Grand Committee
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
My Lords, it is the usual drill: if there is a vote in the Chamber, a bell will ring and we shall adjourn for a time to allow your Lordships to go and vote. So let us begin.
Lord Etherton (CB)
My Lords, before we start, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the other members of the Select Committee on the Bill: the noble Lords, Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Jamieson, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market. I particularly express gratitude on behalf of the House, as much as the committee, for the extraordinary devotion to the committee’s work on the part of those who supported us, bearing in mind that there were 18 petitions against the Bill and three KCs. They were Chris Salmon Percival, the clerk to the committee; Che Diamond, assistant counsel to the Chair of Committees; Mike Wright, private and hybrid legislation manager; and Kiran Kaur, committee operations officer. They worked well above and beyond their duty.
Holocaust Memorial Bill
Tuesday 4th March 2025
(2 days, 10 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeHolocaust Memorial Bill 2022-23 View all Holocaust Memorial Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 4-I(a) Amendment for Grand Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (3 Mar 2025)
Lord Blencathra
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I am a member of Conservative Friends of Israel and a supporter of its current fight against the new attempts to destroy the Jewish homeland from the river to the sea. I say that because I do not want my opposition to this Bill to be misconstrued.
So why am I opposed to the Bill? It is because it fails in every way to implement the recommendations of the Holocaust Commission. The commission recommended a campus with large amounts of space:
“The Learning Centre should include facilities to host lectures and seminars and to run educational courses and workshops, as well as the opportunity for Holocaust organisations to locate their offices, or set up satellite offices, within the wider physical campus”.
This Adjaye design fails that requirement. The commission recommended a unique British design; Adjaye has given us a cast-off rejected by Canada. The commission said in its first recommendation that
“it is also clear that a memorial on its own is not enough and that there must be somewhere close at hand where people can go to learn more”.
about the Holocaust. “Close at hand” does not necessarily mean shoehorned into the wrong space, which is too small to do justice to the commission’s recommendations but far too large for this little garden.
The commission recommended three possible solutions: the Imperial War Museum site, Potters Field and a site further along Millbank. Indeed, it waxed lyrical about the Imperial War Museum and a plan to build a whole new wing to house the campus on the extensive land around the museum in Lambeth. Victoria Tower Gardens never entered its contemplation because the experts on the commission knew it was entirely inappropriate. Ed Balls claimed that Victoria Tower Gardens was his suggestion, but we have never heard why the Imperial War Museum offer was turned down. Nothing has been produced regarding any comparison of the sites, why they were rejected and why Victoria Tower Gardens was picked on a political whim. I think I know why: politicians in my party took the arrogant view that Victoria Tower Gardens was an easy win, right next to Parliament and run by the Royal Parks, which would buckle to political domination.
In summary, I am opposed to this project because it fails to implement the recommendations of the Holocaust Commission, is grotesquely ugly and is designed by a discredited architect whose previous iterations of this were rejected by Ottawa. It does nothing to properly commemorate the evils of the Holocaust nor the ongoing threat of a new one.
I turn specifically to the cost issue, as in my Amendments 1 and 27. I shall use more temperate language and say this: successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable. There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery that at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable.
“The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed”—
that is not a Lord Blencathra observation but the words from the national Infrastructure and Projects Authority in its latest report of 16 January 2025. That is the third year in a row where the authority has given it its most damning “Red” categorisation.
I cannot blame the present Government for pushing on with this out-of-control shambles. The Government whom I supported were more guilty, because they were told two years ago that the project was unachievable. Did the department do anything to sort out the project definition, the schedule or the budget, which the authority said was not manageable nor resolvable? No, of course not, because it was a big sacred cow—or, to mix metaphors, no one dared to suggest that this emperor had no clothes. Just as Jewish organisations were told, “You’d better back this proposal or there’ll be no Holocaust memorial”, so no one dared to admit that this project in Victoria Tower Gardens was out of control, for fear of being accused of not supporting Holocaust commemoration.
The project was originally costed at under £100 million, and the Government proposed to finance it with at least £25 million in philanthropic funding. There has been no suggestion that the Government would not fund the rest of the project and its operating costs as well. The latest capital cost estimate for HMLC—the Holocaust memorial and learning centre—is £138.8 million without any contingency, which shows a substantial rise in the estimate before contingency of 36% between 2022 and 2023. This estimate was based on the expectation of starting construction before 2025.
The only comments about costs which it has since been possible to extract from MHCLG has been a figure for the total spend to date of £18 million, given by the then Minister, Simon Hoare, to the Commons in May 2024 and a recent estimate of a further £2.1 million spent in the last six months. That would bring the total to £20.1 million. If the figures are correct and comparable, that would represent an acceleration on 2020 to 2024, when only £2.8 million was spent over 22 months.
In July 2022, the National Audit Office delivered a report with a whole battery of criticisms of MHCLG’s performance in preparing, planning and managing the project to date, at a point when £15.1 million had been spent with absolutely no result. In particular, the NAO criticised the management of the project and the provision of data on cost escalation to justify the project costs between 2020 and 2022. The NAO report described at paragraph 23, among the “emerging risks” causing potential cost increases, the promoters’ failure to consider any alternative site or the possible effects of legislative delay, or
“to quantify, or account for … the risks”
that that has created, but there has been little subsequent evidence that this NAO criticism has been heeded by MHCLG.
The NAO was critical of the fact that MHCLG had made no provision for defining the governance of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. It commented that the MHCLG accepted the need for a non-departmental public body but insisted that it would set up a new, dedicated NDPB which, the NAO commented, would mean a minimum of 12 months to pass the requisite legislation—and it wants to set that up 12 months before the thing is due to open.
MHCLG made an insubstantial reply in 2022 to the NAO’s criticisms but its statements since then show that it believes it has responded to those criticisms, even though no change is visible to the world outside the ministry. For instance, MHCLG has never provided any estimate of the inflation that would apply to construction costs based on starting construction in, say, 2026 and starting operations in, say, 2028. The Government have never made any provision for operating costs and have made the likely costs higher by agreeing in 2022 to make all entry to the learning centre free, although visitors will still have to register online.
The operating costs will be high and have so far escalated from £6 million to £8 million per annum, but absolutely no detail has been provided about what the costs will cover. This is particularly important because it is not clear what provision the department has made for the costs of policing and other security measures required for the project if it is built. I also believe that MHCLG is not charging significant or even realistic amounts of civil servant management time to the project, which is either poor accounting or evidence that the project has insufficient governance, or both of those things. It is therefore no surprise that the Infrastructure and Projects Authority has three times now—in 2023, 2024 and 2025—classified the memorial project as undeliverable.
In 2024, the MHCLG created the post of senior responsible officer for the project and gave that officer the power to act within cost overruns with a contingency of £53 million—£53 million as a contingency for a £138 million project, well above the normal 10% to 15%. There has been no explanation for why this contingency was pitched at that figure. The MHCLG budgeting process within the published management and other accounts remains completely untransparent about what the HMLC costs will be, what they are for and who is accountable for them.
Finally, I note that, despite the MHCLG having stated in 2024 that it had suspended work on the project, thus partially justifying the suspension of Sir David Adjaye, it recently—this year—told the Lords Select Committee that its design team is already working on adjustments to the design in relation to the assurances provided to the Select Committee, so that shows that some design cost has continued to be spent.
Here we are today, debating a Bill for a project which the Government’s own top infrastructure authority says, and has said for the last three years in a row, is undeliverable. I say that pushing on with a failed project with no proper cost control is treating Parliament with contempt. We need to know the best estimates for the operating costs and exactly who will be in charge. We will debate the possibility of a new NDPB to run this in Amendment 5, but it is legitimate to ask about the financial sustainability of the entity or entities which will execute and operate the project. A report on that should be laid before Parliament. If we pass the Bill, Parliament is entitled to see the legitimacy of what we have sanctioned.
When the Minister replies, I do not want him to answer my points, I want him to answer the points raised by the Government’s own infrastructure authority. Let him tell us what the Government will do about
“the major issues with project definition, the schedule, the budget, the quality and/or benefits delivery, which do not appear to be manageable or resolvable”.
Will he do as it has asked and rescope the whole project and reassess its overall viability?
Finally, I apologise to colleagues for speaking at length, as I probably will on some other amendments also. This is partly a reaction to the various gagging attempts we faced when giving evidence to the Commons and Lords Select Committees, where every other week we seemed to be copied in to a letter from those lawyers, Pinsent Masons, telling the committees that they could not ask this or that question and that they had to limit their inquiries. I thought it was appallingly arrogant to attempt to tie Select Committee hands in that way. Well, our hands will not be tied and we will not be gagged in these debates, except by our own rules of order and procedure. I beg to move.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, I shall not mimic my noble friend Lord Blencathra, who has spoken extremely well and raised a great many issues. I did not petition the Government, although I think I signed a couple of petitions, but I happen to know the area very well, not least because my four month-old puppy, who noble Lords would all adore, goes there for exercise every morning, but that is not a particularly good reason for stopping the progress. I am opposed to the Bill, not opposed to a memorial. I am opposed to putting a learning centre in such a small area. It would destroy the park—there is no question of that.
To turn to the amendment, we can all hear from what my noble friend Lord Blencathra said that nobody really knows how much this will cost. I have seen the scope of the archaeologist who has looked at the diggings by the Thames, and it is almost certain that this area will flood. I am not an archaeologist, so I have not got a clue. I have never dug a big pit next to the Thames, but it is almost certain that this will flood. It is a bonkers thing to do—absolutely mad—and that is why I absolutely support my noble friend Lord Blencathra in this. It is the wrong place to put a large building such as this. It will, furthermore, cost a great deal more than £138.8 million, as I think we all know, even including a 15% contingency, so I support this amendment.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Robathan, in their attempt to bring some fiscal discipline to this project. Not only has the cost escalated beyond the original estimates without even a spade in the ground; the figures that are available are old. No allowance for inflation has been made. The contingency is far higher than usual. Private funds have not been identified publicly and there is no management control, as pointed out by the National Audit Office.
I am struck by the contrast with the planned expenditure on a fitting memorial to our late Queen, together with a space for pause and reflection, which is reportedly to be sited in St James’s Park. The construction cost is £46 million excluding VAT—including a replacement of the Blue Bridge in the park—and it is going to be ready in 2026. If such fiscal restraint is good enough for our late Queen, surely something has gone adrift in the financial plans for the memorial.
Before the Select Committee on the memorial a few weeks ago, the petitioners asked that the Government should present, for the approval of Parliament, a report on the capital and operating costs of the project, as well as the financial sustainability of the entity that will execute the project and operate it before presenting any new or amended proposal for planning permission. This has not been taken up but it should be.
Originally, the government grant towards this project was £50 million. That was soon raised to £75 million, with £25 million to be raised privately when the cost was estimated some years ago at £100 million. Now, that has nearly doubled. We can assume only that the Government will pick up the entire bill. The latest estimate, made a couple of years ago, is £138 million without contingency and £191 million with contingency. There is no information about who will do the building—indeed, whether there are any builders willing to do it, given the security risks.
There are gaps in our financial knowledge. The Commons Select Committee commented on this, saying:
“We are particularly concerned about the costs around security of a Memorial and Learning Centre, which would need to be taken into account. Security is likely to be required around the clock, and this is, as yet, an unknown cost. Security is likely to become an expensive additional cost, which we urge the Government not to overlook”.
Construction costs are bound to rise because this is an historical site very close to the river. It oozes underfoot when you walk through it in the rain and it squelches. It is a fair bet that obstacles relating to water and archaeological finds will emerge if digging ever starts.
About £20 million has been spent so far, I believe, with nothing to show for it; nor has inflation been accounted for. A specific charity is fundraising for the private element but we have heard nothing about its success. Can the Minister tell us how the funding has now been settled, including how much has been raised privately and from where?
In 2022, as we heard, the NAO delivered a report that was highly critical of the department’s performance. It was particularly anxious about management. It noted the failure to consider an alternative site. All this got a complacent response from the department that all was well, with no changes in management and no transparency. Operating costs are also a mystery. The Government have pledged free entry to the learning centre—provided, of course, that visitors book in advance online. Operating costs so far are estimated to have risen to £8 million a year and the cost of security is a big unknown. The Government had hoped to make some money from the learning centre by opening it for conferences, even in the evening, but it would be a most unattractive site: open to the elements; open to risks of various sorts; and calling for expenditure to run it out of hours, not to mention disturbance to the neighbours.
Can the Minister tell us about the operating costs and what plans there are to commercialise the space? The Infrastructure and Projects Authority has three times rated the project as “red” and “undeliverable”—most recently, just a few weeks ago—in the same bracket as HS2. The Minister believes that this is because planning permission has not been granted, but that is mistaken because the authority has reported three times in three years on this and, during one year of that, there was planning permission before it was quashed. Anyway, if not having planning permission was the important factor, why is HS2 regarded as “red” and “undeliverable”? This is a quasi-HS2 project.
