Valedictory Debate

Ben Wallace Excerpts

Friday 24th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

We do not have time for me to share all my anecdotes about my experiences during my 19 years of being a Member of Parliament. I could tell the House about my trip to Iran with Jeremy Corbyn and Jack Straw, which was like something out of Monty Python—I turned out to be the most pro-European of the three, and it was a certainly an extraordinary experience—or about the touching and important time when, as the Security Minister, I joined the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) on a visit to a mosque in her constituency. She has campaigned against antisemitism for years and years, and she has represented the very best of Labour’s position on Jewish communities and the Jewish members of her party for many decades. As an MP, those kinds of things touch you and go with you in your memories.

I would first like to thank my family. The people who make the real sacrifices for us to be in this House are not us; they are the wives, the husbands and the children, who put up with bullying, separation and all sorts of concerns. In today’s world of social media, they put up with hate as well. Without them, none of us could be here at all.

I will mention the staff in my office. I am very privileged that Zoe Dommett has worked for me since three weeks after the day I was elected 19 years ago. Some of us have colleagues who seem to get through staff like a rotating barrel but, luckily, Zoe, Alf Clempson, Susan Hunt and Una Frost have worked for me for many years. Alf Clempson was my sergeant in the Army, and he is still working for me today.

I turn to the staff of the House. Without the Clerks, the waitresses, the maitre d’s and the Doorkeepers, none of us would be able to our jobs. Long after the debates have got interesting, they still have to hang around this House when many of us can go home or elsewhere. They are absolutely key. They do everything for all of us, without judgment or party political bias, and, in my experience, they are never anything other than polite and supportive. I thank them all the way.

I was going to list all my civil servants—not all 240,000 from the Ministry of Defence. I have been very privileged in this House to serve in government and to govern. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for giving me the chance to be her Security Minister. Our job is to represent all our constituents, but it is to govern on their behalf as well. That is a true privilege and it is also luck.

I used to see colleagues who would think it was their right to govern and that only they were the special people. We are chosen by Whips and Prime Ministers, often at random, but we are not special, not “the one” and should never take it personally. We may have months or years—although, let us face it, in the past few years in this Government, it could be weeks. I felt incredibly lucky to govern on behalf of my constituents and the constituents of this Government, alongside the team that is the Government—that is what it is: a team. I never voted against the Government—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] There are the Whips. Luckily, the smoking ban legislation never made it or I might have been voting against that part of the Bill, so my unblemished record will remain.

It is a team; we should not forget that what allows us to govern are our civil servants—hundreds of them. My private offices and my private secretaries put in hours and hours, unknown, unnamed and often blamed by some colleagues and the media for things not going right. If it does not go right in government, it is because the Minister is not governing right, is not a good Minister, is not doing the extra hours needed, is not making themselves clear and is not taking an interest in how they govern. We govern not just by brand, declaration and policies; Ministers govern by using process, the right people and policies, and by communicating. Those who are good govern across the House as well.

The House was at its best during discussions about Ukraine. It was at its best when I worked with colleagues in all parties, including the then leader of the Scottish National party at Westminster, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), and when I could sit down and talk to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) about secrets and threats to our constituents. It was at its best when we had a Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, who knew security, and took the hours and days needed to read the intelligence and treat it with the severity it needs.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an outstanding speech. I thank him for the role he played as Defence Secretary and the courtesy he showed to Members across the House, including the Leader of the Opposition, the then leader of the Liberal Democrats and myself. He was gracious enough to ensure we were briefed on a bi-weekly basis, because there are times when the House must come together over matters of national security. What an example the right hon. Gentleman set, and I thank him for the role he played during that time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear.

[Mr Wallace]

One of the lessons I learned when I was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 1999—it was a bit like being behind enemy lines for a Conservative; there were 13 of us out of 123—was that it was a surprise who was nice or helpful. I remember Dennis Canavan, a former Member of this House, who never quite made it past the Tony Blair vetting system to be a Labour Member in the Scottish Parliament, and who was hard-left in definition, was extremely supportive and kind to me as a new Member of Parliament. Members never know where they might get support, and they should be open to it. It is amazing how people’s politics are often separate to their kindness or their need for support for what they want to do.

