Holocaust Memorial Bill

Committee stage
Thursday 27th March 2025 Grand Committee

Committee (4th Day)

13:00

Amendment 21

Moved by

[Baroness Fookes]

21: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Planning application(1) Any applicant must submit a new full planning application to the relevant local authority relating to any Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre planned for Victoria Tower Gardens.(2) In determining the outcome of that application, special attention must be paid to increased security and environmental considerations arising since the first planning application to Westminster City Council in 2019.(3) If the planning permission is to be determined by a Minister there must be a public inquiry.(4) As soon as possible following a planning application the applicant must publicise this and the anticipated timetable by notifying—(a) Members of the House of Commons and members of the House of Lords by depositing a letter in the Libraries of both Houses;(b) the London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust, the Thomas Fowell Buxton Society and the Thorney Island Society;(c) Holocaust survivors, families of victims and refugees from Nazi Germany and their families;(d) organisations engaged in Holocaust remembrance, education and combating antisemitism;(e) local residents through the press and other media.(5) The applicant must take steps to ensure that the availability of updated information relating to the planning application and submitted by the applicant, including updated information relating to security, (as far as such information can safely be placed in the public domain) is notified to the parties referred to in subsection (4), once it has been published by the Secretary of State as part of any planning process.”

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move the amendment standing in my name and those of several other noble Lords. As noble Lords will see, it calls for a new full planning application to be given to the relevant local authority, in this case Westminster City Council. In the event of the Minister calling in the application, it also calls for a new public inquiry with a different inspector. I am fully aware from the exchanges that have taken place in this Committee that the Minister is very unlikely to welcome the full new planning application and possibly even the more minor arrangement that I have put in as a second best. However, that will not deter me from putting the case as forcefully as I can.

I will deal first with the reasons why a new application is vitally necessary. We all know now about the relevant sections of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900, which specifically set out that the Victoria gardens should be in perpetuity a public garden for the interests of those living there. It seems to me that the inspector at the time gave very little weight to that consideration and assumed that the Victoria gardens were easily there to be taken. I think this was a material consideration, because he felt that other sites might take longer to come to fruition. That was a bad miscalculation, but I will not dwell on it further now.

I also feel that the inspector greatly underestimated the damage to the park that would ensue to both the trees and the interests of the residents who rely on this little park in an area not terribly well served by green spaces. He did not have the benefit, shall we call it, of the later present Government’s consideration that everyone should be able to live within 15 minutes of a green space, as set out fairly recently. I feel, therefore, that the environmental considerations were not taken properly into account, but as I dealt with this in more detail in a previous amendment, I will not dwell on it now.

I will now look at a major source of concern where issues have changed for the worse: the security of the site in terms of possible acts of terrorism and any other source of grief, worry or danger to the public. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has powerfully set out this case. Coming as they do from a former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and a King’s Counsel with many years of experience, his views should be taken far more into consideration. I hope that this afternoon he may wish to elaborate on these matters. I am anxious that he does, because there will be very practical implications if one has to allow for the safety of the public in these circumstances, especially so close to the Palace of Westminster.

Furthermore, we have had powerful speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, setting out the risks of fire hazards. Again, I will not go into all the details, but she made the important point that there was only one escape route from the underground learning centre, which she felt needed to be dealt with. Indeed, since she spoke we have had the ghastly incident in Macedonia, where a number of lives were lost in a nightclub because there was only one exit. These things are to be taken very seriously. That does not mean to say that there will not be some mitigation, but I think it needs a new, thorough look.

Then there is the risk of flood, dealt with most cogently by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. It is in an area that has always been rather prone to flooding, and we have had an example of this at 1 Millbank, where the basement restaurant was flooded and out of action for months. So this is another issue that needs much greater consideration.

Interestingly, the R&R programme now wants experiments to be done on the floor of the River Thames along the east side of the Palace, because it may want to do some works on the Terrace and the neighbouring areas. That may not impinge directly on this, but it is an indication that a great many things will be happening with the restoration programme. The Victoria Tower repair is imminent. Are we to suppose that both of those major impacts will not have a very damaging effect on the park, especially if, at the same time, all the building works for the memorial and the underground learning centre are going on? It seems to me that an impossible practical situation is developing. How can one small park accommodate the overflow from two major restorations and repairs, and cope with the building of the memorial and underground learning centre at the same time?

I now turn to the all-important arrangements for dealing with any planning application once the Bill enters the statute book. Let us look for a moment at the guidance given by the Planning Inspectorate as to the procedure to be followed if an application quashed by a law court is revived or restarted. It says in section 20.8 that written representations will normally not even be considered if there have been material changes since the time the application was first submitted. Let us remember that in this case we are talking about a submission in January 2019, now over six years ago. The Planning Inspectorate guidance adds that a round table or hearing will normally be considered only if

“it can reasonably be expected that the parties will be able to present their own cases (supported by professional witnesses if required) without the need for an advocate to represent them”.

Finally, if the application was previously considered by a public inquiry, there would normally be a fresh inquiry and a new inspector would normally be appointed, because he or she would be reviewing matters previously overturned by a court.

That seems pretty straightforward guidance. I understand that it is guidance and not the application of the law, but it seems to me that the guidance here is akin to that for traffic arrangements, whereby when we have road accidents and so on, we can look to the body of work that guides people on matters of traffic.

I was not aware of yet a further complication: the National Planning Casework Unit, set up by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, with a remit that includes managing major planning applications referred to it by the Secretary of State and requests from the Secretary of State to call in planning applications. It has become involved in a pre-consultation process to ensure that there are no undue delays once the Bill is enacted. To my knowledge—and probably that of others—it has consulted the London Historic Parks & Gardens Trust and, most importantly, the promoter, which, of course, comes from within that very same department. Through its solicitor, Pinsent Masons, it has set out what it believes to be the issues before it. It has made a written representation, from which I will quote—not the whole lot but the most relevant parts. It wrote:

“The Applicant considers that the Minister should consider representations on any and all matters required for the redetermination of the Application … such that the redetermination can then take place as soon as reasonably possible following any Royal Assent”—


as I have pointed out. It continued:

“Such matters can be fully and appropriately dealt with through written representations. To re-open the public inquiry would clearly be disproportionate to the matters relevant to the redetermination”.


Finally, it added that

“all the principal … and planning matters relevant to the determination of the Application … remain either entirely or largely unchanged from the time they were originally considered”.

As I have said previously, I regard that as totally wrong and not to be considered at all.

We have this curious spectacle, as I see it, of a planning application from an applicant, somebody who has to make the decision, and another organisation, the planning unit, all within the same department of state. Looking at it from the outside, as most people will, I consider that to be an unhealthily close relationship—at best unhealthy, and at worst positively incestuous. I am not at all happy if the way out to be chosen once the Bill becomes law is anything other than a full public inquiry or, at the very least, a new public inquiry. That is the burden of my theme this afternoon. I beg to move.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 34 in my name, which I tabled before your Lordships started to look at the Bill in Committee. Having listened so far, I am more than ever convinced that an impact assessment is needed. It would cover many things we have already debated but, as I suggested previously, with regard to risk, there would be great benefit in pulling together the many points that have been and are still to be discussed. Some suggestions will impact on others, so an overall view of the impact of the proposed memorial and learning centre would be of great benefit, not to say essential.

I find it most peculiar that there should not already have been an impact assessment for this project. I expect that a number of issues are more strictly for planning, whereas this Bill is to overcome the limitations of the 1900 covenant. When considering legislation to dispense with a covenant, there are planning issues that will impact on the decision. For example, if the proposal were for a manufacturing unit of some sort, I imagine that your Lordships might well feel that the covenant should stand. So it is not inappropriate to seek answers that are, strictly speaking, planning matters. As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has said, we are entitled to know in detail what is proposed before we are asked to remove the covenant of which we are custodians.

13:15

I would hope that the impact assessment also covered the moral aspect of taking a park such as this and turning it from a tranquil place to be enjoyed by residents and workers in the area to a place most likely to become the centre of controversy and bitterness. I am not in any way against a memorial to that shocking and inhuman tragedy—indeed, I would encourage such a thing—but to place the proposed monstrosity in one of the smallest parks in London, next to the Houses of Parliament, where inevitably it will become the target of demonstrations, is both foolish and reckless. To me, it is beyond imagination that the Government should seek to introduce 1 million visitors a year into a small space in a limited area without carrying out an impact assessment. I comment on the remark by the noble Lord, Lord Austin, at an earlier stage of our debates: the estimate of 1 million is at the lower end of the various estimates.

I have already mentioned the proposed memorial being a target of anti-Jewish demonstrations, but surely the impact from other demonstrations that take place in this area should also be borne in mind. Streets are already closed for larger demonstrations, and residents in the area find it very difficult to get to where they live. If you doubt this, just walk west out of the Palace and see all the steel barriers erected just before you get to Great Peter Street. How are we going to cope with an extra 3,000 to 4,000 visitors a day when this area is closed off? That is something else that needs to have its impact looked at.

How is it proposed to deal with the 11 buses a day forecast to bring visitors to the memorial? You do not need to think for long to realise that 11 buses is a ludicrously small estimate given the projected numbers, but even 11 buses would not find it easy to park or manoeuvre in the area. The streets there are small, and once you leave Millbank they are difficult to turn around in and drive down. Of course the buses will not all arrive at once, but nevertheless the volume—on top of the existing traffic and the Mayor of London’s all too successful attempt to grind London’s traffic to a standstill—will be a problem.

What is going to happen on state occasions? At a bare minimum, there is the State Opening of Parliament approximately once a year, during which, as your Lordships well know, whole areas are closed down. Coming from the west will be less problematic than from the east, but the east is the direction from which those arriving by Underground will come, and that is how the greatest volume of visitors will come. It will not be easy for visitors to get to the proposed centre when swathes of the usual access are either closed off or narrowed down.

The point has been made that the 1 million visitors, although there could be more, will be only a 10% increase, but 10% on most occasions in life is the marginal amount that makes the difference. Has this properly been thought through? Is it wishful thinking to believe there will be no impact? The comments by my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Hodgson, on the impact from the number of visitors, are very relevant.

What about the impact of this conveyor-belt design? We see many things that are not to our taste but are not offensive. This design is both offensive and awful—and, placed where it is, even worse. I have heard it referred to as a toast-rack as well as various other things, but I have never seen a toast-rack quite as hideous as this. I heartily endorse the comments of my noble friend Lord Blencathra and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. When I heard her repeating the architect’s description of the proposed design, I thought she was reading from Pseuds Corner in Private Eye.

We have already debated risk, but inevitably security should be considered in any impact assessment. There are bound to be security officers, probably armed, patrolling the gardens. What will be the impact on people enjoying or trying to enjoy the gardens as the covenant over this precious piece of land intended? What will be the impact for local residents and businesses? The area immediately surrounding Victoria gardens is full of listed buildings of all grades—indeed, Lord North Street still retains its original gas lamps. What will be the impact on these precious pieces of our inheritance? Has the impact of restoring the Palace of Westminster, as I mentioned earlier, been considered? It is a project that will take years and should be taken into consideration.

From whatever way you look at it, it is in everyone’s interests to have an impact assessment. If there is an impact assessment, some of the issues being raised by this Committee might get highlighted and possibly dealt with.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 38. I think Members of the Committee can probably all agree about at least one thing: it is not a usual Committee stage. Apart from anything else, the Bill proposes to amend the LCC Act 1900, which confers on Parliament rights as a landowner through a statutory covenant. This, I suggest, imposes legal and fiduciary duties in respect of the adjoining land. The Bill proposes to remove those rights. This in turn, it seems to me, is reflected in the fact of the Bill’s hybridity, which is the rationale for the special provisions that apply where rights of those who are specifically affected are concerned. This includes, inter alia, the other petitioner and Parliament itself.

It is interesting, and I suggest very relevant, that the Select Committee questioned the appropriateness of the current rules as regards the admissibility or otherwise of certain evidence in front of it. There was some debate about this, and I refer to paragraph 74 of the report of the Select Committee. While the committee and clearly Parliament in the current legal context are not an alternative to the planning authority, the Select Committee, in my view entirely properly, considered matters that might be considered planning matters to the extent that they had relevance to the in-scope amendments under consideration, which I have just mentioned. In any event, once the Bill moves into Grand Committee, the scope of what may be properly debated widens.

It is very important to notice and to focus on the fact that the Select Committee sought assurances and undertakings from the promoter—I am now referring to pages 33 to 37 of the committee’s report. The Select Committee concluded that under the rules of procedure it was not in a position to bring forward amendments. However, the recommended assurances and undertakings that it sought, if honoured, would in the real world have had very similar effect to amendments to the Bill. They would also have much the same effect as planning conditions, and might be seen by some as analogous to them. But, as I have already indicated, that does not make them the same; they are different.

Let us look at the Government’s responses to the Select Committee’s report. Some assurances appear to have been accepted and a couple not, but it seems to me that, in reality, the promoter’s responses, based on the way that this project has been taken forward both inside and outside the House, are not worth the paper they are written on because of the caveats that the promoter will use his best endeavours. These are unenforceable and entirely nebulous and vague.

As I said, having seen the way in which the promoter’s case was presented, both to the Select Committee and more widely, in a strictly not improper way but vigorously and robustly, it seems completely fanciful from the facts that we know to suppose that the Government’s best endeavours have any realistic prospect of properly dealing with the Select Committee’s real concern, because they are weasel words.

Against that background, bearing in mind the rights conferred on it by the 1900 Act, which mean that Parliament is not acting solely as a legislator in this case, it therefore cannot possibly be right to leave all the detail for later consideration by others. On the contrary, in order to honour the obligations, both legal and moral, imposed on it by the LCC Act, which is still on the statute book, and more generally, it must insist on requiring greater detail on what is actually going to be done. That is not incompatible in any way with Parliament’s legislative role and, in my view, is a necessity prior to relinquishing its responsibilities under the 1900 Act.

It seems that the only way this can properly be done is for Parliament to reserve its position until after planning consent—including listed building consents as required, if any—will have been granted, because there is no certainty about to what Parliament is consenting until that is settled. After all, we know the Government cannot guarantee what the outcome of the planning process might be, because if they could do that, they would be denying their impartiality. We also know—this has been confirmed by the Minister in Committee—that even if consent is granted, conditions can be imposed that fundamentally change the substance of the application. Indeed, I might go even further and say that in any event, at any time after Parliament has passed the legislation, other planning applications can be made. There is no guarantee at all that the one currently held up by the courts will be the one eventually implemented.

I may be accused of being ignoble and doubting the good faith of the Government. All I say is that I am a farmer, and I have a certain perspective on certain undertakings that the Government have given.

It has also been suggested that such a process might rack up huge extra costs, but I do not think that can possibly be correct. As long as Parliament deals with the matter expeditiously at the last point in the process, it will make no material difference because any expenditure before the obtaining of planning permission is always speculative. So if Parliament then responds appropriately at the end of this process, that argument cannot stand up.

Perhaps most tellingly of all—this came to me just recently as I thought about it—let us forget that we are talking about Parliament and imagine ourselves as a householder who has a house subject to various covenants that protect it and the adjoining plot of land. If a developer was to approach that householder and say, “We would like to build on this adjoining plot of land—are you prepared to release the covenant?”, what would the response be? First, it would be, “Well, tell me exactly what you want to do”. It is absolutely basic common sense and a responsible way to deal with that sort of circumstance, and it is exactly the approach that we in this House should take in response to this piece of draft legislation. Quite simply, Parliament must know the full facts of what is going to happen before deciding whether to give it its go-ahead.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I start with a reference to Amendment 38, to which my noble friend Lord Inglewood just spoke and which I support. The starting point of this legislation is that Parliament is being used by the Government as a vehicle for development to be permitted on otherwise prohibited land. To allow Parliament to be used as such a vehicle is a very significant responsibility, taken on by the promoters of this legislation. However much enthusiasm is shown by the various bodies—perhaps described in best detail in the Audit Commission’s 2022 report, which revealed many imperfections in the management of this scheme—Parliament should have the final say, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood said.