An important recommendation in the Prime Minister’s report in 2015 on remembering the Holocaust was that there should be an endowment fund. This was to be used to
“support Holocaust education around the country for generations to come”,
to support
“local projects and travelling exhibitions”,
and to ensure that the learning centre would be
“at the heart of a truly national network of activity”.
The report said:
“In administering the endowment fund, the Learning Centre’s trustees would be expected to ensure maximum value for money. This would include requiring organisations to work together more collaboratively across the network, removing duplication and enhancing the impact of the whole sector”.
Have the Government made an allowance for this in their cost calculation, and if not, why not?
The Commons Select Committee on the Bill commented:
“It seems to us that the true cost of this project has not been established. We note that it is not unusual for the costs of major projects to increase with time, due to unforeseen building issues, the ambition of the project, and increases in inflation. The longer that building works go on, the more expensive this project will become. On this basis, we urge the Government to consider how ongoing costs are likely to be paid for and whether it offers appropriate use of public money”,
which it clearly does not. This amendment seeks to cap the costs to force proper management of the project and bring it into a reasonable financial framework. It also proposes a normal contingency fee rather than an extraordinary one.
This Government pride themselves on financial management, and now is their chance to demonstrate that. If the Government will not accept this amendment, will they meet the signatories to the amendment and show transparency about the cost calculations and where they are going?
Viscount Eccles (Con)
My Lords, I have a clause stand part Motion in this group. I am a neighbour of Victoria Tower Gardens, I live with my wife in Smith Square and I was a petitioner to the House of Lords Committee.
After what my noble friend Lord Blencathra told us, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I will try to be short. My purpose is, and always has been, just to set out the contrast between what was put on the tin in January 2015 and what is on the table now. As my noble friend Lord Blencathra said, they are very different, and I think it will help the Committee if they can be clear about what the differences are.
In January 2015, my noble friend Lord Cameron said:
“Today—with the full support of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition—I am accepting the recommendations of the … Commission”.
You could not be clearer than that, and later, in his Statement in the House of Commons, he reiterated that. I suppose—because I do not think we have ever been told—that after 10 years, nine and a half of which, of course, were under the previous Administration, that undertaking is still in existence, so we are going to carry out the recommendations of the commission.
There were five recommendations from the commission, and the first was that there should be a “striking memorial”. Its very first qualification of that was that it should be
“a place where people can pay their respects, contemplate … and offer prayers”.
I rather doubt that what is on the table now—which I gather as best I can from Clause 1 and the Explanatory Memorandum—is a suitable place for paying respect, contemplating and praying. As I understand it, the people visiting will be expected to move through in something like half an hour.
You can make an argument, which I will later, that this is not a suitable memorial. Remembering people is a private affair. The Holocaust was 6 million Jewish tragedies. It is not to say that this is, as we would expect, a London-based conventional memorial. It is something different. In its report, the commission in no way indicated that the memorial would be manned or that there would be interactivity at the memorial. It is clearly set out as a conventional memorial, in a long paragraph.
The second recommendation, about the learning centre, is much longer. It has a huge text. It is clear that the commission did not expect that to be done in five minutes. It did not see this as part of the memorial. There was mention of a campus. As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, it is not the same thing but a completely different activity. Yes, the commission said that it should be close to the memorial, but that closeness depends on where you choose to put the memorial. As the noble Baroness said, the commission proposed three big sites and on all of them it would not have been difficult to put the learning centre and build it up over the years as a campus. It also said that the money for that should be raised immediately.
The third recommendation was for an endowment fund. We all know that endowment funds are not easy. They are very difficult things. It is clear that the commission saw the fund as being for, as the noble Baroness said, the development of the learning centre. The fourth recommendation was that records should be brought up to date. Out of the £20 million that has been spent, a certain proportion has been spent on records of “survivors and liberators”, to use the commission’s words. However, we do not know what has been collected and I cannot see why we have not been able to see some of that work. It is not dependent on the construction of David Adjaye’s building in Victoria Tower Gardens.
Finally, in two places—in Mr Davis’s summary and in the commission’s summary—it is said that an immediate executive independent body should be formed. There was an effort to start one by the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister—who, we must remember, was there for only some 18 months after his January statements before he resigned. Clearly, when Sir Peter Bazalgette was appointed to the foundation, it was in mind that it would be executive. He secured the Victoria Tower Gardens position and held an exhibition—and showed us the result. However, in April 2018, quite a long time after the Prime Minister, my noble friend Lord Cameron, had made way for my noble friend Lady May, he resigned. We do not know why he resigned, or why the body then formed under my noble friend Lord Pickles was made advisory. One can speculate but it has never been explained why there was a change from the proposal of an executive body to one for an advisory body. The fact is that nobody is accountable for managing this project.
There is such a serious difference between what was on the tin in 2015 and what is in front of us now that it needs to be thought about again. It seems to me that the new Government, who have been looking at this whole issue as accountable only for the past seven months, are in a very good place to review it and, if it requires change, to make those changes.
Lord Finkelstein (Con)
My Lords, I should say at the beginning that I am a patron of the Wiener Holocaust Library—my grandfather’s Holocaust library—that I was a member of David Cameron’s Holocaust Commission and that I take a long-standing interest in this as the son of a Holocaust survivor. Of course, not all Holocaust survivors agree about this memorial, but my mother certainly did, as did Ben Helfgott, who sat on the commission with me. Indeed, he regarded the issue of the location as central.
Although this is an amendment about costs, we have heard a number of what amount to Second Reading speeches, so I hope I can be indulged in responding to some of those points a little. Although the noble Viscount is correct that David Cameron resigned, I do not think that he resigned because he appointed my noble friend Lord Pickles to look after the Holocaust memorial. I would just say that it is possible to make an argument against any kind of construction of anything, anywhere. I think that probably the preponderance of people who have attended today have done so in order to be against it, because we tend to get very annoyed when we see points against something and we want to stop it happening.
Every single point that I have heard was also made against the erection of Nelson’s column. They did not have the money. The public subscriptions had fallen short of how much it would cost. The cost ballooned. It was too high. It had to be made shorter. People were not sure about the design and lots of people were not sure about Nelson either. They were furious that the Tsar had contributed. The economic strain was regarded as too great. These are points that are made about the construction of anything when it is first proposed and are later found to be entirely irrelevant to the impact that it will have.
This Holocaust memorial is a memorial to everything we fought the war for and that the young people who liberated Belsen liberated Belsen for. It is a reminder of why we have a Parliament and why we have a parliamentary democracy and therefore it is relevant that it be right next door to Parliament. There is not a single place you could ever put anything that does not disrupt anyone. If we put it somewhere where no one goes, we would have a committee full of people saying, “We cannot believe you are putting this thing in the middle of nowhere”. We have put it in the middle of somewhere where people might actually visit it, and people are worried that too many people will come to it. If we put it somewhere else, people will worry that no one will come to it. There is an argument against doing anything, ever. If we do not do this, we absolutely after 10 years will not have a Holocaust memorial. It was the dearest wish of Ben Helfgott and my mother also supported it. I am going to robustly support it because of that.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lord, I am most grateful to noble Lords. Again, I would appreciate a degree of latitude. First, coming to the point that was made with regard to the advisory nature, it was always an advisory committee. When Bazalgette resigned to go on to other artistic projects, I was appointed, along with Ed Balls, as a co-chair to demonstrate the political unity of putting this together.
I was disturbed by what my noble friend Lord Blencathra —my dear friend—said. He seemed to be almost on the defensive to suggest that if you are opposed to this, somehow you are opposed to Jewish people or opposed to Israel. Nobody thinks that and no one has a greater, more distinguished record in their support of Jewish people than my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I want to make that absolutely clear.
I admire my noble friend Lord Blencathra. He was an amazing Chief Whip when we were in opposition, as indeed my noble friend opposite was an amazing Whip. He taught me many things, one of which was the kind of amendment to put down to embarrass the Government, to hold them down and to get them to say various things. He did it with great style.
But there is something that we need to be clear about. We saw a newspaper article yesterday. I do not blame the reporter—they are as good as the information they are given. I should be grateful if, when the Minister comes to reply, he can confirm that in all the briefings that he received, none suggested that this memorial would be about the glorification of the British Empire or the trivialisation of the Holocaust, or that the Holocaust would be diluted by references to other genocides.
A lot of the amendments before us might best be described as about planning. There is always a balance in planning. There is no absolute, and that is why we have such an elaborate system of planning to test the damages and balances. We are almost trying to set ourselves up as a planning authority to second-guess. This Committee, distinguished as it is, is not in a good position to do that because supporters and objectors do not have the same rights as they would have in a planning application, committee or appeal.
There is also an element in this of marking our own homework. If this went through a planning committee now—there is no criticism of anybody here—the fact that people who are expressing views live close by would be taken into account. If they were on a planning committee, they would have to recuse themselves. They would not be able to speak or vote. We cannot have a situation in this country where it is one rule for their Lordships and another rule for the rest of the country.
Lord Pickles (Con)
Can I just finish this point? I am not criticising. It is within the rules. Nobody is doing anything wrong. But it does not look terribly good from the outside.
We do not like the design. We have become almost like Queen Anne. We kick over a stool and say, “Build it like that”. This design won an international competition among top international architects. Frankly, saying it looked like something that somebody in Canada objected to is wrong. That is the style of the architect, Ron Arad. It would be a bit like saying to Picasso, when he was going through his blue period, “That’s enough, Pablo. Too much blue.” That is the nature of Ron Arad’s work.
The trust that had been put together to raise the sums of money cannot start until we have proper planning permission. We cannot gather lots of money, although Sir Gerald Ronson is confident that we can do it. The state of the park is a disgrace. We have allowed it to get into such a situation.
Lord Pickles (Con)
Just give me one moment and then I will bring you in. This will improve the park. It will improve the park’s access for the disabled, for young people and for four month-old puppies.
Lord Robathan (Con)
If we are talking about planning permission, the whole point about this design was it was turned down flat by Westminster City Council—by both Labour and Conservative councillors.
Lord Pickles (Con)
That is why we have a planning system. When I was a Planning Minister, we often had situations where gaming was played.
Lord Pickles (Con)
Allow me to allow me to develop the point. We always have an independent inspector to look at these things. If the Secretary of State disagrees with the independent inspector, then there is generally a row. But we accepted the report.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
I appreciate that my noble friend had a lot to do with planning when he was a Minister. The point is that this is not planning. This is to try and overturn a legal dedication of this park to being a park. That is what it is about.
Lord Pickles (Con)
With the greatest respect, my noble friend needs to look more carefully at what is being asked here. It is second-guessing the planning.
In terms of the size, it is the size of the Berlin Holocaust underground site. It is the size of the one in Jasenovac. It is the size of the large temporary exhibition in America. It is not particularly small art; it is adequate for its size. It will not have any exhibits. It will all be digital. That does seem reasonable. On the location, more than 50 different sites were looked at.
I apologise for going on for so long; I hope that I will have an opportunity to speak in further debates.
Lord Lisvane (CB)
My Lords, I cannot contribute with the degree of fluency and authority of those noble Lords who have spoken so far, but I have a question for the Minister and an observation.
The question stems from the Explanatory Notes. Years ago, I had the function in another place of looking at Explanatory Notes in draft—not taking responsibility for their contents but ensuring that they were not used by the Government of the day for the purposes of advocacy. I looked at these Explanatory Notes, and they were pretty much typical of the breed: they are certainly notes but they are by no means explanatory. Where I hoped that I would have their assistance was on Clause 1(3) of the Bill, which states:
“For the purposes of subsection (1)(a), ‘construction’ includes erection, extension, alteration and re-erection”.
I would dearly like to see the instructions that counsel was given before it drafted that particular provision. It sounds as though the memorial is going to be mobile, which I am sure is not the intention.
If I can move on to the observation, at the north end of the Victoria Tower Gardens is the education centre; I have a particular reason for remembering this because, as a corporate officer, I was the applicant for the planning permission when it was originally given in 2015. As noble Lords will know, the planning consent ran out on 22 August last year; it was renewed or extended to 2030. When that runs out—or in anticipation of it running out—there will be substantial works, but I have not seen any reference to those in any of the supporting papers that the Committee has before it today. There will be traffic of substantial character, such as heavy lorries moving kit to and fro. If that is going to happen, as is possible, as the memorial and learning centre is in the later stages of construction, whatever difficulties of security, access and safety that that is going to pose will be exacerbated by doing all this to the education centre at the same time.
