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Summer Adjournment

I congratulate the three maiden speakers, the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and my hon. Friends the Members for Livingston (Graeme Morrice) and for Hyndburn (Graham Jones). However, I should point out to the hon. Member for Witham that when Napoleon said that Britain was a nation of shopkeepers, he did not mean it strictly as a compliment. I was very pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston mentioned Robin Cook. I remember, when I was in this place before, hearing Robin Cook's speech when he resigned from the Government. He held the House of Commons in the palm of his hand. I have rarely seen someone make such a powerful speech. Shortly after that, 139 Labour MPs went into the Opposition Lobby and voted against the Iraq war. The suggestion that we are now hearing from the Liberal Democrats that theirs was the only party that opposed the war as a matter of principle is absolutely untrue. As a matter of fact, I remember occasions on which we went into that Lobby—maybe 30 or 40 of us from the Benches on the Government side of the House—and the Liberal Democrats stayed here, sitting on their hands, because at that point it was not entirely clear in which direction public opinion was going. Only when public opinion was clearly swinging against the war did the Liberal Democrats decide to vote with us in the Opposition Lobby.