13:30

The 1900 Act gave restrictions that are now to be removed. Clause 1 does not say that there should be permission to construct on the land a structure that is set out in, for example, a Schedule 1 to the Bill, which could have included a plan for this specific proposal if that had been in the Government’s mind at the time; I assume it was. So Parliament is left with the indefinite article: “a memorial” and “a centre”, not in any way describing what that centre should be.

Therefore, in my view it is logical that Parliament should expect to be able to inspect what is proposed before permission is finally granted. If that has to be through a planning appeal, so be it. There may be another way of doing it but, after a planning appeal, not only will the inspector allow “a memorial” and “a centre” but all the planning conditions will be set out in detail, with drawings, with the access conditions and, presumably, with some specificity about security, which I will come to in a minute. Therefore, Parliament would be able to see “the centre” and “the memorial” that are proposed, with the definite article inserted.

Surely the least Parliament can expect is to be allowed to consider why it has repealed the material parts of Section 8 of the 1900 Act, so that it can decide whether this should be allowed. With great respect to the Minister and all those supporting him enthusiastically, I defy the Government to produce a logical argument that negates the requirement—at least, the principle—that Parliament should have the final say. For those reasons, I support the amendment spoken to so well by my noble friend Lord Inglewood.

Next, I turn to the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, that there should be an impact assessment. One of the things that we have discussed in this Committee—repeatedly, I am afraid—is whether this will be a real educational centre. Will it be the sort of thing that a university—universities are well represented in this Committee—would regard as respectable, helpful and developmental for those who would wish to visit an educational centre? Will it provide some impact about the Shoah—the Holocaust—for the children who come among the millions of people on those buses, which will be parked somewhere between Lambeth Bridge and Great Peter Street? Will it provide the educational impact that would be expected by students who come from Germany and are trying to learn something about the impact of what happened in their country, as well as what happened in this country, in relation to the Shoah? Surely Parliament should be entitled to assess that impact through the presentation of such an assessment to Parliament before this Bill is allowed to become law.

If Parliament is not prepared to provide, in some form, the sort of impact assessment that was asserted so well by the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, what are we doing here? Why are we considering this Bill? Why are we just the tarmac that is the victim of the steamroller, as the proposal passes through Parliament?

I turn to the noble Baroness’s opening of the debate. I have already spoken about security in detail, and I promise not to do it again, but I remind the Committee, in support of the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, that in this country we are not in the habit of dealing with national security issues in planning applications. Nobody has ever considered dealing with national security, particularly of critical national infrastructure, in planning applications. We are not in the habit of asking an architect or surveyor, however skilled—they are often the chairs or inspectors of these planning appeals—to determine the security issues for a building if national security is involved. If a supermarket is being built, of course the planning inspector can determine the security issues that arise, as they can for any building to which the public have resort, but the planning inspector is not capable or qualified to assess a building that is being placed half way between Parliament and the headquarters of the Security Service.

I remind your Lordships—I carefully checked this morning—that there is no provision in planning appeal procedure or in any planning procedure for any secret or closed hearings to be held to deal with national security. It is just not provided for and it would be unlawful if done, even if we had an inspector with the relevant qualifications to deal with it. With respect to the very good planning inspectors, it seems to be something that they would far rather not do and would say that they are not qualified to do.

I say to your Lordships, in support of the noble Baroness’s amendment, that the only place with the flexibility to deal with these national security issues in an informed way is Parliament. Even doing what the noble Baroness suggested is a poor alternative to doing this properly in Parliament.

The “special attention”—that phrase is in her amendment—needs to be covered by the Bill and by allowing Parliament to decide whether national security has been protected. The flexibility of our procedures here enables things to happen such as—here I am repeating myself, but I cannot repeat this often enough—meetings or consultations on Privy Council or similar terms. That would enable one of us in this House to stand up and say, “Well, I’ve had the advantage of a meeting and I’ve seen all the people who are most important at these things and have the highest level of security clearance. I can tell your Lordships that I think there will be no national security issue with putting this structure between Parliament and the headquarters of the Security Service”. I cannot begin to understand why the Government are resisting this common-sense approach to a serious issue that—again, I am repeating myself—may end up with me one day having to stand up and say, “I told you so”. That is the last thing I want to do.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, to follow on a little from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, I want to say that I think most of us would be delighted to see a decent memorial and learning centre to the victims of the ghastly Holocaust, but not here. I am afraid it is a completely bonkers idea—and I want to put that clearly, because it is a bonkers idea. I would love to see Yad Vashem in London—and those who have not been there should go. It is one of the most moving places I have been to, and I have been three times altogether. It is absolutely extraordinary, but it could not possibly be in the space we are talking about. Perhaps it could be in the grounds of the Imperial War Museum, which wanted this learning centre in the first place.

I am not going to dwell on everything that has been said before. I just mention something that my noble friend Lady Fookes talked about—namely, green spaces. Every Government say that we have to have green spaces. I remember Rishi Sunak saying it, and I am sure that Keir Starmer would have said it—the Minister can bear me out if he has. We need green spaces for people, and I think I am right in saying that this is the only green space between Fulham Palace gardens and the other side of the City of London that runs along the north side of the river. That is pretty extraordinary—it is the only green space where you can walk beside the river without a road in the way and see it from a green area. It is extraordinary to want to destroy it when there are no others.

On security, to back up what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, a lot has been said, although I am afraid I missed the part on security. I do not know whether it was discussed last week—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)]

It was.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I know it was discussed last week. But what do you do with all the people visiting if, for instance, the King were to die, God forbid? Did we discuss what would have happened with all those people visiting the late Queen Elizabeth? Thousands of people were in that park. Where would they go now? That is a very reasonable point. Also, I know it has been discussed at length but if we have renovation and renewal, or whatever it is called, there will have to be a slight discussion.

What I particularly want to talk about on my noble friend Lady Fookes’s amendment is the council and planning permission. I should declare as an interest that I am a resident of Westminster and, indeed, that my wife is on Westminster City Council. When it came before the council in, I think, 2019, it was turned down completely—I think, although the Minister might be able to tell me, not just by the Conservatives who were then in power but by the Labour Party as well. He can correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think I am. It is very important that people understand that those are the views of local people. Again, I thought that not just Conservatives but the Labour Party wanted the views of local people taken into account, but they are not going to be on this.

I do not want to repeat everything that has been said. I will say just two things, to be answered by the Minister. Does the Minister believe that the views of the local people of Westminster count, or are we not going to have another planning application? Does the Minister believe in the importance of environmental and open spaces beside the river and elsewhere in London, or is everything just to be bulldozed and trampled over? If that is the case, we might as well all just give up anyway.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and the two amendments on planning. It also falls to me to cope with the heritage amendment because, unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, cannot be here this afternoon, and I support the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, on the impact assessment.

To start with planning, throughout the whole sorry saga of this misbegotten project the Government have tried to avoid proper planning processes. Knowing that Westminster City Council was going to turn it down, the promoter rushed to get the Minister to call it in. The consultancy, Big Ideas, was paid more than £100,000 by the Government to collect and bulk-display comments in favour of the memorial to counteract the genuine objections on the website.

The Government are digging themselves into a deep legal hole here in relation to conflicts and proper planning applications. On conflicts, the department has set up a separate framework for a Minister to take the decision. But who can imagine a junior Minister deciding to defy his Secretary of State and his Government’s wishes in order to take an independent stand against this project?

The whole public inquiry that we had in the past is now utterly vitiated because the inspector was unaware of the 1900 Act, which stood in the way of building on Victoria Tower Gardens. Therefore, the balance of pros and cons that he said he was carrying out was not a proper balance, because one enormous weight was missing on one side: he ignored the 1900 Act.

13:45

There is also the moral issue. WH Smith, who gave the money for the garden, did not do so to avoid a fire risk or for something to do with wharfs. He said—a historian has researched this—that it was nothing to do with those issues; it was his particular desire to cater for the local children. WH Smith said he had a morbid desire to keep that green area free of building. It is somewhat on the immoral side for us to pass over lightly the desire of a generous philanthropist of over 100 years ago.

The original planning application is now over six years old, and the world and Westminster have changed. The Government must know about the requirements—which the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, spelled out—of how to handle a reapplication. It is therefore not the case, as the Minister has said repeatedly, that a Minister will take the decision on what to do about the planning application, because the rules are laid out, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, explained.

Moreover, improper pressure, as I would call it, has already been applied by the promoters through their lawyers, Pinsent Masons, almost insisting that planning application be curtailed and that there should be only written representations. They also said, quite wrongly, that the principal matters relevant to the determination of this application remain unchanged, which is obviously untrue—anyone could tell you that. The promoter’s comments to the PCU planning within the department directly contradict what the Minister has said about not being able to say anything about planning. There has been improper pressure on the decision-taker. I am just issuing a warning that the department is digging a legal hole for itself.

Many things have changed. We now know the problems with the Adjaye design, the security problems and the heritage problems, which I am coming to. The Imperial War Museum opened its display after the public inquiry, the flood risk has increased, there is a new National Planning Policy Framework and, of course, there is security and terrorism. If Parliament really cares about the environment, its own laws and the safety of the people here, a full new planning application has to be carried out. I see no reason why the ministry would not want to do that. If it is so proud of this project, there should be no difficulty at all, from its point of view, in getting planning permission.

On the impact assessment, I will add a few words to what the noble Lord, Lord Howard, said. Why is there no impact assessment accompanying the Bill? One would expect the department to publish an impact assessment, which would be revised all the time to reflect changes made to the Bill during its passage. An impact assessment would be expected to deal with the regulatory burden, competition, small firms, legal aid, sustainable development, carbon emissions, environmental matters, health and well-being, human rights, justice and rural matters. There is a legal obligation on Ministers to have regard to their responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010 in relation to Bills.

Why have the Government not set out their policy position and considered the options? We know that the wrong site has been chosen—that has been thoroughly gone into—but what about the impact on business or, in this case, the cost? What about the impact on the economy, the ongoing maintenance of the site, the security precautions costs and the impact on voluntary organisations? What is the impact on the existing learning centres, of which there are at least 21, and their funding? What is the impact on the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust galleries, less than a mile away, or the impact on all the other Holocaust remembrance organisations that expected to have new offices inside the learning centre, as recommended in 2015?

What about the impact on the environment, the increased traffic, the flood and fire risks, the armed security guards and the impact on the playground and on the parliamentary education centre in VTG? What about damage to the existing memorials, the dirt and dust arising from the construction and its impact on restoration and renewal—and vice versa? We would expect to hear about the carbon emissions associated with the edifice, how to find builders prepared to work underground, access for disabled people and protection against vandalism and terrorism. We do not have an impact assessment because, I fear, the Government do not know the answer to many of those questions. I leave aside the impact that might be caused by the learning centre because we have a separate group dealing with that.

Finally, in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, I will say a few words about heritage and Amendment 42. He particularly wanted me say that he had attended the latest meeting with the World Heritage Committee. He had hoped that this new Government would accept UNESCO’s severe criticisms of the choice of this site. He asked me to say how disappointed he was that this Government have continued to ignore the carefully researched objections of UNESCO. The World Heritage Committee has said, year after year, that it is a bad idea to build on Victoria Tower Gardens because it will ruin the special universal value of the site. UNESCO has advised that alternative locations and designs should be considered. This has been going on since 2019; it has said it about four times. UNESCO strongly supports the concept of a memorial and learning centre but

“re-iterates its serious concerns that the proposed location in Victoria Tower Gardens, would have an unacceptable adverse impact on the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the property and therefore, also reiterates its request to the State Party to pursue alternative locations and/or designs”.

It has simply been rebutted by the Government.

Moreover, the International Council on Monuments and Sites also criticised the choice and Victoria Tower Gardens has in the last few weeks been shortlisted for Europe’s seven most endangered sites. Historic England expressed its concern to Westminster City Council in 2019. Why are the Government ignoring the strictures of the world’s most important heritage guardians on the choice of this site? Will the Minister explain why the advice of international bodies is being ignored, especially bearing in mind the oft-repeated willingness of this Government to observe international law?

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will respond briefly to what has been said on this group of amendments. The Minister will perhaps be grateful to me if I do not repeat all the arguments made in the eloquent speeches we have heard this afternoon. In turn, I will be very grateful to him if he gives a full reply to all the points raised and the questions asked. I particularly want to hear from him what the Government intend to do if the planning application, as I believe the Government intend, leads to a decision to turn down this proposal. I want to know from him whether the Government’s current position—they must have some position on this—is to call it in or to accept what the experts and the politicians on Westminster City Council believe is the right decision. I give my noble friend a little warning that I will get up and ask again if he does not produce an answer to that.

My main reason for speaking is that, like the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, I was at one time the Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport responsible not just for the arts but for heritage. One of the most shocking things about this project relates to the 1900 Act, which was set up in good faith in perpetuity to protect these gardens for the use of residents and other users. We are seeing a blatant disregard for what legislators decided. Admittedly that was a long time ago, but for many years no Governments have decided to disapply the Act to this important garden. The Minister has to say why he thinks this disapplication is acceptable. It is profoundly wrong on social, environmental and political grounds, and in terms of thinking about the future of this particular part of London.

I want to pick up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said about the heritage issues. It is shocking that UNESCO—an extremely important part of the United Nations’ activities, protecting our culture and our heritage around the world—should be ignored. I just do not think a British Government should do that. We are committed members of the United Nations, and we have been committed to UNESCO. On a number of occasions I, as a Minister, sat with my officials discussing how we would ensure that all the British world heritage sites were properly maintained, sustained and cared for, and how we should carefully select new ones when we had an opportunity to do so. As it happened, when I was the Minister responsible, I selected Kew Gardens, which was not a world heritage site but absolutely deserved to be. We gave it some funding to make sure that it could prepare an application for it.

I really urge the Minister to discuss this further, not only in his own department but in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which has some responsibility for heritage issues and for what UNESCO decides to do. Perhaps he could let the Committee know whether any discussions have taken place with his colleagues in that department, and whether there has been any direct contact with UNESCO about the decision to ignore what UNESCO has been saying for the last five years. It is also important that Historic England, an agency funded by the Government, has also come out totally against using the site for this project.

I rest my case. I will not say any more, but I support what has already been said, not just on this matter but by the other contributors to this debate on the whole area of planning.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who noble Lords will recall suggested at a previous session that I said that people who were against this were antisemitic, which was clearly wrong. Most people would have sought all kinds of ways to find their way around those words, but I am delighted to say that the noble Baroness most graciously apologised to me. I accept that apology and I accept that it was made in good faith, and I have to say that I think it takes a great person to admit when they have made a mistake.

I place on record my gratitude to the Government for the announcement made last night at the Community Security Trust dinner by the Home Secretary that the new memorial will receive the protection of the new offence of damage to a public memorial. That is an important announcement, and we are grateful for it.

14:00

I am a bit depressed by the rather personal nature of all this—suggesting that the Government are somehow crooked and you cannot trust them, and that this is not worth the paper it is written on. We have a well-established planning process. I have to say, as somebody who was in charge of it for five years, that the thought that anybody would direct a Minister, even a junior one, on how to decide on a planning application goes against my experience in those five years. I myself took decisions that went against the known will of the Prime Minister because it was the right planning decision to make. People take these decisions very seriously. If there is a suggestion that people take decisions on political grounds, I absolutely deprecate the suggestion that, “Well, the Labour group and the Conservative group on Westminster Council said this”. I can tell noble Lords that, if those groups are meeting as a group to decide on a planning application, that is illegal and a breach of the planning rules. That would in itself be grounds for overturning their refusal. I am sure that that is not what—

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

We are talking about the planning process now. Some of us do not quite understand why the decision of Westminster City Council was overturned by the Government in 2019.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

That was a perfectly proper and normal process, as established in the planning rules. Of course the Government can do that, through the proper process, and have a public inquiry; that is a normal thing. What the council cannot do is meet as a group to decide on planning permissions. The reason why the law was changed was because of a number of dodgy decisions taken in the 1960s for political and personal financial reasons. That is why it is not possible to discuss planning applications.