I am not sure whether my observation should find a home in our discussion of security or in our discussion of planning, but it seems to me that the Clause 1 stand part debate is a pretty good place to put it to begin with. I would be very grateful for the Minister’s reaction to that simultaneity of works and to the additional element of complication and cost that is no doubt to be introduced.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, I was not proposing to speak on this group, but I have been moved to do so by the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Finkelstein and Lord Pickles. As I do so, I make clear my gratitude to them and to everybody else who has been determined that there should be a memorial and a memorial learning centre. I absolutely applaud that, for reasons I explained in another debate in the Chamber. However, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, that I was rather shocked by what I hope he will forgive me for describing as his grandiose lecture creating an analogy with Nelson’s column. First, I remind him—I regret having to remind him, because he has an extraordinary family history, of which we are all aware, and we are hugely grateful for the contribution that his family have made to the remembrance of what happened to my and many other people’s families and ancestors—that Nelson’s column was a memorial to a man who had lived and not to 6 million people who had died. It is a very different proposition.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)
My Lords, I have always felt that this is a most appropriate Room in which to have this debate—it tells you everything. Also, in Prayers today, there were several mentions of Jacob; those of you who were there may remember.
I am afraid that I have a different viewpoint. I will not talk about anything to do with construction whatever, although some of your Lordships know that I know quite a lot about it.
I am the second generation born in this country after the pogrom which happened in 1880, from which my great-grandmother managed to escape. She got to this country and some of our relatives went to New York. What I wanted to say was that when one thinks about the pogroms then, and I take my own family, we finished up here. This country allowed us to be free and to live; it is a great country and we are proud to be part of it. But I also know that some of my family did not get out and finished up in Auschwitz. I am not going to go into what has been happening for the last few thousand years; we could spend years on that.
I was approached early on by friends in both Houses, and the comment which was made to me—I see the Father of the other place back there; we talked about this years ago—is that there are nearly 3,000 people in the Parliament complex, and they love this park for what it is and how they enjoy it. At that stage, it was said to me, “Would you be prepared to get involved, because the problem is that there are many in both Houses who actually are nervous, afraid and very worried that if they come out publicly to state that they are not happy with this park being used for that purpose, they will be considered anti-Semitic”. So, a dear friend and I, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, of all people—she is now facing me—talked about the pros and cons. I thought I knew what I believed in, and what I managed to achieve and not achieve, and the mistakes—all the usual things all of us around this table have made—but she knew the law. I did not know the law.
As a result, there was a major article in the Times—your Lordships can look it up if you want. It was supported by many people on the basis that I said that there were at least four memorials in this country—in fact, in the London area. If you go into Hyde Park, you will see one there, and the best and most important one of the lot is in the Imperial War Museum.
I remember when our late head rang me up, the marshal—sadly, he has now died—and he said, “Jeffrey, can I have your advice? Could you come along and have a chat?” I said, “Yes”. He said, “I’m seriously thinking that I would like to have built in the Imperial War Museum a whole part dedicated to what happened”. If any of your Lordships have not been there and seen how it is been done, you should go. It was supported by a very large number of the Jewish population, of course, and what is even more splendid is that many people who are not Jewish supported it. So you have that.
Also, from the way I am built, you cannot destroy ideas—they are impossible to destroy. You do not need things such as memorials to think about this. You can go out in the morning and look up in the trees and think about it yourself. I have never felt you can destroy it. I have to tell your Lordships, speaking personally, that I love that park.
I come back to the concern about danger, and taking into account anti-Semitism, which has got even worse. In the days to come, as I have said many times before, we could live to regret it if there is any form of memorial in that park; in practice, that is very dangerous. With my other hat on, I am very involved in what happens on the military side on terrorism and so forth. It is from both sides of the park. If you have 500 children, shall we say, when the whole thing is built and the schools come along, and we say, “Right, you can come there”, and there are kids from all over the world, you only have to get somebody to drop a satchel and blow the bloody thing to smithereens. But more importantly, for those noble Lords who know, we have only to look outside at the protection we have here; somebody could come along and fire something into that area. We could therefore live to regret totally what danger there could be.
I strongly advocate that we have these wonderful memorials, but when you speak to people in Newcastle and so forth, they are not even aware of or interested in it. During the war, as we know, and even earlier in 1938 or 1939, the Government here knew that there were problems. They knew what was happening in Poland and other areas. It all got back, but the key was: “We are willing; this is a fight for world survival”. I hope the Committee does not mind me saying that I like the idea that we have that lovely park, which people enjoy. In the morning, there are young families with their children and babies wandering along there and enjoying it. I would like it left like that.
Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)
My Lords, I rise to express my great concern, because I am a strong supporter of a memorial and a learning centre. But I am also pretty clear that if the plans continue on their present course—as it is now nine years since this started on its way—then God knows how many more years may be involved, with all the controversy and concerns about the proposals for the learning centre. The original proposal was for it just to be a memorial and then, as we know, a learning centre was added to it. Since then, other opportunities have come up of various Jewish institutions and facilities that might be suitable. Meanwhile, the learning centre itself has shrunk, because of the obvious problems of cost involved.
Perhaps my only justification for getting to my feet at all is that I know a little about what is going on in the construction industry in London at present. I would be interested to know what quotations there are around for building this learning centre. What I know is that with events elsewhere—Gaza and other things certainly have not helped—any company invited to undertake this is going to look at a very different scale of figures from what it might have looked at a year or two ago.
I declare my interests as in the register; I am involved in quite a major construction activity in London at present, and I know something about the problems that the industry is in. It is not in good shape, and I think this will be very difficult. If you can get somebody to quote who thinks it will be all right on the night, the problems could then emerge in trying to stick to those figures and seeing what sort of money might be involved. That is why I support the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who has spelt it out. It will not be that figure; there is no chance of anything being built for remotely near that.
As I say, I speak from some personal experience, having seen what is happening to quotations being put in for works in London at present. I admire the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, very much and his objective, which has my full support, is to have a good memorial and a good learning centre. But let us have a decent-sized learning centre, and one that can be built without all sorts of reservations about whether it can be done.
One of the comments made was that we need to get on with this or the few remaining Holocaust survivors will not be around to see it opened. How many have died in the last nine years while we have been trying to put this project forward? It is embarrassing for both Governments. My Government put it forward; the Labour Government felt the duty to pick it up again. It is not right to offer a bet on this, but it is almost impossible to see this project going ahead as it is at the moment. If we could start again on the learning centre, there are opportunities which could be quickly achieved without too much controversy. We could then get our memorial and learning centre achieving both the objectives that we all want to see.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I did not declare my interests. I also reference that I am a trustee of the fundraising committee. Given the enthusiasm, I shall certainly be coming round with my tin for a collection fairly soon.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I rise in support of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, not because I have any involvement—I have no Jewish blood in me—but because we are looking at the project through rose-tinted spectacles, as the noble Lord, Lord King, has just said. I have in the last two or three years been personally involved in two significant big construction projects. The rate of inflation in the building industry has been going through the roof. The thing that he touched on will undoubtedly make this even more difficult to budget and then to carry through on budget.
On top of that, whatever it will ultimately cost depends upon the detailed design. It is clearly a difficult site, as the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, said. That is why the contingencies are on the high side, and what are we faced with from the Government? We do not have any realistic figures giving any worthwhile indication of the order of magnitude of the bill that we are likely to be paying at the end of this process. It is not a matter of arguing about the detail of the morality, ethics or desirability of the project. Anyone embarking on a big project of this kind, which will incur very substantial expenditure, particularly public expenditure, ought to have a proper budget in front of them so that they can then take an informed decision on where they want to go. We do not have it. It is as simple as that. It is irresponsible to talk in grandiose terms about all kinds of things when the boring, prosaic aspects of cost and delivery have not properly been considered.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not an accountant.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)
My Lords, I want to add to what has been said because it is all about education. If your Lordships look back, in every educational course at state schools, as they were, there had to be education on what happened with the Holocaust and other holocausts. It was there to be done. I can tell your Lordships from my own grandchildren that over the last few years it has not come up at all. I have checked with teachers, headmasters and headmistresses in some of my other roles, and they say that one of the biggest problems is that now they are advised that it is not necessary, other than on a wider front. That is the key point in education—for it to get back into state schools. It does come up in non-state schools but not in state schools in the form that it should.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, for the information of the Committee, I mention that I will not be speaking in every group on behalf of these Benches. Indeed, I do not speak on behalf of my Benches because if any vote were to come up, it would be a free vote. Any comments that I make will be my own views.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord King, that we need a national Holocaust memorial, a fitting one, a respectful one, somewhere we can remember the suffering and death of 6 million people in the last century. We also need a learning centre. We must never forget, and we must ensure that future generations never forget either. However, like others, I think that they should not necessarily be in the same place and that they should not necessarily be where they are currently proposed to be.
I want to speak about Amendment 27, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, requiring a detailed cost estimate to go before both Houses of Parliament before any planning permission is determined, because my particular concern about the location of a learning centre underground in Victoria Tower Gardens is flooding. As noble Lords will see, I have tabled Amendment 25 about this, so the Committee will hear a lot more from me and, I am sure, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who supported it, when we get to that amendment.
In my researches in tabling that amendment, it became very clear to me that even to reduce the chances of flooding—and you certainly cannot completely remove the chances of flooding—would require measures the cost of which cannot be known at this time. When it comes to the point of planning permission, at least some sort of estimate will have to be given of the cost of them, and I do not think that the risks of flooding can be accepted under any circumstances. When we get to that point, there will be some idea of the cost, but currently there is not, and that is why I support Amendment 27 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I have been living at Tufton Court since 1982; it is just around the corner from this park. I was not intending to speak to this amendment until I got rather provoked by a number of my noble friends.
My noble friend Lord Finkelstein said, “If it doesn’t go here, where else does it go?” I think my noble friend Lord Sterling has answered that point. There is a very satisfactory Holocaust memorial at the Imperial War Museum, which is not a place where nobody ever goes. It is a place where lots of people go, and it is very regularly visited. Could there be a better location for it than that?
My noble friend Lord Pickles said that this is going to improve the park. It is one of the smallest parks in London. I do not claim to go to it very often, but it is a very, very small park and, with all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, I am not sure it has been much improved by the Parliament Education Centre, which is a disgracefully low-budget architectural piece of building. I am very glad that it is going to be rebuilt —perhaps it will be rebuilt better than it is now—but it occupies quite a lot of this very small park, and the idea that we should shove yet another building into the park seems unbelievable. I cannot quite understand where we are going on this.
I do not understand why the Government have volunteered taxpayers’ money, when there is so little of it, to finance this. The Jewish community in Britain has an awful lot of money. It has a lot of education charities that would contribute towards this. I do not understand why they should not pay for their own memorial. Unlike my noble friend, I have plenty of Jewish blood, and I am a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, this is not a memorial for the Jewish community—
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
The noble Lord was not here at the start of the debate.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
I was under the impression that you could speak even though you were not.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
Well, perhaps somebody else might like to make the point that it is not a memorial for the Jewish community.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
I take that point, but the driving forces behind putting up this memorial are the Jewish people in this country. They are people who have property everywhere. I do not see why they should not fund it. I just do not understand why the British taxpayer should be asked to pay for this when there is quite clearly a tremendous shortage of taxpayers’ money to go around. The whole thing is very strapped. I would have thought that this could be financed by individuals, Jewish charities and so forth that would be happy to contribute to it. I am just amazed.
I do not pretend that I go into this park on a regular basis, but I do occasionally go into it. It is very small, and it will be made even smaller if this memorial is put into it. There will be no room for anybody to do anything in it at all. London is not blessed with a number of parks anyway, and the particular park that we are talking about is one of the smallest there is in London. It is not like Hyde Park, where you could tuck this away in a corner; this is going to be completely dominant in a very small park, and it will reduce the amenities available for local people who live in Westminster.
Lord Finkelstein (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for intervening, but I really cannot leave that comment on its own. The noble Lord cannot stand up here and say, “The Jews want the Holocaust memorial, and they ought to pay for it”. The Holocaust is not something that is just about the Jews. I am sure that others on the noble Lord’s side of the Room do not associate themselves with that comment. It illustrates the variety of arguments being put together, each one of which is an argument against it but many of which clash with each other. It is probably a pretty eloquent contribution as to why we need this memorial—and near Parliament.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I have been careful to confine my remarks to the precise amendment, so I do not want to stray into other issues. I just want to pick up on three small points.
First, the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, mentioned Ben Helfgott. It is the case that most of the remaining Holocaust survivors do not know what is being done in their name or the details of it. In fact, people have gone to great lengths to stop them finding out. I was temporarily banned from talking to a group of survivors in north London in case they found out what was going on. However, one of the greatest survivors, Anita Lasker- Wallfisch, is opposed to this project; I believe that there will be some comment from her in the Times tomorrow.
Secondly, it is a matter of profound Jewish scholarship that the Holocaust is diluted by mixing it with other genocides, but there is no time to go into that now.
