Malvern Hills Bill [HL]

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

That puts a different light on things.

I support my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester in supporting this private Bill. I also commend the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for explaining his points in detail, as did the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner. I understand the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, made about the difficulties faced in Malvern, but there are two points I would like to make.

First, the Malvern Hills really are of not just local, regional or even national significance but of international significance and importance. In a way, I suspect that, if a private Bill—which after all 140 years ago set up the trust—is to be used, it is being used because the Malvern Hills are so utterly important to our country. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I have served on private Bills in the other place. The Select Committees do a very thorough job and I have no doubt that the Select Committee which your Lordships will appoint to deal with this Bill will do an equally thorough job, and clearly it needs to do precisely that. Let us see what happens, but that is the mechanism we have in front of us and that is why it is such an important issue.

Secondly, I just want to touch for a few moments on why I as a Welshman am interested in the Malvern Hills: after all, we have a few hills of our own in Wales, including in my former constituency and where I live, my valley, Mynydd Maen. They rise to 1,500 feet above sea level—100 feet more than the Malvern Hills. I am not sure they are quite as beautiful as the Malvern Hills and I would not have said that when I was the Member of Parliament for that constituency.

The Malvern Hills are a wonderful part of our scenery in England. It seems to me that we are doing this, as I said, because of their huge significance and importance in our society. I fell in love with the Malverns in the 1960s, and indeed I was there during the last month on two occasions. I always remember the first time I approached those hills from Ross-on-Wye; you go up to Ledbury and see these magnificent Malvern Hills. But to me, they were always associated with my other love, Sir Edward Elgar, our greatest British composer in my view. Some of your Lordships might be—I am, certainly—old enough to remember Ken Russell’s black and white film on the life of Elgar. It opens with a young Elgar riding across the top of the Malvern Hills to the sound of the introduction and allegro. Every time I go, even now, after all these years to the Malvern Hills, that music is in my ears.

Remember that Elgar himself was a Malvern man. He lived for 76 years, and for 55 of those he lived in Malvern. His grave, and those of his wife and daughter, lie in St Wulstan’s Catholic church in the foothills, in Little Malvern. To those of us who love his music, I say that the “Enigma Variations” and the “Dream of Gerontius” were actually written, among other things, when he was within sight of the Malvern Hills. So I think there is an importance of acquainting or associating the work of this great composer and British music with these wonderful hills. That is why it is important to me.

There are all sorts of other reasons why the Malvern Hills are important. I cannot climb them; I walk them, I even ride a car across them—it is only eight miles. Nevertheless, to me, those hills are something so very special that something like this means that they deserve the sort of scrutiny and the sort of attention that a Select Committee of the House of Lords can give them.

I conclude by saying to your Lordships that in 1934, the year that Elgar died, not long before died, he wrote of his cello concerto:

“If ever after I’m dead you hear someone whistling this tune on the Malvern Hills, don’t be alarmed. It’s only me”.