These things are taken completely independently. There have been some ingenious arguments put forward, which I have enjoyed, but, essentially, it is the same thing: “We want a different planning system. We don’t want one that applies to the rest of the country. We want a planning application that applies to where we live, and we want to decide it because we’re in the House of Lords”. That is an untenable position and one that is difficult to justify outside. This Bill does not seek to grant planning permission; it does not take it into the planning permission. Nothing in this process relates to town and country planning. It just opens the possibility for town and country planning to be applied to this process.

The Imperial War Museum is a key partner in this. It supports the memorial in the Victoria Tower Gardens. Regarding UNESCO, we should remember that this is not in its area; it is outside it. We are perhaps entitled to get the opinion of Historic England. I am sure that it was just because of a question of time—she was coming to the end of her time—that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, did not give Historic England’s view; of course, it looked at this matter specifically. It said that

“the proposals would not significantly harm the Outstanding Universal Value of the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey including Saint Margaret’s Church World Heritage Site”.

We are grateful for that but, ultimately, something such as this has to be determined by the Minister. The Government, who are responsible for our security, have to make that decision in conjunction with the security forces.

I am going to sit down now, but I do hope that we can conduct this in a slightly more comradely fashion. In 1992, during my first appearance on a committee, I accused George Mudie, who was then a Member of Parliament—and quite a good friend of mine, actually—of issuing weasel words. I was hauled over the coals for that, and I had to make a full and frank apology. But, apparently, your Lordships’ House, which is supposed to be the dignified end of the constitution, can serve words such as these without it even raising an eyebrow.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 21. I have a few straightforward questions for the Minister on the so-called planning process. First, I say to my noble friend Lord Pickles, in the most comradely and indeed cuddly way, that I think he misunderstood what my noble friend Lord Robathan was saying. I do not take my noble friend Lord Robathan’s comments to mean that the Labour and Tory groups met in some secret cabal or caucus to sabotage the planning application. I took them to mean that, when they met in the council properly to determine it, all the Tories and Labour people voted against it, perfectly legitimately—not in some secret caucus.

The questions I have for the Minister are straightforward. First, will he confirm that the designated Minister to decide on the three options that he mentioned last week will be from his own department? Will it be Matthew Pennycook MP, Jim McMahon OBE MP, Rushanara Ali MP, Alex Norris MP or the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage? Secondly, will he state how their independence will be judged?

I must tell the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, that in my opinion there is not the slightest snowflake’s chance in Hades that the Government will again send this to Westminster City Council for a planning application. They will go for the other two internal options. In that regard, will the Minister set out exactly how the round-table proposal will work? Who will be invited, how many round tables will there be and what written evidence will they accept?

Finally, there is a suggestion for written representations as another option. Will he or the designated Minister accept and give full consideration to all written representations received, just like the planning application to Westminster City Council? If the designated Minister rejects them, will his or her justification be set out in full?

For the benefit of any present who may wish to give the Minister any advisory notes from the Box, I repeat: who will be the designated Minister? How will the department determine his or her independence? How will the round tables work? Will written representations permit all the representations that Westminster City Council receives? How will they be assessed? Will the designated Minister set out in full the reasons for rejecting written arguments, if the decision to go ahead is taken?

There you go, my Lords: two and a half minutes, which is a record for me in this Committee.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group, as with many of the amendments that have been tabled to the Bill, relate to the planning process and the impact that the new memorial and learning centre will have on security and other buildings in the area.

Amendment 21, from my noble friend Lady Fookes, asks for a new planning application because of new information on security and environmental impacts. We have discussed these issues in an earlier group and I do not intend to revisit those arguments in my remarks here.

The amendment also seeks to place an expanded notification duty on the applicant. I do not support the amendment, but I am sure that the Minister will take this opportunity to reassure my noble friend Lady Fookes and her cosignatories that appropriate notifications will, as always, be sent in the appropriate manner to the appropriate persons.

Amendment 34, in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising, seeks to require another impact assessment before this project. I know that my noble friend’s concerns are deeply felt, but I do not feel that we need to do a further impact assessment. We need to make progress on the delivery of this landmark memorial, which was promised to this country so very long ago.

Amendment 38 seeks to give Parliament the final decision on planning. Parliament will have a say once the Bill is passed. We are not certain that bringing the proposition to Parliament once again is at all appropriate.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, the point I was arguing was about the LCC Act 1900, which completely antedates the planning system and imposes some statutory covenants. My amendment is focused on the statutory covenants, which have nothing to do with the planning system at all. If it is presented as something to do with the planning system, that is fundamentally to misunderstand the reality of the position we are in.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, but what we are discussing here should only be the covenant and we are discussing things that appertain to the planning application.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, but they are different, and they have different relevance and values associated with them, because in essence they operate in different areas of law and/or administration.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I have nothing further to say, my Lords.

Amendment 42, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, touches on an important issue. Obviously, we would not want any proposals to damage or undermine the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey or St Margaret’s. These are sites of immense value to the British people, and the abbey is of global architectural importance. That said, again, we do not feel that this amendment is necessary, and these questions should be addressed, as always, through the planning process.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Howard and Lord Inglewood, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Fookes, for bringing these amendments. This group of amendments seeks to put in place a series of new requirements that must be met before progress could be made with construction of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre.

It may be helpful if I briefly remind the Grand Committee that a very extensive process has already been followed in the journey from the 2015 report of the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission. The commission consulted extensively before submitting its report, entitled Britain’s Promise to Remember, in January 2015. The recommendations in that report were accepted by all major political parties. An independent, cross-party foundation then 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.

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 gives the memorial the prominence it deserves and which uniquely allows the story of the Holocaust to be told alongside the Houses of Parliament. The design of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre was chosen by a broad-based panel after an international competition with more than 90 entrants.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

Is it not true that the original commission put forward three positions, and none of them was Victoria Tower Gardens?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

Yes, that is right.

After detailed consultation in which shortlisted schemes toured the UK and a major consultation event for Holocaust survivors was held, the judging panel chose the winning design for a Holocaust memorial with a collocated learning centre because of its sensitivity to Victoria Tower Gardens. Public exhibitions were held to gather feedback on the winning design ahead of a planning application. As the law requires, further consultation took place around the planning application. More than 4,000—

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister believe that the description “collocated” includes being in the same building? What the commission actually said was that the learning centre should be located in close proximity, not in the same building. If one organisation tries to tell you that in this instance “collocated” includes being in the same building, I am afraid that that is a definitional mistake and quite misleading.

14:15

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I can only refer back to the word “collocated” which was used about the Holocaust memorial alongside the learning centre.

I would like to make some progress and I know that I have a number of questions to answer. Please can I get through some of the background of where we are? I hope we can address the amendments, and I will take interventions, as required.

As I have said, as the law requires, further consultation took place around the planning application. More than 4,000 written representations were submitted. A six-week planning inquiry was held, in public, at which more than 50 interested parties spoke; I believe some noble Lords were there. All the details of the planning application—over 6,000 pages of information, all of which remains publicly accessible online—were closely scrutinised. The design team, and indeed the co-chairs of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, were cross-examined by learned counsel.

Following the planning inquiry, the independent inspector then submitted his detailed and lengthy report to the Minister with a recommendation that consent should be granted. The Minister agreed with that recommendation. The planning decision was, of course, subsequently quashed by the High Court, on the basis that certain parts of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 prevented development in Victoria Tower Gardens. That is why we are promoting this Bill: to seek Parliament’s agreement that the statutory impediment should be lifted for the purposes of a Holocaust memorial and learning centre. However, the planning decision still needs to be retaken by the designated Minister—for the sake of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and other noble Lords in the Committee, that would be Jim McMahon—in accordance with proper procedures and in line with all relevant statutory requirements.

I turn now to Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes. This would require a new planning application, which would take us back to 2018. I see no possible justification for such a step. The planning application submitted in 2018 remains current. The planning process which is under way has provided, and will provide, all the proper opportunities for consultation and scrutiny. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw Amendment 21.

Amendment 34 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howard, calls for a new impact assessment. I have pointed out already that the impacts of the proposal have been studied in depth and a great deal of material has been published on the Westminster City Council planning portal. Noble Lords who wish to consider further the educational impact of the proposal could review the evidence provided by Professor Stuart Foster of the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, who told the inquiry that the learning centre

“will offer visitors an engaging, interactive and dynamic experience … underpinned by rigorous scholarship and the advice and expertise of some of the leading academics and specialists in the field”.

It will

“offer different insights and critical interpretations of what Britain did and did not do in response to events”,

and

“will serve as a catalyst for deeper engagement and interest in Holocaust education across the country”.

For an assessment of the impacts on air quality, archaeology, soils, flood risk, traffic and water quality—and a great deal more—noble Lords could review the environmental assessment which remains available online. The expected costs of the proposal have been presented to Parliament and will be updated in line with the normal arrangements for major projects. This clause simply requires work to be duplicated, causing further unnecessary delay, so I ask the noble Lord not to move Amendment 34.

Amendment 38 from the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, seeks to insert an additional step into the process for obtaining all the required permissions and consents for construction of the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre at Victoria Tower Gardens. Such a clause can hardly be justified. Both Houses of Parliament have had the opportunity to consider very carefully the case for a Holocaust memorial and learning centre at VTG; I need hardly remind noble Lords that this Bill has already received its Second Reading in this House, having been agreed by the other House last summer. It has certainly been no secret that the Government are promoting this Bill with the express purpose of enabling construction of the scheme for which planning permission was sought in December 2018.

Members of Parliament and Members of the House of Lords have the same opportunities as all other citizens and residents to express their opinions about any proposed development. In the case of this particular planning application, Members of this House made their views clear and spoke very forcefully at the planning inquiry. The Palace of Westminster of course has an interest as a neighbour to the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre. Like any other neighbour, Parliament can make its views known through the planning system and be confident that those views will be given due weight.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

Does the Minister see any internal contradiction in what he says? He says repeatedly that these issues can be considered in a planning application, but at the same time he also says that the Minister can decide what to do about a planning application. As we have said repeatedly, there is absolutely no guarantee that there will be any space of any sort for these issues to be considered. Is it not important to the Minister that the original planning application was made six or seven years ago? Any politician will tell you that the world has changed—Westminster has changed, the atmosphere has changed and the climate has changed in the last seven years. How can it be right to ignore all of that, not answering the questions that have been put this afternoon, and ignoring the elephant in the room—that the project now proposed is a very far cry from that which was recommended in 2015 and accepted by David Cameron, then the Prime Minister? This is a million miles away from what was proposed and accepted then.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I politely disagree with the noble Baroness—there is no inconsistency. My job in promoting the Bill is to look at the two main clauses along with the third one, which says that the Bill applies to England and Wales. Planning permission is absolutely for the designated Minister. As a proposal of national significance, it is perfectly proper for a planning decision to be taken by a Minister rather than by a local planning authority. When these arrangements were challenged in a judicial review in 2020, that challenge did not succeed.

Perhaps I can just make some more progress. Like any other neighbour, Parliament can make its views known through the planning system.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

With the greatest respect to the Minister, if the Planning Minister is somebody different, why is he not here answering these questions today?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, that is not the way planning works. I will leave my remarks there, in the sense that it is up to the designated planning Minister how he takes this process forward, but there will be a planning process, which is right. It is not ideal for this House, through this Bill in particular, to be discussing planning applications. That is not the role of this Committee on this Bill in particular.

As I said before, Parliament can make its views known through the planning system and can be confident that those views will be given due weight. We have well-established provisions in place to allow a decision to be challenged if proper weight is not given. The Lords Select Committee considered this matter, and the Government were pleased to give an assurance that they would notify the relevant authorities in both Houses as soon as practicable following the reactivation of the planning process in respect of the current application.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

Before the Minister sits down—I am sorry to harass him—

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

Can I just make a point to the noble Lord?

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

Of course.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I am not anywhere near sitting down for a while yet, because I have a number of points to make—but I will take the noble Lord’s intervention then.

The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, raised this point in his amendment. The Government were pleased to give an assurance that they would notify the relevant authorities in both Houses as soon as practicable, following the reactivation of the planning process in respect of the current application. The planning process, put in place by Parliament and regulated through the courts, is the proper place for considering developments such as the proposed national Holocaust memorial and learning centre. There is no justification for seeking to add further steps into the approval process, which can only cause unnecessary delay and uncertainty. I therefore ask the noble Lord not to press Amendment 38.

Finally in this group, Amendment 42 from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, proposes that an additional approval should be required before the Bill could come into effect. This is a convenient place for me to respond to the questions put to me earlier by my noble friend Lady Blackstone, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, who I regret to say is not in his place today but who talked passionately about UNESCO—so it is ideal that I now talk to the points made by the noble Lord previously.

The Government’s obligations with regard to UNESCO were asked about. In brief, those obligations rest on Articles 4 and 5 of the world heritage convention. That convention initiated the world heritage list, which identifies the cultural and natural heritage across the globe considered to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. I need hardly say that the Government take those obligations extremely seriously.

The Government’s statutory adviser on the historic environment, including on world heritage sites, is Historic England, as the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, said. There is a great deal of helpful information on Historic England’s website relating to the world heritage convention and its significance for the 35 UK sites currently on the world heritage list. In practical terms, as Historic England explains on its website:

“Protection for World Heritage in England is provided by a combination of the spatial planning system and national designations (for example, listed buildings, scheduled monuments, sites of special scientific interest … that cover elements, if not the whole, of the site. The heritage significance of a World Heritage Site (its ‘outstanding universal value’)”—


which the noble Baroness referred to—

“may be reflected, at least in part, in the significance of any listed building, scheduled monument … or other heritage asset that forms part of it where this relates to its”

outstanding universal value. It continues:

“The provisions and protections under the planning system that apply to any such elements within a World Heritage Site are an important element, ensuring that the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage Site is recognised and taken into account”.


Having addressed the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on the general context, I turn to the specific example of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre and its potential impact on the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey, including St Margaret’s Church, a world heritage site. In line with the provisions and protections of the planning system that I referred to a moment ago, the potential impact of the memorial and learning centre on the world heritage site and its settings has been properly considered and fully taken into account.

Historic England, in its role as statutory adviser, provided pre-application advice on the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre. Its written advice was in front of the independent planning inspector, who considered the planning application—as indeed a further statement from a highly qualified representative of Historic England was considered. That statement reminded the inspector of Historic England’s role

“in advising Government in relation to World Heritage Sites and compliance with the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and National Heritage. It is the lead body for the heritage sector and the Government’s principal adviser on the historic environment”.

On the specific question on the impact of the proposal, the statement confirmed the view that Historic England has set out in its pre-planning advice, following a detailed consideration of the proposal. The view was that

“the proposals would not significantly harm the Outstanding Universal Value of the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey including Saint Margaret’s Church World Heritage Site”.

The planning inspector did, of course, have the benefit of hearing other opinions on this matter, including opponents of the scheme who took a different view from Historic England. The inspector, having heard all the evidence, was able to come to a fully informed view about the potential impact of the application on the World Heritage site. His assessment was that the proposed UK Holocaust memorial and learning centre

“would not result in compromise to the”—

outstanding universal value of the world heritage site—

“because it does not harm it or its setting, thus conserving it”.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

Why, therefore, has UNESCO continued to reiterate its

“serious concerns that the proposed location of the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre … would have a significant adverse impact on the OUV of the property, and therefore requests the State Party to refrain from any action which would allow the current proposal to proceed, and to seek alternative locations and/or designs”?

