Valedictory Debate

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Friday 24th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. You have been a friend, an ally and a support since I first came here, so thank you.

It is honestly a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Dame Tracey Crouch). We have worked together three times. When I was 16, I was working at McDonald’s in St Andrew’s Quay in Hull and she was my floor manager. She was much more senior than me: she had a white shirt and she was the one who told me, if I remember, what to do with my pickles and where to place them. We then worked together for our right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) for a period, so this is now our third time working together. I can also confirm she has already offered me a job washing her windows, which I might well do. It has been a real privilege.

In the run-up to the 2010 general election, my hon. Friend and I used to have a thing every Saturday where, if a song from “Dirty Dancing” came on, and especially one particular song—I am sure she remembers which—we would ring each other up and sing it down the phone at one another. Or, if I missed her, I would pick up my voicemail to have Tracey Crouch singing “Hungry Eyes” or “She’s Like the Wind” down the phone. I really wish her all the best. She has been incredibly brave these last few years, and I love her to bits.

When I spoke at the boundary commission review to argue in favour of the abolition of my constituency, I said that it was the closest I could get to speaking at my own funeral. That is how I opened, yet today also feels a bit like that, because as I look at my name on the Annunciator, it will be the last time I speak and the last time that we see “Brigg and Goole”, because Briggand Goole is being abolished at this election and split four ways.

Today also marks the end of 24 years in elected office for me—I was expecting howls of disbelief at the idea that that could be true of someone with such good skin and who looks so young. Over those 24 years, I did 10 years in East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, 10 as one of two Tory councillors on Hull City Council—there are now none of us—a period as a parish councillor in my village of Airmyn, and of course 14 years here. I thank all the people who voted for me for those various positions locally: the electors of Newland and Bricknell wards in Hull, who gave this working-class lad from the worst comprehensive, in the worst-performing education authority in the country, his first opportunity in elected office; and then, of course, the absolutely wonderful people of Brigg and Goole, and the Isle of Axholme, who returned me last time with 71% of the vote. I will be forever thankful. It is genuinely the privilege of my life to have served them here.

I also want to thank the Conservative party. I started leafleting for the Conservative party when I was 11, in part thanks to a lady who has long since departed, Mrs Stonehouse, who at that point was in her 70s or early 80s. I was the local paperboy, and I started delivering leaflets. The Conservative party is a family. It is a thoroughly dysfunctional family, and there are times when I do not want to spend another moment with those members of my family, but then, at the end of the day, I remember that we are all family, and I love them dearly—some more than others.

I want to thank Mr Speaker in particular—and of course you, Mr Deputy Speaker; he is not here and I have already thanked you, so it is not one over the other—for his support over these years, and also all the House staff, including the Doorkeepers and everybody who does everything to keep us and this place functioning. Obviously I thank the Tea Room staff, but I also thank Anthony and Richard in the Strangers’ Bar, who are thoroughly wonderful people.

I also thank many different colleagues. There are so many I have made friends with over the years, some whom have gone: Guto Bebb, who was my greatest pal in this place over those first couple of terms; James Wharton, who is now Baron Wharton; and my former flatmates, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), who I lived with in that first term. I also thank my new colleagues since the 2019 election, who have been particularly fun to be with, including my hon. Friends the Members for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) and for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft), my wonderful constituency neighbour, who in her maiden speech described me as like a father figure to her. I can reveal today that we are very much family—if anyone comes after this one, I am coming after them—but it is not a case of father and daughter; it is brother and sister, and she will forever be my elder sister. [Laughter.]

As I look around, I see so many great colleagues and friends who I am so proud to have served with. Although he is not here, I will pick out my chum and mate the Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart). When we all got here in 2010, we used to hang out in James Wharton’s tiny office—my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson) would be there—and we had such fun. We knew why we were here, we were all part of a team and we knew where we were heading. It was the best of times for me.

I also want to thank David Cameron for giving me this opportunity. I was put on the A-list. When I came here, lots of people who did not like the A-list used to come up to me and say how terrible it was with all these A-listers—they would look at me, listen to me, hear my accent and think, “He couldn’t possibly have been on the A-list.”—but being on the A-list allowed me to stand in my local constituency. However, I did text him this week saying, “I am sorry that I ended up being a disappointment,” because I did vote against the Whip 80 times in that first Parliament. When he once pulled me up for it, though, I did point out that that meant I voted with the Conservative Whip 90% of the time, which was a lot better than the Labour MP I had replaced.

I also want to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who gave me the honour of being a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government, as well as our current Prime Minister, who I think is a thoroughly decent human being.

Of course, I want to thank my family and all my friends, my mum and dad and my grandparents, who are not with us any more. I thank in particular my parents, who did not need degrees and family money to give me the values that I believe I have exhibited in this Chamber. There are lots of other people I want to thank—so many friends over the years. I thank my constituency neighbours: my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden, and of course my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe.

