“There is nothing more important to a child than their mother. She provides the comfort, the security and stability amidst the worries of the world. A person assumed to go on for ever.

And so it was for Elizabeth the mother of our country, our Queen of hearts.

The people across the four nations of our United Kingdom owe so much to her majesty the Queen for providing steady continuity over war and peacetime through the peaks & troughs of change.

We feel a sense of deep grief across our United Kingdom. The loss of an eternal mother.

For me personally I feel a special affection as my own mother was of the same generation and met my father during the war when he served in the Royal Navy.

Elizabeth bore the weight of the United Kingdom on her young shoulders from the age of 25, when Winston Churchill was Prime Minister, over 70 years of global change.

She has been an anchor for Britain in a sea of change through 15 prime ministers, 14 US presidents and 7 Popes seeing the world, not through the short term but in the long term interests or all her communities and nations.

As a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother she has lead a family, often in personal turbulence, in public view, with a steady hand carefully balancing the interests of the country with those of her family.

I had the privilege of meeting her briefly on behalf of Swansea West on a few occasions as the MP since 2010 and, in those fleeting moments, could appreciate her wisdom and quiet gravity amidst her sunny demeanour, whatever the weather.

She will remain loved by so many millions for so many things and, for me, her continuity has helped anchor our fundamental values of fairness and democracy amidst the undulating changes of political leadership and the storms and sunshine of global events.

We shall never forget you and the people of Wales and Swansea will always hold you in our hearts for your service and devotion to our country.

Our thoughts are with the Royal Family, wishing them strength at this most difficult time, in the comfort of remembering, with love and affection, happy times shared together as a family with Elizabeth ..who will continue to live in our hearts.

And finally, on behalf of Swansea West I’d like to recall how on 14 May 1946 Elizabeth at the tender age of 20 attended A Recital of Poetry in Wigmore Hall with her mother Queen Elizabeth and sister Princess Margaret.

There Dylan Thomas Wales’ greatest poet born in Uplands in my constituency of Swansea West, recited his poem Fern Hill. It’s last verse reads

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea

Diolch yn fawr Elizabeth, Rest in Peace.

God save the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales”