Emergency Services Cenotaph: Westminster

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

It is a true honour and privilege to follow such an important debate. We have been united across the House this afternoon. I hope that this Adjournment debate, which might continue for considerably longer than some may expect for an Adjournment debate, will give me the opportunity to show that this House, both Houses and those outside the House can come together on a subject that I know is close to your heart, Madam Deputy Speaker, and which is certainly very close to mine.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you were Minister of State at the Department of Health. Before I came to this House, I had the honour and privilege of being a firefighter. I have also been the Policing Minister and the Minister responsible for the coastguard, and, as you will remember, lots of other things; for the purpose of this debate, those sorts of things are very important.

This debate is about establishing a cenotaph for the emergency workers we have lost. Some 7,500 emergency workers have lost their lives over the years, and the sad fact is that we will lose more. Another sad fact is that there is no national memorial for those who have given so much to us over the years. It was so moving to hear hon. Members talking about the sad loss of Jo and what happened to her. The emergency workers I am talking about were the emergency workers who went to Jo: the police and the paramedics. Sadly, they did not manage to save her life, but I am sure we all agree that they would have done everything that they possibly could have to save Jo, as they would for anybody else. We are talking about those who go towards a situation when very often, quite rightly, the rest of us are going in the opposite direction. Some of them do not come back. That is a commitment to humanity that I am calling on the Government to acknowledge.

As I have said before, the emergency services today are as dedicated to us now as they have ever been. I will touch on the different aspects of that. It is not just those who work for us. Believe it or not, there are 2,500 first responders out there today—mostly volunteers. There were those who volunteered, for instance, during the pandemic, to help in ways that we have probably never tried since the second world war.

We need a cenotaph here in central London. We formed a committee, which I had the honour of being asked to co-chair with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). As a former Minister and a former firefighter, I could not think of anything that I would like to do more. I was quite determined that we should try to do this together, as a Parliament and as a country. I know that there are various memorials around the country. Certain colleagues have told me that, quite rightly, their local communities have come together and that they have memorials for emergency workers in their constituencies, but I cannot believe that in 2021 we do not have something here in London.

That is not to take away in any way, shape or form from the military memorials in London, including the Cenotaph itself, which we celebrate every year on Remembrance Day, when we remember those who have given so much and those who continue to serve today on our behalf around the world. We are not trying to take away from that. We are just trying to put in place a memorial that is going to be here forever, for those who have served and we have lost, for those who have volunteered and we have lost, and for those going forward, sadly, long after we are gone.

I have looked very carefully at how this could be done and the committee has looked at where the memorial should be. The committee believes—and there seems to be hugely popular agreement on this, even from the Mayor of London and many others—that it should be in Whitehall.

That was a unanimous decision. As I shall say in a moment, most of the great and good of this country have said the same, including the Duke of Cambridge—the future king of this country has supported what we are trying to do.

The cenotaph will cost a lot of money, but cenotaphs do. I do not think we are fixated on where exactly in Whitehall it should be. We have made a facsimile of where we would like it to be and created photographs, and we would like it to be quite close to Parliament Square, but, actually, I do not think we really mind. I think the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford and I would agree that we do not mind where it is; we just want it in Whitehall—the place where the country comes together to say thank you.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

It is an honour to co-chair with the right hon. Gentleman the committee that is campaigning for this memorial. Does he recognise that the 18 months we have had have really taught us that we should never take for granted those on whom we depend in so many different ways, and our emergency services are at the heart of that because we all depend on them every single day? That is why it would be right to have a tribute to them and the work that they do at the very heart of where decisions are made. Parliament, the Government and the country should come together to support that.

[Sir Mike Penning]

The right hon. Lady has hit the nail completely on the head. What better opportunity do we have? By the way, this campaign started long before covid—I shall come on to say a bit about how a lovely man called Tom got it going and how we got to this stage—but covid has brought the country together in a way that we have not seen since the second world war. Even though there is an expense and red tape—can we cut through some of the red tape?—and people will baulk at the fact that it will probably cost just over £3 million to do, who cares? In the scheme of things, £3 million is such a small amount of money when it could give so much to the country.