I was not expecting to speak today, as I did not know there was a slot today for valedictory speeches. During yesterday’s statement, I spoke about the importance of the NHS, and said that that would be the end of my contributions, but I saw Mr Speaker last night, and he explained that some time would be given over to valedictory speeches today. Having had the Conservative Whip restored this week, I am delighted to say that many, many colleagues have said, “You should say something and reflect.”

I start by saying what an honour it is to follow Dame Margaret Hodge, who taught me an enormous amount when I was a new Member of Parliament and I served on her Public Accounts Committee. It was our Public Accounts Committee in theory, but as she was Chair, it was very much her PAC. I undertook to read every word of every draft report, because she was brilliant at occasionally —[Interruption.] She is laughing, which I take as an admission of guilt; she knows what I am going to say. She would occasionally stick in a sentence that put the boot into the Government, but she would put it on about page 29, hoping that nobody else in the Committee would notice. I took it upon myself to read the detail, and I learned that from her.

I have, of course, found serving in this House to be the privilege of my life—I am sure we all feel that. I agree strongly with the words of the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend Mrs May, and the former Defence Secretary, my right hon. Friend Mr Wallace, about the importance and value of public service. Politics, no matter how difficult it can be, is public service, because in a democracy it is the only way to translate the will of the people into the governance of the nation. We are the channels through which that should happen, and I want to thank some people who have helped make it happen for me.

I want to thank the people who got me into politics in the first place, particularly Dr Michael Hart, who is also the man who spotted my dyslexia, and Nick St Aubyn, the man who suffered most from my dyslexia. I was his agent in the 2001 general election, when he was the Member for Guildford. Let me retell a terrible story. He had written his election address and I had put it into a very early version of PowerPoint. He had written this lovely phrase, “I want to unite the community”. I thought it was great, so I put it into the headline. It was only when 42,000 copies of the election address had been delivered that he picked a copy up from his doormat and said, “Matt, why have your written, ‘I want to untie the community’?” He took it very well, but unfortunately he lost the seat, and I did not speak about my dyslexia for 20 years after that because of the shame it brought me. He also forgave me, which was a truly heroic act.

I thank my staff here, particularly Helen Dudley, who retired a few years ago, and Elizabeth Hitchcock. I thank the countless others who have supported me in my office here in Parliament, but those two have always held the thing together. Especially in times in government, when it is hard to give as much time as one would want to one’s constituency duties, they really have taken action. Both of them were preferred to me in West Suffolk and did a much better job than I could have done. I thank all the civil servants with whom I served and worked so closely, but I also want to put in a word for special advisers. Let me give one short story about why special advisers are such a valuable and important part of our political system. In the pandemic, Members might remember that during the vaccination programme there was an interval—a gap—between two doses of the vaccine being given. I cannot remember how long it was—it might have been 12 weeks. One of my political special advisers spotted a tweet from an American statistician saying that, because the first vaccine had a much greater impact than the second, if we reduced the number of weeks between the first and the second being given, we would save many lives. He spotted the tweet and brought it to me. I took it to the clinical leads, Professor Whitty and Professor Van-Tam, who ran the maths and verified it. We spoke to the regulators and, despite this being novel, within nine days the information spotted in a tweet by an American statistician became Government policy, announced here, and that was followed throughout the world. That alone is calculated to have saved 10,000 lives in the UK.

There are many more staff I would like to thank, including my three agents in West Suffolk over the years: Dorothy Whittaker, Lance Stanbury and Bobby Bennett. And, like the former Defence Secretary, I also thank my family, in particular my children, because the impact of the scrutiny of politics, especially when people make mistakes, has a huge impact on them, and they have put up with a lot.

It is in the nature of politics that people do not see what a team effort it is. Many people have said that today. What will I miss most? The single unambiguous answer to that question is that I will miss colleagues the most. In difficult times, the support of colleagues, both on this and the other side of the House, has been incredibly powerful. I will also miss the opportunity to contribute to national debates. The single vote that I regret not having taken part in is that on assisted dying, which surely will come and which I have come to support very passionately.

Politics is also noisier and harder than it was 14 years ago, when I first came to Parliament. The nature of social media has made it more difficult, and the nature of the world has, sadly, made it more dangerous. Even through this, one of the things that I have tried to promote is the power of technology as a force for good. Mr Sheerman and I have campaigned on that together over the years. Yes, we must ensure that technology is harnessed for the benefit of humanity, but by God, we must make sure that harness it we do. We cannot stand in the way, and the UK is at its best when we are at the forefront and when we harness the power of modern technology. My prediction is that, over the next 14 years, the impact will be far greater not just on the economy but on society and politics than it has been even over the past 14 years. We are living through the slowest rate of change of our lives. It is only going to get faster, and I hope that this place is ready for that.

I cannot finish without a word on the NHS and the role it plays in our national life. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead asked me to be Health Secretary she said, “We need to improve the tech in the health service. Could you do that?” For 18 months, I thoroughly enjoyed myself trying to improve the tech in the health service. Then, of course, the pandemic struck. For one last time I want to say thank you to all of those who rose to the occasion and did so much to get us through, delivering the necessary safety measures, including the shielding programme, which is not mentioned as much as it should be, protecting those who were most vulnerable. And, of course, the vaccine programme was without doubt one of the country’s finest achievements in peacetime. I want to thank the colleagues with whom I worked incredibly closely and who helped make that happen; some of them were heroes of the pandemic too.

I leave by saying this. I think it is impossible for a political party—those aspiring to govern—to win without some of those lodestars. It is impossible and wrong to win without being on the side of the future and trying to represent the youth of our country who are coming through. They may see things differently from how we do; I say that even as a 45-year-old. It is impossible to win or to deserve to win without a true love of the NHS. I am proud to serve a Prime Minister who is from an NHS family. That true love is important because the people believe it and it is true.

Finally, it is impossible to win unless we truly want to serve our country. I believe that everybody comes into this place wanting to make their country a better place. I have tried my hardest to do that for 14 years—to reach out, to try to do things differently and to try to embrace the future. It has been a honour and a privilege, and I thank you.