Retirement of the Clerk of the House

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Thank you very much indeed, Mr Speaker. I join all those who have spoken so eloquently and beautifully in tribute to Sir David in rising to share with the House just two memories of him. It is a great pity that he is not present. I do not know whether it is natural modesty on his part or a tradition of the House that the Clerk is not here in person to hear the tributes. If it is the latter, there is an act of modernisation yet to come, and I hope that those who lead on such things will take due and careful attention.

Reference has been made to Sir David’s wit, and I first encountered it one sunny morning when I arrived off the underground and came across Sir David getting off his bicycle in New Palace Yard. I greeted him cheerily and said, “So, how long does it take you to cycle in every day, David?” and he looked at me with a stern face and then his eyes twinkled and he said, “About a minute longer every year.” If my maths is any good, after 40 years that must be a hell of a bicycle journey into the House of Commons.

The second memory is of a much more sombre and sad occasion. It was the day after the murder of PC Keith Palmer. I think I was walking back from 4 Millbank, and I decided to come in through St Stephen’s entrance. There I found two of our wonderful staff who greet the visitors every day, and who else but David, who had come out to ask them, “How are you? How are you feeling?” Imagine being those members of staff, absolutely on the frontline, the day after one of our own had been murdered along with the tourists and others killed on the bridge. At that moment, the visitors who came by were directed, as the conversation was interrupted, and would have had absolutely no idea—we talk about the great and the good—that the man standing there in a raincoat with a slightly skew-whiff white bow tie, talking with care and compassion to our staff, was Sir David Lionel Natzler KCB, the Clerk of the House of Commons. That is typical of the man to whom today we pay such deep and heartfelt tribute in wishing him and all his family the very best for the future.