YOUR MP WRITES (From Worcester News)

YOUR MP WRITES

9:10am Thursday 8th November 2007

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Taking into account two General Elections in 1974, this Tuesday marked my 34th Queen’s Speech.
The first time I heard her Majesty deliver the gracious speech (ie. the Government’s propaganda message for the year ahead) Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, Edward Heath leader of the Opposition and Selwyn Lloyd the speaker.
You would have thought therefore that I would have been one of the world’s experts on Queen’s speeches.
You would have been wrong.
After all this time, I still attend Parliament in a state of awe and general disorientation on Queen Speech mornings.
It all begins with prayers at 11.25am – not 11am, not 11.30am but 11.25am.
In order to be able to sit in my usual place at the top of the gangway I need to insert my namecard at about 8am, when the doors of the chamber are opened.
The problem with my seat is that it is up at the back so that when we all form a crocodile to go off to the Lords, in between the bright TV lights and the flashing cameras, I am invariably towards the end of the queue.
By the time I get to the Lords to try to squeeze into the tiny space behind the bar, the Queen is usually half way through and I am too far away to hear the second half.
So it is back to the Commons on my own to request the printed copy of the speech at the Vote Office; this is refused “until she is finished”.
There are now five minutes or so to kill while waiting for the others to file back to the Commons led by the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.
The next appointment is a reception in the Speaker’s Palace.
If it is sunny (as it was this week), I pop outside to see the band strike up and the Horseguards reform for the Queen’s return to the Palace, one hopes for a good lunch. (Yesterday I was joined for lunch by my wife, Ann, who had sensibly watched it all from the gallery in the Lords).
Normality returns when I get back to my office often to be told by my wonderful personal assistant, Jessica Stewart, that e-mails have been arriving from constituents; having watched it all on TV, they would apparently have liked to have seen more of me.
Maybe next year I should halt in front of the nearest camera and wave to it.