. Wherever they come from, they are wrong, they should not be there and they should go. I am absolutely clear about that.

I would like to ask some questions of the Government. What relationship do they have with the Rwandan Government, and what pressure are they putting on them? Are they able to increase humanitarian aid to the DRC, particularly in relation to education of both girls and boys? I know that priority was given to girls’ education by the Department for International Development, which is now part of the Foreign Office. I supported that, but I also made the point that if we want the next generation of boys to grow up and not commit the appalling sexual violence of their parents’ generation and previous male generations, they need education as well. It is not just girls who need to be educated but boys too. What support are we able to give to MONUSCO and the important work it does there?

I would like to finish by saying,

“The legacy of injustice can only be erased through the pursuit of truth and reconciliation.”

That is another quote from Adam Hochschild. Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said:

“The insecurity is being fuelled by a seemingly impassable mountain of challenges: from large-scale corruption, to the unbridled race between multiple parties to take control and exploit the country’s wealth of natural resources, to ongoing violent land disputes.”

I will finish at this point, because I think I have taken up too much time, but I hope I managed to set out my concerns about the DRC.

Ukraine

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

Russian oligarchs close to Putin have numerous assets under UK jurisdiction, equating to nearly £23 billion. Will the Minister commit to acting on a Lib Dem manifesto commitment to begin the process of seizing currently frozen assets in the UK and repurposing them in support of the people of Ukraine, building financial resilience in UK domestic support even if US support were to waver following the US election in November?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his question. He is right in his implication that we need a robust sanctions regime—this Government are absolutely committed to that. Without sanctions, we estimate that Russia would have over £400 billion more to fund its war for another four years. It is important that we continue with that sanctions regime and do what we can to ensure that it is impossible to circumvent—I believe that his point was about that particular issue.

There is an international movement towards ensuring that Russian sovereign assets are put into play to support people who have been so appallingly impacted in Ukraine. We are working intensively with all our allies to pursue lawful ways to ensure that Russia meets its obligations. Together with our G7 partners we have agreed to make available approximately $50 billion to Ukraine by the end of the year by advancing the extraordinary profits generated by immobilised Russian sovereign assets in the EU and other relevant jurisdictions. Work is already ongoing on the issues that the hon. Member mentioned, if I understood his question correctly.

Education and Opportunity

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to you for allowing me the opportunity to intervene in this important debate and, in so doing, to give my maiden speech. I also congratulate you on both of your recent election successes and welcome you to the Chair.

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson). I was delighted in particular to hear about her recent abseiling exploits. I wondered whether she was giving a maiden speech or making a pitch to be the next Lib Dem party leader, but it was wonderful to hear her rich and powerful evocation of Derby North—I thank her very much. I also pay tribute to the other maiden speakers today and last week. The quality of speeches and the intellectual energy of those new Members suggest that this Parliament will be enhanced by a new generation of thinkers and doers who will serve this place and their constituents well.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am especially grateful to you for allowing me to catch your eye on an occasion when education is placed in the parliamentary spotlight. I have dedicated my working life to teaching and researching in higher education, most recently as a Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London, where I worked with generations of incredible students who have gone on to incredible things in the public, private and charitable sectors. I am proud to say that three of my former students were candidates in the recent general election, at least two are current heads of office or special advisers to senior Members of the House, and one is a rising star of the lobby press. I take no credit for what they do—what they have achieved, they have achieved themselves—but I hope that they will forgive me if I feel some pride in what they do and the contributions they make, even if those contributions are all too often disproportionately favoured towards the Conservative party.

Surrey Heath is blessed with an extraordinary state and independent school system within and local to our constituency. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work that teachers and senior leaderships do in supporting generations of young people, providing them with knowledge and the critical and practical skills that are vital preparation for further learning and successful careers. As was reinforced in the recent general election campaign, Surrey Heath’s state schools achieve all of that while edging ever closer to financial crisis.