I am proud to have served as a Minister, but I am most proud of having served as our trade envoy to Canada, a country that I have had a lifelong love affair with. [Interruption.] There is a drinking game going on over how many times I can say Canada. I want to thank two people who supported me in that role in particular: our two consul generals, Kevin McGurgan and Nicole Davison, and her wonderful partner Karen Ferguson. I also thank all the high commission team and all the people in the high commission in Canada who helped.

I am conscious of time. I am coming to my staff—a couple of them are here—but I am keeping them till last because I said that I was really going to spill the beans on them.

It has been the privilege of my life to serve the people of East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. We are the best of this country. We tell people what we think and we like what we say. We are blunt and we are clear, and we are concise about it.

I am proud locally to have helped deliver on some of the things that I hope have made life a little bit better. That includes cutting the Humber bridge tolls. My right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) did a lot on that, but you would not know that by the time it got into my literature—I had completely and utterly written him out of it. I am proud to have brought the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to my area—we will shortly be delivering the millionth book from that scheme—which has had a real impact on our pre-school literacy rates.

I also set up a first-responder scheme and have spent 12 years at weekends volunteering in the NHS with Yorkshire Ambulance Service. This past Saturday I was out at 1 o’clock in the morning responding to calls. That has put me in some of the most difficult of positions, but I am proud to have done it, as well as to have supported the steel industry, to have secured huge amounts of money for flood defences—I represent the most flood-prone constituency—and also, through the bid writing service that I set up, to have secured £2.5 million. We have got defibs all over, secured the town deal for Goole and, in more recent times, funded and produced in my constituency—thanks to the brilliant work of Oliver North—156 ambulances for Ukraine.

I am coming on to my closing remarks, but I have to thank my local councillors. My local party has been brilliant, particularly Councillor Rob Waltham, the leader of our council who has been my agent in all of these elections. He is utterly brilliant at making you do things you do not want to do in the pouring rain, so I thank him. I also thank my staff who have worked alongside me: the ones who presently work for me are Kassim Qureshi—who is in the Gallery—Julie Reed, Sarah Hayes, Elaine Marper, Mark Kerman, Tom Bramham and Pedr Owen, and my former parliamentary staff are Robert Lingard and Andrew Barrett. We all live on as friends to this day in the beer club. There is a game going on with my former staffers: if I get “beer club” into this speech, I am doing all right. I also thank others who have come and gone: Corey, Craig, Aiden, Liam, and so many more. I thank Pat and Liz—Pat worked with me for 10 years when I was a councillor. When I was made a Minister, the private office rang up my Goole office and asked her, “How does the Minister like his tea or his coffee?” She said, “I don’t know, he gets his own,” which I thought was wonderful. Then she said, “Some people rang up asking about this bloke called the Minister, and I had to ask, ‘Who do you mean?’” They never failed to make absolutely clear to me that my presence in the constituency office was nothing but a pain in the backside for them. I thank Pat, Liz, Georgina and others, as well as all of my interns who we have had over the years, particularly those from the US and Canada.

I also want to thank other teams I have worked with, including Conservative Friends of Israel, particularly James Gurd, the political director, who is now a close friend of mine; the European Leadership Network; and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, which I have worked very closely with, including with Danny Stone, who is also in the Gallery today. I also thank SurrogacyUK, which I worked with on my all-party parliamentary group on surrogacy.

I am so proud to have served in this place. It is an amazing privilege to get that opportunity, but I am sad to be leaving at a time when a couple of issues particularly close to my heart are in the news and are of such concern. The first is the appalling rise in Jew hate—antisemitism—in this country. It breaks my heart to see Jewish people in this country frightened and afraid to go about their business, showing their faith. It is a stain on our democracy and our country, and it is happening across the west. Antisemitism is the canary in the coalmine.

The second thing that breaks my heart is the tone of political discourse, and the way in which we seem incapable of having a discussion and a debate without it turning into threats, personal abuse and all the rest of it. I am the first one to be blunt. I believe in being clear and firm: tell people what you think, and do not be afraid of how you say it. Be forceful at times, if you need to be. But there is also a need to be respectful and to appreciate that, at the end of the day, the people on the other side of politics are motivated by the same thing, which is to do good; it is just that we disagree about how to get there. Unfortunately, today our politics is becoming so toxic and awful that we sometimes forget that all of us in this place are motivated by exactly the same thing. I have been proud to work across the Chamber with various colleagues. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who was in the Chamber earlier, was very generous to me, and I will be generous to him too. I have also worked with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell); we worked together very constructively in the Brexit years.

I will end by saying that I have met some absolute rotters in my time in this job, but none of them is in this Chamber today. Actually, I have just spotted one—no. [Laughter.] Generally, despite the rotters, I have worked and served with amazing people in this place across the political aisle. As I have said, it has been the privilege of my life to be here. I never thought I would be, and I count everybody in this place as a friend and thank everybody for serving alongside me.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

You are a true friend, Andy. I know we will see lots of you in the coming months when you come up and campaign for me at the election, and stuff like that—love you loads. I call Chloe Smith.