We are all in this House to do the best job for our constituents, who are the people I would like to thank finally: my constituents in Lancaster and Wyre and then in Wyre and Preston North. I won a seat in 2005 and I won in opposition. I remember sitting in the Cabinet of Liz Truss and realising I was the only member of the Cabinet who had been in opposition. When I stood down last September, I was the last Minister appointed by David Cameron who had continued to be a Minister throughout. I have served five Prime Ministers, which I think is a record, although probably self-inflicted by the Conservative party. Nevertheless, to serve five Prime Ministers as a Minister uninterrupted is not only an experience but shows the times of change we are living in.

I do not think any party is going to be insulated from those types of changes. Our public, our discourse, our media and the social media pressures are changing our society and not for the better. People are not wanting to take time in making decisions; people are trying to do things at a rush. There is a lack of stability in our society, there is disinformation, there is division, there is aggression, and I fear very much, as someone who has studied the threat every day for seven and a half years both as a Security Minister and a Defence Minister, that we are moving into a period where the world is less stable, less secure and more anxious—and that is also the case here at home on these beautiful shores. It saddens me, because as a young man and indeed as Defence Secretary I often or sometimes would have to inflict violence on behalf of the state to defend others. It is no easy thing to do and we should never celebrate it, but we have to do it to keep ourselves safe. Yet I always think of the victims or the consequences of those actions that we take.

People do not realise that the sole authority in Government for the use of lethal force lies with the Secretary of State for Defence and that it can be vetoed by a Prime Minister. They are the only two who in the end make decisions that often affect people’s lives and deaths and that send people into harm’s way on behalf of the state. That is a very important responsibility and I know that whoever, from whichever party, does that job next will be well supported by the men and women of the armed forces and the civil servants and the security services, who absolutely put sacrifice and duty first and should be an inspiration to us all.

At Sandhurst I was taught the motto “Serve to lead”: that the way we lead people, whether our troops or the public, is to give up ourselves, to sacrifice ourselves for their service, and that means sacrificing our ego and sometimes our ambition and, sadly, sometimes costs our private life as well. Ultimately, if we in this House do not realise that duty and service are how we serve this country, I do not know who else will. We must maintain those standards and maintain that principle for eternity, because as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead said, across the world people are not believing in democracy or the rule of law, and people look to Britain. When going around the world as Defence Secretary or Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary or representing the Opposition, we learn that people look to Britain still for tolerance, for democracy, for the rule of law. We must recognise that that is part of our DNA and our core.

I am sad that we will have another general election, although of course that is the nature of this wonderful democracy. It will be my sixth general election, but I will not be fighting it, and I know that across this House many of our colleagues of different parties will lose their seats through no fault of their own. They will have done everything in their time here: they will have served their constituents, sacrificing family time; they will have done their very best. They will have tried to answer the email from the impossible constituent, they will have put up with threats, and they will lose their seat because on polling day someone will decide they do not like their Prime Minister or their leader, and that is the way of things. People should not take it personally, and I say to colleagues present who may not return to this House that, in my experience, “If the boundaries don’t get you, the electorate one day will. Don’t take it personally—you are loved by all of us and you will remain so.”

So, Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you: thank you to this House, which I used to dream about joining when I was a young boy at school. Politics was the only A-level I actually enjoyed; I was inspired by a teacher. I got a D in it I am afraid to say; my children laugh at that whenever I tell them. Nevertheless, politics is about people and when we forget that we are in trouble and the worse for it.

The final thing I would say as an election is approaching—we are almost already in it—is that I always tried to make sure that defence was a core part of Government, not a discretionary spend stuck on the end. We hear, in all parts of the House, lines such as “Defence does not win elections.” Well, it can lose them. I live in the north-west of England and I am not trying to be party political, but loyal, patriotic Labour voters rejected the Labour party in 2019 because they felt that the leader at that time did not care about defence and about them. Defence matters. It is not an add-on after health and education.

When we come to writing our manifestos, let us please include investment in defence. Let us ensure that it is core, and let us not allow leaders to say things like “when economic conditions allow”. We do not say that about health, and we do not say it about education. Having read so much intelligence for so many years, I am frightened to think that by the end of this decade, if our armed forces and our security services are not match-fit for the threat that is coming our way, we will have only ourselves to blame. It is our children who might have to go and fight for us, and they deserve to be as protected as possible, with the best equipment and the best allies.

[Several hon. Members rose—]