I welcome and will support any initiative put before the House that will raise educational standards and drive opportunity. Education, after all, is the engine of social mobility and our country’s future economic prosperity. I sincerely hope that, with this change of Government, the hostility that has been directed towards the UK’s genuinely world-leading universities will end. The new Government now have an opportunity to walk the sector back from the brink of financial crisis—indeed catastrophe, as I saw in the newspapers this week—and to recognise again the intrinsic value of higher education, and the role of our universities as powerful instruments of local economic growth and the foundation of our national success in research, innovation and skills.

Surrey Heath is a wonderful place to live. We are blessed with striking and historic landscapes. As the name of the constituency suggests, we are defined by ancient lowland heaths: lasting remnants of prehistoric woodland cleared over the centuries and kept clear by grazing, burning and cutting. Although not strictly natural, these heaths are the preserve of unique ecosystems and biodiversity.

Chobham common is one of the finest remaining examples of lowland heath left anywhere in the world. Wildfires are common—increasingly so—as we are gripped by the climate crisis. We are grateful to the brave men and women of Surrey Fire and Rescue, who battle the toughest of conditions to keep residents and their property safe. They deserve our fullest support, especially now as they go into battle again, facing another round of cuts to that vital-to-life service.

Surrey Heath is a borough and a constituency with a long and proud military tradition, from the development of Chobham armour in the 1960s to the present-day home of ATC Pirbright—a place that any new recruit to the British Army will come to know all too well. Surrey Heath is also home to Gordon’s school, founded in 1885, which is both an award-winning state boarding school and a national monument to General Gordon of Khartoum. The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where British Army officers are trained, straddles the boundaries of Surrey Heath and nearby Bracknell Forest—although most of the RMA’s buildings are technically in Berkshire, I will claim them a little for Surrey Heath today.

There can be no doubt of the connection between Sandhurst and Surrey Heath’s main market town of Camberley. Camberley is a product of the Royal Military College, which was formed in Sandhurst in 1812. In the years that followed, settlements formed at the margins of the college, including the planned community of Cambridge Town, named after the Duke of Cambridge, the head of the British army at the time. As the town grew, so did confusion between Cambridge Town and Cambridge, its much less well known and less distinguished namesake somewhere in the midlands—apologies to hon. Members representing Cambridge. This problem was especially felt by users of the postal service, whose letters would frequently find themselves long delayed and hundreds of miles from their intended destinations—150 years has gone by, and little has changed.

Royal Mail requested a name change, and it was the newer upstart Cambridge Town that relented, changing its identity in 1877 to Camberley: a portmanteau referencing the River Cam, which still runs underneath the town; “Amber”, in reference to nearby Amber Hill; and “ley”, which is the Anglo-Saxon for a forest clearing and commonly used as a suffix in nearby placenames such as Frimley and Bisley, also in Surrey Heath.

Surrey Heath has a rich musical and artistic tradition. Camberley was the childhood home of Sir Arthur Sullivan and Bros—rich musical tradition—and today is home to musician, astrophysicist and animal welfare activist Dr Brian May. Daphne du Maurier wrote “Jamaica Inn” while living in Frimley, and we are hopeful that a blue plaque may soon mark that spot as Surrey Heath’s contribution to British literary history. We are home to extraordinary local, national and international businesses too numerous to mention, as well as a vibrant charitable and voluntary sector and a community of multiple faith traditions, ethnicities and nationalities, including a large and historic Gurkha community.

During the pandemic, residents self-organised into a remarkable community-wide response to covid-19. Surrey Heath Prepared delivered essential food parcels and thousands of prescriptions to the isolating and vulnerable—an expression of community resilience and solidarity when it was most needed. I hope that contributions by the likes of Surrey Heath Prepared and mutual aid groups will not be forgotten in the inquiry under way into how the UK responded to the pandemic.

Following the recent boundary review that brought the beautiful villages of Normandy and Pirbright into the constituency, Surrey Heath is officially the resting place of at least two significant figures of empire. Sir Henry Morton Stanley is buried in Pirbright, near the home he created for himself after his return from Africa. Perhaps worthy of greater celebration is John Pennycuick, an extraordinary engineer and colonial administrator with the vision and skill to construct the Mullaperiyar dam. Since its construction in 1895, the dam has been credited with saving tens of thousands of lives by protecting communities from seasonal flooding, and for bringing nearly a quarter of a million acres of land into crop-bearing productivity. Today, Pennycuick is revered in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu—children are given his name in his honour—yet he is almost unknown here in the UK. I hope that his mention in this House today may be a small contribution to addressing that historical absence.

