As a good friend, whom I greatly admired, words cannot express my sense of sadness and loss over the murder of Sir David Amess. He was first elected in 1983, aged just 31, a year before myself, so our political careers – as fellow Catholic MPs – ran almost parallel. My prayers have been conveyed to his bereaved widow Julia and his five children. There will be a Requiem Mass and memorial. The tributes in the Commons reflected the great esteem in which David was held from all sides.
As the dreadful crime was committed on 15 October in Leigh-on–Sea, in Essex, I was doing my own Friday afternoon surgery in Stone, Staffordshire while my friend was stabbed 17 times by a Somali stranger who had booked an appointment to see his MP. Later that evening, my Conservative Association held a two-minute silence to commemorate this great and lovely man for whom his faith was an integral part of his life.
