Sir Richard Shepherd

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

What is so striking about all those quotations from parliamentary colleagues is that they are absolutely interchangeable. They were all written separately and they all said the same things. I can take that one step further because in preparation for this event this evening, I took the trouble to look up the obituaries in a variety of papers, ranging from The Guardian on the left to The Daily Telegraph on the right. And guess what? Those tributes are absolutely interchangeable, too. They talk about his independence of mind, his integrity and the fact that he was a true gentleman and a man of principle.

All I can add that I do not think has been said before is that, as somebody who has been here for merely almost 25 years—I am therefore a relative newcomer by comparison with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and, indeed, Richard—I believe that he set an example that all of us were proud to follow, sometimes even to the point of having the Whip suspended for a little while.