Business of the House

Joy Morrissey Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

We miss the hon. Gentleman too and look forward to seeing him back here in due course. I was pleased to note that he asked a question to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care earlier, so he remains an enormously active Member of Parliament, although I recognise his general point that it is harder to get in during Question Time than it was before.

With regard to building works in the Palace, I am delighted to be able to say that that is a matter for the House of Commons Commission. The spokesman for the Commission answers questions periodically, and I am sure the matter will come up next time. We all look forward to seeing the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) back here in due course.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that a review of the parliamentary art collection should be an opportunity to celebrate Parliament’s rich and central role in our nation’s history and heritage, rather than a political exercise to edit, rewrite and impose woke contemporary interpretations of history on a place of such national importance?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

We should take such pride in the history that is displayed through the art in this House. It might be a slightly Whiggish view of history, but if we go to Committee Room 10, we see Alfred the Great defeating the Danes, starting our great island story. If we walk from here to the House of Lords, we see on the walls the whole process of the civil war, with King Charles I raising his standard at Nottingham, and we see the birds that flew—we see the history of our nation. It is something that we should be proud of, for we are a great nation; a successful nation; one of the greatest nations the world has ever seen; and we have done so much good, not just at home but abroad, and we should be proud of that. We should recognise that how our forefathers have recorded our history is not something we should dispose of. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has said:

“Statues and other historical objects were created by generations with different perspectives and understandings of right and wrong… they play an important role in teaching us about our past… Rather than erasing these objects, we should seek to contextualise…them in a way that enables the public to learn about them in their entirety… Our aim should be to use them to educate people about all aspects of Britain’s complex past, both good”—

in my view, primarily good—and occasionally bad. The word “occasionally” is an edit of my own.