Angela Rayner has revealed the message written on a note she was passed in the House of Commons on the day the Queen died.

The MP and deputy leader of the Labour Party - who represents Ashton, Droylsden and Failsworth in Parliament - was sat next to leader Sir Keir Starmer as he was giving his response to the government's statement on the cost of living crisis on 8 September.

She was then handed a note before Speaker Lindsay Hoyle interrupted proceedings, after Buckingham Palace had announced Her Majesty had been placed under medical supervision at Balmoral Castle, where she was “comfortable”.

Queen Elizabeth II’s death at the age of 96 was announced later that day, shortly after 6.30pm. 

'You feel the gravity of it' 

Speaking in a wide-ranging interview on The News Agents podcast, Ms Rayner provided insight into the contents of the note and how she tried to communicate the news to Starmer without interrupting him in front of television cameras.

“The note was the Queen was unwell and Keir needs to leave the chamber as soon as possible to be briefed,” she told presenters Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall.

“I read between the lines on that because you don’t get a note saying the Queen is unwell if she’s got a bit of a cough or a cold. I thought at the time that it was very serious.

“Before that news, that [debate] was the most important news of the day, the cost of living crisis, the situation, it was a big moment for Parliament anyway for what we were discussing. So to get a note saying he needs to leave the chamber, I felt the gravity of it.”

The MP continued: “I was trying to get the note to him [Sir Keir Starmer] without being too dramatic but also not knowing exactly what was going on but that I needed to get him out of the chamber.

“I had kept the note and was trying to think how I was going to get it to Keir without totally ruining what he’s trying to say. If someone is trying to give you information when you’re actually in the middle of speaking, it is the most distracting thing so I was kind of waiting for my opportunity to do it.

“Then I looked over at the Speaker [Lindsay Hoyle] and he was giving me the nod of this is actually quite urgent, i.e. don’t wait for your opportunity, so I kind of knew that it was quite an important moment.”

‘This is going to change everything’

MP Rayner also described two thoughts which were going through her head at the time as she recalled the harrowing moment of learning of the late monarch’s ill health.

“We’d all kind of known that the Queen was getting very frail and there had been conversations in the past about what would happen - in the newsrooms it’s the same,” she said.

“I’ve been on the Privy Council for just over a year so I’d received information about potential situations like that.

“My family are big royalists, my children are named James and Charles. The first thought that went through my mind was a personal thought of ‘oh my god this is going to change everything’.

“The second thought was Keir [Starmer] was in full flow on a topic that paled into insignificance of what this news was that we were getting.”

Upon leaving the Commons, Ms Rayner said she and Sir Keir Starmer were briefed by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who explained the situation that the Queen was unwell and she learned of the Queen’s death “probably around the same time as the media knew” shortly before the news was made public.

The following day, in a special session in the Commons, the Ashton-under-Lyne MP paid a heartfelt tribute to the Queen - saying she "set an example of leadership for women everywhere". 

You can read more tributes and news following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in a dedicated section of our website here.