Wednesday Volume 560 10 April 2013 No. 138 HOUSE OF COMMONS OFFICIAL REPORT PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES (HANSARD) Wednesday 10 April 2013 £5·00 © Parliamentary Copyright House of Commons 2013 This publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Open Parliament licence, which is published at www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/. 1613 10 APRIL 2013 Tributes to Baroness Thatcher 1614 off the hyphen, leaving a note that actually read, “Please House of Commons can you resign this minute?”—to which the Prime Minister politely replied, “Thank you dear, but I’d rather not.” Wednesday 10 April 2013 Margaret Thatcher was faultlessly kind to her staff and utterly devoted to her family. For more than 50 years, Denis was always at her side, an invaluable confidant The House met at half-past Two o’clock and friend. Of her, he said this: “I have been married to one of the greatest women the world PRAYERS has ever produced. All I could produce—small as it may be—was love and loyalty.” [MR SPEAKER in the Chair] We know just how important the support of her family and friends was to Margaret, and I know that today Tributes to Baroness Thatcher everyone in this House will wish to send our most heartfelt condolences to her children, Carol and Mark, 2.35 pm to her grandchildren and to her many, many loyal The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron): I beg to friends. She was always incredibly kind to me, and it move, was a huge honour to welcome her to Downing street That this House has considered the matter of tributes to the shortly after I became Prime Minister—something that, right hon. Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven LG OM. when I started working for her in 1988, I never dreamed In the long history of this Parliament, Margaret Thatcher I would do. was our first—and, so far, our only—woman Prime As this day of tributes begins, I would like to acknowledge Minister. She won three elections in a row, serving this that there are Members in the House today from all country for a longer continuous period than any Prime parties who profoundly disagreed with Mrs Thatcher Minister for more than 150 years. She defined, and she but who have come here today willing to pay their overcame, the great challenges of her age, and it is right respects. Let me say this to those hon. Members: your that Parliament has been recalled to mark our respect. generosity of spirit does you great credit and speaks It is also right that next Wednesday Lady Thatcher’s more eloquently than any one person can of the strength coffin will be draped with the flag that she loved, placed and spirit of British statesmanship and British democracy. on a gun carriage and taken to St Paul’s cathedral, and Margaret Thatcher was a remarkable type of leader. members of all three services will line the route. This She said very clearly, “I am not a consensus politician, will be a fitting salute to a great Prime Minister. but a conviction politician.” She could sum up those Today, we in the House of Commons are here to pay convictions, which were linked profoundly with her our own tributes to an extraordinary leader and an upbringing and values, in just a few short phrases: extraordinary woman. What she achieved—even before sound money; strong defence; liberty under the rule of her three terms in office—was remarkable. Those of us law; you should not spend what you have not earned; who grew up when Margaret Thatcher was already in Governments do not create wealth, but businesses do. Downing street can sometimes fail to appreciate the The clarity of those convictions was applied with great thickness of the glass ceiling that she broke through—from courage to the problems of the age. a grocer’s shop in Grantham to the highest office in the land. At a time when it was difficult for a woman to The scale of her achievements is only apparent when become a Member of Parliament, almost inconceivable we look back to Britain in the 1970s. Successive that one could lead the Conservative party and, by her Governments had failed to deal with what was beginning own reckoning, virtually impossible that a woman could to be called the British disease: appalling industrial become Prime Minister, she did all three. It is also right relations, poor productivity and persistently high inflation. to remember that she spent her whole premiership, and Although it seems absurd today, the state had got so big indeed much of her life, under direct personal threat that it owned our airports and airline, the phones in our from the IRA. She lost two of her closest friends and houses, trucks on our roads, and even a removal company. closest parliamentary colleagues, Airey Neave and Ian The air was thick with defeatism. There was a sense that Gow, to terrorism. And, of course, she herself was only the role of Government was simply to manage decline. inches away from death in the Brighton bomb attack of Margaret Thatcher rejected this defeatism. She had a 1984. Yet it was the measure of her leadership that she clear view about what needed to change. Inflation was shook off the dust from that attack and just a few hours to be controlled not by incomes policies, but by monetary later gave an outstanding conference speech reminding and fiscal discipline; industries were to be set free into us all why democracy must never give in to terror. the private sector; trade unions should be handed back to their members; and people should be able to buy Margaret Thatcher was a woman of great contrasts. their own council homes. Success in these endeavours She could be incredibly formidable in argument yet was never assured. Her political story was one of a wonderfully kind in private. In No. 10 Downing street perpetual battle, in the country, in this place and sometimes today there are still people who worked with her as even in her own Cabinet. Prime Minister, and they talk of her fondly. One assistant tells of how when she got drenched in a downpour on a Of course, her career could have taken an entirely trip to Cornwall, Margaret Thatcher personally made different path. In the late 1940s, before she entered sure she was looked after and found her a set of dry politics, the then Margaret Roberts went for a job at clothes—of course, she did always prefer dries to wets. ICI. The personnel department rejected her application [Laughter.] On another occasion, one assistant had put and afterwards wrote: in a hand-written note to Mrs Thatcher to say, “Please “This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self- can you re-sign this minute?” Unfortunately she had left opinionated.” 1615 Tributes to Baroness Thatcher10 APRIL 2013 Tributes to Baroness Thatcher 1616 [The Prime Minister] Churchill once put it, there are some politicians who “make the weather”, and Margaret Thatcher was undoubtedly Even her closest friends would agree that she could be one of them. all those things, but the point is this: she used that In the Members’ Lobby of the House of Commons conviction and resolve in the service of her country, and there are rightly four principal statues: Lloyd George, we are all the better for that. who gave us the beginnings of the welfare state; Winston Margaret Thatcher was also a great parliamentarian. Churchill, who gave us victory in war; Clement Attlee, She loved and respected this place and was for many who gave us the NHS; and Margaret Thatcher, who years its finest debater. She was utterly fastidious in her rescued our country from post-war decline. They say preparations. I was a junior party researcher in the that cometh the hour, cometh the man. Well, in 1979 1980s, and the trauma of preparation for Prime Minister’s came the hour, and came the lady. She made the political questions is still seared into my memory. Twice a week it weather. She made history. And let this be her epitaph: was as if the arms of a giant octopus shook every she made our country great again. I commend the building in Whitehall for every analysis of every problem motion to the House. and every answer to every question. Her respect for Parliament was instilled in others. Early in her first 2.47 pm Government, a junior Minister was seen running through the Lobby. His hair was dishevelled and he was carrying Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab): I join the a heavy box and a full tray of papers under his arm. Prime Minister in commemorating the extraordinary Another Member cried out, “Slow down. Rome wasn’t life and unique contribution of Margaret Thatcher. I built in a day.”The Minister replied, “Yes, but Margaret join him, too, in sending my deepest condolences to her Thatcher wasn’t the foreman on that job.” children, Carol and Mark, the whole family and her As Tony Blair said this week—rightly, in my view— many, many close friends. Margaret Thatcher was one of the very few leaders who Today is an opportunity for us to reflect on Margaret changed the political landscape not only in their own Thatcher’s personal achievements, her style of politics country, but in the rest of the world. She was no and her political legacy. As the Prime Minister said, the starry-eyed internationalist, but again her approach journey from being the child of a grocer to Downing was rooted in some simple and clear principles: strength street is an unlikely one, and it is particularly remarkable abroad begins with strength at home; deterrence, not because she was the daughter, not the son, of a grocer.