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Tributes: Lord Weatherill

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I add our condolences to those of other noble Lords who have spoken. We have the title ““Lords Spiritual””, but Jack Weatherill was one of the Lords Spiritual in reality. We have heard about the integrity of his life and the thimble of humility; he was a genuinely spiritual person. In addition to the services to Parliament, about which Peers with better right to speak have referred, he cared for the coherence of the whole of society. I think of his work on the Speaker’s Commission on Citizenship, for example, which gave birth to the Institute of Citizenship Studies. He saw his own contribution to the story in the light of the continuous story of the generations. He looked back to some of the past great Speakers of the past; he located himself in a continuing story and saw himself as making a contribution to something in which we all have a share. The Speakership was almost a perfect expression of his gifts. He was conspicuously fair and inclusive. It was typical of Lord Weatherill that he was the patron of the Three Faiths Forum, and its members were all keen to share him as their own. I remember vividly him describing the first time that he was under fire, not politically but in that period to which the Lord President has referred—the Second World War. He was in a vehicle, the bullets were buzzing around him and it was being driven by a Sikh. The Sikh turned round to him and said, ““Put your trust in God, sahib, he’s a very reliable fella””. So we believe, but so, more importantly, Jack Weatherill lived.