Hearing the news yesterday that Oscar had passed away was like a bolt out of the blue. As someone who came into the Assembly at the same time that Oscar did in 2007, I believe our political journeys certainly have been intertwined ever since. Having been the leader for seven years of the period that we were together in the Assembly, the comments that Adam Price talked of him being a free spirit politically was something that used to always send me somewhat twitchy in the Chamber, because very often I'd be sitting in front of him, and you'd always know when Oscar was going off on one when he said, 'What it is—', and then all of a sudden, for three or four minutes, we would get Oscar's political philosophy, which invariably was embedded in his passion and commitment to improve people's lives.

Oscar, like myself, could massacre the English language—let's be realistic about that—and I'm as guilty as anyone who does that to the English language. But what Oscar had in bucketloads was a passion and a commitment to public service. He believed in improving people's lives, he believed in using his own experiences through life, as we've heard in the testimony today from other Members, from partition in India right the way through to running businesses, to supporting people in their faith and in their hour of need, and trying to bridge the divide between political groups and religious groups. Oscar was the epitome of a good, decent public servant. 

I'd hazard a guess that—hopefully, when we get back—social distancing might have been a challenge for Oscar, because he was one of those people who really did want to put his arms around you in a positive way, whether you were down and you needed an uplift, or whether it was just a sort of genuine emotion for something you had done. I really, really do feel for both Natasha and Firdaus today, and for the coming days. To lose someone so special and so integral to your family is a bitter, bitter blow. But what I passionately hope is that, in the coming days, weeks and months, the sunshine of the many happy and pleasant memories that you will have of him will comfort you in those dark hours, because, like us as Members, we too will take great comfort from being able to say we were friends, colleagues and fellow participants in the Assembly of Mohammad Asghar. And I regard it as being a great pleasure and a privilege to have served my time in the Assembly and been able to call Mohammad Asghar not just a political colleague, but a friend.