Finally, even if the Jewish community had money, it supports its own people through a number of charities. If it was called on to come up with £200 million, there would be nothing left for anything else. It is a misconception that this is a community project or that the community should pay for it.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I echo what has just been said. I have no problem with the British taxpayer paying up its share to realise this noble objective; I just wish there were a figure that would allow us to think of the scale, size and nature of the project so that anything above and beyond that would rest with others in the private sector. I do not care whether they are Jewish or not Jewish.
It seems to me that the bald statement on the face of the Bill—
“The Secretary of State may incur expenditure”—
pure and simple—is not helpful at all. If people do not agree with the figure in the amendment, let them come up with a better one, but it seems to me to be a responsible thing, at a time of great financial stricture, for us to be generous but to indicate the levels of our generosity by putting in the Bill the sort of figure that we would be happy to endorse in legislation coming from this Parliament.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, this has been a mostly good opening debate on this very important Bill. I want to begin by setting out His Majesty’s Official Opposition’s broader approach to this legislation before addressing the specific amendments in this group. As I said at Second Reading, my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton made a solemn commitment to the survivors of the Holocaust, saying that
“the past will never die and your courage will never be forgotten”.
That was 11 years ago.
We have heard a great deal about solemn commitments already this week, but this is not a promise that we can break. In the 80th anniversary year of so many liberations of concentration camps, we have a duty to deliver a Holocaust memorial and learning centre right here in Westminster, at the heart of our democracy. We must do this so that survivors who are still with us can see it opened to the public, sure in the knowledge that we as a nation have renewed our commitment never to forget the horrors of the Holocaust. That is what is at stake with this Bill. I fear that if the Government do not succeed in securing this Bill in this Session, we may lose our chance to build the memorial that the survivors of the Holocaust and their families deserve in their lifetime.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government gratefully acknowledge the Select Committee’s report and conclusions. We thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and the members of the Select Committee, who performed their task conscientiously and thoroughly, dedicating considerable time and effort to ensuring that they tested and understood the evidence presented to them. Their report is proof of the balanced approach they have taken. The Government thank them for their patience and dedication.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his amendments. It would be appropriate alongside this amendment move the Question that Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. This group of amendments deals with matters relating to public expenditure on the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre. The purpose of Clause 1 is to authorise expenditure on the construction, use, maintenance, improvement and operation of a new national holocaust memorial and learning centre. We want the centre to be a permanent feature of our national consciousness that ensures that the lessons of the Holocaust and the testimony of those who survived have an enduring legacy.
This clause will enable the Government to deliver the commitment, first made in 2015, with cross-party support, to deliver a fitting national memorial that meets the recommendations of the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission. The commission found widespread dissatisfaction with the existing memorial in Hyde Park. That is why the commission recommended that there should be a striking new memorial, prominently located in central London, to make a bold statement about the importance that Britain places on preserving the memory of the Holocaust.
Plans for the Holocaust memorial and learning centre have been endorsed by every living Prime Minister and have widespread support from leading representatives of the Jewish community, other faith and community leaders, survivors, refugees and the wider public. The proposed memorial will honour the 6 million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered in the Holocaust and all other victims of Nazi persecution. The collocated learning centre will examine the Holocaust through British perspectives, looking at what we did and what more we could have done to tackle the murder and persecution of the Jewish people and other groups.
By long-standing convention, based on the Public Accounts Committee concordat of 1932, reflected in the current Treasury guidance Managing Public Money, specific legislation is needed for funding new services that are expected to continue beyond two years. Clause 1 meets that requirement.
Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, would put in the Bill a limit that would apply to both the construction and the operational costs of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. Although I sympathise with the noble Lord’s concern to manage public expenditure, I think noble Lords will be aware that other mechanisms are used to allocate funding and control costs. The figure of £138.8 million is evidently taken from the Written Ministerial Statement made by the previous Government in June 2023. As a consequence of that Statement, Parliament and all interested parties were fully aware of the expected costs when the Bill completed its passage through the other House and passed its Second Reading in this House.
The amendment would use that published sum, plus an arbitrary 15% contingency, to set a cost limit for both the construction and the ongoing operation of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre programme. Setting a limit in primary legislation in that way would create a great deal of inflexibility in the management of the project. The project to create a national Holocaust memorial and learning centre is being taken forward in line with normal procedures and processes for government projects. As part of the Government’s major projects portfolio, it is subject to regular and transparent reporting.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, particularly as he has been so amenable to consultation throughout the process of the Bill. Is he saying that the passage of the Bill would allow the Government to raise the money, whatever the cost of the project would be? Is it not the case that all that the Bill would do is allow the Treasury to be asked, from its vote, to allow a certain sum of money to be granted? My understanding is that the Bill does not give a blank cheque to the Government without further checks and balances in normal Treasury procedures. If that is the case, please would the Minister not leave that impression?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I shall clarify what Clause 1 is about. Clause 1 allows the Secretary of State to spend money to build the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. That is what it is about.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
With respect, the Minister is not answering my question. Of course this Bill, once an Act, would allow the Secretary of State to spend money, but the implication of what he says is “any” money. Is it not a fact, and the law, that it has to be provided from the Treasury vote? Therefore, decisions have to be made as to how much money will be permitted. Can he help us, if that is true, as to how much money it is intended to permit?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, that is correct. The appropriation Act allows us to spend the money.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
The Minister said the Government needed flexibility in the case of additional cost. Is that limitless?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, it would help if I can come on to more details about contingencies and costs, and then we can come back. If I do not answer anything specific, I can come back to the noble Lord in writing or in a further meeting.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
We will deal with this issue more extensively in the third group of amendments, but perhaps it would help to quote from page 11 of the National Audit Office report, which sets out all the organisations in charge of trying to run this project. It says that the Treasury is:
“Responsible for allocating funding for the programme. Treasury approval is required at different stages as per the Integrated Assurance and Approval Plan … As a condition of the funding, the Department must seek further Treasury approval if the programme is forecast to use more than half of the approved contingency”.
Another box also says that the Cabinet Office must give approval as well.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I must make progress but, very quickly, we will follow the normal public expenditure rules, as I have illustrated. I remind noble Lords that Clause 1 refers to allowing us to spend the money to build the project. I understand that it does not say how much money, but whatever the Government do will follow the normal Treasury rules, as indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile.
Lord Robathan (Con)
The Minister is under a bit of flak here. This is a very unusual Bill, as he will understand. It is not like voting for huge amounts to go to defence, or whatever it might be. We in Parliament surely exist to control what public money—not our money—is spent on. We are talking here about some astronomical amount that we do not know. That is why people are asking these questions.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
I understand the point that the noble Lord is making, but this Bill allows expenditure. Funding will be allocated through the normal public expenditure arrangements. The House of Commons passes annual appropriation Acts.
The project is also subject to review by the National Audit Office. In July 2022, the National Audit Office conducted a review and produced a report noting, among other points:
“The programme has controls to try to safeguard against substantial cost increases”.
Three recommendations made by the National Audit Office have been implemented. On the points that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, raised about the management of the project, we welcome the National Audit Office’s July 2022 report on the project and have addressed all its recommendations. The National Audit Office also recognises that governance arrangements are in place. The strategic benefits of the programme have been clearly identified and specialists with the necessary skills have been recruited to the programme.
It is also important to make the point that the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which the noble Lord referred to, currently rates the project as undeliverable because the Bill needs to be passed and planning consent granted in order for it to proceed. That is why there is a red flag rating on this. The project needs planning consent. That was quashed, and it was given a red rating as this Bill needs to be passed.
The £138 million estimate is based on professional advice from cost consultants and allows for inflation.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
Are those the same cost consultants who advised on HS2?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I do not want to limit myself by saying “yes” or “no” because I do not know the answer. As you would expect, I do not have that knowledge here.
On contingency, the estimate considers potential inflation being more than expected and the risks of the site. Again, the estimate is based on professional advice.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, raised the commitment to raise charitable donations. The commitment to raise £25 million has been given by the Holocaust Memorial Charitable Trust, which is chaired by Sir Gerald Ronson. Specific donations will be agreed once planning consent has been granted.
The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, raised improving records. The testimony of 120 Holocaust survivors has been recorded and is being made available online for all to see before the memorial opens. We have worked with the Association of Jewish Refugees to create an online portal.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, also talked about the operating costs. These have been estimated at £6.5 million to £8 million per annum.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I was responding to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on the operational costs. Operating costs have been estimated at between £6.5 million to £8.5 million per annum, and the estimates draw on comparisons with other museums and galleries of a similar size. Further detailed costs will be developed as the programme proceeds.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
If those costs have been estimated in line with other museums, do they include the extra costs that will be needed for potential demonstrations at that particular memorial, especially as it is so close to Parliament?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
Yes; all the costs associated with the operation of the memorial learning centre reflect the estimation I have just detailed, but further details of costs will be developed.
On the point from the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, on the Explanatory Notes and re-erection, the purpose is to avoid having to come back to Parliament to change legislation in the event of damage and related issues. We have regular discussions with the Palace of Westminster on the issue of other works, including the restoration of Victoria Tower. These will continue to take place and we expect to manage logistics, deliveries, and so on, through sensible planning. The estimated cost of the UK Holocaust memorial and learning centre has been produced in line with the Treasury Green Book guidance. Taking all that into account, the last accounting officer assessment from June 2023 concludes that the project represents value for money. The ordinary mechanisms by which Parliament allocates public funding and holds Ministers to account can apply to this programme, just as with any other programme.
The further Amendment 27, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, would introduce an additional step in the process of seeking planning consent for the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre. While the noble Lord is to be commended for his focus on cost control and value for money, the additional step he proposes is not necessary and would simply add still further delay to the decision-making process. Costs are regularly reviewed, and updated figures will be published in due course, in line with the Government’s major projects portfolio reporting process.
A range of options are being considered for operating the memorial and learning centre. As a significant public investment, responsibility for managing the centre will need to rest with a body that is ultimately accountable to Parliament. The Government will continue to be transparent about the costs and future arrangements for the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. This should, however, not delay the separate planning determination process.
The Holocaust memorial and learning centre will be a source of pride and an inspiration to the whole of society across boundaries of religion, class, geography or political party. I have only to quote the words of 94 year-old Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich, MBE, to underline why this is so vital:
“As the Holocaust moves further into history and we survivors become less able to share our testimonies this Memorial and Learning Centre will be a lasting legacy so that future generations will understand why it is important for people to remember the Holocaust, to learn from the past and stand up against injustice”.
I just want to echo—
Lord Pickles (Con)
I am sorry; I agree very much with the tenor of what the Minister is saying. He may recall that earlier I asked him to address a specific question. During his briefing, has he seen anything to suggest that the memorial centre will be about white- washing our history and praising the British Empire, and not about telling the whole truth, warts and all?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I was literally going to come on to that particular point. There will be nothing at all like that. If I can further add to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, the memorial and learning centre will draw on the history of the Holocaust, and particularly the decisions made by the British Parliament, to stress the importance of tackling intolerance and hatred at all levels in our society. It will deliver this message for all the people across the UK and the rest of the world, regardless of faith and background.
I just want to remind noble Lords what we are debating. The Holocaust Memorial Bill includes measures essential for the Government to deliver the long- standing commitment to build the planned Holocaust memorial and learning centre. The Bill authorises expenditure on the construction, maintenance, operation and improvement of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. Finally, the Bill also disapplies the relevant sections of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900, ensuring that this legislation does not block the building of a memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens.
I hope that I have been able to provide further clarity and assurance as to the purpose of this Bill to enable the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, to withdraw his amendment. I also hope that my explanation of Clause 1 will enable noble Lords, including the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, to agree that Clause 1 stand part of the Bill.
Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)
Can I ask the Minister something before he sits down? Does he have evidence that there are companies that are willing to quote for carrying out this construction? What is the situation over there?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, the simple answer is that we will seek tenders for the main construction contracts once planning consent is secured but, to use the noble Lord’s words, we need to get on with it.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I do not think I can recall this Committee Room being so packed out with colleagues, on all sides, for such an important and controversial debate. As the Minister would say, some passionate speeches are being made here today; I am grateful to all colleagues who have taken part.
I was particularly struck by the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, who gave a powerful criticism of the Explanatory Notes. It is not just this Bill where I have found that the Explanatory Notes did not explain much; as a former chair of the Delegated Powers Committee, I found that in almost every Bill we got. The noble Lord is right to make the points that there could be substantial changes to Parliament’s visitors centre and that that has not been taken into account here.
The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, rightly praised the dedication of my noble friends Lord Pickles and Lord Finkelstein to a memorial. My noble friend Lord Pickles has for many years championed this cause; just because I think that it may be the wrong place and the wrong memorial does not take away from the fact that he has been an absolute hero. However, my noble friend said that this memorial would improve the park, but that is not what Adjaye, the architect, said. When people said that these fins are despicably ugly, he said:
“Disrupting the pleasure of being in a park is key to the thinking”
on the memorial. I thought that key to the thinking was finding a memorial that commemorated the 6 million exterminated Jews, not putting something ugly in the park. Of course, the Government never mention Adjaye now. In the press release announcing that his bid had been accepted, he was named 12 times as the greatest architect in history. Now, he is wiped out from the memory, and the name is given to the rest of his firm but not to Adjaye.