UNESCO has said that, I think, four times now.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I can talk only about how the inspector, in his decision, has taken different views—opposing and supporting views—and has taken evidence from Historic England.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister—I know he wants to get on—but perhaps he could respond to my questions. What discussions have taken place between those who propose this project and the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO? It has a committee that has pronounced, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said. Why have the Government not taken into account its views—or, if they have, when did they, and did they persuade the committee to change its mind?

14:30

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will have to come back in particular detail on the noble Baroness’s specific question. If she is asking whether the Government are talking to the DCMS, I say that of course our officials are speaking to colleagues in DCMS. That is an earlier question that the noble Baroness asked.

I remind my noble friend that this is not a planning committee. We are here discussing the particular provision of the clauses of this Bill. I apologise to noble Lords that I have to go into some detail on these matters. I hope the answer that I have given responds to the earlier questions from the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, about the Government’s general approach as well as the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, about UNESCO designations. I hope it reassures the House that the potential impact of the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre on the Westminster world heritage site has been fully and properly considered.

The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, would have the effect of elevating the views of two eminent bodies, one British and one an international committee, above the views of the Minister designated to take a decision on the planning application. In effect, it would mean that the balancing exercise intrinsic to planning decisions could not be carried out. There is no good reason to make such a radical intervention in the normal planning procedures for this particular proposal. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw Amendment 42.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I am sorry to harass the Minister. He is doing extremely well. My brief question is one that I asked beforehand, and it is encapsulated thus: does the proposal to build this memorial centre—not the memorial itself but the centre—override the Government’s proposal to keep open spaces, particularly green space, for families and particularly for children in Westminster?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My answer to that is that there will be green spaces. Some 90% of the park will still be green spaces. The whole project is 7.5% of the park. This has been discussed extensively in previous groups. There has been no lack of analysis, consultation and scrutiny in the process that has led us to this point. I accept, of course, that the process has not brought a complete consensus, but are we really expected to believe that, by repeating the process that began all those years ago, we would find a solution that would somehow meet everyone’s expectations? That is simply not realistic.

Our objective is widely shared, including by a succession of Prime Ministers and party leaders. Earlier this afternoon I was watching numerous Prime Ministers, from John Major to Gordon Brown, Theresa May, David Cameron and Tony Blair, all with democratic mandates and all giving strong support to this project. Numerous Prime Ministers and party leaders have shared widely their support to create a national memorial to the Holocaust, with an integrated learning centre, in a prominent location. An excellent design meeting our objectives has been put forward and awaits a decision on the planning application.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I detect that the Minister is in his peroration so I am grateful for him allowing me to intervene. He answered straightforwardly one of the questions that I posed—whom the designated Minister would be—but there are two others that he has not. He has made it clear that the designated Minister would have three options. He has been briefed by his civil servants that there are three options you can do. One is a full-scale planning application to Westminster City Council, which I believe will never happen. The second option was described by the Minister as a round table and the third was written representations to be received by the Minister. Clearly, the able civil servants in his department have invented those two other options. There must be a brief somewhere on what the round table and the written representations would do, and I would like to hear from the Minister, either today or at some time in the future, exactly what those other two options would involve.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not going to get involved in that. The reason why is that I am in no position to pre-empt what the designated planning Minister will do or the nature of his decision. That might require that the planning process is totally to be determined, and, within the options, he may have a particular focus on how he would like that exercised.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am sorry but the Minister may have misunderstood me. I am not asking for a decision on which option he will go for; I am asking for the details of the possible options that he could decide on. It is perfectly legitimate to ask, if the Government are saying that one thing will be a planning application, another thing will be a round table and the third one will be written representations, what details would be required in the round table. We are perfectly entitled to know that. The Minister must have had a brief on what it would be about; the department cannot pluck those three options from thin air without giving Ministers details of how they would operate in reality. I do not want to know which one he will go for, of course, but I want to know how they might work.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is perfectly reasonable of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, to ask that question, but information is available on the website of the planning casework unit; the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has previously referred to it in this Committee. If it would help, we could send some more detail, in terms of where the website is and the address—as well as more details about the options that the designated Minister could pursue—to give the noble Lord more assurance around and confidence in the procedure. That would be no problem.

There is nothing to be gained by turning the clock back to 2015. All that this would achieve is to delay the creation of a memorial by many years. Few Holocaust survivors, perhaps none at all, would live to see the project completed—

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I must remind the Minister again that we are building not for the survivors, who already have something like six memorials and 21 learning centres in this country, but for the future. The survivors themselves would say that it is a mistake to hurry just because there is a possibility that it will be built in their lifetimes. That is not the issue.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I can give noble Lords absolute confidence that the many Holocaust survivors I have spoken to are looking forward to seeing this Holocaust memorial built. It might not be so for everybody, but I speak in the context of my numerous heartfelt conversations with Holocaust survivors.

My point stands: few Holocaust survivors, perhaps none at all, would live to see the project completed. In those lost years, how many more opportunities to spread and deepen understanding of the Holocaust will be missed? How many millions of visitors will pass through Westminster who might otherwise have been prompted to reflect on the murder of 6 million Jews? How many visitors, young and old, will be denied the opportunity to learn objective facts on a topic of such profound importance? We should not be creating new hurdles, setting new tests or extending legitimate processes. Our aim should be to build a Holocaust memorial and learning centre of which the nation can be proud, and to do it soon. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I am not surprised by the line that the Minister has taken. I may be allowed to express disappointment, but certainly not surprise, because it seems to me that, despite previous discussions in this Committee—particularly this afternoon—we have heard many and varied reasons as to why the situation has changed markedly from what it was six years ago or more, and that these should have been taken into account.

I am particularly concerned that we are overriding an Act of Parliament set up by somebody—originally as a gesture of good will and philanthropy, which was then endorsed by the 1900 Act—whose objectives, far from being over, are if anything more important now than they were before because it is a valuable green space in an area served by many people, often those without great assets or gardens of their own. We are now far more aware of the importance of the environment than we probably were in 1900. So, far from being old hat, this remains extremely important. That is where I start from.

However, I also look to the fact that the commission set up—it gave its verdict in 2015, I think—outlined the kind of memorial and learning centre that it wished to see. Clearly, that cannot be carried out fully in this very small space, so there is a great gap between what the commission said it wanted and what is now possible on a very restricted site. That is where I take my stand.

Sadly, I feel that the Minister has not been listening to the many and varied arguments put with considerable force, knowledge and eloquence by people serving on this Committee. I am sorry indeed about that, and I am particularly sorry that we seem to be getting nowhere fast. In those circumstances, I cannot see that any lengthy speech by me— or anybody else come to that—will change the Minister’s mind and, because we cannot have votes in this Committee by reason of the way it is set up, I can do nothing but seek leave to withdraw my amendment, but I do so believing that I am right about this. I am disappointed that we are not getting anywhere, so I seek leave to withdraw my amendment, but with a very heavy heart.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.

Amendments 22 and 23 not moved.

Amendment 24

Moved by

[Baroness Deech]

24: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Restoration and RenewalThe activities described in section 1(1) may not be commenced on the land referred to in section 2 unless the authorities of both Houses of Parliament have certified that they are satisfied that those activities will not impede any restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster.”

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I was going to say to the Minister that people are not being deprived of any opportunities to learn about the Holocaust because there are six other memorials and 21 other learning centres.

We come now to the very important topic of restoration and renewal. The motive behind the amendments is to explain that one simply cannot do both at the same time, or even sequentially, and that the building of this so-called memorial, which it is not, and learning centre, which hardly justifies the name, should not be allowed to get in the way of the great project of restoration and renewal.

If one builds a Holocaust memorial and underground learning centre in VTG, it will either render impossible restoration and renewal or make it more difficult and expensive. If the memorial and learning centre is built—which, of course, I hope it never will be—before restoration and renewal, it will get in the way. It is impossible to imagine a memorial to 6 million deaths taking shape and being visited when it will be surrounded by—it will have right up to its boundaries—all the paraphernalia that will accompany restoration and renewal. I do not think that the movers behind the memorial have ever stopped to think what is meant by a memorial. Instead of reverence and contemplation, peace and quiet, there will be masonry, concrete mixers, builders, scaffolding, material and a jetty, with trucks roaring by and unloading.

There are three projects ongoing, including the memorial, that conflict with each other, and all of them centre on Victoria Tower Gardens. One is the repair of Victoria Tower, delayed by some error in the procurement process, but now expected to start imminently and run for at least five years. It is not strictly a restoration and renewal project, but I raise it because its repair, too, will need some occupation of Victoria Tower Gardens. All the proposals for restoration and renewal will involve the use of a chunk of Victoria Tower Gardens as the main area for keeping all the equipment, access to the Palace and so on. In the talk by the promoters of keeping greenery open and available, I do not see how they can justify this when we will have building at one end and building at the other.

Two of the proposals for R&R and the memorial involve going underground, under the Palace and into VTG, with great upheaval, remembering that the so-called learning centre attached to the memorial will also be underground. It brings to mind the Channel Tunnel excitement, when the team starting in France and the team starting here eventually met exactly in the middle. Restoration and renewal works will reach nearly as far as the Buxton Memorial, and the memorial will reach up to it from the other end.

14:45

The current plan—I express my gratitude for the thoughtful presentation given by my noble friend Lord Vaux to the Select Committee on the Holocaust Memorial Bill—indicates that almost half the area of VTG will be needed for the full duration of the works programme, which could last for 30 years. Work is unlikely to start until 2029; the memorial may or may not be under construction then. The planning permission needed for restoration and renewal will be more difficult if a memorial is built or planned to be built. Nothing of the gardens will remain open, in effect, contrary to the 1900 LCC improvement Act, which prohibited building in VTG—the very Act the Government now propose to remove to make room for a memorial.

If a memorial is built, there will still be an obligation under that Act to keep the rest of Victoria Tower Gardens open for the public, and it is impossible to see how that can be achieved. If built, it will damage the ability to get planning permission and further amendment of the 1900 Act may be needed. It will restrict the ability of the restoration and renewal project to use the gardens as it might wish to, including early work to build a jetty and the tunnels that I mentioned. If both projects are undertaken, there will be no gardens left, and the atmosphere that might be conducive to a memorial will be destroyed.

The promoters have so far seen no objection to having a kiosk and all the litter that will involve, 11 buses a day, a playground or crowds. They have no concept of the contemplation and special nature that should attach to a memorial—not that 23 fins sticking in the air could ever remind anyone of anything, let alone six million deaths. The quiet and contemplation that one perceives at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial, for example, or other memorials that I have visited around the world, or even the galleries in the Imperial War Museum, cannot exist here. It will be a little tourist attraction, surrounded by building works and litter. It will also be surrounded by the Millbank traffic, with buses of visitors to the memorial potentially conflicting with lorries for the building works, even before restoration and renewal get properly under way.

We have had no indication from those involved in restoration and renewal how they will manage this, or how the security will work. They will be victims of the same kind of troubles that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, so eloquently outlined. I wonder, frankly, whether any contractors will want to get involved in the restoration and renewal project, knowing of this difficulty. We have had no indication from those involved in restoration and renewal about how they will manage this—and, of course, it has to take precedence over anything else in the gardens, as it is of historic interest. It follows, therefore, that there has to be a clear explanation to Parliament of how the two projects will work together or, alternatively, one has to wait for the other to be finished. The one that ought to wait is of course the memorial, given, as I have said, that there are already six others and 21 learning centres.

There is a simple solution. The restoration and renewal project is of importance to the nation, the work of government, the dignity of Parliament and the needs of future generations. It must eventually be allowed to go ahead as efficiently as possible, so the memorial must either be moved to a more peaceful location, which would be much more desirable, or it must be delayed until the restoration and renewal project is completed.

The stubbornness behind the memorial project is hard to understand; it can now be seen to be adverse to national interests, in addition to all its other flaws. We must get on with restoration and renewal and end the costly indecision and fire risks that we who use this building face now. We must see it as an obligation to create an atmosphere for any memorial and learning centre that is built which is conducive to memory, learning, safety, dignity and reverence. I submit that that would be impossible if you put it up in the middle of one of the most gigantic building sites that this country has ever seen. I beg to move.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, I will make a few comments on Amendments 24 and 41, which deal with the interrelationship between the Holocaust memorial and the restoration and renewal programme for the Palace of Westminster. I am the deputy chair of the R&R Programme Board, and I chair its sub-board, although I stress that I am speaking today strictly in my own capacity and not on behalf of the boards. As my noble friend Lady Deech said, I gave evidence to the Bill Select Committee at an earlier stage. I thought it would be helpful to the Grand Committee to set out briefly the ways that these two substantial projects may interact.

As noble Lords are probably aware, three R&R options are currently being worked out and we hope that the two Houses will make a decision later this year. One thing that all three have in common is that they expect to use a substantial portion of the gardens—nearly 50% by area—during the works as a marshalling area, for storage, for welfare provision, for loading and unloading and so on, as well as for the tunnelling activities that the noble Baroness referred to. To correct her, all three options include tunnelling under the building, not just two. This would all take place in the end of the gardens nearest the Palace and include the part of the gardens currently occupied by the temporary education centre.

The timing of when the use of the gardens would start to be required varies depending on which option we choose, but it is likely that it will be somewhere around 2030 to 2033. Some access may be needed before that to build a jetty in the river and, as the noble Baroness mentioned, the Victoria Tower works, which may or may not be part of R&R, depending on decisions taken, are due to start fairly imminently. Whichever option we take, the R&R works will be long term, so we are probably talking about a minimum usage of a substantial portion of the gardens for about a decade and potentially, perhaps probably, very much longer. The longer options last up to about 50 years.

As I understand it, the Holocaust memorial should be completed and open by the time the major works for R&R would get fully under way, so the overlap of the actual construction works on the two projects will be limited. But that does not mean there will be no interaction between the two projects. There are three principal areas of concern.

First, there is a concern that using a significant part of the gardens for the Holocaust memorial may make it more difficult to obtain the necessary consents for the use of a large part of what remains of the gardens for the purpose of the R&R project. Secondly, there is the impact that having nearly half of the gardens blocked off and being, effectively, part of a major building site for many years will have on the Holocaust memorial. That must surely impact on the dignity of the site and the ability for quiet reflection within it. Thirdly, there is the impact on the gardens. Having the two projects under way will inevitably mean that, for quite a long time, very little of the gardens will be available for use as a park. We will first have the upheaval from the building of the memorial and then, once that is completed, the other half of the gardens will become a building site. Quiet enjoyment of the gardens as a park will be near impossible for many years, possibly decades.

Whether these amendments are the right way forward is up for debate, but the Government really need to take this issue much more seriously than they seem to have done so far. When the Minister kindly arranged a virtual meeting before Second Reading, I asked about the interaction with R&R and was told by the officials present, effectively, that all was in hand and had been taken into account. I am afraid I felt that rather complacent at the time and still do. It is certainly not my understanding from my role as deputy chair of the programme board that this is under complete control. This is a very serious issue and needs much greater consideration by the Government.

Amendment 24 could usefully be strengthened: it requires the authorities of both Houses only to certify that they have satisfied themselves that the activities covered by the Bill will not impede the R&R of the Palace of Westminster. I think the amendment could usefully look at the three impacts I have described—in other words, it could also helpfully consider the impact of R&R on the Holocaust memorial itself, as well as the combined impacts of the two projects on the ability to enjoy the use of the gardens as a park.

