Introduction: Lord Barber of Chittlehampton
Grass-roots Music Venues
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bassam of Brighton
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the 2025 Budget on grassroots music venues.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, we are introducing permanently lower tax rates for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties, including grass-roots music venues, worth nearly £1 billion a year. As part of the changes to business rates, we announced a £4.3 billion support package to protect those facing higher bills after revaluation. We have also more than doubled funding to support independent artists and grass-roots music venues as part of the music growth package, building on the UK’s strength as a world-leading creative industries destination.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lord, that is a very welcome response from the Minister, but I wonder what assessment His Majesty’s Government have made of forecasts that increased business rate valuations could result in a closure of between 80 to 120 grass-roots music venues and place a further 120-plus at risk. How do the Government square this with their welcome commitment to high street regeneration, creative sector growth, the night-time economy and protecting cultural infrastructure? Will the Minister agree to meet representatives from the sector to discuss the issue further?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for the question. I am very happy to meet the groups that he mentioned. He is absolutely right to say that the creative sector is extremely important to the UK economy. It is a major employer and a significant part of our economy. It has been included as a priority sector in our industrial strategy, recognising its high growth potential, particularly through the development and adoption of new technologies.
On business rates, which my noble friend raised, as I have said before in your Lordships’ House, I acknowledge that the revaluation means that sectors such as pubs and music venues will struggle in relation to the business rates applicable to them. That is why we are working with the sectors involved to ensure they get the support they need. Noble Lords will have heard what the Prime Minister and Chancellor said on this in recent days. I will not add to that or comment on any speculation, but where there are further comments to be made I will of course come back to your Lordships’ House to discuss them.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, there is plenty of time. We will hear from the Lib Dems next, then the Conservative Benches.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, given that the Music Producers Guild reports that 50% of recording studios are considering closure within the year, with rateable value increases of up to 100%, will the Minister commit to urgently reviewing their exclusion from the retail, hospitality and leisure multiplier, and their misclassification as office space by the Valuation Office Agency, particularly given that film studios, which are similarly not public-facing, already benefit from 40% targeted relief?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The Government have been very clear that the lower multipliers will broadly reflect the scope of the current retail, hospitality and leisure business rates relief, which is centred around retail, hospitality and leisure properties that are reasonably accessible to visiting members of the public. If a recording studio forms part of a single property with a qualifying hospitality or retail business, and the hospitality or retail aspect is the main purpose of the property, it will qualify for the lower multipliers.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, the whole House will agree that music venues are a vital part of our cultural ecosystem. Music venues are now benefiting from a voluntary grass-roots levy levied on concert tickets, which I understand the Government are keeping under review with a view to introducing a statutory levy. The Government are also talking about a tourist tax. I suspect I know what the Minister’s answer will be, but would it make sense to roll up consultation on a tourist tax and a ticket levy into one single tax?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I do not think so. I shall repeat what my right honourable friend Ian Murray, the Culture Minister, said on the industry levy:
“My ambition is to see the voluntary levy in place for as many concerts as possible and, as a milestone in that progress, for at least 50% of tickets on sale for stadium and arena shows in 2026”
to have adopted the levy by 31 December.
“Following this, I would like to see this target brought as close to 100% as possible”.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, further to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is the Minister aware that as well as the possibility of closures, there is the danger that our recording studios may up sticks and move abroad? With the continuing effect of Brexit on the music industry, unfortunately, they will not need a great deal of encouragement.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
As noble Lords will know, I am very happy to agree with the noble Earl on the last point he raises: the incredibly damaging effect of Brexit on that sector in particular. He will like to know that, along with the EU, we have jointly recognised the value of travel and cultural artistic exchanges, including the activities of touring artists, and we will continue our efforts to support travel and cultural exchange. We will explore how best to improve arrangements for touring across the European continent with the EU and other EU member states.
Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that I am leading a fan-led review of live music as commissioned by the Culture Committee in the House of Commons. One of the things that comes clearly from fans’ voices is that they are happy to pay a levy if they know it is going to grass-roots music venues in order to support them, unlike the obscure levies they sometimes have to pay, or other service charges on top of ticket prices. With that in mind, will the Government commit in the forthcoming ticketing legislation to include taking powers for a statutory levy just in case the voluntary levy does not work out?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am very grateful to my noble friend for the work he is doing in the review he mentions. I do not think it is for me to commit the Government to that specific point, but I will of course take it back and discuss it with colleagues in other departments as well.
