With a record 335 new Members of Parliament inducted into the House of Commons in July, following the summer and party conference recesses, new MPs continue to make their maiden speeches.
Jack delivered his speech today during a Commons debate on the Commonwealth, describing his constituency of Windsor as capturing the “glorious history of our constitution, the evolution of our parliamentary democracy and the very best of our Commonwealth of Nations”.
He acknowledged the important work and legacy of his predecessor, Adam Afriyie - the first-ever black Conservative MP - particularly around campaigning against a third runway at Heathrow. Jack has already been a strong local voice on this issue, championing more equitable noise distribution for residents.
Jack also hit out at the lack of safeguards for Datchet, Wraysbury, Horton and Old Windsor under the current River Thames Scheme, saying they are “disgracefully the only part of the Thames from Taplow to the North Sea which remain materially undefended.” He is continuing to push for Channel 1 of the Scheme to be funded centrally.
As is traditional, much of Jack’s speech celebrated key moments of the constituency’s history, but he was keen to mention some often-forgotten facts like Old Windsor once being central to the reign of Saxon Kings.
After a heartfelt tribute to Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Jack concluded his maiden speech by referencing Windsor’s Elizabeth the Confessor, and great conservative thinker Edmund Burke’s words on society, reflecting his commitment to his constituents both present and future.
The full text of Jack’s maiden speech is as follows:
“It gives me great pleasure to rise for my maiden speech today, and I think, very appropriate, during a debate on the Commonwealth of Nations.
We share a set of values with our Commonwealth kin – rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech, property rights, innocence until proven guilty by a jury of our peers – built on a shared constitutional heritage. Principles which, with my time in this house, I want to fight for, and of which my constituency is at the beating heart.
Because the Windsor constituency is not just a series of beautiful towns and villages, although that is undoubtedly true, but one that encapsulates the glorious history of our constitution, the evolution of our parliamentary democracy and the very best of our Commonwealth of Nations.
My predecessor was a son of the Commonwealth, with a Ghanaian father and an English mother. Adam Afriyie came from a tough background, growing up on a council estate in Peckham, but became a successful tech entrepreneur and the first black Conservative Member of Parliament. Adam spent his years in Parliament campaigning against Heathrow’s third runway, which I will be continuing, as well as supporting many good local causes, including the children’s charity Sebastian’s Action Trust. I also appreciated Adam’s work on Fintech and his role as the longest serving chair of the parliamentary office of science and technology. As someone with a mathematics and physics academic background, it is clear to me this place needs more of a quantitative and scientific approach. Above all, Adam is a good man and a person I’m proud to call a friend. I wish him and his family well for the future.
Clearly Windsor’s link to the royal family is self-evident. The Conqueror first built the castle and the Royal House proudly carries our name. But fewer know the Windsor Constituency was the home of monarchs long before the arrival of the Norman yoke. Old Windsor was an important palace of Saxon Kings documented as a defended royal manor in Edward the Confessor’s time, but evidence suggests royal connections in existence since at least the 9th century.
William the Conqueror chose the site for Windsor Castle, on a strategically important position high above the key medieval route to London on the River Thames. It was part of a defensive ring of motte and bailey castles around London, each a day’s march from the City and the next, allowing for easy reinforcements.
The first King to use Windsor castle as a royal residence was William’s son, Henry I. Perhaps he was attracted by the proximity of the royal hunting forest, then Windsor Forest, which is now Windsor Great Park at the centre of my constituency. I represent most of the communities around it, including Ascot, Sunninghill and Sunningdale where my wife Sarah and I have made our own family home with our sons, Edward and Christopher.
It was his Great Grandson John who was besieged by the Barons in 1214 and signed the Magna Carta the following year, north of the river in Wraysbury or south on Runnymede meadows is lost to time. Whichever the true site – both are in the Windsor constituency thanks to the most recent boundary changes, and we welcome Runnymede meadow into the patch with the Surrey villages of Englefield Green and Virginia Water, as well as the east of Langley in Slough.
Whether Wraysbury or Runnymede, what remains undeniable is the propensity for there to be too much water in both of these places. One of the things I will be advocating for in this Place is proper flood defences for Datchet, Wraysbury, Horton and Old Windsor. When the River Thames Scheme is built as is currently envisaged, these villages are disgracefully the only part of the Thames from Taplow to the North Sea which remain materially undefended. What was proposed as Channel 1 of the River Thames Scheme must get funded centrally as national strategic infrastructure – this House will be hearing from me again on this topic, I assure you Mr Speaker.
