War Graves Week

Will Quince Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord), who made a very powerful speech. There have been so many powerful and emotive speeches, and so many Members have eloquently and articulately set out why the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is so important. As other right hon. and hon. Members have said, it is a great honour to speak in this debate. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a reservist.

I am very proud to represent Colchester, which is the home of 16 Air Assault Brigade. It was a long-time garrison town, and now a garrison city. I think the first garrison in Colchester was formed shortly after the Roman invasion in AD 43 and it has been a garrison ever since, but it has been a very important garrison since the Napoleonic wars. As an important garrison town, we have a large military cemetery in Colchester. It contains 114 Commonwealth war graves from the second world war and 266 war graves from the first world war. On Remembrance Sunday, we have a very well attended service at the war memorial, which thousands of Colcestrians attend. In fact, every year the crowd gets larger, but few are aware of the two services held beforehand at both the first world war and second world war memorials in Colchester cemetery, very close to the military cemetery. It is Colchester cemetery that I will speak about this afternoon in this War Graves Week debate.

Those of us on the glide path out of politics tend to look back at our time in this place as a parliamentarian and the changes and the difference we have tried to make. With that in mind I would like to pay tribute to a constituent of mine who I have been honoured to support. On my election to this House in 2015 I was approached by Mike Jackson specifically about Colchester cemetery. Mike and Sue Jackson are two of the most inspirational people I have ever met. They have raised over £275,000 for Help for Heroes in memory of their late son-in-law Kevin, or Kev, Fortuna. They initially set out to raise £10,000 and they just did not stop.

Colour Serjeant Kev Fortuna of A Company, 1st Battalion the Rifles was tragically killed in May 2011 on active duty in Afghanistan. Mike had been raising the issue of war graves with my predecessor, Sir Bob Russell, and on my election Mike asked me to come with him to visit Colchester cemetery and of course I accepted. He showed me the part of the cemetery with the first and second world war graves, which were beautifully maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. He then showed me the war graves of those who had tragically lost their lives after the end of the second world war, which of course included the grave of Colour Serjeant Fortuna. Shamefully, despite the best efforts of several family members who live locally, the war graves were not maintained to anywhere near the standard of those of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

After research Mike and I identified this was not a Colchester-unique issue; it was a national issue. Mike and I agreed to work together to address this and campaign for change. I wrote to, and secured a meeting with, Earl Howe of the other place, then a Defence Minister. He explained that the remit of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was the first and second world war graves and any war grave thereafter was maintained by the Ministry of Defence. He explained that the MOD budget for war grave maintenance was around a third of that of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and, as sympathetic as he was, he suggested I speak with the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

So we secured a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was George Osborne at the time, and I recall it vividly. Any parliamentary colleague who has ever gone to ask the Chancellor, or any Treasury Minister, for money knows that is no easy task; especially for an MP in their first year, the default response is usually “No”—or at least it starts with “No”.

However, to his great credit, this meeting with George Osborne was very different. We set out the facts, we explained the background, we spoke about Mike Jackson’s campaign and how wrong it was that Kev Fortuna’s family were maintaining his grave, not to mention the graves of those who had fallen without loved ones nearby to tend to their graves. To George Osborne’s credit, he put out his hand to stop me mid-sentence and said. “That isn’t right. Leave it with me, but I assure you I’m going to fix it.” And just a handful of weeks later at the spending review and autumn statement, George Osborne announced the Government would fund the brilliant Commonwealth War Graves Commission so it could tend over 6,000 graves of those who have died fighting for our country since the second world war. That in effect meant £2 million as an initial up-front sum and then funding as a commitment in perpetuity for all war graves to be maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

I pay tribute to George Osborne for seeing this injustice and putting it right, and I want to thank and pay tribute to Mike Jackson for his determination to right this injustice. His campaign has benefited not just Colchester but more than 1,200 locations where there are war graves. Finally, but by no means least, I want to pay tribute to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for the incredible work it does locally, nationally and internationally. Of course I welcome the uplift in funding announced by the Secretary of State. Commemoration matters; recognising sacrifice matters. We must and we will remember them.