Alan Mak

I thank my hon. Friend for his very positive intervention and for his work as an officer of the British-American Parliamentary Group. I am proud to serve on its executive. The Minister will have heard his request, which I certainly agree with. I agree that today’s anniversary is an opportunity to reaffirm our relationship with the United States and our wider faith in democracy and decency. The terrorists sought not only to murder innocent people on 9/11, but to destroy open societies, the relationships my hon. Friend talks about and the values that sustain them. They failed. The response to hatred was courage. The response to destruction was rescue and rebuilding. The response to human lives being lost is a determination to keep speaking their names. Remembrance is not passive. Instead, it requires active choices: to teach, to preserve and to tell the stories of individuals, rather than allowing them to disappear into history. Those who remember that morning must now pass on its story to those who do not. We owe it to the people who were murdered, including the 67 British victims; we owe it to families such as Sally’s, who have carried their loss for a quarter of a century; and we owe it to future generations, who must understand both the hatred displayed that day and the courage that came in response. Inscribed in the 9/11 museum’s memorial hall are words from Virgil’s “Aeneid” “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” Inspired by Virgil’s poetry, we must ensure the victims of history’s deadliest terrorist attack are never lost to time. That is a responsibility carried by each generation, including ours, and it is one that we must always honour.