I rise to give my maiden speech. I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your position and the Transport Secretary and the Front-Bench team on their positions.
It is a privilege and a pleasure to follow the maiden speeches that we have just heard, including by the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean), who, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde), significantly increases the Josh quotient in the House. If I contribute nothing else, I clearly increase the Gideon quotient by the massive number of one new Member of Parliament. I also thank the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), whose public service has been enduring. He has had my congratulations on that already. Their speeches will be a hard act to follow, but I have the advantage of representing Taunton and Wellington, so it should not be too much of a problem.
I give credit to the former Conservative Member for Taunton Deane, Rebecca Pow, who will, I am sure, continue her enthusiasm for gardening and wildlife. She was, of course, a Minister with responsibility for water and for our rivers. I am partial to a dip in the river from time to time, so I was pleased to successfully apply for bathing water status for a stretch of the Tone in Taunton to get the improvement in water quality that we desperately need in our rivers down in Taunton. The River Tone is the silver thread that joins Wellington to Taunton to the levels, close to where the famous cakes were burned near the King Alfred Inn at Burrowbridge.
I also pay tribute to the former Liberal Democrat MP Jeremy Browne, the Member of Parliament for Taunton Deane from 2005 to 2015. He served as a Home Office and a Foreign Office Minister, and remains incredibly well liked in the constituency. He was the first Member to propose a new railway station for Wellington, and I am delighted to have had the Chancellor’s assurance in the previous debate that that project will go ahead. I am the eighth Liberal to represent Taunton in Parliament since some guy named Disraeli was defeated by the first one in the 1835 general election. Of course, nothing further was heard of him—at least not in Taunton.
Taunton’s parliamentary tradition is very deep-rooted. As a county town with a castle, which today proudly houses the Castle hotel and the superb Museum of Somerset supported by our dynamic town council, its parliamentarians held out in siege after siege. Today, the hard work of so many people in Taunton at the Brewhouse theatre, the Southern Sinfonia, the Bluebirds Theatre Company, the Tacchi-Morris, the Willows and Wetlands visitor centre, the Creative Innovation Centre, Arts
Taunton, GoCreate Taunton, groups such as Amici and Voce, and the Bradford Players—I have many more—the Taunton Thespians and the @2K Theatre; and in Wellington at the Arts Centre, the Wellesley Theatre, the operatic society, and the Gaumont theatre, which once played host to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and is now home to the bingo, all comes together to mean that not only do we have a Mecca, but our area is a cultural mecca to which people come from far and wide.
Then, of course, there is the magnificent Somerset county ground, graced by the towers of St James and the minster, where I married Caroline just 28 short years ago. I thank her and our children, Emily, Fraser and Fenner and Felix, from the bottom of my heart for their support. Our schools from North Town and Minerva to Bishop Fox’s, Court Fields, Castle, Pyrland, Selworthy and Monkton Wood feed into our nationally renowned Richard Huish College, Bridgwater & Taunton College and University Centre Somerset, which now offers degrees like nursing, in support of the superb staff at Musgrove Park hospital. Funding is urgently needed for the hospital’s new maternity unit, because buckets are currently used to catch the rain in the corridors of a building built for the US army—as a temporary building—in 1940.
Similarly, King’s and Queen’s, Taunton and Wellington’s independent schools, make a massive contribution to our area’s local economy. We also have a successful home education community that inspires an innovative generation of young people. To all our area’s children, I say: “Be yourself. If your name is Gideon, for example, there’s no need to change it to get elected to Parliament.” That is something I once tried to discuss with the former Member for Tatton. I confess that it has taken me a little time to get to this Chamber—if I had not had to deliver all those bibles to hotels, I would have got here a lot quicker.
All those institutions, together with the UK Hydrographic Office, make Taunton the ideal location for new research and innovation entrepreneurs. It is only 104 minutes from Paddington, so they should all come and enjoy the amazing quality of life that we offer. When they come to Taunton, they will find a ticket office at the station that is still working. I was amazed to hear the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) apparently still advocating the closure of ticket offices—a policy about which I can say only “good luck”. To encourage people to come to Wellington, I look forward to working hard on the Wellington station project that I mentioned earlier.
I invite the right hon. Lady the Transport Secretary, and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wakefield and Rothwell (Simon Lightwood), to visit the project. On their visit, I hope that they will enjoy a glass of famous Sheppy’s or Taunton cider—or, to pronounce it correctly for Hansard, zyder—at the Ring of Bells, the Green Dragon or the Pump House in Tonedale, in a Rocket and Bird glass with some Somerdale cheese and perhaps some Bumblee’s relish, followed by a meal at Guddi and Gikki, Maliha and Taj, the Little Wine Shop or Augustus. They are ideal for planning visits to key organisations in the constituency, like WPA, Pritex or indeed the 40 Commando Royal Marines at Norton Manor camp.
I was delighted to support the Royal Marines, with the help of former Royal Marine Paddy Ashdown—raising an ultimately successful petition to gain a U-turn on the previous Government’s shocking proposal to close down the entire facility. In his maiden speech the other day, my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas), drew attention to the huge sacrifice that previous generations made so that we are all free to sit in this Chamber today. My service in the Territorial Army was pretty minimal, but my father, FJC “Jim” Amos CBE, and my mother, Geraldine Amos MBE, both served in world war two, following their fathers who served in the trenches. I remember discussing it with them all.
When I was growing up, hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that the atmosphere and the memories of war loomed large in discussions around meal tables. Is it not that generation’s courage and bravery, not only in rebuilding Britain but in defeating fascism in the first place, that demand our respect? They demand that we do everything we can to defend the liberal and democratic values that make this country so great. Their bravery surely also demands that all hon. Members, on both sides of the House, always say no to those who would stir up division, despair and hatred for nothing more than votes, because they have nothing positive to offer people.
It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve the residents of Taunton and Wellington—from Hatch Beauchamp, Helland and North Curry in the east to Whiteball, West Buckland, and Sampfords Moor and Arundel in the west; and from Bishopswood, Churchinford and Stoke St Mary in the south to Pickney, West Monckton and Kingston St Mary in the north—in this House. I am here to do one thing: work for them and stand up for them to those in power whenever that is the right thing to do. I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to begin that duty today.