Moving on, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, was so right to point out that people will come to a memorial if it is good enough, not because of where it is sited. That is a key point.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Sterling. His description of his family circumstances and the Holocaust match, if in a different way, the circumstances of my noble friend Lord Finkelstein. The noble Lord, Lord King is right: let us have a decent learning centre and a fitting memorial.
My noble friend Lord Inglewood said that building in inflation, which is going through the roof at the moment, will be absolutely essential. That tied into the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, about the fact that we must have a cost ceiling. It may not be £138 million—indeed, it may be something else—but, unless there is a cost ceiling, the costs will go through the roof.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for her comments and her personal statement. I appreciate that she was not speaking as a party spokesperson.
My noble friend Lord Inglewood said that he was not an accountant, but at least what he said added up and made sense to me in any case.
The shadow Minister, my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, said that no one wants to break a solemn promise. I suspect that there is no one anywhere in this Room who wants to break the promise to build a memorial, but what we all want is a proper memorial and a big, proper learning centre, as the Holocaust Commission recommended.
I come to the Minister. I have always liked him, ever since he was a Whip. I used to be a Whip in the Conservative Party. Us Whips have to stick together, in a sort of camaraderie; someone should explain that to Simon Hart. I welcome the Minister to his position—he is a thoroughly decent man and a caring, nice Minister—but he has been under some pressure today and that is not his fault. We have the National Audit Office’s report, which is devastating against his department. We have the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s report, which is also highly critical. That same department has had to give the Minister a brief. He has had to defend the indefensible today, but I give him credit for trying.
I want to conclude by asking the Minister something. Before Report, when I suspect that noble Lords—perhaps better noble Lords than I—will wish to put down a new amendment on costs, will the Minister produce a full, updated cost for the project? Will he give detailed answers before Report, as well as full answers to the NAO’s criticisms? I should say to him that I do not think the NAO criticised this project because we have not got the Bill through yet. It said that this project was undeliverable based not on that but on the fact that there was no schedule, no budget and no quality control. For a whole range of reasons, it found it grossly inadequate.
I think the Minister said that my ceiling of a 15% contingency was an arbitrary figure. Well, the Government have suddenly bunged in an extra £50 million with no justification, and I suggest that that is also an arbitrary figure.
I am grateful to everyone who has spoken. Obviously, I will not push it today, but we will need to get some detailed answers on the costing and control of this project before Report, or I suspect that we will have to come back to this then. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
Before the noble Lord sits down, I just point out for Hansard that I am Lady Scott of Bybrook, not of Needham Market.
Baroness Blackstone
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by correcting the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook. I think she suggested that I had my name down on the first group; I did not. I may have misheard her but I was not alone in hearing that. If she did not, that is fine.
I have a couple of other opening remarks. I really hope that the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, who is not in his place at the moment, and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, will respect the views of those who are opposed to the Bill and not in any sense intimate or suggest that we are not in favour of a Holocaust memorial or indeed a learning centre. That is not the case as far as I am concerned and I do not believe that it is the case among any other members of the Committee who are speaking against the Bill.
Lord Pickles (Con)
Can the noble Baroness point to a single sentence I have uttered over, say, the last 10 years where I have suggested that?
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
I am not alone, because I have talked to one or two people in the intervening time, when we were taking part in the Division, who believed that that was what was intimated from what the noble Lord said.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
I will reread what the noble Lord said and come back to him if in fact if what I understood does not seem to be held up in the Hansard report of what he said.
I also want to say that I think I am one of the few Labour members of this Committee who are speaking against the Bill. I know many Labour Members who are not taking part but who are very concerned, and I expressed my worries about this to the Minister. I do not like opposing the Government on any issue and I am not known to be serially disloyal. However, there are two particular things in my past that make me worried about the Bill.
The first is that I am a former Minister responsible for heritage, including heritage parks, and I think it is a great and grave mistake to change the 1900 Act that was set up to protect heritage parks in a way that will lead to great damage done to this park. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Sterling and Lord Hamilton, that this is a beautiful, much used but small park which will not have the same role as it had in the past because of putting this very large—from the point of view of the size of the park—memorial and learning centre in it.
The second reason I am worried about this Bill as it is currently proposed is my interest in education. I do not think that the learning centre as currently proposed is fit for purpose. I do not want to make a Second Reading speech now but want to go straight in to my amendments in this group. I will speak to Amendments 2, 3, 4, 6 and 13, all of which concern the learning centre, which is at present an intrinsic part of the design of the Holocaust memorial as proposed by the sponsors.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans has had to go to another meeting and asked me, with noble Lords’ permission, to speak to his Amendment 23. It is about an endowment fund to help counter anti-Semitism. An Ofcom report of July 2022 showed that for teenagers, Instagram gave them 29% of the news, TikTok 28% and YouTube 28%. These are the main sources of news with ITV and the BBC way down in fourth and fifth places. The Ofcom report also states:
“Users of TikTok for news claim to get more of their news on the platform from ‘other people they follow’ (44%) than ‘news organisations’ (24%).”
The report continues:
“Teenagers today are increasingly unlikely to pick up a newspaper or tune into TV News, instead preferring to keep up-to-date by scrolling through their social feeds”.
If those social media outlets were accurate, we would have little concern, but also in July 2023 we had a United Nations report History Under Attack. It was a co-operation with an Oxford organisation and found that up to half of Holocaust-related content on Telegram denied or distorted the facts. It said that distortion and Holocaust denial was present on all social media but that moderation and education can significantly reduce this. It went on to say that UNESCO and the United Nations sought to measure the extent of this phenomenon on social networks and commissioned researchers to identify and analyse about 4,000 posts related to the Holocaust on the five major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok and Twitter. These were the findings: on Telegram, there was 50% distortion and denial of the Holocaust in English language messages; on Twitter, which is now X, there was 19% distortion; on TikTok, 17%; on Facebook, 8%; and on Instagram, 3%. Many of those comments were anti-Semitic as well.
Another key finding of the United Nations report is that the researchers identified that perpetrators have learned to evade content moderation through the use of humorous and parodic memes as a strategy intended to normalise anti-Semitic ideas and make them appear mainstream. I had no idea what anti-Semitic memes were, or any memes, but I found hundreds on the internet, some suggesting that the Jews had attacked USS “Liberty” in 1967, others that the Jews had brought down the Twin Towers in New York. Some said that if America was to save itself then it had to declare war on Israel. Thousands of these memes are absolutely scurrilous, despicable lies and hate-filled, but millions of our young people are lapping them up.
Up to even three years ago, I thought that education on the Holocaust of 80 years ago was all that we needed to do, but now we see hundreds of thousands of people on our streets calling for a new Holocaust, the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews. Indeed, in 2019 the BBC published a poll of more than 2,000 people that was carried out by Opinion Matters for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. It found, and this is quite frightening, that 5% of UK adults—that is, out of 45 million—do not believe that the Holocaust took place, and one in 12 believes that its scale has been exaggerated. Some 45% of those polled said they did not know how many people were killed in the Holocaust, while 19% believed that fewer than 2 million Jews were murdered and 5% believed that there was no Holocaust at all; that is 2.2 million people. That is frightening—all those British people denying the Holocaust or completely ignorant about it.
It is therefore essential that we create an endowment fund to undertake 24/7 Holocaust education and rebuttal of all the new anti-Semitic attacks. That is why we need a proper campus, as recommended in the Holocaust Commission report, staffed by experts who can work online 24/7 countermanding lies about the Holocaust and the new Holocaust demand to push the Jews out of Israel, their homeland, from the river to the sea. Anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, and it seems to be even worse in the UK, so a monument to the unique Holocaust of 80 years ago is essential. Equally essential is annual funding to tackle the new lies about Jews and the calls for their extermination.
I turn to my Amendments 29 and 30, and I believe my noble friend Lord Hodgson will speak to Amendment 31 in my place. I also support Amendments 2, 3, 4 and 6 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. As I said in my speech on Amendment 1, I concluded that Conservative politicians opted for the completely unsuitable Victoria Tower Gardens and ignored the recommendations of the Holocaust Commission because they thought the gardens would be an easier bet. However, the site fails to deliver a central theme of the commission—indeed, its key recommendation 2. Recommendation 1 concluded with the words:
“But it is also clear that a memorial on its own is not enough and that there must be somewhere close at hand where people can go to learn”
about the Holocaust. This is what the commission said about the ideal site for the memorial and learning centre. In its “Delivery and Next Steps” section, it said, and it is worth while quoting it:
“The Commission has identified three possible locations that should be considered as part of a consultation taken forwards by the permanent independent body … The Holocaust Exhibition at IWM London is very highly regarded, as was demonstrated throughout the evidence received. There is therefore an obvious advantage in locating the Learning Centre alongside IWM London in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park near Lambeth. The site is within easy reach of Westminster and accessible via several routes by public transport. It offers existing high footfall with approximately 1.5 million visits to IWM in 2014. IWM has proposed the building of a new wing to house a memorial and a learning centre and to link to newly expanded and upgraded Holocaust galleries in the main building. This would also benefit from being able to use the existing visitor facilities and essential infrastructure of the IWM building”.
Lord Robathan (Con)
As a matter of interest, I do not know how many people in this Room have been to the Holocaust memorial galleries in the Imperial War Museum. They are incredibly instructive and similar to the ones outside Tel Aviv, whereas somewhere here would be about one-eighth of the size.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My noble friend makes a good point. I visited them almost two years ago, and they are extraordinary. The good thing about the museum is that it has physical artefacts, although not many—it has more Nazi uniforms than Jewish uniforms —but it has physical things to look at, whereas the Adjaye bunker will merely have videos showing on a screen that kids can look at on their mobile phones and iPads much more easily. Why build a museum if you have nothing physical to put in it?
The Holocaust Commission concluded on the Imperial War Museum by saying:
“It is the view of the Commission that this is a viable option, provided a way can be found to meet the Commission’s vision for a prominent and striking memorial”.
Then there was Potters Fields as an option—it is between Tower Bridge and City Hall—but I believe that it has been sold and is no longer available. On Millbank, this is what the commission said:
“David and Simon Reuben have been inspirational supporters of the Commission’s vision and have proposed a redevelopment of a large area of their Millbank complex. The location offers great potential for a prominent riverfront memorial, a short walk along the river from the Houses of Parliament. The campus could include a hidden garden, reflective pond, wall of remembrance and a learning centre, incorporating the existing cinema, doubling as a lecture theatre. The complex sits alongside Tate Britain which attracts 1.4 million visits a year. It also benefits from its own pier with river boat connections to Westminster. There may be the opportunity to work alongside Tate Britain to further develop the area to increase its appeal, helping to create a new cultural and educational quarter”.
That is what the official Holocaust Commission recommended on the location of a memorial and a learning centre nearby.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)
I ask the noble Lord to draw his remarks to a conclusion.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I appreciate that. I apologise for going over 10 minutes, but I did not expect to have to do two minutes on the amendments tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans.
If I can conclude with just a few more seconds to go, the commission commended the 9/11 exhibition in New York. In November last year, I had to attend some official meetings at the United Nations, so I thought I would go along to see it. I was half expecting it to be, in the usual American way, a bit over the top and a bit tacky, but I was utterly wrong. It was exceptionally well done, moving and authoritative, with exquisite architecture—and it was absolutely massive. It was to commemorate just—just—2,977 victims. We are trying to commemorate 6 million victims by squeezing them into this tiny little bunker under the ground, which has usable space of just 1,700 square metres. It is simply not good enough. I commend my amendments to the Committee.
Baroness Fleet (Con)
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee but this is my first intervention on the Bill. I declare my interest as a former chairman of Arts Council London. I rise to speak to Amendment 29 and the consequential amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra.
I would like to put on record my admiration for the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and all the work that she has put into this extraordinary debate today. I have a few brief observations to add to the comprehensive remarks that my noble friend delivered just now with his customary eloquence and wisdom, with which I entirely agree. I support the analysis by several noble Lords of the problems of this site in Victoria Tower Gardens.
I must begin by saying that I am entirely in favour of a Holocaust memorial in central London. We all want present and future generations to recognise, understand and learn what the Holocaust was, why it happened and why it still matters. It is frightening that anti-Semitism is ever present. As my noble friend highlighted, a poll showed that more than 2 million people —about 5% of our population—believe that there never was a Holocaust at all. That figure is probably much higher now as a result of social media. Anti-Semitism must be a central element of whatever or wherever the learning centre is.