The Lord Bishop of Hereford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answers. Across the country, churches provide the largest network of performance spaces available to professional and amateur groups for music making and other artistic endeavours, so I thank him for the recent announcement regarding the new places of worship renewal fund. But I am sure he will be aware that there are thousands of churches and other faith communities across the country waiting to know how that scheme will operate. Will the Minister let us know when the details of the scheme will be published and whether the Government will work with us to ensure the scheme is workable, consistent and fair, especially in the levying of VAT?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful for the support that the right reverend Prelate set out in his question. I assure him that that will be responded to very shortly.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
The Minister will be aware that music venues contribute hugely to growth, particularly in market towns and cities, and that the night-time economy suffered greatly during Covid. Will he discuss with his colleagues the impact that the agent of change principle is having, especially when it is not followed to the letter, where poorly soundproofed residential developments are built in close proximity to an existing music venue? It can force a music venue to close down, despite it being very popular.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I will absolutely do what the noble Baroness asks. The Government have heard exactly what she said: that the existing policy to mitigate the impact of development on existing activities, including live music, is not always applied effectively. The creative industries sector plan committed to improving the implementation of the agent of change principle. MHCLG’s current consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework proposes that the policy be more explicit about the matters to be considered, such as both the current and permitted levels of activity within existing uses, which includes licensing for music and cultural venues. This will enable decision-makers to consider the right information early on, addressing the conflict between new and existing development.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, live music venues are the R&D incubators for our creative industries. Some 53% of venues made no profit last year, and the Government’s choices on national insurance contributions and business rates have given them an additional tax bill of £7 million. At a recent helpful meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, a number of noble Lords met representatives of music venues who said that one of the difficulties is hearing different things from the Treasury and from the Valuation Office Agency. So regarding the meeting the Minister’s kindly agreed to on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, may I encourage him to bring along somebody from the Valuation Office Agency to help clarify the situation for these vital parts of our grass-roots music sector?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am not in a position to promise who specifically will attend the meeting, but I will absolutely take that representation back to the department to see if it is possible. I agree with the noble Lord on the importance of music venues; as he says, they are the R&D incubator for the rest of the sector. As part of the industrial strategy, the Government have recognised music and performing and visual arts as a priority sub-sector, and we have recognised the potential for growth. The UK is the third biggest music market globally. As you all know, as part of the music growth package, we are backing the next generation of British talent by doubling funding to support independent artists and grass-root music venues.
Lord Spellar (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister take back to Whitehall the very clear message on the importance of the music industry, including for Britain’s place in the world, that he has identified? No one starts their career playing the O2; they learn their trade—particularly how to relate to an audience—by playing the small venues, night after night. This is hugely important for our soft power but also for a significant part of our economy. Is that understood in Whitehall?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I hope it is understood. I agree with much of what my noble friend says. He will know that we have provided £2.5 million of funding this year for Arts Council England’s Supporting Grassroots Music Fund, enabling grass-roots music venues, recording studios, promoters and festivals to apply for grants to develop new revenue streams, make repairs and improvements, and enhance live music experiences.
ILO Convention 190
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the UK’s implementation of ILO Convention 190, which recognises the right to be free from violence and harassment in the workplace.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, the UK ratified ILO Convention 190 in March 2022, demonstrating its commitment to preventing and addressing violence and harassment in the workplace. We have a robust legislative framework in place, consisting of strong health and safety at work and discrimination laws. We are confident that these meet the convention’s requirements. These protections will be further strengthened through the Employment Rights Act 2025, which includes a requirement for employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and harassment by third parties.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. However, if one in five workers reports feeling at risk of violence at work, on what basis are His Majesty’s Government confident that existing legislation is sufficient to result in prevention, rather than simply to respond to the harm once it has occurred?
Lord Katz (Lab)
The noble Baroness is obviously right and correct that we need to be concerned about prevention and building a culture of positive employers’ attitudes towards tackling harassment and victimisation in the workplace, rather than simply relying on tackling harm when it is caught.
