Points of Order

David Lammy Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

As the hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position, we have got until October, but first of all we must hear from Mr David Lammy.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Much has been said, obviously, by Members of Parliament in this place, but I want to put on record what I suspect are deep thanks in huge parts of the country, and to echo absolutely what has been said by, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle).

I was in the House after the riots of 2011, and I thank you, Mr Speaker, for helping to recall the House to debate that very important subject. I also thank you for, most recently, after a scandal that involved people with Caribbean backgrounds, granting my urgent question that allowed the revelation of that scandal. So many issues concerning minorities in this country could so easily have remained on the fringes, as has been the case during previous decades in our country—thank you for putting them at the centre of the action in this Parliament.

Thank you, also, for appointing Rose Hudson-Wilkin as the Chaplain when the establishment might have preferred a different choice. Yes, the role of Speaker is to be part of the establishment, but it takes a giant—and, of course, you are not a giant—to stand up to that establishment and never be cowed. The next Speaker will have very, very big shoes to fill.

[Mr Speaker]

That is extraordinarily eloquent and generous. I do not want to comment on anything the right hon. Gentleman has said about me but I want instead to endorse in triplicate what he has just said about the Right Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, a great servant to Parliament, in her place in the Under Gallery now, a source of comfort and inspiration to me for the last nine years. There has not been a single day when I have not felt delighted and reinforced in my insistence, and it was my insistence, that Rose should be appointed to that role. There is always scope for legitimate difference of opinion, but there were people—part of what I have to say outside of this place I will call the bigot faction—who volunteered their views as to what an inapposite appointment I had made with all the force and insistence at their disposal, which sadly from their point of view were in inverse proportion to their knowledge of the subject matter under discussion. They had not met Rose, they did not know her, they could not form a view; they had a stupid, dim-witted, atavistic, racist and rancid opposition to the Rev. Rose. I was right, they were wrong: the House loves her. [Applause.]