As Prime Minister in 2015, my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton had a noble ambition when, with cross-party support, he announced details of his proposal. The memorial and learning centre would be world-class. My noble friends have already set out clearly what was promised and what will now be delivered. There is no doubt that the original ambition has been radically reduced as, now, the proposed learning centre would be just a few rooms, all digital. My noble friend Lady Bottomley once memorably described the learning centre as a “subterranean shoebox”.
Several eminent historians, including Sir Richard Evans, have pointed out that London’s contribution would be put to shame by what can be seen elsewhere in the world—indeed, in our own Imperial War Museum, which has been referred to already, and its Holocaust galleries. In preparation for today’s debate, I revisited the Holocaust galleries. They are indeed world-class: through more than 2,000 photos, books and letters, they tell individual stories of some of the 6 million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust.
The first room is extraordinary. It introduces us, through home movies, music and photos, to Jewish families across Europe in the early 1930s. They are smiling and posing on graduation from school or university, at family weddings, skiing and playing table tennis. With the dark reality of what was to come, we then see personal possessions—a child’s teddy bear, a darning mushroom and sheet music—displayed in the large cabinets. A dozen or so spacious, themed rooms link events from the rise of Hitler through to the final solution. It is a profound, emotional and educational experience.
The proposed learning centre, squeezed into the very limited space of Victoria Tower Gardens, lacks this essential content and impact. Surely the Imperial War Museum, set in the verdant 14-acre Harmsworth Park just a mile from Westminster, is a potential alternative site for the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. The Victoria Tower Gardens site is totally inappropriate. As my noble friends have said, it has been criticised by UNESCO, Historic England and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which rated it red—in other words, undeliverable. Victims of the Holocaust and survivors, as well as our future generations, deserve a world-class learning centre. That cannot be in Victoria Tower Gardens.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 29 and 31 in this group. My noble friend Lord Blencathra has, as my noble friend Lady Fleet just pointed out, spoken with great eloquence to them, but I have a few sweeping-up remarks to make about Amendment 31 and some tangential matters arising therefrom.
Before I speak to them, I owe the Committee an apology because I did not participate at Second Reading on 4 September last—I am afraid that I was abroad at the time—but I did make a submission to the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House on the Bill and appeared before it to plead my case. If I may, I will return to that in a minute or two.
Since I did not participate in the September debate, I should perhaps say a few words about where I stand on the principles of the Bill as a whole. I am not nihilistic. I reject the suggestion from my noble friend Lord Finkelstein that one is going to find objections to everything. I am very much in favour of a memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens. I am prepared to work and live with the design that people think is satisfactory.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I was half way through explaining my position on the proposals of the Bill. I believe that there should be a memorial to the Holocaust and that it should be in Victoria Tower Gardens. I would work with almost anybody regarding the design. I do not think that the present design is particularly attractive. I also support the proposal for a learning centre but have difficulty with putting that into Victoria Tower Gardens, for the reasons that have been given by my noble friend Lord Blencathra and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. That site is not suitable for the scale and importance of the task that it would be undertaking. That is the background to Amendments 29 and 30—the need for a campus and all the other things that have been mentioned.
Amendment 31 has a slight additional edge to it, because the Jewish Museum in Camden has closed due to a lack of funding. All its exhibits are now in storage. It might be worth while considering that this could be included in an overall context of a British-Jewish experience and a national, or London, Jewish museum. That is simply the background and purpose of Amendment 31: that this is included in any consideration of alternative sites.
My noble friend Lady Scott—I know she is “of Bybrook”—explained that we had to consider some of the tangential impacts. I will do that briefly now—again in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone—because quite a lot of what is talked about on the tangential experience is based on poor evidence and soggy experience. Those of us who have offices in Millbank, as I do, see how very crowded the pavements and the areas outside are all the time—particularly in the summer, obviously, but nearly all the time. Obviously, there is a bus shelter for Transport for London. There are coach points where people come to hop on and hop off tourist buses, and where students are dropped for tours of Parliament, all of which are very worthy things. If you walk along there on an ordinary day, you will find that not only is the pavement crowded but, because of the black crash barrier, you have a choke point that makes it even more crowded before you can get to where you can turn right into the Victoria Tower Gardens or go straight on to Black Rod’s Garden entrance.
I raised this issue with the committee and I was ruled out of order. The committee said, in paragraph 56 of its report:
“These concerns do not confer an entitlement to be heard and … the Standing Orders do not confer on us any discretion to consider his petition”.
Of course, I accept the Standing Orders of your Lordships’ House, but we are now moving from the rather dry area of Standing Orders to the real world. What is going to happen in this area over the many years ahead? If an activity or something inside the periphery of the area—that is, inside the gardens—causes trouble, difficulties, problems or inconvenience in the immediate environment outside, that at least demands to be considered and weighed in the scale. I would therefore like to tackle that briefly now.
In his reply in the Second Reading debate, the Minister said:
“We estimate that there will be 11 coaches per day, using a proposed coach bay on a quieter section of Millbank”.—[Official Report, 4/9/24; col. 1225.]
I have done a bit of research, because I have been popping into coaches for the last few days to ask, “How many passengers do you carry?” The truth is that I have not found one that carries fewer than 55 or more than 70, so we have an average of probably around 60 or 65. Eleven coaches a day is 660 people. Are we going to do all this for 660 people? Surely not. The idea is that this should be much bigger than that. If we then ask what estimates are being given for the number of people, it comes out usually as between 3,000 and 4,000. That number means that you are going to need about 58 coaches a day. If you are open between 9 am and 4 pm with a line for a 45-minute tour of the building—that is, for seven hours—that will be eight coaches per hour: one every seven minutes. Those are the numbers that we are likely to have to face.
I am sure the Minister does not know anything about the 11 coaches per hour; he was given a speaking note by his official. I am not suggesting he made this up at all. However, we need to think more carefully about this, because at present, the footfall and the impact on the area is absolutely clearly underestimated. If I may just quote from his speaking note one more time, he suggested using a proposed coach bay on a “quieter section of Millbank”. I invite him to get his officials to take him to a quieter section of Millbank. There is no quieter section of Millbank—it is a main thoroughfare where traffic passes all the time. I hope we can get more clarity on what the tangential impact is likely to be in the areas around what is proposed.
I share the view that the learning centre is not in a good place. In my view, it is going to be born in the spirit of rancour, whereas it surely should be born in the spirit of remembrance and healing. I hope that the Minister will be able to demonstrate that the Government are listening to all the points being made, and we do not just have a situation of “Put the pedal to the metal and get this thing done as quickly as possible”.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My noble friend mentioned the Jewish Museum in Camden, which has closed down. Is he aware that it says that it has 28,000 items and artefacts—including Jewish art, and examples showing the Jewish way of life going back centuries—in storage? Can he understand why, on the one hand, we have plans for this learning centre in Victoria gardens that will have no artefacts while, on the other, we have a closed-down museum with 28,000 artefacts looking for a home? Can the Government explain why on earth they are unable to marry them up and put the two together in a big, proper museum and learning centre, as the Holocaust Commission recommended?
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
Well, my Lords, that just shows that you should never speak after my noble friend Lord Blencathra, because of course he is right. I hope I made it clear that I thought the consideration of alternative sites should include the idea that we should have a national Jewish museum, which would pick up the 28,000 items, the number of which I was not aware.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, had there been time yesterday, we would have disaggregated this group because it covers three enormous topics that are very different, and I will not have time to say everything that I wanted to. I will start with the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, which is perhaps the most obvious and sensible of all of them. I call them over and under. If we stick to over and avoid under, nearly all the problems are solved—in other words, a memorial overground, and a learning centre somewhere else. That would avoid all the complications and costs of excavating Victoria Tower Gardens and the disruption and damage. Moreover, apparently the learning centre will have only digital and audio material in it, so why not just send us round the country, in whatever way can be done technologically these days, rather than bringing people to London?
I turn to the issue of endowment—what is in the learning centre and what it is supposed to do. The inadequacy of Holocaust education, which is well known, can be seen on the streets of London every week and on our campuses. Young people who have had some education about the Holocaust at school cannot make the connection between that and the vicious hatred of Israel today, the attacks on the survival of Jewish people, the resurgence of Nazi language and images, and the violence we find against Jewish people as they go about their businesses or go to synagogue. That is because of the failing of Holocaust education in two respects. First, it places the hatred of Jews in a box, something that was the exclusive province of the Nazis 90 years ago and ended at the end of the Second World War. The planned learning centre will compound that.
The other failing is the presentation of many genocides as if they had anything in common. The messages coming from the learning centre, as far as one can tell, will be “Do not be a bystander” and “Hatred is what brought on the Holocaust and other genocides”. That serves as an obfuscation and diversion of blame. It misses the point entirely: it was 2,000 years of anti-Semitism. The civilised world has said “Never again”, but that is overoptimistic. Anti-Semitism remains alive and well, not only among the denizens of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran but of course, since 7 October, in countries hitherto thought immune, such as the Western world.
Holocaust education has failed, but it should include the place of Israel in the world and in Jewish life and history. Scholars say that the Holocaust found Jews defenceless. After 7 October, sadly, a Jewish state was able to hit back and may eliminate its enemies, but certainly Israel provides a haven for Jews elsewhere who find themselves threatened by this new anti-Semitism. That fairly obvious statement shows what is so wrong about the theme and location of the memorial planned for VTG. As the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, has said, his intent is that seeing the Palace of Westminster and being reminded of the power of democracy means that there is protection for Jewish people under British values, but that is historically and contemporaneously wrong. Democracy here, now and in the past, has not protected Jewish minorities. We can see that even today there are plenty of people in our democratic Government who wish Israel ill and who have failed to protect the Jewish community from the pressure that it faces right now.
What saves people from genocide? It is having a state of one’s own and the means of self-defence. Take, for example, the Uighurs, Armenians and Tutsis. What they have in common is that they were minorities in a state that had power over them. As the late Lord Sacks of blessed memory pointed out, today’s anti-Semitism is directed at the world’s only Jewish state, which should be a haven for a persecuted minority. He called for Holocaust education to be in context—the context of Jewish history over the millennia, and Jewish culture. In regard to the Holocaust, it is wrong for people to learn only about that and nothing else. The ill-educated person in the street often associates Jews only with the images of concentration camps and knows nothing other than that—nothing about Jewish history and practices.
That is made worse by the films, some of them ghoulish, that deal with that period. This concentration on the Holocaust, taken out of context and history, turns it into just a word for describing something dreadful, which is casually used, as is the word “genocide”. It even results in those accusations being turned against the Jewish people. Holocaust education needs a complete overhaul, rather than being frozen into the same inadequate frame that we will find in the learning centre. That is why there needs to be an endowment fund and a professor, as suggested in Amendment 32, because those awkward topics of anti-Semitism today and Israel need to be faced up to and explained. We want to know why the Government have abandoned the suggested endowment fund.
I turn briefly to alternatives. No effort was made to find a suitable location when Victoria Tower Gardens was announced, but the supporters have clung stubbornly to that site, though they must know in their hearts that it is no good and that the choice has provoked litigation, disharmony, delay, expense and discord in the Jewish community and elsewhere. Indeed, the choice of site has provoked adverse comment around the world. In 2015, the call was only for a central London site of up to 10,000 square metres, with room for conferences, offices and all the appurtenance of a campus, and only near at hand to the memorial given that proponents also recommended that the site incorporate the Imperial War Museum exhibition. So they could not have had in mind an underground construction somewhere else. The choice of VTG was reached without consultation, given that the consultants came up with the London Museum, Millbank Tower and other sites.
I imagine that VTG was chosen because it was free, whereas Imperial War Museum co-operation over the use of its green space was ignored. My own ideal compromise would be a suitable figurative memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens and a suitably sized learning centre somewhere nearby, maybe along Millbank. Buildings on Millbank have been offered. They are available to rent or buy. What about College Green, whose underground is not being used, the education centre in Victoria Tower Gardens or Victoria Tower itself, as the archives have been removed? My favourite is Richmond House, which it seems will not now be used for decant during R&R and which has a forecourt suitable for a memorial and is right by the Cenotaph. No position is more visible and important. Others have suggested the former Museum of London, the Barbican and underneath Carlton House Terrace. There has never been any meeting with the department to consider these suggestions. Michael Gove offered a round table but did not pursue it. The only other meeting with him was a formality, with no intent other than to head off my repeated complaints that there was no discussion. My offers to talk to supporters have been ignored or worse.
We know about the drawbacks of VTG—the cramped nature, the deprivation of local residents, the breach of trust, the environmental damage, the flooding risk, the fire risk, the crowding and the security. The cost is bound to rise. Climate protesters and the public will not be sympathetic to a project that flies in the face of all the government pledges to be green and economical. The Jewish community is sharply divided, with establishment figures and donors on one side and those who study the situation—scholars and most ordinary members, whether of the reform, Orthodox or mainstream persuasion—on the other. Once they know what it looks like and what it will contain, which is carefully hidden from most of us, they are against it.
