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Tributes to the late Lord Belstead

My Lords, it may be apposite to follow my noble friend Lord Waddington. As a result of the disability which eventually took John Belstead to his death, I scarcely saw him during my four years or so in this House, but the reminiscences concerning my late noble kinsman and my late noble relative were so affectionate and vivid that I vicariously felt that I was, in fact, more often in the House with him. However, I wish to make a brief reference to the one occasion when he and I overlapped in a government department. When my noble friend Lord Waddington became Leader of your Lordships’ House, John Belstead came to Northern Ireland, where he took over the vacancy left by my noble friend Lord Cope, who was removed in what I still call a shuffle, rather than a reshuffle. Lord Belstead became my understudy in the place of my noble friend Lord Cope. I do not think that he had ever been a soldier, but the office of being the understudy in Northern Ireland means that you become the security Minister in the Province, and I pay the loudest possible tribute to the fortitude and integrity with which he discharged that role without having had a military background. I also pay tribute to the manner in which he ran the Province during the general election in 1992, when, by definition, the other Ministers were fighting the election. I close on another personal note. He was a member of ““Nobody’s Friends””—a body which dines in Lambeth Palace, half of whom are lay people and half of whom are ecclesiastical. I will not explain why what I am about to say happens, but the group is called ““Nobody’s Friends”” because people who are elected to it have to make a seven minute speech to explain why they are nobody’s friend. It will not surprise your Lordships’ House that John Belstead did that particularly well.