I struggle slightly with Amendment 41, as it would mean that the Act will not come into force until R&R is completed, which could be decades—indeed, up to 50 years—away. It is, effectively, a wrecking amendment, so perhaps that goes a bit too far. But I support the sentiments and, again, I cannot urge the Minister strongly enough to take these issues much more seriously than they have been taken so far before any final decision is taken.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, both amendments in this group seek to delay plans to deliver the memorial and learning centre unless it can be shown that the works will not negatively impact the process of the restoration and renewal. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, for his clear explanation of the timescales and the importance of continued discussion between the two projects. When I was Minister in the department, that was happening regularly, as were discussions on security and other issues, and it is important that those things continue. With respect, however, what we have here is one long-planned and undelivered project and another long-planned and undelivered project, and I feel it is now time just to get on with the important delivery of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. It is not going to be as long a project as the restoration project, and we should get on with it and deliver what is important.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 24 and 41 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, deal with the important matter of co-ordination between the programmes to construct a Holocaust memorial and learning centre and the programme of restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster. It is of course essential that care should be taken when planning these projects.

The House of Lords Select Committee gave a good deal of attention to this matter and addressed it in its report. It recommended that we should give detailed consideration to how the construction and operation of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre and the restoration and renewal programme will interact with each other, and accommodate the use of Victoria Tower Gardens by nearby residents and their children. We made clear in our response to the Select Committee that we agree on the importance of the interaction between the two programmes and that the interests of users of the gardens need to be considered. We will continue to work with the restoration and renewal programme to make sure that we understand those interactions and potential impacts.

It is worth noting—as the Select Committee made clear in its report—that the evidence presented to the committee was that the main restoration and renewal works would not begin before 2029 at the earliest. I also remind noble Lords that the Holocaust memorial and learning centre is to be constructed at the southern end of Victoria Tower Gardens—in other words, the opposite end of the gardens to the area which may be required during the restoration and renewal programme.

With all that in mind, we do not believe that there is good reason to expect any major practical conflict between the two programmes, and there is no reason that the construction and operation of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre should be contingent on certification by the authorities of both Houses of Parliament. It would be even less sensible to delay the entire project until the restoration and renewal programme is complete. The commencement of the construction of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre is a matter for the statutory planning framework that Parliament has put in place to determine planning matters.

It is very important that I say this. I want to engage with the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, in particular, and I want to make sure that, after the great, eloquent contribution from the noble Lord, we pay due respect and have regard to the points he makes. I am happy to arrange a meeting to discuss it in detail and to show how seriously we want to see interaction between the programmes. The two programme teams already meet regularly to share information and co-ordinate plans to reduce potential impacts. Rest assured, they will continue to do so.

I respectfully ask the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, to withdraw Amendment 24 and not to press Amendment 41.

15:00

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

We were presented, in the committee, with a plan that showed that, during construction, the whole of the garden area would have to be regarded as subject to works—in other words, the whole of the grass area, up to quite close to the memorials at the north end. Has the Minister taken into account the fact that the underground works may have to be dealt with by opening up the surface of the ground to construct the works underneath? It is not quite right to say that the effect of the Holocaust memorial is simply at the southern end of the grassy area; that is not what the plan showed. I simply ask the noble Lord to take account of that from now on in considering the interaction between the two, because the promoter’s plan showed that it would have to occupy the whole of the grass area, right up to the public path at the north end. That is a very important point, because it is one thing to say that it is at the southern end and the grassy area as a whole will not be touched, but that is not what the promoter’s plan showed. That is why there is more to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, than perhaps the noble Lord suggested.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord makes an interesting point, which I hear strongly. I have been studying this plan for a big part of today and I want to reassure noble Lords on it. By the way, I am happy to sit down as part of the discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, that my team will arrange, because the noble Lords’ points are important, and we want to give them extra due consideration post Committee.

Rest assured that the Select Committee made clear in the report that the evidence presented to it was that the main restoration and renewal work would not begin before 2029 at the earliest. By then, we hope that we will be well on the way to completing the Holocaust memorial.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

Following up on what the noble and learned Lord said, I will paraphrase what the Minister has said: “You can rely on us. It’ll be all right on the night”. I do not think that is quite good enough in the context of the debate we are having, because the whole thing is a straight-up construct of generalities.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I am sure I did not say, “Rely on us on the night”, but I did say that the Select Committee itself acknowledged that the work on the restoration and renewal programme will not start until 2029 at the earliest—that is my point. However, I said to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, that, because of the specific interest, I am happy to sit down and understand more of their concerns.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I had hoped for an answer from the Minister about the atmosphere to surround a memorial. Can one imagine, for example, the Cenotaph or any other dignified war memorial in this country being right in the middle of a building site with, as I said, concrete mixers, builders drinking their cups of tea, and the dirt, dust and noise? Why is that okay for a Holocaust memorial when, I submit, it would not be contemplated for a moment in relation to any other holy commemorative or significant religious site anywhere else in the world, let alone in this country?

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will add to what the noble Baroness has just said. The Minister made clear that he wants the experience of visiting this Holocaust memorial and learning centre to be valuable from an educational point of view. I do not think that any teacher would be particularly happy about bringing their older primary school pupils or younger secondary school pupils to an environment like this. It is not a good learning environment. There are obviously so many other much better places for this to happen than a small park that will be used—not for ever but for quite a long period—as a base for building a renewed Palace of Westminster. It just does not make any sense. Will the Minister take this issue back and discuss it again with his colleagues to see whether some change of mind can result from it?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have finished my contribution and just want to ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I have no option.

Amendment 24 withdrawn.

Amendments 25 to 31 not moved.

Amendment 32

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

32: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Learning Centre purposeThe sole purpose of any Learning Centre must be the provision of education about the Nazi genocide of the Jews and antisemitism.”

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 32 in my name, on this occasion, I will be a wee bit longer than two minutes. I suggest that this is the most important amendment we will consider since, no matter where this thing is built, it is vital that it concentrates on the Shoah and antisemitism, and nothing else.

I want to say that it was a most powerful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who has just left the Room. Some of the rest of us may be accused of being party political; he certainly was not, and I found his contribution quite devastating.

It was argued in this Committee last week that the only exhibits or information to be included in the learning centre would be on the Holocaust or Shoah. It was said that a group of historical experts had asserted that. Well, if that is what they believe, they are being taken for mugs or have not read what the Government have said about the learning centre. Paragraph 3 of the Explanatory Notes for the Bill says:

“The Learning Centre’s exhibition will … help people understand the way the lessons of the Holocaust apply more widely, including to other genocides”.


Note the words “including to other genocides”.

In his winding-up speech at Second Reading on 4 September, the Minister said:

“The learning centre will provide the opportunity to learn about the Holocaust close to the memorial, helping people to better understand how the lessons of the Holocaust apply more widely, including to other genocides”.—[Official Report, 4/9/24; col. 1228.]


I prefer to believe the written Explanatory Notes on the Bill and the word of the Minister rather than the wishful thinking of a bunch of, no doubt, distinguished historians.

Can we all agree that it is government policy that “other genocides” will be included? What are all these other genocides? In a speech to the Council of Europe commemorating the 100th anniversary of the communist revolution in Russia, I said that we should commemorate 100 years of socialism and all the countries in which socialist policies had been tried. That was the Soviet Union, Germany, China, Cambodia, North Korea, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, East Germany, Cuba, Angola, Albania, Laos, Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Chile and others.

I then went on to say that we should list the 130 million people it slaughtered by genocide, democide and politicide as well as the countless millions tortured in gulags and forced labour camps. The principal countries and parties to showcase for genocide would be the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which killed 35 million people. The National Socialist Workers Party—that is, Hitler—killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and 20 million others in World War II. The Communist Party of China killed 65 million. The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot killed 2 million. North Korea killed 3.6 million. Ethiopia killed 2 million. Yugoslavia killed 1.5 million. Then, if we add up Angola, Bulgaria, Laos, Zimbabwe and all the others, we get another 1.7 million slaughtered in socialist regimes.

Of course we have other evil genocides from non-socialist regimes. The Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides, all carried out by the Ottoman Empire, add up to 2.175 million. The Indonesian genocide adds up to about 1.5 million. The Guatemalan or Maya genocide killed 250,000; the Rwanda genocide killed 800,000, the Darfur genocide 300,000, and the Bosnia and Srebrenica genocide, 8,000. The Rohingya genocide—which continues, I suppose—is at 40,000. With the Uyghur genocide in China, we have no idea, but it could be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. In brief, that is an awful lot of genocides, with almost 140 million people slaughtered since 1914. After every one we always say it must never happen again, but it always does.

So which of these genocides will the learning centre highlight as “the other genocides”? It seems that only four are being considered: Cambodia, of 2 million; Rwanda, of 800,000; Darfur, of 300,000; and Bosnia, of 8,000. That is a total of 3,108,000. They are horrendous in themselves, but represent only a tiny fraction of the more than 75 million killed in genocides since the end of the Second World War.

Where have these four suggested genocides emerged from? I shall take noble Lords through the timeline. The 2015 Holocaust Commission had two throwaway lines. In paragraph 10 it said:

“While the Holocaust was unprecedented and should never be seen as equivalent to other genocides, we see many of the same steps from prejudice to persecution in other atrocities, like those in Rwanda and Bosnia or the crimes of ISIL today”.


Noble Lords should note the words

“unprecedented and should never be seen as equivalent to other genocides”.

Then in paragraph 44 it said that

“one of the objectives of the Learning Centre would also be to help people understand the way the lessons of the Holocaust apply more widely, including to other genocides”.

Note that there was no suggestion whatever that there would be a display of other genocides.

In 2018, the department employed a company called Metaphor to design the interior of the learning centre and present a detailed plan to Westminster City Council. That is when the whole thing became transmogrified. In his submission, a Mr Stephen Greenberg, an expert on the Holocaust and of impeccable integrity, said in paragraph 13.1:

“Decisions on which communities, and how many we select are yet to be decided”.


But then in paragraph 18.4, in describing “the Void” he said:

“It is a space where we will also reflect on the murder of the millions of Cambodians by the Pol Pot regime, the millions of Rwandans murdered by the Interahamwe and the thousands of Muslim men and boys murdered in Bosnia”.


So much for it not being decided yet, as he said four pages earlier. The Holocaust Commission mentioned Rwanda, Bosnia and Islamic State, not having exhibits on them—and suddenly we get Cambodia added to this list from out of nowhere. Then this idea of adding more genocides got legs through the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Holocaust Memorial Day came about because of the Stockholm declaration of January 2000, which was the outcome of the international forum convened in Stockholm in January 2000 and attended by 23 Heads of State or Prime Ministers and 14 Deputy Prime Ministers or Ministers. It said in articles 1 and 2:

“We, The High Representatives of Governments at the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, declare that … 1. The Holocaust (Shoah) fundamentally challenged the foundations of civilization. The unprecedented character of the Holocaust will always hold universal meaning … 2. The magnitude of the Holocaust, planned and carried out by the Nazis, must be forever seared in our collective memory … The depths of that horror, and the heights of their heroism, can be touchstones in our understanding of the human capacity for evil and for good”.


Article 6 said:

“We share a commitment to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and to honour those who stood against it. We will encourage appropriate forms of Holocaust remembrance, including an annual Day of Holocaust Remembrance, in our countries”.


That was in 2000.

The Home Office then organised Holocaust Memorial Day from 2001 to 2005, when it created the charity the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and appointed the trustees. The trust has run it ever since and has been 75% funded since 2007 by the Minister’s own Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government; the funding amounted to £900,000 last year. The front page of the Holocaust Memorial Day website says in big letters:

“On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and the millions of people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups, and during more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur, and the Yazidi genocide”.


We should note that another one has been added—Darfur. Where did that come from? Who suggested adding Darfur to Holocaust Memorial Day?

The trust is run by a senior leadership team made up of eminent trustees of great ability and impeccable character, with my noble friend Lord Pickles as its honorary vice-president. But why on earth has the trust selected these four genocides to be commemorated along with the Shoah on Holocaust Memorial Day? They have nothing in common with the Holocaust. The Khmer Rouge wanted a classless society. In Rwanda, it was years of tribal hatred. Darfur was an ethnic war between black African farmers and nomadic Arabs. With Bosnia and Srebrenica, there was a religious war between Orthodox Serbs and Bosnian Muslims. The Holocaust was unique. The Holocaust Commission rightly said:

“The Holocaust is the product of an ideology. It was not a battle for land or power or even a grotesque response to perceived wrongdoing by Jewish people. It was rooted in an irrational hatred of Jews, for simply being born a Jew or of Jewish ancestry. Never before had a people been denied the right to life simply because of the crime of being born. It was, ultimately, a product of a thousand years of European antisemitism”.

15:15

Hitler believed that Germany lost the First World War because it was stabbed in the back by various groups, including the Jews. Even way back in 1920, he compared Jews to germs, stating that diseases cannot be controlled unless you destroy their causes. He said that the influence of the Jews would never disappear without removing its cause—the Jew—from our midst. Hitler blamed the Jews for everything that was wrong with the world. Germany was weak and in decline due to Jewish influence. According to Hitler, the Jews were after world dominance and they would not hesitate to use all possible means, including capitalism. In this way, he took advantage of the existing prejudice that linked Jews to monetary power and financial gain.

I submit that that evil way of thinking, which caused the Holocaust, is totally different from the reasons behind the four genocides that the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Government want to feature in the Holocaust learning centre. I submit that no other genocide bears any relationship to the Shoah. There are no lessons to be learned about other genocides by looking at the Holocaust; you would, I suspect, need to go back to the Crusades to find an equivalent. I suggest that the learning centre should be about the Shoah only.

However, if other genocides should be included, as the Government say, they should include Armenia, China, the Soviet Union and the others I mentioned, which add up to 130 million people—not just 3 million. Three million is horrendous, but 130 million is 43 times worse. Now, if for some inexplicable reason we wanted to include only genocides after 1945, we should refer to all of them—including China, the Rohingya, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, et cetera—which would give us 75 million people.

Before Report, I want to know who selected these four, which the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust go on and on about, and why. They must explain why they want to add these four to Holocaust Remembrance Day, and why just these four. They must also explain why they have taken the comments of the Holocaust Commission and changed them into displays of genocide in four, I submit, irrelevant countries. We must get back to the purity of the Stockholm declaration, which recognised that the Holocaust shook the foundations of modern civilisation and stated that its “unprecedented character” and horror will “always hold universal meaning”. Note the phrase “unprecedented character”. We cannot allow the unprecedented character of the Shoah to be diluted by reference to various other randomly selected genocides that are undoubtedly evil but not unique like the Holocaust.

In 2020, a further ministerial declaration was added to the 2000 declaration, paragraph 6 of which was to:

“Express our deepest concerns about rising antisemitism”.

That is why my amendment states:

“The sole purpose of any Learning Centre must be … education about”

the Holocaust and antisemitism. We have all seen tens of thousands of people on our streets calling for the extermination of Jews and a new Holocaust—an absolutely vile and evil protest. As an aside, I am appalled that the police have ignored the worst forms of hate crimes that I have ever seen. I have photographs of the protesters’ signs showing the whole of Israel being pushed into the Mediterranean Sea. Those who say, “We only want to destroy Israel, not necessarily kill Jews”, are lying. Without Israel as a home, Jews will be exterminated again. Do not pretend that “from the river to the sea” posters and slogans do not mean the extermination of Jews. That is another reason why the Holocaust is different: no one is calling for a new genocide in Bosnia, Cambodia or Rwanda, even though Rwanda might want to attack its neighbours.

In conclusion, there is no justification for adding other genocides and breaking the solemn declaration that we signed in Stockholm in 2000 and again in 2020. If we are to add others, the choice should be a lot better than those weirdly selected ones of Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda. None of the past countries that have suffered genocide—except perhaps for Burma and China and what Putin is doing in Ukraine—have continuing calls for a new genocide. No one is denying their genocides like we have with Holocaust denial, which is why it is essential that this learning centre concentrates on the Holocaust and the rising tide of antisemitism only—nothing else. I beg to move.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, this gives me an opportunity to remind the Committee of my declaration of interest. I am pleased that my noble friend referred to the Stockholm declaration; I am sure he is delighted that it created the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which I am a former chairman. He will also be delighted that we met in February this year, in London, not only to celebrate the last 25 years but to plan the next 25 years. I am pleased that the United Kingdom has played such an important part in ensuring that the Shoah goes on to be remembered. I am not one who thinks there are any lessons from the Holocaust, but there are lots of warnings and it is important that we bear them in mind.

