My Lords, I add a welcome from these Benches to the Statement by the Prime Minister, which, as the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition said, rightly set the tone and spoke for this country. I also convey to the House the messages of sympathy and support that I have received through the night from faith leaders around the world
and across this country who want this House and Parliament, particularly its staff and those who have suffered, to know how much those people are in their hearts and minds.
With regard to values, I want to refer to something that seems to me to go deeper, to something that is at the foundation of our own understanding of what our society is about, and I want to do so in three simple, brief pictures. The first is of a vehicle being driven across Westminster Bridge by someone who had a perverted, nihilistic and despairing view of objectives, and of what society and indeed life are about, that could be fulfilled only by death and destruction. The second is of that same person a few minutes later, on a stretcher or on the ground being treated by the very people whom he had sought to kill. The third is of these two Houses, where profound, bitter, angry disagreement is dealt with not with violence, despair or cruelty but with discussion, reason and calmness.
Those three pictures point us to deep values within our society—deeper even than those that have rightly been mentioned in the Prime Minister’s Statement and other statements. You would expect to hear this from these Benches, but it is the sense that comes from a narrative that has been within our society for almost 2,000 years. It speaks at this time of year, as we look forward to Holy Week and Easter, of a God who stands with the suffering and brings justice, and whose resurrection has given to believer and unbeliever the sense that where we do what is right—where we behave properly, where that generosity and extraordinary sense of duty that leads people to treat a terrorist is shown, where the bravery of someone such as PC Keith Palmer is demonstrated—there is a victory for what is right and good over what is evil, despairing and bad. That was shown yesterday; that is shown not just in our expression of values but in our practices, which define those values; and that is the mood that we must show in future.