70th Birthday of the Prince of Wales

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow two incredibly generous speeches. I absolutely endorse and support everything that has been said so far about His Royal Highness, the Prince’s Trust and the other foundations. I have had the privilege and the honour of working closely with His Royal Highness in my capacity as the MP for North West Norfolk, which includes the Sandringham estate. When I was in the Foreign Office, I also had the privilege of accompanying him on two foreign visits, so I had a chance to see for myself his extraordinary personality.

Sandringham is a large and highly diversified estate that employs a significant number of people in my constituency and generates many more jobs through tourism. It is, without doubt, one of the most innovative estates in the country, with a lot of pioneering work going on around organic farming and soil structures, habitat management, forestry, coastline and marshland preservation, and eco-housing for rent. His Royal Highness has played a pivotal role in all this, especially on the housing front. The Sandringham estate has built a number of new developments to be rented out—not just to people working on the estate, but to retired people and local people. In this way, it is setting the highest possible standards, and I applaud and salute that work.

His Royal Highness takes a very close interest in west Norfolk and the wider local community, and his advice and input has always been discreet, tactful and very much aware of the local political constraints. On occasions, I have had the opportunity to deal with him myself alongside the local borough council. When we have gone to him for advice, we have always found him incredibly approachable, but above all else is his convening power—a power to bring together different experts. Depending on what the situation demands, he has the experts to bring together, although he also has the most extraordinary knowledge himself.

I do not want to run through a lot of examples, but I should say that his foundation was absolutely indispensable in the redevelopment of King’s Lynn town centre, ensuring that we moved from what was going to be a very ordinary design to one that was quite exceptional. The Norfolk coastal footpath provides another example. And although recycling policy may sound very prosaic and boring, his input has been crucial at different times. He has also been involved in our work regarding the Construction Industry Training Board, which has a proud history in west Norfolk. We are doing our level best to persuade the board to keep its presence in west Norfolk, to develop the site and, above all, to make sure that when it puts its training contracts out to tender, we have the right people running those contracts so that we can use the organisation to help with skills and the whole apprenticeship agenda.

Behind the scenes, His Royal Highness has always shown so much interest, huge energy and a great sense of humour. Above all, he has an extraordinary ability to inspire, motivate and bring out the best in other people, so I join the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in saluting Prince Charles on his 70th birthday.