Today, drivers on the M3 motorway slip quickly and efficiently—when it is not clogged up—through Surrey Heath as they travel between London and the south-west, often without even realising that they are passing through this fine constituency. On the other hand, Surrey Heath road users may be more aware of the less smooth and much less efficient point of entry on to the M3, at the junction with the A322. My predecessor Michael Gove—more on him in a moment—spent many an hour at that particular road junction over the past few years, but even his formidable talents could not resolve this serious, shared, local frustration. I hope I can make some headway on that issue in the months and years to come.

In Restoration England of the 1600s, hold-ups on the highways of what is now Surrey Heath were of a rather different kind. The Great West Road, known less prosaically today as the A30, was the main connecting route between London and the great port cities of the south coast. It was a lucrative prospect for highwaymen and opportunistic cutpurses, especially on the long, isolated stretches around Bagshot Heath. William Davis, the so-called Golden Farmer, and Claude Duval were two of the most notorious and noteworthy of the 17th century land pirates. Duval is recalled as a “gentleman of the road”. Gracious to the point of obsequiousness, he would relieve you of your jewels while dancing with your wife and complimenting you on the finery of your apparel. An abhorrer of physical violence, the history books recall him as a master of politeness, smiling pleasantly to your face while metaphorically sticking the knife in.

Now, the sharp-eared among you may recognise a passing—one might even say limited and specific—similarity between Duval and another more recent gentleman of Surrey Heath’s roads. I refer, of course, to the former Member for Surrey Heath, my predecessor, Michael Gove, who served the constituency and this House with considerable distinction and flair for just shy of 20 years. Both were men possessed of a singular vision, noted for their grace and observance of the highest courtesies and manners. Unlike Duval, there is no evidence to suggest that Michael’s outings to the A322 involved any public displays of dancing. Those, as far as we can tell, he saved for the nightclubs of old Aberdeen. Conservative Members to my right may go further, but for my part I am certain that that is where any similarities end.

Michael Gove will rightly be remembered as a transformative Minister, even by teachers—this is a debate on education—who will consider him transformative, but not necessarily beneficially so. He was a talented parliamentarian. His oratorical skills marked him out as a once-in-a-generation performer at the Dispatch Box. He will be greatly missed in this House by both his friends and his opponents, and I am sure they will want to join me in wishing him well in whatever his future has in store.

Personally, I am hugely indebted to the people of Surrey Heath for electing me to be the first non-Conservative MP for our constituency in 118 years. This was a vote to be taken seriously again—one for a local MP who will work in this place to further the cause of a great community. And we need that now more than ever. Surrey Heath’s roads and rail infrastructure require significant investment. It cannot be right that it takes longer to travel between Camberley and London in 2024 than it did a century ago. We need to end the postcode lottery of health, and to address the deep inequalities in life expectancy and life opportunities that scar and divide our communities. I welcome the commitment of the Secretary of State for Health to prioritising the rebuilding of RAAC-affected hospitals, such as Frimley Park hospital in my constituency, but we need reassurance that the new Frimley Park will be the right hospital providing the right services and sited in the most appropriate location, accessible by road, rail and bus, and that it does not come at the expense of losing vital green or amenity space. We also need a fair deal for our young people, with genuinely affordable homes, and new educational and training opportunities. We urgently need to fix Surrey’s broken special educational needs provision. In the spirit that there is always more that unites us than divides us, I look forward to working with Members across the House to achieve those things for Surrey Heath and in support of communities across the UK.

Finally, our families all too often pay a high price—indeed, the highest price—to enable us to do what we do in this House, and to participate in the long and stressful campaigns that go before and which, soon enough, will come again. In closing, I express my love and thanks to my wife, Philippa, and to my children, Jamie and Will, for putting up with me, for their limitless support, and for being the best team anyone could ever hope to be part of.

[Several hon. Members rose—]