However, we have very strong laws and regulations in place right now. As I said, harassment is covered under the Equality Act 2010, which was recently strengthened in October 2024 to place a specific duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. The noble Baroness will remember well the debates we had in Committee on the then Employment Rights Bill, now Act, where we changed the law to toughen it up further so that employers must take all reasonable steps to stop sexual harassment before it starts and create and maintain workplaces free from harassment.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the rise in the number of reported harassment cases—certainly of women—means either that we have got a great rise in the number of incidents or that people are more prepared to report it? If so, can we make sure that there is an easier way of getting resolution of any complaint? Something that is merely reported and talked about will mean nothing unless there is an effective enforcement regime in place.
Lord Katz (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that enforcement is as much a part of tackling the issue as is creating solutions to the nature of workplace culture. The Employment Rights Act does a number of things in this regard. As well as what I have already mentioned, it voids non-disclosure agreements between employers and workers that prevent a woman speaking out about relevant harassment and discrimination. It also strengthens protection for whistleblowers, making it explicit that sexual harassment can be the basis for protected disclosure. On top of all else, it creates the Fair Work Agency, which will monitor all these new workplace rights.
Baroness Prosser (Lab)
My Lords, an awful lot of these incidents occur because many people, in various kinds of workplace, either think the issue is a non-issue or that it is funny, or they just do not get it. How about, with companies that have been found guilty of not facing up to these problems properly and not dealing with them efficiently, taking some further action unless the company agrees and carries out proper training of its managers to ensure that they do understand what is wrong and spot things before they get out of hand?
Lord Katz (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very good point that enforcement has to be driven somewhat by example. It is important that we do not trivialise this issue, as some seek to do. I would widen that out past workplaces to the very issue of discrimination, harassment and violence against women and girls. That is why everybody in your Lordships’ House should be welcoming the Government’s violence against women and girls strategy that was published just before Christmas. We have a landmark mission to halve violence against women and girls over the next decade. That is the way that we place women’s equality at the heart of the Government’s missions.
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of the Free Speech Union. Can the Minister help define what third-party non-sexual harassment employers will have a duty under Section 21 of the Employment Rights Act to take all reasonable steps to protect their employees from? In the past, when I have raised the spectre of that duty being extended to indirect harassment—for example, overheard conversations, jokes, remarks or witticisms—I have been pooh-poohed. Can the Minister assure us that I was just being alarmist and that, when the Government do produce their guidance on this issue, which I understand they are about to do, it will specifically say that business owners are not responsible for protecting their employees from overheard conversations, remarks, witticisms and jokes?
Lord Katz (Lab)
Well, I congratulate the noble Lord on getting through that question without mentioning the phrase “banter ban”. I am going to be absolutely clear: employers will not be penalised for failing to anticipate the unforeseeable or take other impractical steps. Employers cannot and are not expected to police or control every action of third parties. The measure does not change Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which applies in terms of interfering with the right to freedom of expression. It is clear that it is not about banning banter in a pub; it is about taking action against real hate, homophobia, racism and misogyny, which other customers or other workers should not have to face in this day and age.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
Does the Minister agree that those in Downing Street should accept that the ILO convention applies to them as well when it comes to meting out violence and harassment on Labour colleagues whose only crime is that they think they could run the country better than the Prime Minister?
Lord Katz (Lab)
To answer the noble Lord’s question, yes, of course it applies in all workplaces, but I am not going to tell the NEC how to do its business.
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, alongside many other people across this House, I welcome this Government’s focus on reducing violence, and in particular the introduction of those new measures on non-disclosure agreements that silenced thousands and thousands, particularly women, who were facing harassment. That is serious when you are at work trying to earn a living, so we should congratulate the Government on listening.
On the duty to prevent harassment, will my noble friend the Minister also listen to concerns that, at the moment, Health and Safety Executive workplace inspectors do not have a specific role to enforce that duty? If there are other ideas, I think people would be happy to listen to them, but can he reassure us that there will be a comprehensive enforcement regime for that duty to prevent harassment?
