CAROLINE ANSELL MP: The poice are doing a magnificent job

To police with consent an unprecedented lockdown of the country is no small task but two weeks in and public support for the police’s approach remains high.

With a strategy to engage, explain, encourage, enforce, it is testament to their even-handedness that so few people have been fined for flouting the instruction to social distance.

It must also be remembered these officers are bravely putting their health and possibly their lives at risk doing this vital job.

I know some have taken the difficult decision to leave family behind in this lockdown time to continue to serve us.

When I hear of people spitting or coughing at them, I am deeply angry and I have raised priority testing with the Home Office.

If you chance to see officers on one of the very limited times you are out – and at a safe distance! - please join me in thanking them personally.

Public service was personified on Sunday in the Queen as our head of state and our rock in a crisis, and I was very moved by her address to the nation and Commonwealth earlier this week.

In her very own quiet and determined way, she was pitch perfect when she spoke so movingly of these challenging times and thanked the NHS, other key workers and the public for all they are doing.

I was particularly struck by the mention of her first ever radio broadcast in 1940 when she spoke to children who had been evacuated from their homes to avoid bombing during the Second World War.

When she said, “Today, once again, many will feel a painful sense of separation from their loved ones. But now, as then, we know, deep down, that it is the right thing to do,” I think she perfectly encapsulated that sense of duty and, but also sadness that many millions of people – apart from their loved ones - were feeling as they watched.

She also spoke of remaining united to overcome this terrible disease and talked of our “attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling”.

I don’t think these strengths have ever left us.

Sometimes they may lie dormant, but at times like these they come again.

It was nice to be reminded of those strengths by someone so respected and loved.