I rise at this sombre time to represent my constituents in East Sussex to send our condolences to the royal family for their deep loss of Her late Majesty the Queen. East Sussex is a county that Her Majesty visited many times. She helped to commemorate the 900th year since the Norman invasion, visiting Pevensey bay where William the Conqueror first landed and then going to Battle town, where the battle of Hastings took place.
For many, we are mourning not only a glorious reign of public service for the past 70 years, but the one constant who glued together our past and the present. That encapsulates the service of Her late Majesty. She represented the historic traditions of the past, but she also sought to champion and support the ideas of the future and of the generations to come. Perhaps I may use Her late Majesty’s link to transport in that regard.
There are many modes where she would be remembered, in land, air and sea, but I will go to the London underground. As a 13-year-old in 1939, the then Princess Elizabeth joined her sister Princess Margaret for her first trip on the London underground. The network’s staff magazine, Pennyfare, reported:
“Both Princesses were greatly interested in the escalators, automatic ticket-machines and automatic doors”.
Despite their status, the princesses sat in a third-class smoking carriage of the District line train.
Thirty years later, a further trip on the underground marked the opening of the Victoria line. There she operated the controls in the cab of the first train on that line, going from Green Park to Oxford Circus. Although the tube line was the first to be operated automatically, the Queen could be said to have been its very first driver.
The Queen took the controls at the front of the train on the opening of the Piccadilly line extension and the docklands light railway. Only this year, we remember her in those amazing photos as she operated an Oyster card at the opening of the Elizabeth line. She truly was an innovator and always interested in innovation.
Many in this Chamber and across the nation and the Commonwealth will not have met Her late Majesty. That matters not; what matters is that we all remember her and keep her as part of us, celebrating her duty to public service, her graciousness, her kindness and her devotion. We will not just keep that with us, but every day demonstrate it, and we will become better in her memory. May Her late Majesty rest in peace. God save the King.
6.54 pm