Lord Katz (Lab)
My noble friend is right to recognise the important step this Government have taken to avoid NDAs when it comes to prevention or speaking out about harassment and discrimination. Our Benches are very proud of that landmark piece of legislation in the Employment Rights Act. In terms of enforcement, as I have already said, one of the other things that the Employment Rights Act does is create the Fair Work Agency, which will be relevant in terms of enforcing all the new rights at work that the Act creates. Having said that, health and safety at work legislation still covers people at work in terms of work-related violence and other risks arising from work activities, and that will certainly still be in place enforcing those aspects.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
Might I share with the Minister my concern that backlogs in employment tribunals have now reached record levels? He referred to the Employment Rights Act. That statute and the related work reforms will generate, on the Government’s own analysis, at least a 17% increase in claims before employment tribunals, so will he give a clear assurance that those involved with claims of violence and harassment at work will not face delayed justice because of employment tribunal backlogs and that the Government will provide the additional judges, staff and resources required to meet that expected rise in claims?
Lord Katz (Lab)
When it comes to talking about backlogs and underfunding in our criminal justice system, in fact our whole justice system, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah from those on the Benches opposite, who spent 14 years underfunding all aspects of our justice system, to then say, “Isn’t this going to be a problem?” We are investing in our criminal justice system, we have legislation going through your Lordships’ House to do just that, and I do not resile from my criticism of the Benches opposite for their failure to invest in our justice system.
Uniformed youth groups: Promoting Skills and Resilience in Young People
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of uniformed youth groups on promoting skills and resilience in young people.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
We recognise the excellent contribution and impact of uniformed youth organisations. The Government have directly funded their work since 2022. There is a range of existing research that shows the positive impact of uniformed youth organisations on young people and their lives. Ipsos independently evaluated the DCMS-funded uniformed youth fund from 2022 to 2025. The evaluation found evidence supporting the positive impact of uniformed youth organisation membership on young people’s well-being, social and emotional development, skills and community connectedness.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Lab)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for that fabulous reply. I could not agree with her more. We know that uniformed youth groups will play a vital role in delivering the Government’s new youth strategy. Groups such as the Scouts, the Girl Guides, all our cadets, the Jewish Lads’ and Girls’ Brigade and of course the Girls Brigade and Boys’ Brigade do an amazing job. Will the Minister encourage her department to look again at the funding arrangements so that these groups can retain staff during the transition from the uniformed youth fund, which is coming to an end in March, to the new funding arrangements that will come into place with the new youth strategy? It is great to put the contribution of these groups on the record here today.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I pay tribute to all those supporting uniformed youth organisations, including my noble friend. Our new national youth strategy has been co-designed with young people. We are engaging further with young people in youth groups, including uniformed youth organisations, to ensure that their perspectives, needs and proven outcomes are incorporated. As for transitional funding and funding arrangements, I will take my noble friend’s points back to the department ahead of her meeting with Minister Peacock, which I understand is taking place early next month.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
It is definitely the turn of the Conservative Benches. Can we make our mind up?
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as the chair of the cadet health check team. The value of the uniformed services to our young people throughout the country is beyond doubt, particularly in the poorest communities in the country. The real challenge now is adult volunteers. The entire service is based on adult volunteers, so what work are the Government doing to improve recruitment and retention of those very valuable volunteers?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I agree with the points the noble Lord raised around the value of uniformed youth groups. One of the things our new funding arrangements will do is support the development of volunteers. I will be very happy to share some examples and discuss that further with him.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I echo comments made earlier in your Lordships’ Chamber about the invaluable service that uniformed youth services provide, particularly when it comes to life skills and experiences. How can the Government change policies to get more young people involved in these organisations so that more young people benefit from this and stand a better chance in the world of employment?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The new national youth strategy has been developed with young people precisely to make sure that the Government are directing funding towards areas that young people themselves have identified. One of the most difficult findings from some of the work done in the run-up to the launch of the national youth strategy was around the isolation and loneliness faced by so many young people. The strategy is a 10-year plan to make sure that every young person across the country has somewhere to go, somewhere that cares for them and a community they feel part of.
