Abandoned lamb cutlets, a race to vote and meeting with the PM

“Let me have a look at it,” said the Fermanagh-south Tyrone MP as the rickety lift finally arrived at the floor of the Ulster Unionist’s office. “I’ll give him a ring later, I have a few things to do first.” Since winning the Westminster seat from Sinn Fein’s Michelle Gildernew in May, Mr. Elliott’s schedule has never been as busy nor the commute to work as long. It usually takes him six hours to get from Ballinamallard to The Palace of Westminster providing there has been no delays.

The new office makes a change from Stormont and Fermanagh District Council where he served as an MLA and councillor. Westminster, sometimes referred to as the Mother of all Parliaments, with its 100 staircases, more than 1,000 rooms and three miles of passages is brimming with history. Built on the site of William the Conqueror’s first palace, it is situated alongside the River Thames and is a mixture of courtyards, buildings and passageways. It has its own gymnasium, of which Mr. Elliott is not a member, though Mr. Kinahan is, a hair salon and a shooting range. Purple ribbons attached to the coat-hangers in the members’ cloakroom allow MPs to hang up their swords as well as their coats, though Mr. Elliott does not own a sword.

“I can hear Big Ben at my desk,” he told The Impartial Reporter inside his small office, adding that he sometimes rings his children Adam and Chloe so they can hear the bell ringing inside The Elizabeth Tower. Above his desk are photographs of his children helping him on the farm. Shovelling silage and feeding cows is a world away from his new life surrounded by grand neo-Gothic architecture, twentieth century art, pomp and ceremony and statues of former prime ministers, such as Winston Churchill. The Churchill statue sits next to one of Margaret Thatcher and overlooks the entrance to the chamber and Conservative MPs touch his feet on the way to the House of Commons in some sort of ritual.

Mr. Elliott spends several days a week in London and is currently staying at a hotel. He has lost weight as a result of his demanding schedule and regularly does not make enough time to eat. “I’ll have a yoghurt later,” he told his sister Thelma who lives in the South of England and occasionally assists him in the office. “I have to go on here, I have a meeting with Reg [Empey] now.” When he isn’t going through correspondence from constituents, including from many people “who maybe did not vote for me” he is leafing through policy documents, briefing papers and notes for debating in the House of Commons. He has a never-ending list of things to do, people to meet, phone calls to make and e-mails to reply to. Preparation is key for Mr. Elliott, particularly ahead of important discussions and debates both inside and outside the chamber. As he spoke to this newspaper, he was preparing for Prime Minister’s Questions while fielding calls from the UUP’s office in Belfast and party leader Mike Nesbitt about the political deadlock at Stormont and a potential meeting with Secretary of State Theresa Villiers which he would have to participate in back in Belfast.

There was also the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee to think about. Kenny Donaldson of South East Fermanagh Foundation, and Aileen Quinton, whose mother was killed in the Enniskillen bombing, were over to call on the Government to seek compensation for victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA terror attacks. Mr. Kinahan, a member of the committee, listened to the testimonies while Mr. Elliott stood at the back of the room, leaving a bit later to take another phone call as it looked more and more likely that Stormont was heading for collapse.

It appeared that the situation all hinged on how Prime Minister David Cameron would react. The previous day, Mr. Kinahan had bumped into Mr. Cameron on the stairs and requested a meeting to discuss “some issues”. Mr. Cameron acknowledged the request, asked if Mr. Elliott would be there also, and rushed off back to Downing Street. “That’s how you do things here. Tom and I can talk to these people face to face. That’s how you get things done,” said Mr. Kinahan.

While he and Mr. Elliott finally grabbed something to eat at a restaurant in the House of Lords much later, the Division bell which tells MPs when they have to vote rang out. The two men jumped up and had eight minutes to scurry into the chamber to vote on a finance bill. “Will we make it?” asked Mr. Kinahan. “If we run,” replied Mr. Elliott, leaving behind his plate of lamb cutlets. During a vote, MPs, such as Mr. Elliott, have to stand up for yes or no and if there is still no clear decision then they have to go to one side of the room for aye and one side for nay. They queue up and a clerk uses a pen and paper to count them one by one rather than process the information electronically.

After the vote, Mr. Elliott talked to other MPs on the terrace, including Armagh born Labour MP Conor McGinn and the Democratic Unionist’s Gavin Robinson. Former Fermanagh-south Tyrone MP Ken Maginnis stopped by to say hello.

Despite there being 650 MPs, the chamber only has 427 of its famous green seats meaning there is often standing room only. Mr. Elliott had to visit the chamber at 8am to place a ‘prayer card’ on the seat for both him and Mr. Kinahan as a way of securing their places. Both men then had to be in the chamber for the start of that day’s sitting for prayers, a ritual that has been going for over four centuries. Prayers last for three minutes in which MPs have to face the wall for the duration.

As he prepared for Prime Minister’s Questions on the terrace of Westminster later, Mr. Elliott received a phone call from Mr. Cameron’s private secretary informing him that the prime minister would be free to meet with him and Mr. Kinahan later that day.

While going through e-mails and making phone calls, including one to the former SNP leader, Mr. Elliott also had to prepare for a debate to mark the fact that The Queen had just become the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

Ahead of Prime Minister’s Questions, Speaker of the House John Bercow, as tradition, was walked into the chamber by men dressed in medieval style clothes, including one carrying a Mace. “Strangers take off your hats,” he shouted, while police sniffer dogs searched doorways, corridors, under chairs and book shelves ahead of the arrival of the prime minister.

Inside the chamber, which is a lot smaller than it appears on television and unbearably warm, members of the public took their seats behind a glass screen erected after protesters threw condoms full of purple flour at former Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004. There was something theatrical about the debate. Mr. Cameron would be thrown a question and would quickly make a note on the back of a piece of paper or highlight a paragraph from the notes he had with him then jump up to answer it. There was a lot of jeering and finger pointing from his opponents and cheering and backslapping, metaphorically, from his Conservative colleagues. Nigel Dodds of the Democratic Unionist Party told the prime minister that Northern Ireland had “gone beyond the tipping point” over the devolution problems. Mr. Cameron appealed to all parties to “sort out” the issues. Due to time restraints, Mr. Elliott was not called to ask a question as he had hoped, though an hour later he sat with Mr. Cameron in a meeting that had been arranged on the stairs the day before.

Afterwards, Mr. Elliott was back in his office, adding more engagements to his diary and preparing for a debate the next day on rural broadband and the budget.

“Being in Westminster is not pointless. Taking part in discussions in the chamber, outside the chamber and talking to other parties such as Labour, the SNP and the Conservatives is very important. It is about making those connections, getting your point across and speaking up for the people of Fermanagh-south Tyrone and representing them,” said Mr. Elliott.