Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Debate between Baroness Neville-Jones and Lord Coaker

Saturday 10th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a sad privilege to stand up and address the Chamber as we come towards the end of this tribute. I start by paying respect to the wonderful way in which the Lord Privy Seal opened the debate, followed by my noble friend Lady Smith, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who set the tone for the whole debate. I do not want to repeat all the various comments that have been made about the service that the Queen has undertaken through her long reign; that can be read in Hansard at great length. I shall just highlight one or two things before making a general comment about why the Queen was and is held in such high regard.

The first thing is her acquaintance with the military, as we saw with her service during the war, but also her long commitment to the Armed Forces, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, will know as well as anybody. She always championed the veterans and our Armed Forces at great length through the whole of her life, which is of huge significance and speaks to the whole nation.

I also want to refer, as did the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, my noble friend Lord Kennedy and others, to the work she did with respect to Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord Caine, will know better than anybody about what she did and the work he did around that time in Belfast. It is easy to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, will know, “Wasn’t it fantastic that our Queen went to Ireland, went to Dublin and then went to Belfast?”, but just think, as the noble Lord, Lord Caine, will know, about the controversy that arose at the time and the hostility she received. The leadership and courage that she had to show to do that should be recognised by all of us.

That was an example of how, time and again, she did not always take the popular route; she sometimes took the route that was necessary for the greater good. Just think of her going to Dublin, not just wearing green and speaking in Gaelic, but visiting the memorial for those who were killed in the Easter 1916 rising. It is unbelievable that a British monarch should be welcomed to do that. Then she went to Belfast. The noble Lord, Lord Caine, was at the Lyric Theatre, I believe, when she shook the hand of Martin McGuinness. Unbelievable. She got hostility in Belfast for doing that, but she did it in the cause of peace and reconciliation and the belief that she had to use the authority of her office to move that on.

That is the nature of the person we had as our monarch, and that is why it is so important for us to give voice to all that in this tribute and in the tributes over the last two days here and in the other place. It is not repetition when people speak of their own experiences. It is not an unnecessary thing to do. It is an important statement of something that is important to our public life, both now and in the past.

I will say why I think the Queen has been so revered and why her loss is so shocking, but also something about what we should learn from her to inspire us for the future and what her legacy to us should be. The big thing about the Queen is the values she lived and stood for. People have heard me say this time and again, but some of those values, of family, community, patriotism, country and individual responsibility, are almost regarded as out of fashion and somehow irrelevant to the modern age, not something that we should all adhere to and teach our children but which we should leave out from our schools and that our country should not champion any more—that we should not say to the rest of the world, “This is what we are proud of about our country.” We had a monarch who symbolised all those values and principles. Because of that, she spoke to the inner core of the British people, the people of the Commonwealth and beyond. That is why people are so saddened and shocked, because they do not want to see those values die with her.

For me, and I think for our Parliament and us as representatives—whatever that means within a democracy—our legacy to her should be to say, “Ma’am, we’re going to take that forward and ensure we fight for it as well.” That is what the country is looking for in its leadership. Instead of division, people want harmony. That, Ma’am, should be our legacy and our epitaph to you.

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, spoke for us all when he pointed to the moral courage our late sovereign showed.

When I debated with myself about whether I would speak in these tributes to Her late Majesty the Queen, I found that I had an absolutely overwhelming desire to say thank you for her life of service, and her dedication to the welfare of the United Kingdom and to the well-being of its inhabitants. There have been many outstanding contributions. Given the hour, I will not fall into the habit of insisting on repeating all these sentiments myself, but I must say that I agree with what this House feels about the contribution the Queen made to our national life and destiny.

The Queen brought good cheer—one of her characteristics. I am old enough to have known another sovereign. I was 12 when the Queen ascended to the throne. Britain was a pretty grey place. Something lifted. First of all, we saw the wonderful dress she wore, which was made with an incalculable number of pearls that came from various parts of what was then still the empire to be sewn into it. From this rather grey world we began to see something that was rather lovely and cheery. She was very beautiful. It was a great occasion. My family, like many in the United Kingdom, bought its first television set to watch the proceedings. So she started with a tremendous show, which I think greatly improved the morale and general happiness of our society.

The other thing I want to say about the way she behaved over all these years is that she was a tremendous force for inclusion in our society. Little people mattered to her—that was widely and instinctively understood and much appreciated by the general public. Very ordinary people have been saying these very complimentary things about her, and are spontaneously repaying the compliment by covering the boundaries of Buckingham Palace, Balmoral and the grass of Green Park with a carpet of flowers. I do not know whether noble Lords have seen them on the television; it is extraordinary.

We also witnessed something else. Not only did people see that the Queen represented us collectively, which they much appreciated, but many in this society felt they had an individual connection with her. They did not know her in the conventional sense, but she connected with us, and put a lot of effort into doing so. One should not imagine that this is somehow a gift handed to you—you have to work at it. It is hard work to make connections, but she most certainly did. That is one of the reasons why she was also so effective in the Commonwealth. People understood that she had thought about them and the situation, and here was the contribution she was willing to make.

Many Members of the House have recounted stories of personal encounters with the Queen. I am not among those who could claim to have known her, though I did meet her. On one occasion, there was a private sitting at which I was present—a birthday party where we were both guests. It was held in the London aquarium. As she arrived, the Queen looked round at the colourful goldfish in the tanks near the entrance. “I haven’t been here before”, she said. I happened to be standing just near her, and said “Your Majesty, when you get much further into this place, you will find that it contains a lot of sharks.” “Oh”, she said, “How like real life”.

I will make just one more point. Like most Members of the House, I watched His Majesty the King speak last night, when he made his own public tribute to his mother and talked to us about his future role. He made some very perceptive comments and important commitments on how he would seek to act. Some Members have said they think the Queen will be a hard act to follow. I am sure that that is right, but I thought that our new monarch had all the empathy that will be needed for him to be an extraordinary, commanding presence in the country and that he will communicate with us as effectively as his mother. God save the King.