Between July 2018 and April 2019, I had the very great privilege of serving as Vice-Chamberlain of Her Majesty’s Household, a role and a title given to the fourth most senior Government Whip. It is a role about which the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) spoke earlier in her fantastic contribution, and it is a role that most right hon. and hon. Members do not even know exists—except when they see one of the Whips standing at the Bar of the House wearing a tailcoat and carrying what appears to be a snooker cue. It is also a role that people would hear about only when they realised that someone had to be held hostage at the Palace before Her Majesty came to Parliament for the State Opening.
However, the role involves much more than that. Alongside the day-to-day activities in the Whips Office, the Vice-Chamberlain would write a daily note to Her Majesty, keeping her up to date on parliamentary business and giving her all the gossip, and would then go to Parliament to discuss those matters. I am glad to say that, unlike the right hon. Member for Derby South, I can say that neither the Chief Whip nor the Prime Minister ever read my notes.
Given that my period in office coincided with some of the most acrimonious Brexit debates, a confidence vote in our Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and the 2019 vote of confidence, there are very few issues Her Majesty and I have not discussed. Indeed, my final week in office as Vice-Chamberlain included nude protesters gluing themselves to the glass in the Public Gallery, and the
Chamber being suspended after water started pouring through the ceiling into the Press Gallery. Perhaps it was quite symbolic of how broken our Parliament was at that time.
However, although that was an immensely stressful and politically charged period, on every occasion on which I met Her Majesty I found her calm, warm and reassuring. Like all who have spoken today, I was struck by her interest in current events and her lifelong service to our nation. As our longest-reigning monarch and the world’s longest-serving Head of State, she had an incredible insight into current affairs, and was a great symbol of continuity in a rapidly changing world.
I remember vividly a discussion that we had about the online abuse that many Members throughout the House face on social media. Her Majesty recalled a conversation she had had with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, and talked knowledgeably about the subject, although social media was something most people in their nineties would not know or care anything about. We also discussed interviews that she had watched on “BBC News at Ten” the night before, which demonstrated that Her Majesty’s desire to stay on top of current affairs stretched well beyond the papers that she received in her daily red box. All these meetings took place with Her Majesty standing throughout and were often sandwiched between multiple other official engagements that she was undertaking.
I last met Her Majesty the Queen on 19 July at her last ever Privy Council meeting. I was sworn into the Privy Council and presented with a bible, which I carry with me today. I believe that made me the 1,336th person, and final person, to be sworn into Her late Majesty’s Privy Council.
It was an incredible honour, as a Minister for the past five years, to get to meet a remarkable, caring, informed and witty monarch who oversaw huge change during her reign, but never stopped working day in, day out for our country. And it is an incredible honour for me as a Lancastrian MP to see the love felt towards Her Majesty Duke of Lancaster by so many of my constituents in Pendle, with whom I will be joining in remembering and celebrating her life over this period of national mourning. May she rest in peace, and God save the King.
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