Legacy of Jo Cox

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I would like to give way, thank you.

[Jess Phillips]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, without question, everybody in here can understand how difficult this is for many of us, but also how much we delight in celebrating our friend whom we miss so dearly? Everybody will understand that some of us may need a little time in this debate.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, but I am not sure whether that has helped me to pull myself together, but I will give it my best shot.

I had the privilege of knowing Jo for around 20 years. I shared an office with her for a year before she was so cruelly taken from us. We were elected in 2016, and I am still in that same office now, and not a day goes by when I do not think of her hurtling into our office in her cycling gear, having a chat with my staff and talking about one of the most amazing campaigns that she would be working on. These campaigns ranged widely from reducing loneliness in society to standing up for refugees and fighting for the Labour party’s values, Britain’s democratic values and compassionate values internationally.

Jo was truly driven by giving a voice to the voiceless and by speaking truth to power. If I was really lucky she would bring her beautiful children into the office. I am not sure whether they are here with us today—I do not think they are—but it was always wonderful to see them. If I was really, really lucky I would receive a dinosaur drawing or even get the chance to read them a story. It is these personal memories of Jo that I continue to cherish most every day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for calling me despite me charging into the Chamber, barely a second late. You may think that it is because my timekeeping is poor, but it was actually a tribute to my friend Jo Cox, who, in my recollection of working with her for a very brief period, almost always came in with a crashing door, a burst of colour and an “I’m sorry I’m late.” As many Members have already said, in those moments when she would burst in, she brought with her an extraordinary ball of energy, an extraordinary passion and an extraordinary strength that I am delighted to see have returned to this House in the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater). She has demonstrated that the family who gave birth to one extraordinary individual and raised her has achieved it a second time. For that, I pay the most extraordinary tribute to a fantastic mother and father.

I am going to share with the House my experience of working with Jo, because together we had put together almost all of a paper on the cost of non-intervention. Both of us had seen, in different ways, the impact that intervention—military intervention in my case, humanitarian in hers—had had on lives around the world. We had seen the problems in Iraq and the failures in Afghanistan, and we were aware that in many parts of the world, including in the United Kingdom, there was a desire—almost a hope—that we would never do it again: that we could turn away, look past and pretend it was not happening. But we cannot—and Jo knew that, because what she also brought to this place was the reality of the lived experience of somebody who actually knew the cost. She was somebody who really saw the price, whether in Darfur or Syria, and who knew what that intervention meant to the lives of the most vulnerable and most at risk in countries around the world.

Together Jo and I pulled together most of the paper “The Cost of Doing Nothing”, which was published by Policy Exchange. But, sadly, before it was able to come out—indeed, before it was fully finished—we know what happened. That was a terrible moment, I am sure, for everybody. My memory of it was phoning her number many times, and sadly, like everyone else, getting no answer.

I pay huge tribute to my friend, the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), for the extraordinary courage that she showed after that, in taking up the work that had been done—not imposing herself on it, but ensuring that what was published was in keeping with the words that Jo herself would have written. I also pay another tribute: to my friend, Brendan, who is up in the Gallery and who helped us.

[Jess Phillips]

While the hon. Gentleman is heaping out praise, let me refer back to what the right hon. Member for the royal town of Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said earlier. I would not ever wish to speak for Jo, or ever claim that I could, but I know what she would be thinking at the moment and over the last few weeks: she would be heaping praise on the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) for the interventions that he has made. If she and her legacy give him any courage in what he is doing, he should know that she is—in my eye and in my mind—standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am enormously moved, and as somebody who is my girth and size knows, that is quite hard to achieve.

It has been in thinking of the work that Jo and I did together that I have been motivated and given strength to speak out in recent weeks, because I know that these are not political issues in the narrow sense, but issues that unite the core of our country.

Let me come to my last point. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen has already demonstrated that she knows perfectly well how to find her way around Hogwarts and that she knows exceptionally well how to make her voice heard in this place. She knows, I can tell the House, how to make friends across parties. In that, she needs absolutely no advice. The one thing that I think we all need to remember—I do not single her out especially, as this applies to us all—is what this place is for. It is too easy to think of it as a place for soundbites and video clips, as a place where we pass a quick Bill or make a cheap point.

What this place is for is to have the fights that a democracy needs to have, to have the arguments that free people need to express, to test ideas, to challenge each other—respectfully, yes, but to challenge each other—and to try to make the best for this amazing country, which we are privileged to be in. That is sometimes hard to remember; I admit my own failings. It is hard to remember when too often the accusations are of immorality or deceit, or the supposition is that parties define individuals, rather than that they are defined by the individuals who make them up.

What Jo demonstrated—and, for me, what made her not just a great friend but an amazing parliamentarian and, more importantly, a great Briton—is that she knew the purpose of this place; she knew that absolutely fundamentally. She knew that it was not to back down or make cheap compromise, but, as my friend the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) put it, to make compromise from a position of strength and principle, to choose the battles to fight and to make sure that they were won, in a way not that ground down her opponents, but which brought them with her. And that she achieved—remarkably, in under two years. I still cannot believe how brief the period was. I have been here for six years and have consistently failed since, but Jo demonstrated that and that is what I try to remember here.

As I pay tribute to a fantastic maiden speech, demonstrating all the passion that we knew the hon. Member for Batley and Spen had, let me say to her that she is taking up an extraordinary mantle. She carries with her the thanks, certainly of this House and, I am sure, of the whole country for demonstrating that courage is the willingness to come forward even when it is difficult, and particularly when it hurts.