It is important not to conflate the memorial with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. As my noble friend said, I am vice-president of that. I do not occupy an executive role. I took on the role to try to help out when the late Sir Ben Helfgott of blessed memory was perhaps not as ambulant as he had been. I agreed to stay on an extra year and will be standing down in July this year. I am delighted that Sir Sajid Javid is taking over as chair.

My noble friend talked about the importance of the Shoah, but I have to tell him with some reluctance that that is not what this amendment says. This is a very dangerous amendment. It will bring comfort to those who wish to rinse their history and to say, “No, it wasn’t us. It was just them Nazis who caused the genocide”. That is certainly not the case.

There are two great certainties about the Holocaust. The first is that, whether you lived in a village nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees or deep in the forests of Belarus, the Nazis and their machine did not need to tell you about antisemitism; you knew all about it. They might have given messages that reinforced this prejudice, but antisemitism was there.

The second truth is that there were not enough Nazis to produce the Holocaust. The Nazis could not have done it by themselves; they required collaboration. For example, they needed the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia, the Iron Guard in Romania, the Ustaše in Croatia—which went a stage further and actually had its own concentration camp—and the Arrow Cross in Hungary. The Arrow Cross committed atrocities and sadism that in many cases were worse than the Nazis. None of these organisations were Nazis.

Those areas that were occupied—eventually Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia were occupied, along with former allies Bulgaria, France and the Netherlands—used the police and gendarmerie to round up and take their Jewish populations to be murdered, either in ditches or in the gas chambers. I recently visited a number of the Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland—and in all these countries people were brought to their death by local gendarmes. Just a few Fridays ago, I stood in a forest in the snow looking at the heaps of bodies that had been eventually cremated. They were all taken there by local gendarmes—people who were not Nazis.

Places like Jasenovac did not have gas chambers. Their favourite method of killing children was to bash them on the back of the head with a hammer, up close and very personal. “Do you want to meet your mummy?” was the question they would ask prior to slamming the hammer into their head. None of those people were Nazis.

There is a serious attempt to use the Holocaust as a way of rinsing history. The house of faiths in Hungary attempted to show Hungary being a victim of the Nazis, when in fact it was fully co-operative and collaborate. Look at the defamation laws in Poland, where it is a criminal offence to suggest that Poles were involved in the persecution of Jews. All these countries are really in favour of celebrating the blessed among the nations; they will talk for ever about the people who saved Jews, and we should remember them and regard them with honour. But we should understand that those people were great exceptions to the rule. The majority of the population did nothing—they either collaborated or just looked the other way. Austria can no longer call itself the first victim of the Nazis. France has now admitted its culpability. Italy has admitted its culpability in the Holocaust.

I have to say to my noble friend that his amendment as written would give those bodies an enormous fillip. He said, “Well, it’s a long way away and hasn’t affected us”. I ask Members to remind themselves: about two years ago, a very glossy book was sent to every Member of this House from the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, which showed Poland’s involvement in the Second World War. It looked nice, with lots of diagrams and photographs. There were no lies in it but there were an awful lot of omissions. No one talked about the pogroms that happened after the Second World War, when returning Jews were murdered by Polish citizens. There are deliberate attempts to twist the Holocaust.

This question is a serious matter. I take exception to the idea that somehow the memorial is going to deal with anything other than the Shoah. That is quite wrong. There is not going to be a room on Rwanda or anything else. Do not conflate things with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. But what will it deal with? How does it need to look beyond the Shoah? There are two specific reasons. You cannot honour the dead. You cannot understand what happened in the Shoah without understanding those two great legal changes: crimes against humanity and genocide as a crime.

We need to be able to reference them, because we are very happy to bow our heads on 27 January and repeat the great lie “never again”. Of course, I do not believe for one moment that we will ever see a nation that together will decide to murder its population using mechanical means. That is not going to happen, but people dying by being shot and dumped in a ditch almost certainly does and will happen. More people died in a ditch than were gassed in the death factories; we need to understand that.

15:30

This will be vital. I have heard people sneering about historians. I will finish in a moment, but I really want to say this. This will be an important institution in the fight against antisemitism; it will be part of an international body that will fight antisemitism. It is likely to be the most visited museum anywhere in the world. It will act as a way of meeting new technologies and artificial intelligence and of finding roles that we actively take on; it will not be a passive museum. I understand and regret the disruption, but do not pretend that this is not focused on the Shoah, because it almost certainly is.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lord Pickles. It is impossible to carry the words of this amendment into effect. Of course the Nazis initiated the Holocaust and were responsible for organising it, but its administration involved many hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens. The rounding-up of the Jews, their confinement to holding camps and transportation from their countries of origin to the camps in the east all involved the participation of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens. Certainly, the French, Polish and Dutch police were involved, but so too were ordinary citizens carrying out their jobs.

One of the most important aspects of the Holocaust, which one must understand, is that it involved ordinary people—ordinary Frenchmen, Lithuanians and Poles—participating in the extermination of their fellow citizens. Crimes by people against their own nationals became one of the most outstanding features of the Holocaust. Therefore, it is very important to convey in this memorial the fact that, if you have a Government who have no limits on their powers and what they can do and who are pursuing evil policy, that evil will contaminate and involve many others. It cannot be confined to a small group of initiators, so although I sympathise with the spirit underlying this amendment, the words that it uses would be damaging and would disguise one of the most important aspects of the Holocaust.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I also signed this amendment. I was interested in what my noble friends said, in particular my noble friends Lord Pickles and Lord Tugendhat. The point is that this will be a relatively small area. The appalling and destructive nature of the Nazi regime and its allies, wherever they were found, is well known, but we need to reinforce it. I thought that was the purpose of this: it will be called the Holocaust memorial. Perhaps I have this wrong, but I saw statements that other genocides will be commemorated. It will be too small to commemorate other genocides.

My noble friend Lord Pickles talked about Poles. I remember going to Auschwitz with the excellent Karen Pollock and the Holocaust memorial group. It was the most amazing visit, in 24 hours, and should be repeated: if people have not been to Auschwitz, they should go, and it is particularly well done by Karen Pollock. We all knew it at the time, but guess what? Not all the guards were dyed in the wool Germans —a lot of them were Poles, whatever the Polish Government have said. Sadly, in current times, I am told that a very prominent group in many of the concentration camps, including Belsen, were Ukrainians. I do not know, but I am told that that is true. This should be made plain, but either this is a Holocaust memorial or a memorial to all discrimination anywhere. That is my point. Let us have a Holocaust memorial, not a memorial to discrimination against anybody, anywhere, because otherwise the whole thing will be diluted.

My noble friend has talked about the anti-Israeli behaviour on the streets—let us be quite clear that it is anti-Jewish behaviour on the streets, not just anti-Israel. We need to get that absolutely plain. That is why, wherever we put it, this memorial should be a Holocaust memorial. By all means have charts saying, “And by the way, we are appalled by continuing discrimination wherever it may be”, but let us stick to the Holocaust alone.

[Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I added my name in support of Amendment 32 because it responds to a concern that I raised at Second Reading. I am sorry that I could not have been here for previous days in Committee when the scope of the learning centre was discussed, and in particular on day 2, when Amendment 2 was debated, and on day 3, when there was a very animated debate around the learning centre.

I was reassured by what the noble Lord, Lord Austin, said about the focus that historians have decided to put on the centre. None the less, I remain a bit unnerved by the language in the Explanatory Notes to which Lord Blencathra has referred, and by the answer that the Minister gave at Second Reading in response to the concern that I and others such as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, raised. He said:

“The learning centre will also address subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur”.—[Official Report, 4/9/24; col. 1224.]


It seems to me that a learning centre needs focus. It cannot cover all atrocities, whether genocidal or not. All those situations obviously involved very serious crimes against humanity, war crimes at a minimum, and probably genocide—certainly genocide in the case of Rwanda and Srebrenica. I do not claim to have any particular expertise on any of those situations, but I have some knowledge of the Rwandan genocide because I started my academic career interviewing victims of that genocide. Months into my fieldwork, I had only just begun to understand the complexity of Rwandan society, Rwandan history and identities in Rwanda, which are far more complex than people understand. So I just do not see how something as tragic and as complex as the Rwandan genocide could be meaningfully addressed in a learning centre that is already devoted principally to the Holocaust.

Obviously, I would not have any objection to a board at the end referring to other atrocities that may be similar in nature, which I believe the noble Lord, Lord Austin, mentioned. But there is a difference between that message, which can be conveyed at the end, and the intent to address these other genocides as learning experiences as part of the learning centre.

We also need to realise that, unfortunately, the concept of genocide is going through a process of rather intense instrumentalisation at the international level. At the moment, we have at least four disputes involving the genocide convention before the International Court of Justice. We have disputes between Russia and Ukraine, Gambia and Myanmar, South Africa and Israel, and, as of last week, a case brought by Sudan against the United Arab Emirates. The reason for this proliferation of genocide litigation is that the genocide convention is quite often the only treaty that is available against that state for submitting a dispute to the International Court of Justice.

Be that as it may, in each of these cases there will be groups and campaigns which argue that that particular situation is genocidal in nature and comparable to the Holocaust. Those campaigns and groups would contend that those situations would have to be addressed in a learning centre if that centre has pledged, as it seems that this one has done, to address subsequent genocide. I fear that we can expect a great deal of controversy about what counts as a subsequent genocide that needs to be included in this learning centre. We would be much better off avoiding that controversy by defining the scope of the centre at the outset much more clearly. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has given us a sense of the kind of arguments that we could get into about all the other situations that have been claimed to be genocidal in nature.

I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, but I do not think the issue is whether the learning centre should address what happened during the Shoah that involved non-Nazis or Nazi sympathisers elsewhere in Europe. That is very much part of the history of the Shoah, and therefore the Ustaše, the Hungarian collaborators and the fascists in Italy would all have to be part of that history. Maybe the language can be clarified to make that absolutely clear, but I understand the amendment to say that the focus of the learning centre must be the Holocaust in its entirety.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

It does not say that.

[Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)]

The language could be changed to clarify that; the Nazi genocide of the Jews is how I read it. However, what concerns me and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is the subsequent genocide and not including the entirety of the Shoah.

I do not see this amendment as disruptive of the Bill, the memorial or the learning centre. Its purpose is to clarify what the centre is about and, as I see it, to ensure that the focus of the learning centre should remain the Holocaust. I would have thought that, understood in those terms, this amendment could attract support from those enthusiastic about the project, those who are less enthusiastic and the sceptics. However, I understand that that may not be the case.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I have an amendment in this group which, I regret to say, I should probably have asked to be degrouped because I do not intend to follow the debate so far, except to say that it highlights the tremendous importance of what is set up as the learning centre part of the memorial and learning centre. It reinforces my view that what is on the table at the moment simply goes no way to meeting the kind of description that my noble friend Lord Pickles and others have spoken about.

Before coming to my amendment, I quote the last sentence of Britain’s Promise to Remember in recommendation 1:

“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 more”.


That vividly shows the commission’s view. It did not in any way want to see what it saw as a very long development in recommendation 2 that needed to be thought about. Would there be enough money to do the things it wanted to do? All sorts of things had to be developed in a flexible way.

The purpose of my amendment is to try to end—or come close to ending—this Committee’s deliberations on a positive note rather than a negative one. As the Committee will know, I have proposed two amendments before, and I raised a lot of questions in them and made a lot of points. The first one particularly emphasised the differences between what was in the commission’s report and was accepted and what is on the table today, and the second one questioned the reasons why the commission’s recommendation immediately to form a management body has been rejected and is still under consideration. It seems to me that such a body could have done a deal of good work over the last few years.

15:45

My thought then is: there is no point in going over the same ground. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. My making points and asking questions is, frankly, a waste of time. It is not within the scope of either of the representatives on the Front Benches in this Committee to deal with such matters; they avoid them. So I will put forward my solution to some of the points that I have made.

In doing so, I want to be clear about the purposes. First, is compliance with the recommendations that were made in 2015. Secondly, anything that is suggested needs to be aware of the financial situation and needs to be cost competitive. Thirdly, anything that is suggested should remove any suggestion of competition with the Imperial War Museum. I will deal with that right away: if we need a gallery, and if we need a presentation about the position of the UK in the 1930s—I remember some demonstrations at Hyde Park Corner, which was a favourite place in those days before the war—it could be made in the Imperial War Museum. Indeed, it could be financed by the memorial and learning centre if it were successful in raising money. Fourthly, the risks that we are facing now badly need reducing. I also think we should create not a closely-defined learning centre but the possibility of a flexible approach to whatever that centre is going to do to create a world-class educational initiative. We should also try to find a way of enabling an earlier completion date; the debates today make that very clear.

The alternative, as far as I am concerned, should be a stand-alone unmanned memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens. I have no particular wish to determine which end of the gardens or even in the middle, but we should go out straight away and get a design and a programme for building a fine, stand-alone unmanned memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens. In saying that, I am following up some valuable initiatives that have been made during our Committee debates.

We should then create the management body that we do not have, which should supervise in certain respects the way in which the memorial is built. How long will it take to build the memorial? In the commission’s original report it thought it would take about two years, which does not seem unreasonable to me. If we started on 1 June, we could have it in 2027.

The management could take for itself quite a humble office, having been appointed by Parliament as a non-departmental public body, which is my choice. It could set up shop, start to raise money and make a great deal of mileage with the charity that has already been in existence for six years, about which my noble friend Lord Pickles knows more than the rest of us.

I think about what this will do to reduce risk. First, it will remove the risk of the basement box, which will not be needed. The risks of the basement box are very severe; there is no doubt about that. A lot of test holes have been drilled and the contract for the basement box would be horrendously complicated. What if there is an unexploded bomb down there somewhere? What about the archaeological investigations that will be needed? It is just not an easy thing to put in that box.

Then, of course, any danger to the trees disappears, because a stand-alone memorial does not need anything but a conventional foundation. The flooding risk, such as it is, will be reduced. The relationship with the park and the management of the park becomes much easier. The visitors to the park would hardly notice, because there would be none of this endless progression of buses and traffic. I leave it to Members of the Committee to see the extent to which this would reduce the uncertainty, delay and risk.

In conclusion, I think this deserves to be properly considered. It is no good hiding behind the fiction that this is all a planning matter. We have not heard any defence or argument in favour, any statements from my noble friend Lord Pickles or my own Front Bench, or anything from the noble Lord, Lord Khan, about the real benefits of what is being proposed. It has all been to shut down the debate and deal with the criticisms.

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 32, moved by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I am mindful, if I am correct, that at this stage amendments are not usually put to the vote but are often a means of fishing for information from the Minister, which is what I am seeking now in making three brief points.

First, by way of setting the scene, the horror of the Shoah is unique and must, in my view, be seen in the context of European and other antisemitism historically. I say that without wishing in any way to detract from other genocides.

It is upon that word “genocide” that I make my second point, because I substantially share the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, who referred in his remarks to the “instrumentalisation” of genocide and the proliferation of legal cases about it. This is a reminder that the word “genocide” is contested. There is a legal idea of it, a political idea of it and a popular idea of it. Without repeating what I said at Second Reading, I have been dismayed, as have other Members of the Committee including the noble Lord, Lord Robathan —and I say this as someone who has sometimes been critical of the Israeli Government—to see the Holocaust compared to what is going on now in Israel and Gaza. This seems profoundly wrong and profoundly worrying.