In the handful of weeks I have been here Mr Speaker, I have already lost count of the times this place has been incorrectly referred to as the Mother of Parliaments, misquoting John Bright. It is England which Bright referred to as Mother of Parliaments. In that speech, Bright was arguing for what became the Reform Act of 1867 which enfranchised, for the first time, part of the urban male working class from which I hail.
England is the Mother of Parliaments because of the principles, established in Anglo Saxon England, that yes, we owe our allegiance to His Majesty The King, then in Old Windsor, now in New Windsor, but within a framework that protects our ancient individual liberties, as articulated in Magna Carta.
This heritage is proudly ours, but the Saxon Great Councils, which started to be called Parliaments by the 13th century, and the principles underpinning them, amongst other things, that the King could only make law and raise taxation with the consent of the community of the realm, now belongs to the whole Commonwealth and the wider free world.
That concept, to raise taxation only with the consent of the community of the realm, should give the new government pause for thought, I recommend it as a good conservative instinct.
Because in this House, Mr Speaker, the Treasury bench, the Crown, should be cautious of levying taxation, especially if punitive or excessive, without gaining wide common counsel. And my counsel would be, as this new government raises taxes, in breach of its manifesto commitments, that taxation will only gain wide consent, if and only if, it leads to a material improvement in the quality of public services – and that will not happen without quite radical public sector reforms to drive productivity improvements, which I urge the government to consider.
Tax without proper consent is something Governments over the years have come a cropper over. Most famously the British in North America in the eighteenth century!
I do hope our American cousins may rejoin the Commonwealth one day. And it is often they, that remember our shared constitutional heritage the keenest. The Magna Carta memorial erected in my constituency in 1957 was done so by the American Bar Association for example, who alongside ourselves and our Commonwealth kin are the beneficiaries of this great legacy.
There is an extraordinary wealth of cultural and historical riches tied to the history of our great country, originating in my constituency. And I assure you Sir, I will be bringing this Houses attention to this on many an occasion in due course. Whether that’s:
The foundation of Eton College in 1440
Royal Holloway over 170 years ago by Victorian social pioneers who founded one of the first places in Britain where women could access higher education.
The establishment of Ascot racecourse in 1711 when Queen Anne found a flat expanse of heathland which she thought would be perfect for racing horses, and that tradition continues over 330 years later. And I would say to members opposite, particularly the new ministers, it’s a great place for a freebie. Please do see my updated register of interests next month!
Or the foundation of Combermere Barracks in 1796 and Victoria Barracks in 1853, making Windsor a proud double garrison town. We owe our Armed Services so much in protecting the legacy on which I am talking
We will remember them.
But of course, none of this compares to the events of 1996, with the founding of the great institution of Legoland.
What I cannot do Mr Speaker, is give my maiden speech without turning to the House of Windsor, which is of course the name of our British Royal House and the reigning house of our brothers and sisters in the other 14 Commonwealth Realms.
In Windsor we have enormous pride that King George V proclaimed that “Our House and family shall be styled and known as Windsor”. It was felt inappropriate in the First World War for the Royal Family to be called Saxe Coburg Gotha as London was being bombed by aircraft of the same name. It was thought that Windsor sounded necessarily regal and English sounding and I agree.
We have now seen our fifth monarch of the House of Windsor, albeit it is better sometimes we forget about the second. They’ve all made Windsor their home. But few monarchs will be more associated with Windsor than Her Late Majesty of Blessed Memory, Elizabeth, who made Windsor her principal weekend retreat, indeed her home.
But retreating was of course something our late Queen very rarely did. Indeed her great passion was the Commonwealth. On her 21st Birthday in 1947 in South Africa, she dedicated her life to the service of the Commonwealth when she famously said “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” And didn’t she just.
She was the living embodiment every day of the model of Christian service and of the history and continuity of this country and its constitutional monarchy – the very essence of our great nation. Throughout her reign, she was, as the then Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip [Boris Johnson] said on her passing, “the keystone in the vast arch of the British state”. But she was more than that, she was the Head of State, yes, but she was also head of the nation, and more wider, the head of our family of nations – deeply understanding the role she had been called to, in the context of a millennium of constitutional development, lots of which is local to my constituency, but is relevant to free people the world over.
Mr Speaker, I come from a much more modest background, but all of us in this House, like Windsor’s Elizabeth the Confessor, would do well to appreciate that we are but the momentary trustees of our country. As Burke said, society is a contract between those who are living, those who are dead, and those yet to be born. Yes, we have a responsibility to our constituents today - but we have a shared inheritance of our history, our great Parliamentary democracy and we all have a duty to uphold the great traditions of our past in order to safeguard its future.”