Advances in technology lessen the case for the exhibition hall. There are already six memorials in this country and 21 learning centres. No one has stopped to think what effect they have or what they achieve. Is anything lacking? Why do we need another one? What is it for? Of course, people outside London will find it hard to get to. I have said before that this is not a memorial, it is not about the Holocaust and it is not a learning centre. The choice of VTG is to make a political point which is naive and misleading: that putting a memorial close to Parliament will make the point that democracy protects Jews and protects against genocide. This is the British values narrative, a project led by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and Mr Ed Balls, who also leads the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. The placement of memorials makes no difference if you look around the world—nor are they a reminder to parliamentarians of the dangers. If parliamentarians have to have a memorial next door, at a cost of £200 million, they must be in even bigger trouble than we thought.
There is no evidence that a visit to this will make any difference. There are 300 memorials around the world, from New Zealand to China, and nobody measures the effect. In fact, anti-Semitism is growing. The memorial will provide a nice political backdrop for politicians who want to pose against it and say, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body”, but it will not help prevent anti-Semitism today. I support the movement to create a wonderful new Jewish museum like the fabulous one in Warsaw, which is placed where the Warsaw ghetto used to be and has made that into a sacred site.
I support all these amendments.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, I particularly support Amendments 13, 29 and 30. Their effect would be that there was a sculpture but not a learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens. In doing so, I urge the Minister to consider the difference between your Lordships’ House and the other place. Many Members of your Lordships’ House are very modest about their achievements, other than possibly us lawyers.
However, we have heard in this debate two Members of your Lordships’ House with great expertise in the matters that we are discussing. One is the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who has a long history in education. She was master of Birkbeck College, the paradigm of education to a large external audience. That is an example of what we are trying to achieve, at least in part, with the learning centre. Also, the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, who made a superb speech, is a person with real experience of cultural arenas and the like—of how cultural issues are delivered to a much larger public right across the cultural spectrum. It would be useful for the Minister to focus particularly on their expertise before any final decisions are made about what should go in Victoria Tower Gardens.
I am very much in favour of a memorial and a Holocaust learning centre, but not in Victoria Tower Gardens. A memorial there could be one of the most magnificent sculptures in the world. To give one example, Anish Kapoor, the great British sculptor, has already done a small Holocaust sculpture in London. Someone such as Anish Kapoor might produce one of those sculptures that lives for the centuries, maybe rather like how the Burghers of Calais, which has lived for well over one century, anyway. Putting a sculpture in Victoria Tower Gardens but nothing else would remove many of the security concerns, which I will address later, that will arise if a so-called learning centre is built in the gardens.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
The noble Lord mentioned the shoebox. Is he aware that, if I remember correctly, the Holocaust Commission wanted a campus of between 5,000 square meters and 10,000 square metres, but in an Answer from my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook on 12 April to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the department said that the Adjaye bunker would be just 3,258 square metres? The Answer went on to reveal that 48% of it will be completely unusable, made out of risers, ducts and unusable space, leaving a mere 1,722 square metres for the learning centre. That is about four or five times the size of this Room—some campus, is it not?
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
I absolutely agree and I will try to finish within the 10 minutes, and I believe that there is going to be a vote in a moment anyway. I believe that if the Minister were to listen to the witnesses available in your Lordships’ House, we would have a different conclusion. I promise the Minister, not because I know it but because I know it in my bones, that if we were allowed to build a Holocaust learning centre elsewhere, with the subvention that is already promised by the Government, we would have no difficulty in raising the money for an establishment that would rival the great POLIN museum that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, mentioned.
I finish by saying that if the noble Baroness will allow me to say so, and she knows that I love her dearly, I thought she was a little unkind to some members of the Committee. I do not believe that anybody is ill motivated about this in any way. I believe that, unfortunately, they are just wrong and should recognise it.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, that is my cue. I was going to take the noble Lord up. He quoted me earlier as saying something I had not said, but I realised that it is the kind of thing I would have said, so I did not object to being misquoted.
Lord Pickles (Con)
On the improvements to the park, the grass is not of very high quality, but it will be returfed. The paths will be redone. Those paths are important because, as they stand right now, they are strangling the roots of the trees and causing long-term problems. It will be possible to get water to the existing trees, there will be access to the Embankment for wheelchairs for the very first time and there will be extensive tree planting.
Some very interesting points were made about fire, flood, transport and, of course, planning matters. We will discuss any new planning application. I just want to address the questions of whether it is too small and what new things have been found. In terms of its size, it is by no means unusual among Holocaust museums. I talked about the Berlin museum, which is subterranean and roughly that size. Jasenovac is roughly that size. If we talk about museums in Warsaw, a short walk from the POLIN museum is a museum dedicated to the uprising, which is roughly the same size.
As for new things, we have discovered, hidden for 80 years, some tapes by Patrick Gordon Walker, who many here will remember. He went in the week after Dimbleby did his famous interviews and interviewed inmates of the camp as well as perpetrators. We also have the first recording of the singing of Hatikvah after liberation. As the Government took the decision to release all the documents relating to the Holocaust, we have lots of new material that has simply not been seen. It will certainly address what we knew and when we knew it.
In terms of getting an idea of what it would look like, if Members have visited Hut 27 at Auschwitz, which is an audio-visual experience of the book burning and the effect that it had on Jewish life and young people, they will know that that gives you an idea. You cannot say, “We need to embrace new technologies”, then criticise us for doing precisely that. It is not as though we are in a position where we are waiting for this to happen; the United Kingdom has already created a portal of evidence. Everyone here can now see the testimonies of Holocaust survivors going down the years, no matter where they were given. It is a big leap forward. Other countries are following suit because, to ensure that our stuff is worth while, it must be accessible.
My noble friend is right about TikTok and other social media, which is why we produced—it was just a tentative idea—80 Objects/80 Lives in which Holocaust survivors describe a particular object that kept them going through the Holocaust. That was repeated in 35 countries. It is not an answer in itself, but it is a fact that we are trying to lean out and to make a difference.
There will be natural light. There is going to be light; it is going to be used extraordinarily well with regard to a staircase.
I am very pleased that Members have gone to see the Imperial War Museum. It is a magnificent new exhibition, particularly about the use of the V-2 rocket, because it manages to bring the whole of the Second World War galleries together and demonstrates—better than the previous exhibition, I think—that the Second World War was a war of annihilation. I am pleased to say that that the past chairman of the Imperial War Museum is on the foundation’s board and that the Imperial War Museum is a key partner. I am also pleased to say that the former director of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, which is apparently well disposed to here, is also on the board. In order to ensure that we never lose sight of the Jewish nature of the Holocaust, our director of the exhibition is a former deputy director of Yad Vashem. We work regularly with Yad Vashem on this, and there is a lot of interest.
I want to say something about numbers. I was quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. If she is going to quote me, let it be right. I do not take credit for that; it was from the widow of the great historian Martin Gilbert, who, in talking to her before his death, said that it should be about coming out of a building and recognising that democracy is there as a bastion against tyranny. It is not about the Jews to say that; it is a bastion against tyranny. However, it is also for the people in this building to look the other way and understand what happens when a compliant legislature passes various things.
Baroness Deech (CB)
Can I just ask the noble Lord why he thinks that being a tourist attraction that attracts millions is compatible with commemoration, grief, prayer, remembrance and all the other things that the commission called for and that are normally associated with a Holocaust memorial? There is a little plaque to one of my grandmothers in Manchester; that brings me more solace than any number of millions of people tramping through the gardens then heading off to have an ice cream.
Lord Pickles (Con)
It is important not to conflate the solemn nature of the memorial with the learning centre; they are two distinct but integrated matters. The Committee will always go to museums and Holocaust sites. What we want are the uncommitted: we want people who go to the learning centre and come away having learned something. They will use it as a doorway to wider knowledge. It will not be in isolation. We are going to work closely with our American friends, our friends at Auschwitz and our friends in Yad Vashem because the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and distortion do not recognise national boundaries. We have a common purpose, and part of that common purpose will be to spread it out in different languages.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as someone who is not Jewish, as I mentioned earlier, I have been very moved by the debate I have just heard about the learning centre. I subscribe to the perspective of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. As I was sitting there, I thought to myself, “Actually, there’s something that has not been mentioned”. It is—speaking as a non-Jew—the fact that Victoria Tower Gardens is a remarkable park as it stands now; that is a relevant consideration in our consideration in this place of what the future should be.
I am reminded of a story that I was told about the time when T Dan Smith redeveloped Eldon Square in Newcastle. He called in, as one of his expert advisers, Arne Jacobsen, the famous Danish architect. After the competition for the redesign of Eldon Square had been completed, he turned to Jacobsen and said, “If you had been putting in for this competition, what would you have done?” Jacobsen replied, “I would have left it just as it was before”.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, that was an extremely interesting debate from both sides of what I will call a discussion, not an argument. I thank noble Lords for it; I have learned a lot.
This is a large group covering three themes that have been discussed throughout the years of work that have been done on the Holocaust memorial. First, Amendments 2, 3, 4, 6 and 13 relate to the design of the memorial and the learning centre, seeking to prevent it involving an underground element and to separate the learning centre from the memorial. These issues have been debated at length. I do not feel that this Bill is the right place for us to debate issues relating to the planning and design of the building. I am sure that the Minister will respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, in detail. We urge him to listen to her concerns, but we cannot support her amendments.
Amendment 23, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of St Albans, is one I do support. I do not think he spoke to it, but it has been such a long debate that I have forgotten what happened at the beginning. At a time when we are seeing growing anti-Semitism while marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, we need to recommit ourselves to the memory of the Holocaust, as I said earlier this year when we debated Holocaust Memorial Day. My noble friend Lord Blencathra, speaking on behalf of the right reverend Prelate, was right to highlight the need for proper Holocaust education as we work to counter anti-Semitism.
I take this opportunity, a bit cheekily, to ask the Minister to update me on what steps his department is taking to counter rising anti-Semitism in this country. I am very happy to have a letter. Also, can he confirm that the Government will, at the very least, maintain the level of support for Holocaust education provided by the previous Conservative Government? I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for all the evidence that he provided showing the need for this continued education.
Finally, Amendments 29, 30 and 31, tabled by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, all seek to re-open the question of an alternative site for the memorial or learning centre. While I understand the arguments made by many noble Lords on the question of where the memorial and learning centre should be located, I cannot agree that re-opening this issue, when in the past we have looked at more than 50 sites, would be a constructive step forward and would deliver that centre in anything like a timely manner.
I said in my opening remarks that it has been 11 years since my noble friend Lord Cameron made that solemn commitment to the survivors of the Holocaust. I feel very strongly that we should not take steps that will hinder the delivery of that commitment any longer.
Baroness Deech (CB)
I will just elucidate for the noble Baroness that 50 sites were not looked at. The foundation just plumped for Victoria Tower Gardens. The thing about haste is that we are not building for the handful of survivors who are left. They do not need a memorial. If we build, we are building for the future. There is not a hurry. Survivors have said to me that they would rather it was got right; that is more important than hurrying. Even if everything went smoothly now, which I hope that it will not, there is no chance of getting it up in the lifetime of people who are in their late 90s. You have to get it right for the future, not for the handful who are left.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Blackstone and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for tabling these amendments. This group concerns the need for a learning centre, what its focus should be and how it should be funded. I believe there is a great deal of common ground on these matters. The need for a learning centre was set out clearly in the 2015 report, Britain’s Promise to Remember, published by the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission and accepted by all major political parties.
The commission proposed
“that the National Memorial should be co-located with a world-class Learning Centre. This would be a must-see destination using the latest technology to engage and inspire vast numbers of visitors”.
That remains the Government’s intention. We want to put in place a learning centre that will set the memorial in context and will be a moving and inspiring experience for visitors. Work towards this aim has begun. We are confident that our proposed scheme provides the space needed for an enthralling exhibition; I will come on to the issue of its size later. It is certain that the experience of entering the underground exhibition space through the bronze fins of the memorial will be a powerful introduction for all visitors.
Our proposal for a learning centre integrated with the Holocaust memorial is a tangible demonstration of the importance that we attach to education, which has been at the heart of this programme from the outset. The creation of the memorial and learning centre will be a further development of the significant efforts already taking place to deepen understanding of the Holocaust. Already, the Holocaust is the only historic event that is compulsory in the national curriculum for history at key stage 3, for pupils aged 11 to 14. The Prime Minister has made a strong personal commitment that this Government will seek to give every young person the opportunity to hear a recorded survivor testimony. The Government fund the Holocaust Educational Trust’s “Lessons from Auschwitz” programme and Holocaust Memorial Day. It is right that we should also build this Holocaust memorial with a co-located learning centre as a focal point for national commemoration to demonstrate our commitment to ensuring that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten.
