Bletchley Park

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow one of our most remarkable new Members of your Lordships’ House. She has today become the chancellor of the Open University and we should all congratulate her on that.

It is a real privilege to speak in a debate introduced by my noble friend Lady Trumpington. She is a national treasure. If we had, as the Japanese have, national treasures as human beings, she would be right at the top of the list. She embodies so many of those qualities that made our country great. She is determined, never takes no for an answer, has a wonderful good humour but, above all, has a passionate love of her country.

I remember taking my noble friend to Bletchley. A few years ago, she will remember, I was asked to take there a group from the All-Party Parliamentary Arts and Heritage Group. We had a bus load of Members of this House and of another place and went to see the manor and the huts. The company included not only my noble friend Lady Trumpington but the son of Viscount Montgomery of Alamein and Countess Mountbatten of Burma. It was a real historic day. Of all the buildings that the all-party group has visited over the years, every one is more distinguished architecturally than the house at Bletchley. We saw huts that would never enter the heritage league but we came away united in the realisation that we had seen something of imperishable worth that was truly part of our national heritage, because the work that was done there helped to preserve our national heritage of freedom and democracy at a dark time. I very much hope that young people going there will realise just what was done by a number of extraordinary people, led by Alan Turing but including my noble friend—our noble friend—Lady Trumpington and so many others, such as the mother of my noble friend Lord Astor.

It would be very bad indeed if we allowed any disputes between individuals to confound the preservation of Bletchley Park. I have the honour to be a patron of the trust and hope that the patrons together might help to bridge any gaps that may exist. Of course it is vital to have a computing museum. As my noble friend Lord Sharkey said, it is nonsense to have disputes between two essentially worthwhile organisations confounding the realisation of both. If there is one thing that I hope the Minister will be able to say when he replies, it is that the Government are utterly determined to ensure that this part of our history, symbolised by a rather indifferent Victorian manor house and a number of huts, is preserved for future generations. These huts are every bit as important as—indeed, in many ways more important than—Captain Scott’s huts in the Antarctic, which should also be maintained. I hope that we will have a positive response from my noble friend to the debate, which was so brilliantly initiated by our noble friend Lady Trumpington.