Katherine Fletcher – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II
The tribute made by Katherine Fletcher, the Conservative MP for South Ribble, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.
On behalf of my family, friends and the people of South Ribble, I wish to pay tribute to Her Majesty Elizabeth II. This is a sad loss and many people across South Ribble have been in touch with me, from Penwortham, Leyland, Croston, Tarleton and the surrounding villages. A theme within that, especially today, has been how deeply they have wanted to celebrate a remarkable life and a remarkable woman. If the House will bear with me, I should like to give two examples of why, to me, she was the epitome of that.
The Queen was a woman of global influence and respect, including in the Commonwealth, as my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) mentioned. In an African Commonwealth country, people were sat around the fire and in that conversation we had represented New Zealand, Zulu, Australian, Shangaan, Afrikaans, English, French and American. The conversation turned to the Queen, and it is fair to say that not everybody understands our system and many questions were asked. Ultimately, a little voice said, in a Kiwi accent, “Oh, she’s like the ultimate pressure valve on your system.” That is what our constitutional monarchy is, and the Queen bore that on her shoulders since she was 25. It was a remarkable life and she was a remarkable woman.
More personal for me is the fact that in the 1980s, when I was growing up, we had a female Prime Minister, a Queen and even a lady in the Speaker’s Chair, and it did not occur to seven-year-old me that women were anything other than in charge. I am sure that given her famous sense of humour, which has come across in many of the contributions made here today, the Queen would have enjoyed my surprise at discovering, when I had grown up a little more, that it was not the norm for women to run everything. From a global icon to an inspiration for a little girl, wow, this was the one and only Queen. I might even say that she was the original Spice Girl. Was she the originator of girl power? It is possible. On behalf of all of us, what I can simply say is: thank you for everything. May she rest in peace and rise in glory. God save the King.