That leads me to my third and final point. I am concerned—the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, made this point very ably—about what may happen in future. In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to the story of how Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur have in some way been added, as it were, to the mission of the learning centre; the Minister referred to that at Second Reading. It might be argued that, in future, the learning centre’s mission should be a matter for historians and the people who will have guardianship of both the memorial and the learning centre. But this is a government Bill and the Minister is here, so I want to hear him explain to the Committee how the uniqueness of the Holocaust will be guarded in the learning centre. I look forward to hearing what he has to say when he responds to this debate.

[Baroness Fleet (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 32 in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I will briefly add a rather personal perspective of antisemitism, which is absolutely central to our debate today.

I believe, as I think we all do, that antisemitism must be central to the memorial’s learning centre, with no distraction of other genocides. I am not Jewish but I believe that everyone, of whatever religion or faith, should have a knowledge and understanding of antisemitism—what it means and why it is ever present. The proposed learning centre provides us with a real opportunity. We must take that opportunity.

Antisemitism has touched my life in ways that I could never have imagined 40 years ago when I married someone who is Jewish. Early on in our marriage, my husband said to me, “You have to understand that antisemitism is with us now, just as it was in 1948 when the State of Israel was created, just as it was in 1933 and just as it was 2,000 years ago”. He then added, “My suitcase is always packed”. It is hard for people who are not Jewish to understand that. In the run-up to this debate, I spoke to a number of noble friends who, like me, are not Jewish, and they looked really quite puzzled.

My husband’s grandfather died in Auschwitz. His mother, an assimilated Jew from Vienna, escaped to London as a 17 year-old. His father, just one year older, escaped from Prague. They met in the Lyon’s tea house on Coventry Street, which was the only place they could find work, even though they were both highly educated. They were among the fortunate few who found refuge here, and they were grateful to Britain for ever. However, they believed that the antisemitism of British officials and politicians had prevented thousands of Jews being saved from the Holocaust.

Shockingly, antisemitism has continued to lurk in the shadows since 1945. Now, since the horrific events of 7 October, it is boldly and violently on the streets of London and elsewhere in Britain once again. The ignorance and complicity of the police allowed crude antisemitism to gain respectability during the pro-Hamas demonstrations in central London, just as the German police did in Berlin in 1933. How else, during the pro-Palestinian march through Westminster in February 2024, could a hologram saying “from the river to the sea” be projected on to Big Ben and the Elizabeth Tower for some considerable time? Do the police not know that that phrase calls for the destruction of the 7 million Jews in Israel?

I will give two examples from close to home; one is quite minor but the other is, I think, very significant. Every day, I walk down Hampstead High Street. Since 7 October, I have seen the heartbreaking posters of dozens of Israeli hostages—men, women and children —on the windows of empty shop fronts and bus shelters. Overnight, day after day, these were defaced. Is that not antisemitism?

Then there is the BBC. Why is antisemitism in the BBC still tolerated? Noble Lords will remember that, for weeks after 7 October, the BBC resisted calling Hamas a terrorist organisation. The former director, Danny Cohen, set out the evidence against the BBC when he published a 60-page dossier endorsed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, in September 2024. The dossier exposed the corporation’s pro-Hamas coverage of events since 7 October. It said the BBC’s

“false and damaging claims about Israel’s conduct of war have fuelled the flames of anti-semitism across the world”.

16:00

The most glaring examples are in news reports from Jerusalem by one particular correspondent, Fergal Keane. Throughout the war, Keane has used footage supplied by Hamas as the basis of his reports. He speaks as if he were there and has checked or verified the facts independently. The BBC continues to use Hamas footage supplied by Hamas-approved cameramen, which is sold to the BBC. Was it any surprise, therefore, that the BBC’s disgraceful Gaza documentary, narrated by the 13 year-old son of a Hamas Minister, was not only made with money paid to the Hamas family but approved by the BBC’s most senior editorial executives? Who can be in any doubt that there is still active antisemitism in the BBC and in this country? Given the reach and influence of the BBC, is this not of concern to BBC governors, and all of us?

In the current climate, it is more important than ever that the memorial’s learning centre recounts the history of the 2,000 years of antisemitism that led to the Holocaust. It is essential that, as Amendment 32 proposes, the learning centre is solely focused on the Holocaust and antisemitism—otherwise, it will fail in its purpose.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, what a relief it was to hear the brilliant speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, for which I will always be grateful. I had hoped to avoid too much controversial material about antisemitism today, but it is impossible. I agree with the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, about what happened during the war, but I think it amounts only to the possible removal of the word “Nazi” from Amendment 32, which I otherwise support. I also support Amendment 38A in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles.

The question we have not asked is: what are we supposed to be learning from the learning centre? No one has ever told me. We know that it is to be about the British involvement in or reaction to the Holocaust, which is a far cry from the broad panorama of history outlined so well by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles. So I do not see why that has any bearing on the apparent plans for the so-called learning centre, which is just a small exhibition.

I wonder what is meant when Britain’s politicians and the promoters of this project support Holocaust remembrance, memorials and “never again”, because what I see is ignorance of the history of antisemitism, as so eloquently set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles. Unfortunately, as we all know, antisemitism is on the rise again, despite more than 300 memorials around the world. Sometimes, it seems as though the faster they go up, the more antisemitism grows. Antisemitism is to be found everywhere, sadly, even inside the Palace of Westminster.

I am sorry to see that it has been hinted sometimes that it is antisemitic to oppose the memorial and learning centre. Far from it: the Jewish community is divided. Indeed, in some ways the memorial and learning provide a sort of fig leaf. It is all too easy to imagine an antisemite sitting in the front row of national Holocaust remembrance events, posing to have a photograph taken in Parliament, signing the book of remembrance and then going on to have tea with Hamas and say, “My friends, Hamas”, because, as the American author put it, everyone loves dead Jews; the living, not so much.

Unfortunately, the words “Holocaust” and “genocide” have been globalised and are now tossed around as rather trivial concepts. It is a continuing threat, and four little rooms in Victoria Tower Gardens are hardly likely to cover a history of at least 2,000 years. What is the learning centre about? It is not about learning; it is an exhibition. The Holocaust was about the culmination of at least 2,000 years of antisemitism, largely fuelled by the Church, and its modern continuation in which Islamism plays a large part.

I submit that the lessons of the Holocaust—if anything is to be learned from the learning centre—should be about the destruction of antisemitism. This means modifying any religious teaching that depicts the Jews as Christ killers—a teaching that I was subjected to at school—or as inferior or evil in any way. It also means, and this is difficult, treating Israel like any other country, many of which were established after the war to meet the independence demands of certain populations and which nearly all involved major displacements of existing populations and their subsequent picking up of their lives again—as did the parents of many in this Room. Only the Palestinians refuse to accept the international reality.

One can combine the history of antisemitism and the situation of Israel today by pointing out that it is the only Jewish state in the world, and the only one guaranteed to protect Jews to the best of its ability and to grant them a safe haven. Note that all the genocides that have occurred recently are of people who were in a minority and lacked their own state and self-defence.

I come to the importance of defining what is to be included in the learning centre and what one is supposed to learn from it. The Government do not seem to know. The 2015 report pointed out the uniqueness of the Holocaust and said that the learning centre would also help people understand the wider lessons of including it in other genocides. Then Mr Greenberg, who was involved in planning the layout of the learning centre, gave evidence to the public inquiry and said that it would include the murder of millions of Cambodians, Rwandans and Bosnians. But the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, in reply to my Written Question of 12 February 2021 said that it would include all victims of Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides. Then the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, said on 10 May 2023, in answer to another Question of mine, that it would include Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Other replies have said that inclusions remain to be considered and the noble Lord, Lord Khan, said on 20 March that:

“The learning centre will look at subsequent genocides through the lens of the Holocaust”,—[Official Report, 20/3/25; col. GC 437.]


whatever that means. We have no firm statement from any Government that it will be confined to the Jewish genocide and the politics of this have always been about including other genocides in government-funded Holocaust ventures, lest the Jewish genocide is treated as superior or exclusive. This matters because of the cheapening of the word “genocide” and its application to any loss of life that is widely deplored.

Worse still, the new term negates the Jews. There are those who regard the 1948 exodus of Palestinians from Israel as a genocide and those who regard the deaths in Gaza as a genocide, disregarding the legal definition and the lack of intent. Germany has been accused of focusing too much on the Holocaust and of ignoring so-called colonial crimes and not allowing comparisons with the Holocaust. Almost unbelievably, the first version of this year’s invitation to Holocaust Memorial Day included the Gazans in the objects for commemoration. This aroused shock and dismay among many in the Jewish community and had to be withdrawn and the chair of the HMDT apologised.

Apology is insufficient, because it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the politics of genocide and its inversion. One cannot separate out HMDT and the other Holocaust establishment organisations from what is going on and Holocaust remembrance. Whatever happens in Gaza cannot be compared with the Holocaust. To place Israel’s self-defence on a continuum with, for example, the Einsatzgruppen during the war is to show the damage being done by the lack of scholarly input into the so-called learning centre: input from learned Jewish scholars who are not taking orders from politicians. The Holocaust is being used now to tell a nationalist or politically convenient story, and that is what the learning centre appears to be about, because it packages what happened in a box labelled 1939 to 1945 and the British reaction.

It is time for the Jewish community to reclaim the memory of our unique tragedy and explain its antisemitic roots our way. These national Holocaust ceremonies are being used to defame Israel and divert attention away from the roots of antisemitic murder. The learning centre cannot compare with the scholarly output of, for example, the Weiner library, UCL, the National Holocaust Centre and the educational programmes of the 21 learning centres already in existence. If it goes on down this multi-genocide path, the allegations against Israel will get worse. One can only hope that those who are, as it were, the establishment and are responsible now for the national remembrance events will not be leading the contents and administration of the centre, if it is built.

It has been assumed too readily, without evidence, that being exposed to the facts of the Holocaust prevents lapses into antisemitism, but it has not—it has failed. The late Lord Sacks explained how antisemitism now focuses on the one and only Jewish state. It is only a state of one’s own and the means of self-defence that stop genocide. If Israel had existed in 1938, which it did not because there was a British mandate, rather than in 1948, and if it had been able to take in refugees, rather than being blocked by the British, how many thousands or millions of lives might have been saved? Now we see the inversion of the words “Holocaust” and “genocide” against the Jews. I ask the Minister to explain exactly what we are supposed to learn from the learning centre and what genocides or Holocausts it will include?

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I have been listening carefully to this debate and asking myself the question: for whose benefit is this memorial to be created? For whose benefit did the noble Lord, Lord Pickles—and I praise much of the work he has done on this—and does the Minister believe that this memorial and learning centre ought to be created? Who are the intended direct beneficiaries and who are the intended indirect beneficiaries—for there are those two categories?

One thing that this proposal is not intended to provide is justification for entrenched views held by former and current Ministers or other politicians. The two groups for whom this proposal provides benefit and should be the intended beneficiaries, I suggest, are as follows. I start with the first group by referring to the Haggadah. The Haggadah, as many in this Room will know, is the liturgy that is read at seder dinners at the beginning of Passover, and it tells the story of the Exodus. That is a very important concept in what we are discussing here. The whole concept of the wandering Jew is linked with the Exodus, and the Exodus has now gone on for thousands of years. Jews have left various countries for safety, come to other countries where they have found a good life and then, from time to time, it has been disrupted by yet another bout of terrible antisemitism, with huge quantities of murder.

16:15

Among those people who have been part of the exodus is an elderly lady called Renata, now aged 88. Renata, who is my beloved sister, is a survivor of the Holocaust. She left Poland in 1945, having been rescued from the Holocaust not just by the end of the war but by the extraordinary efforts of a young indirect relative, who was not her mother but who later became my mother and married Renata’s father. So she is really my half-sister.

We share a lot of things, Renata and I. One of the things we share is a photograph, taken just before the Second World War on a balcony in Przemyśl, where she lived with our father and her mother, his first wife, who died after three and a half years of slave labour in Auschwitz. That photograph of a little girl being held by her mother on a balcony in Przemyśl is the only memory she has of her mother. She does not remember anything else that happened between her and her mother because she was only 23 months old when the Second World War started. Eventually, when we started to come to terms with our family history together, we made a little shrine of that photograph in my sister’s home.

Though she is still alive, Renata’s memory of the Holocaust has unfortunately now been removed by dementia, although, as I said at Second Reading, she was able to put it in a book that Bloomsbury published 10 years ago now. It is a very good book, not designed for a mass audience but designed for teenagers, because she taught children for the whole of her career. The noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley—he and I share having been brought up in Burnley—will be interested to know that Renata was head girl of Burnley High School many years ago.

She records, and she told me this from her memories, the extraordinary cruelty that she suffered, of how she was moved from place to place, and of how she was eventually collected by the woman who saved her life, who became my mother, and brought to be reunited with her father, who became my father, in London. We talked a great deal, over the long decades before she became a sufferer of dementia, of how we could come to terms with our parents’ survivor’s guilt and what really shaped us.

Why did I, a boy from Burnley, become a Member of another place and then of this House? Because my father, who was the world’s most reasonable man, thought that I should understand politics from a very early age. When the Manchester Guardian, as it was called, dropped through the front door of our house every morning, I was sat down and told the news and how important it was that the democracy that my father was proud to have joined should continue, and that we should not hear any more of antisemitism. My father, who died in 1989, would be shocked today to hear that, in the years since his death, that has continued. My mother, who was younger than him and lived until 2013 to a magnificent and occasionally troublesome old age, often reflected how shocked my father, her beloved husband, would have been by the continuation of antisemitism in this country.

So the first group for whom this memorial is intended are people like Renata, and for people like my uncle, Karol. Uncle Karol was a young neurologist, a brilliant young man. He had some suspect political opinions—he was a communist—but he died because he broke the curfew in Warsaw. A German soldier told him to pull his trousers down. Because he did so, the soldier could see that he was a Jew, and he was put in the back of a lorry where he was shot dead, and he was never seen again. There is a grave in Warsaw—I have been to it—but it is empty. It was put there by my mother at the end of the war, and this is part of what we are remembering in what we are discussing here.

I absolutely agree that we should memorialise what has happened to others in horrific events around the world, but it should not be here. I am not particularly wedded to the words of any amendment that we are considering this afternoon, but I want to hear a clear commitment from the Minister—I shall be disappointed, and possibly worse than disappointed, if I do not—that this memorial and learning centre, wherever it is, will be to what we all understand by the Holocaust and the Shoah. We should not shilly-shally about it.

The second group is much easier and less emotional to state. It is: others. That is, the people who come to such a place: young people who are educated in a world that we hope will put aside the extremism that the Holocaust depicted, and all people who go there and come away thinking that this kind of horror should never, ever occur again. This needs—and I ask the Minister to confirm this—to be used as a very simple example. It should not say that there have been 13 events around the world that contribute to this kind of issue; it should say that there has been this continued exodus that I have referred to—that a whole race has been driven to different parts of the world by antisemitism and that 6 million of them were murdered by the Nazis and their sympathisers. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, that, whatever their labels were, they were sympathisers of the Nazis and believed in exterminating the Jews at about the same time and in about the same area of the world.

I say to the Minister, the Government and those managing this scheme, who I fear may be rather less objective than I would wish: let us not waste further time in this discussion. Just tell us, please, that this is about the Holocaust, which caused the extermination of the Jews, and that this memorial and any learning centre will be for that and that alone.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords on all sides for their many powerful and often moving speeches throughout the whole of this Committee.

Amendments 32 and 38A seek to require the Holocaust memorial and learning centre to focus solely on the Nazi genocide of Jews and antisemitism, and to be in conformity with Britain’s Promise to Remember: The Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission Report. My understanding is that this is the Government’s intention, and I hope the Minister can confirm this.

