Points of Order

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think that the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has done huge and invaluable work on this front. She knows the issues and she feels them. She is, of course, as the hon. Lady knows, a stellar progressive change maker, and she has charted that course since she entered the House on 28 October 1982—she came into the House as a very young woman indeed, and she will mark 37 years in the House next month. If I know the right hon. and learned Lady, she will keep pursuing these issues, in whatever capacity, because they reflect her humanity and her attachment to principle, the rights of the underdog and the cause of equality. She, like the hon. Lady, came into politics for all the right reasons.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

rose—

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I know that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) will be very proud of what I have just said about his wife, and he is looking even happier than he otherwise would. I will come to him, but it would be a pity to squander him at too early a stage of our proceedings when we have only been going for an hour and a quarter or so, so I will come to him momentarily.

[Caroline Lucas]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for breaking one of your own rules—perhaps not a written one—as I have only just come into the Chamber, as you noticed. I want to apologise and explain that I was off the parliamentary estate. I had not known that you were about to make a statement, but as soon as I heard, I came back as fast as I could.

I want to thank you very seriously for your incredibly strong sense of fairness. As an MP from a party of just one in this place, it is very easy to feel somewhat marginalised from time to time, and I have so much gratitude for you that you have always included the Green party, recognising that I may be only one in here, but I represent a party out there. I thank you for your incredibly strong sense of fairness and justice and thank you for your reforming zeal in this place. We still have a long way to go, but thanks to you, we are a long way down that path.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady may recall that she once asked me if it would be all right if she included on the dust jacket of a book she was about to publish a tribute that I had paid her. I said to her that I was more than delighted for her to use that tribute on the dust jacket. My rationale was very simple: I had said what I said in public. I said it because I meant it, and I meant it so I said it, and, having meant it and said it, I was more than happy for it to be reproduced. I rather trust that that will continue to be at the hon. Lady’s pleasure. She is a superb parliamentarian and I think that that is recognised across the House. Without a vast infrastructure to support her, she is indefatigable, irrepressible and astonishing in her productivity and in the sheer range of her political interests. She is a fine parliamentarian. Also, because she is the only member of her party at the moment in this House, she is in the happy position of being leader and Chief Whip of her own party and, I think, of invariably agreeing with herself.

I thank colleagues. I know that we have taken a long time, but finally, we have time—frankly, we would have more time if we were not disappearing for a rather excessive period—for Jack Dromey.