Taken together, my noble friend Lady Blackstone’s amendments—this amendment, Amendment 2, and Amendments 3, 4, 6 and 13—would mean that no learning centre could be constructed at the Victoria Tower Gardens; and, indeed, that the Government could not allocate any funding to the construction and operation of any learning centre in any location. The Holocaust Commission recommended that a new world-class learning centre should physically accompany the new national memorial. The learning centre will provide an opportunity to learn about the Holocaust close to the memorial and will therefore provide necessary context to the memorial. It is essential that the learning centre should be co-located with the memorial.
Having chosen Victoria Tower Gardens as the site uniquely capable of meeting the commission’s vision, the architectural design competition for the memorial tested the feasibility of a below-ground learning centre. The judges panel chose the winning design for a Holocaust memorial with a co-located learning centre because of its sensitivity to the gardens. The potential impact of our proposed learning centre was captured effectively by Professor Stuart Foster, the executive director of Holocaust education at UCL, who told the planning inquiry of his belief that
“the proposed Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre will make a profound and positive impact on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in this country and, potentially, beyond”.
I ask my noble friend Lady Blackstone to withdraw Amendment 2 and not move Amendments 3, 4, 6 and 13.
Amendment 23 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, to which the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, spoke, would similarly interfere with our objectives of establishing a world-class learning centre and strengthening Holocaust education. Taking £50 million away from the construction budget will mean no learning centre and no programme of education. The right approach is to create a powerful Holocaust memorial and learning centre that can then be a foundation for enhanced educational efforts, drawing together the wide range of impressive organisations already working in the field. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, not to move Amendment 23.
Amendments 29 and 30 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, call for new site searches for a Holocaust memorial and learning centre. Adopting these amendments would take us all the way back to 2015. An independent, cross-party foundation appointed by the then Prime Minister, following cross-party commitment to the recommendations of the Holocaust Commission, led an extensive search for the right site. The foundation included experienced and eminent property developers. A firm of professional property consultants was commissioned to provide assistance. Around 50 sites were identified and considered, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, mentioned. The outcome is, of course, well known: Victoria Tower Gardens was identified as the most suitable site. The foundation was unanimous in recommending the site, which will give the memorial the prominence that it deserves and will uniquely allow the story of the Holocaust to be told alongside the Houses of Parliament. There is nothing to be gained by further site searches but there is, of course, a great deal to be lost. This Government and their predecessors believe that Victoria Tower Gardens is the right site for the memorial and learning centre.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
Can the Minister confirm that the Government looked at 50 sites before deciding on Victoria Tower Gardens? Is it not the case that Victoria Tower Gardens was selected first and a search then went on to look for unsuitable sites?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I strongly reject that assertion. That was not the case. It was a competition; 50 sites were considered and after all those considerations, it was decided.
I must make progress. I will answer the points that have been raised in the debate. There is a lot to get through as this is a big group, but turning the clock back 10 years to conduct further searches in the belief that some greater consensus will be found is simply not realistic. Moreover, one implication of these amendments is that the learning centre might be located separately from the memorial. The clear recommendation of the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission in its 2015 report was that
“the National Memorial should be co-located with a world-class learning centre”.
That recommendation was accepted by the then Prime Minister, with cross-party support.
The reasons why co-location matters are clear. We want the Holocaust to be understood. We cannot assume that visitors, however powerfully they may be affected by the memorial, will have even a basic understanding of the facts of the Holocaust. We cannot assume that they will recognise the relevance of the Holocaust to us, here in Great Britain, now and in the years to come. A co-located learning centre provides the opportunity to give facts, setting the memorial in context and prompting visitors to reflect.
I have no doubt that visitors will be motivated to learn more, as I was when I visited the Washington memorial. For many, the learning centre will be a starting point. I am confident that many visitors will want to explore the subject further at the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth, at the Holocaust Centre and Museum in Nottinghamshire, at Holocaust Centre North in Huddersfield and at many other excellent institutions in the UK and abroad. If the memorial were not accompanied by a learning centre, how many opportunities would be missed? Is it realistic to expect that thousands of visitors would see the memorial and decide then to make a journey of some miles across London to search out further information? Perhaps some would; I am certain that a great many would not.
Turning to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, making a comparison with the Imperial War Museum Holocaust galleries and the size of this learning centre, the learning centre will have around 1,300 square metres of exhibition space, which is about the same as the Imperial War Museum Holocaust galleries. I want to address the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. To be clear, the great majority of visitors will come via public transport, not by coach. Our plans for vehicle access are included within a construction logistics plan which we previously shared with Westminster City Council and which we expect will need to be agreed with it as a planning condition. Visitors will have access to the gardens using the existing entrances, with the site entrance permanently manned with security and construction banksmen.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said that her offer to meet supporters has been ignored. I must politely disagree. Officials and I have met with her and I will continue to meet her whenever she wants, my diary permitting. I am always happy to meet any noble Lord who strongly wants to raise anything. I can see the passion today. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, referred to the great expertise of the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, and my noble friend Lady Blackstone. I am happy to meet at any time in relation to expertise.
Baroness Deech (CB)
I have to say to the Minister that I have met him and his predecessors but not once have they entertained any compromise. They listen, sometimes they shout, and that is the end of it. There has never been an offer to compromise or change anything, no matter what we have written or what plans we have shown.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I have to politely disagree, with the greatest respect for the noble Baroness. I have always listened. We have to understand that I have two main goals with the Bill. The first, in Clause 1, is to allow the Secretary of State to have expenditure to build the project. Secondly, my job in bringing the Bill forward and promoting it is to look at the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 to disapply the condition for this project to be built. Noble Lords are passionate and the strength of feeling is clear, but there is a planning process. Planning permission is still to be granted, and noble Lords will have plenty of opportunity to raise these important and pertinent points on the planning side.
Baroness Deech (CB)
Will the Minister therefore guarantee that a new full planning permission application will go back to Westminster City Council and through all the layers of planning that are normally required, and that it will not be cut short?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I cannot give that guarantee. I want to be clear because noble Lords must understand this: that is in the hands of the designated Minister. It is the role of the designated Minister to see how he takes that forward.
I repeat that the proposals put forward include more than 300 square metres of exhibition space, comparable to the International War Museum’s Holocaust galleries and capable of accommodating a world-class exhibition. I ask the noble Lord not to press Amendments 29 and 30.
Amendment 31 is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who I thank for his kind words earlier, which I thought were most respectful. The amendment calls for a review of the feasibility of including the Holocaust learning centre within a Jewish museum. I want to affirm straight away that the learning centre must and will set the Holocaust in the context of Jewish history. It is simply impossible to provide an accurate account of the Holocaust without addressing the long history of anti-Semitism. For a British Holocaust memorial, that will include addressing the history of British anti-Semitism, working with an experienced curator with the advice of eminent and respected academics. That is what our learning centre will do. I know that several noble Lords may have had the opportunity to see a short presentation from Martin Winstone.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
I am troubled by the Minister repeatedly using the term “world-class”. Could he give us some comparators that enable him to say that what is offered in this centre is world-class? In what respect is it in the same class as the POLIN centre in Warsaw or Yad Vashem? Those centres set the standard for world-class. How can he make that claim for a small centre that will have only computerised images?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
I will affirm the point. The noble Lord talked about Yad Vashem. The content for the learning centre is being developed by a leading international curator, Yehudit Shendar, formerly of Yad Vashem. The ambition and vision is to have a quality curator with a strong academic advisory board.
Baroness Deech (CB)
I am sorry to keep interrupting, but Sir Richard Evans, who is our greatest historian of Germany, and who has been outstanding in combating Holocaust denial, said at the public inquiry that the learning centre will be a national and international embarrassment.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, the Committee can understand that I do not agree with that point. That is a matter of opinion for Sir Richard Evans. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, as we have seen in the passionate debate today.
I was making the point that several noble Lords may have had the opportunity to see a short presentation from Martin Winstone, the historical adviser to the programme, in which he provides a small insight to the work under way. For those noble Lords who have not seen it, we can arrange for Martin Winstone to come in and give them that presentation. I had a drop-in session yesterday; unfortunately it was just me and officials, but I enjoyed it.
The overall focus of the learning centre must of course remain clearly on the Holocaust, and it must be wholly integrated with the national memorial to the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. We want to be sure that visitors are left in no doubt about the nature of the Holocaust. Having seen the memorial, they should clearly understand what it represents. For those reasons, it simply does not make sense to envisage a learning centre located elsewhere and carrying a much broader set of messages.
The history of the Jewish people is rich and deep. Jewish communities have a long history in Britain that needs to be understood, including of course the history of anti-Semitism, extending for many centuries. Telling such a story requires expertise, creativity and space. The Jewish Museum London told this story well, making excellent use of the tens of thousands of artefacts in its collection. I wish the museum well in its search for a new home. I believe also that there will be important opportunities in future for joint work between the learning centre and the Jewish Museum. We aim to work in partnership with institutions across the UK and overseas as we develop education programmes, and as we encourage greater awareness of the Holocaust and its deep roots. But I am sure that we should recognise the differences between the purpose of a Jewish museum in London and the aims of a learning centre located with a Holocaust museum. Each has a distinct and hugely important aim. Placing the Holocaust learning centre wholly within the Jewish Museum could easily mean a loss of focus and would certainly require breaking the essential link between the learning centre and the memorial.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
Who is the “we” who will work with these other institutions? Because, as noble Lords will know, as we come on to the next group, if we do, there is no management. Therefore, I do not understand who is going to work with these other institutions.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I mean “we” as in the Government. Can I continue my final point? The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, made the very important point about rising anti-Semitism. Let me be clear. Anti-Semitism is completely abhorrent and has no place in our society, which is why we are taking a strong lead in tackling it in all its forms. The Government are particularly concerned about the sharp rise in anti-Semitism and will not tolerate this. We have allocated £54 million for the Community Security Trust to continue its vital work until 2028, providing security to schools, synagogues and other Jewish community buildings. We have been actively exploring a more integrated and cohesive approach to tackling all forms of racial and religious hatred. We continue to work closely with the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, in his important work of IHRA. Also, the noble Lord, Lord Mann, continues his work as an anti-Semitism adviser to the Government. On that note, I respectfully ask my noble friend Lady Blackstone to withdraw her amendment and not move her other amendments in this group.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I listened very carefully to what the Minister said in reply to this group of amendments and I have to admit that I am deeply disappointed. I did not hear any spirit of compromise whatever in what he said, and no attempt to reach out on the many points that were made by Members of the Committee.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
I am so sorry to stop my noble friend in her tracks but I said very clearly that I am happy to sit down with anybody, post-Committee, to look at any particular issues. I reminded her that I sat down with noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and had a drop-in session available for noble Lords to visit and see the presentation. My only focus, if we look at the Bill, are these two clauses, which I am trying to promote and make sure we can work through. However, I understand there are a lot of issues and concerns, which I think are for a planning stage of the Bill.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
I am grateful for the Minister’s offer to sit down with various Members of the Committee, but that is not compromising today, which is what I was asking for and expecting. I tried to set out as clearly as I could why what is being proposed for this learning centre is inadequate. There is not enough space for it; the proposals for a computerised exhibition are deeply disappointing; and what I hoped the Minister might say is that he would take this away, have a look at it and discuss it with his officials and others who have expertise in the provision of learning centres on this subject. There was none of that.
I can only say that I am disappointed, as other Members of the Committee will be. The Minister said at the beginning that he attached importance to education as far as this project is concerned, and I am grateful for that. But it is not about attaching importance just to education but to high-quality education that we can be proud of and that many people will want to experience. I do not believe that that is what is being proposed here, so I ask again that before we reach the next stage of the Bill, he will come back with something more positive about how to improve it.
My last point is that I was really surprised that my noble friend would be so dismissive about Sir Richard Evans’s comments. He happens to have been the vice-master of Birkbeck throughout my time there, so we were very close colleagues. He is the most eminent historian in this country of German history of this period. I do not want to sound patronising, but the Minister should not be so dismissive of somebody of that kind of commitment and expertise. I hope he will look again at that.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
Just before my noble friend concludes and, I hope, withdraws her amendment, clearly, a lot of these matters are for planning. The Committee will understand that I might not be able to satisfy the very detailed and passionate contributions made by many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I did not address his point about security because we will have a whole group on security arrangements. I was not ignoring it but wanted to make sure that I brought up that point.
On the point about Richard Evans, as we see today, everyone has a different view. I respect everyone’s opinion but we see in this debate that everyone has a different perspective. As I understand it, we are all well intentioned and want to make sure that we put our case across.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
I thank the Minister. I am delighted to hear that there is to be a proper planning process. He would not give a final commitment to that happening and said it was another Minister’s responsibility. I believe that that Minister said earlier, as a shadow Minister before the election, that there should be a proper planning procedure. Meanwhile, I will withdraw my amendment, but I indicate to the Minister that I will want to come back at the next stage to discuss having a better place for a learning centre than is currently proposed.