This is the final group that we will debate in Committee. I conclude, as I began, with a clear statement of our support for the Government’s plans to deliver the Holocaust memorial and learning centre as soon as possible. As the Committee knows, I have worked on this as a Minister and will continue to work with the noble Lord opposite to support the delivery of this important project.

As I have said before, a Conservative Prime Minister made this solemn commitment to the survivors of the Holocaust, and we will stand by that commitment, made 11 years ago. This is not a promise to be broken. Eighty years on from so many liberations of concentration camps, we must get on and deliver the Holocaust memorial and learning centre right here in Westminster, at the heart of our democracy. We must do this so that the survivors who are still with us can see it open to the public. It is our duty to renew our commitment never to forget the horrors of the Holocaust. We support the Government in making good on that promise.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments in this final group take us to topics at the heart of the Government’s reasons for seeking to establish a new national memorial and learning centre.

Amendment 32 proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, would restrict the learning centre to providing solely

“education about the Nazi genocide of the Jews and antisemitism”.

The proposed new clause is well intentioned but overly restrictive and may have unintended consequences. First, it is unnecessary. The Bill—the clue is in its name—clearly refers to a memorial commemorating the victims of the Holocaust and a centre for learning related to the memorial. This Bill is about a memorial to the Holocaust, not to all genocides or crimes against humanity. The learning centre will focus on the unique crime of the Holocaust and aim to set the historical facts in the context of antisemitism. No Holocaust memorial and learning centre could exist without a clear understanding of the roots of antisemitism.

The clause may also have unintended consequences. It may discourage the learning centre from exploring the context and complexity of the Holocaust, missing an opportunity to create an educational offer that would benefit visitors. From the start, we have been clear that, to understand the devastation of the Holocaust on European Jewry, it is crucial to also understand the vibrancy and breadth of Jewish life before the Holocaust.

The centre is also intended to address subsequent genocides within the context of the Holocaust, showing how the Holocaust led to the development of international law. It is doubtful whether either of these topics could be included in the learning centre under this proposed new clause. The content for the learning centre is being developed by a leading international curator, Yehudit Shendar—formerly of Yad Vashem—with the support of an academic advisory group. They will ensure that the content is robust and credible and reflects the current state of historical investigation into, and interpretation of, the Holocaust.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I really do not understand; there are too many contradictions here. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott—presumably speaking for the Tories when they were in government—said quite plainly that it will include Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. I just do not understand what is meant by projecting the Holocaust on to other catastrophes. There are legal aspects but, as far as I know, this will not be an exhibition devoted to the legal meaning and development of the concept of genocide—although one could have a huge exhibition on that. I simply do not understand.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to repeat the arguments; I have laid them out very clearly.

Yad Vashem has been mentioned numerous times across the Committee for its excellent content. Having Yehudit Shendar, formerly of Yad Vashem—to be supported by an academic advisory group—will ensure that the content is robust and credible and reflects the current state of historical investigation into, and interpretation of, the Holocaust. I respectfully ask the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, to withdraw Amendment 32.

I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, for his Amendment 38A. I welcome the opportunity that it presents to draw attention to the report he mentioned, Britain’s Promise to Remember, which was published in January 2015 by the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission. The commission, set up with the active participation of all the main political parties, conducted an extensive investigation into the state of Holocaust commemoration and education.

Rereading the report and its conclusion is a valuable exercise that can help remind us all of the context of our debates on this Bill. In his foreword, the chair of the commission, Mick Davis, recorded the statement of his fellow commissioner, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who saw the commission’s work as

“a sacred duty to the memory of both victims and survivors of the Holocaust”.

The report reminded us that:

“The Holocaust was … a catastrophe for human civilisation”.


It is very clear that the commission conducted its work with a full and clear knowledge of the depth of its responsibility.

At the heart of the commission’s report was the recommendation that

“there should be a striking new memorial to serve as the focal point of national commemoration of the Holocaust. It should be prominently located in Central London to make a bold statement about the importance Britain places on preserving the memory of the Holocaust. This will stand as a permanent affirmation of the values of our society”.

This recommendation was accepted by the then Prime Minister in 2015, with cross-party support. Each subsequent Prime Minister has given the same commitment. The current Prime Minister, the right honourable Sir Keir Starmer MP, has unequivocally committed his Government to fulfilling that promise.

16:30

There are, of course, further recommendations in Britain’s Promise to Remember that support that central ambition. The report called for

“a world-class Learning Centre”.

We intend to deliver a world-class learning centre with a powerful and engaging exhibition that will ensure that visitors leave with a clear understanding of the Holocaust and a strong sense of its relevance to the modern world. The exhibition will occupy a space of around 1,300 square metres, comparable to the Holocaust gallery at the Imperial War Museum, which will be fully capable of hosting a comprehensive exhibition.

Let me address the point the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, raised concerning the relationship between the memorial and the learning centre. As I have said before, the commission was absolutely clear that the memorial must be co-located with the learning centre. When the commission considered the existing Holocaust memorial garden in Hyde Park, it noted that:

“It is isolated; standing as it does on its own, it offers no opportunity to educate the casual passer-by or to inspire an interest to learn more. There is nothing in the vicinity which provides an opportunity to find out more”.

The commission was crystal clear that the learning centre must “physically accompany” the new national memorial. Only this way could the memorial serve its critical purpose of informing as well as commemorating.

It is right that the commission did not specify a particular site, nor propose that the learning centre must be underground. The decision on a site, and the choice of a design suitable for the site selected, were matters to be taken forward after the commission produced its report. The commission was quite explicit in noting that it had not found a site that met all its aspirations. Three sites were mentioned in its report, all of which had some strengths, but none unequivocally met its objectives. It was the task of the foundation appointed in 2015 to conduct further searches and to recommend a site. When the foundation identified Victoria Tower Gardens, it was unanimous in its view that this was the right site. As we have discussed already in this Committee, having chosen the site, the Government commissioned a world-class design team to produce the proposal that we are now seeking to take forward.

The commission’s report recommended that an endowment fund be established to secure the future of Holocaust education. I am confident that such a fund can be established, drawing on the generosity and commitment of people from all sections of society who wish to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten. The project to establish the memorial and learning centre has received a commitment from Sir Gerald Ronson that charitable donations of £25 million will be obtained. Of course, fundraising to support the memorial and its learning centre can begin in earnest only when there is a clear route to construction, with all the necessary permissions in place.

A further recommendation of the commission was that there should be an urgent programme to record and preserve the testimony of British Holocaust survivors and liberators. That recommendation received prompt attention. Between 2015 and 2016, 112 interviews were conducted by UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation member Natasha Kaplinsky, with each interview digitally recorded. Those interviews provide an invaluable record of personal experience that will be available for generations to come.

Finally, the commission recommended the establishment of a permanent and independent body to establish and run the memorial and to administer the endowment. We had a great deal of discussion on this point on a previous day in Committee. In short, it remains the Government’s objective to establish such a body to secure the long-term future of the memorial and learning centre.

For the immediate task of achieving the necessary consents and permissions and preparing for construction, the programme is being managed directly within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, working closely with the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, which currently has the status of an advisory body. That arrangement supports proper ministerial accountability while ensuring that the cross-party nature of the commitment is fully reflected in the foundation.

I want to make it clear to the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that we agree that we need to have a permanent independent body, but the right time is when the memorial and learning centre are built. The arrangement that we have at the moment supports proper ministerial accountability as well as cross-party commitment.

I hope I have shown that the Government, like our predecessor, remain fully committed to achieving the objectives set out in Britain’s Promise to Remember. We take the sense of our sacred duty very seriously. However, that does not mean we would wish to see such a commitment captured in the Bill. To do so would be an invitation to those who oppose the scheme to find opportunities for legal challenges across all sorts of topics.

It is more than 10 years since Britain’s Promise to Remember was published. In that time we have lost a great number of Holocaust survivors. We have also missed an immense number of opportunities to capture the attention of millions of visitors to Westminster—visitors who might have seen the memorial, visited the exhibition and learned of the immense human catastrophe that was the Holocaust. Our focus must be on pressing forward with the construction of the memorial. I pay tribute to the many powerful speeches and contributions in this group in particular.

Our thoughts are with Renata, and I will read that book. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has served us well and helped us to be where we are, and that he will continue to make fruitful contributions. Although we might be in slight disagreement in this particular debate, I am sure we will find commonality in lots of other areas.

I remind noble Lords that, as the noble Lord, Lord Austin, mentioned on a previous Committee day, I am in talks with the historian Martin Winstone to come into the House so that all noble Lords have an opportunity to have a briefing with questions and answers and any concerns they want to raise. That should be in the near future; we are trying to schedule it in.

I have also arranged, hopefully—we are just waiting for confirmation—to bring in a 3D model of the whole project. I say this from the bottom of my heart: I found that such a constructive exercise. Whichever side of the argument noble Lords are on, they should see the practical model in the context of its setting and have the architects talk them through and answer their questions.

I will finish on this point. We have to press forward with the construction of the memorial, and I hope I have satisfied noble Lords as much as possible. I ask the noble Viscount to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

I am not Jewish, as I have explained to the Committee on previous occasions. I have found what I have heard in the debates around these amendments moving and interesting, but it is important in this context that we are clear that the Holocaust is not exclusively part of Jewish history. It is part of British history—because, for example, my family went and fought the Germans in order to try to rid the world of this evil. Some of my concerns about the proposal in its current form arise from the fact of this slightly wider context. Victoria Tower Gardens are an important site for the whole of the British people, but this commemorates something that, in a different way from the Jewish community, is part of our history and our heritage. It is important that that is borne in mind.

I also think as an individual—and this may engender considerable criticism—that the greatest thing we can do in this country to honour those who died in the Holocaust is to have a country that operates under the rule of law, where Governments cannot bully and just override citizens, and that we have a proper process where all the interested parties have their interests properly taken into account. My amendment—which the Minister, I thought rather unfairly, described as being about planning consent—was about using planning consent as a kind of milestone in the process.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

I ask the noble Lord to sit down. We are no longer discussing his amendment. This is a completely separate group, and the Minister has now sat down. We need to move on.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

I will certainly sit down.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I said at the beginning that I thought this was about the most important amendment we had; I am glad that I have, I think, been proved right. We have had a highly provocative, important debate on what the learning centre should be about. It has been stressed time and again that it should be about the Holocaust and antisemitism—nothing else.

I am grateful to all those of my noble friends who participated; to two highly distinguished Cross-Benchers, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew; and the non-affiliated Peer who signed my amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame. He is a highly distinguished King’s Counsel who has led on many important cases in this country. I will forgive him for taking a brief from the ghastly Leigh Day firm; that was a cab rank thing, I suppose. He is also a professor of international law at King’s College. He rightly made the point that there will be controversy on what other groups are to be included; that point was picked up by my noble friend Lord Goodman, who supported my amendment and also made the point about there being a lot of controversy around what the other genocides are.

I think I would be right to say that probably every noble Lord in this place knows that what happened in Armenia 110 years ago, with 1 million Armenians slaughtered, was genocide. Some other countries in the world have said that, but no British Government have ever called it genocide because we are terrified that, if we call it genocide, Turkey and President Erdoğan—a big NATO member—will get terribly upset. Therefore, we do not call it genocide for wider geopolitical and military reasons; we have the same problem in trying to select various other genocides to attach here.

My noble friend Lady Fleet made a powerful speech on the antisemitism that she and her husband and family currently face. She rightly pointed out that the evil chant of “from the river to the sea” means the extermination of the Jews; she also made the point that the memorial and the learning centre must be about the Holocaust and antisemitism only.

The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, kept asking what the learning centre is about and what it is supposed to teach. If it is supposed to teach 2,000 years of Jewish history, you need something better than a few posters and videos in this little bunker; you need the giant campus that the Holocaust Commission proposed. Other Jewish organisations could have rooms there and you could have conferences. You would actually teach the 2,000-year history of Jewish life and the Holocaust in full detail.

The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, just made an intervention to say that his family fought the Germans. My uncles did as well, in the 51st Highland Division; they were captured at Saint-Valery and spent five years of the war in, I think, Stalag IV-D.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, asked: who are the beneficiaries? He rightly pointed out it would be those wandering Jews from 1,300 BC and the exodus in Egypt to the present day; that is 3,300 years of Jews looking for a safe home somewhere in the world. He also made the point that this must be about the Shoah and nothing else.

The shadow Minister, my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook, said that the point was to get the learning centre built so that the survivors of the Holocaust could see in their lifetime that we were commemorating the Holocaust. If I may say so, that is not the important point. The point is not, as was wrongly said in this Committee by a colleague, that this is for the benefit of the Jews. The whole point of the memorial and the learning centre is that it is for the tens of millions of people who deny that the Holocaust ever existed. The survivors of the Holocaust do not need to be told how bad it was—

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am sorry but they have told me very strongly—and have done so over a number of years, as they have told the Minister now—that they would like to see it.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I accept that. Of course they would like to see it—I totally understand that; I am not dismissing their desire—but what is more important: placating and dealing with their desire, or addressing the millions of people who are calling for a new holocaust and denying that the last Holocaust ever existed? That concern must take priority over building something that is grossly inadequate to please the existing survivors. The Minister talked again about it communicating the value of Jewish life over 2,000 years. I simply make the point, again, that you cannot do that with this little bunker; you need a proper learning centre, which the original Holocaust Commission called for.

I cannot see how on earth you can put an exhibition in this bunker that has any relevance to what happened later in Darfur or to Pol Pot. There is nothing to learn about these genocides from what happened to the Jews.

The noble Lord pointed out that every Prime Minister has supported this. Those of us who have been in Parliament for many years have always formed the view that when both political parties agree on something, the public are being stuffed somewhere. When you have half a dozen Prime Ministers agreeing on something, you can again be sure to bet that the public are being misled. If one could, I would love to put down a Parliamentary Question asking how many times these former Prime Ministers have actually walked through Victoria gardens.

16:45

I am saving the best to last, naturally. My noble friend Lord Pickles was, in the nicest possible way, dancing on the head of a pin. He sought to rubbish the whole concept of the amendment by picking on the word “Nazi”. He rightly pointed out that many other countries in Europe were also killing Jews through their various police organisations and other nasty affiliations, but is he seriously suggesting that those countries would have committed their own Holocaust and started exterminating the Jews if Hitler had not given the lead, if they were not inspired by Hitler?

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I just say to noble Lords that we do not want to be reliving the whole debate, as passionate as it is. We should be winding up now, as the Minister has sat down.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

I can do this in 20 seconds. All I am saying is that the Arrow Cross was murdering Jews in Hungary while Hitler was attempting the Munich putsch. The antisemitic laws were first introduced not at Nuremberg but in Hungary.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I will happily take that guidance from my noble friend; he may be absolutely right. I say to the Government Whip that we are not reliving the debate; I am trying to wind up the most important debate we have had in this Session over the last few days, and it is important to deal with the very important points raised by my noble friend Lord Pickles.

Okay, I am quite happy to remove the word “Nazi” and to say “Nazi-inspired”. We all agree that if we did not say “Nazi”, the amendment would be perfectly in order, because no one in this Room who supports the amendment is suggesting that we included the word “Nazi” to somehow exonerate Poland or the other countries that did it and are trying to concentrate just on a few hundred misguided people who wore the SS uniform. Of course that is not the case. We want this memorial and learning centre to be about everyone who exterminated Jews, whichever country they were in and whatever nationality they were.

That is the point made, in conclusion, by my noble friend Lord Robathan. He said that the whole point of the memorial is the genocide of the Jews by whoever did it. It has to be the Holocaust only, and none of the other four genocides suggested here has any relevance to the Holocaust. They should be ignored: the Holocaust and antisemitism only. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 32 withdrawn.

Amendments 33 to 38A not moved.

Clause 3: Extent, commencement and short title

Amendments 39 to 43 not moved.

Clause 3 agreed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Committee adjourned at 4.50 pm.