Lord Mountevans (CB)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as a vice-president of the Sea Cadets and president of the successful City of London Sea Cadets. The Minister kindly discussed the new arrangements of DCMS, but the strategic defence review just six or seven months ago called for a 30% increase in the offer of the cadet organisations. What additional funding, if any, can the Minister point to that is going to facilitate this growth?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
This is Ministry of Defence funding. My understanding is that the Government plan to have increased military cadet forces by 30% by 2030; this is an investment of over £70 million of new funding, as set out in the strategic defence review, which the noble Lord rightly points out was published last year.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Bollington and Macclesfield Sea Cadets—there is a northern aspect to me, as you can see. Whenever I have been involved with the uniformed cadet forces, I have been amazed how they have changed the lives of many of our young people. Can the Minister confirm that sea cadets will now carry rifles when members of a guard and that they will do range-firing practices like the other cadet units?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I have absolutely no idea. I am not going to come up with a fudged answer, but I will write to my noble friend to outline whether or not that is the case.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as a former Brownie, Guide and Guide leader, I absolutely agree with all that has been said about the worth of belonging to uniformed organisations, particularly in relation to self-esteem for our young people and the resilience that is built up. I visited my local Guide unit two weeks ago during Parliament Week, and I was very concerned to learn that a number of units have closed recently because of the lack of volunteers. Is there more that the Government can do to help with the lack of volunteers? I am working with the devolved Administrations to help highlight that.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes a valuable point, as previous speakers have done, in relation to the vital role of volunteers. You cannot have these uniformed youth groups without volunteers. Most of the funding that is outlined within the national youth strategy is focused on England, but I will take back the noble Baroness’s points, because it is a national organisation. I thank her and everyone else in your Lordships’ House who have contributed through volunteering for these groups.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission. In 1908, Scouting for Boys—and, in 1912, the companion edition called How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire—was very explicit about the importance of being prepared. That remains very much at the heart of the work that those two uniformed organisations, and all the others that have been mentioned, do. This is going to be increasingly important for the nation, given all the threats and hazards that we face. Can my noble friend indicate whether or not that philosophy is going to be supported in relation to those organisations, other youth organisations and, more generally, in schools, to ensure that young people are equipped with the personal resilience skills and the skills that may be necessary to support the country in terms of the threats and hazards that we face?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I think “Be prepared” could usefully be used as a motto for Ministers standing at the Dispatch Box in your Lordships’ House as well. There is clearly a role played by cadet forces and other uniformed youth organisations in the broader resilience piece. However, a thread that goes through all our policies on youth is around that resilience that young people so desperately need. All noble Lords from across the House will be aware of the crisis that so many people are feeling, and we want to make sure they feel equipped for the challenges they may face in the future.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The Minister said in her initial Answer that the last Conservative Government set up the uniformed youth fund to give young people these life-changing skills and opportunities, and I was glad to hear about the evaluation she mentioned. It is sad, therefore, that the fund is ending in March. In the transition to the new funding arrangements, can she guarantee—as she said in response to her noble friend—that all of the organisations, including the Sea Cadets, St John Ambulance, the Guides, the Scouts and others, will continue to receive funding support so that young people can continue to have these life-changing opportunities?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I have committed to my noble friend to take the point about transitional funding back to the department. However, as the noble Lord will be aware, the uniformed youth fund was announced in the immediate aftermath of Covid and was intended to allow the groups to set up additional units. It was only ever intended to run until 2025. Therefore, the additional year has been while we have been setting up the programmes and funds under the new national youth strategy, which we are proud to say we have co-produced with young people. That is why the focus has shifted to a different way of rolling out funds.
Superintelligent AI
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to regulate the development of superintelligent AI.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)
AI’s superintelligence is the subject of ongoing debate regarding its definition and whether it is achievable. Advanced transformative AI presents both significant opportunities, such as improvements in healthcare and climate action, and risks. As frontier AI evolves, the AI Security Institute helps the Government assess and identify potential emerging risks, which would include pathways towards any kind of superintelligence. The Government will remain vigilant and prepare for new AI risks, including rapid advancements that could affect society and national security. AI regulated by existing expert regulators will be informed by the AISI findings.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that considered Answer. Clearly, AI has great potential; the UK is third in the global league of AI investment. I understand the Government’s response, which is essentially a nuanced approach to encourage both proper regulation and investment.
However, superintelligent AI undoubtedly does present risks. The Minister will know that the director-general of MI5 has warned of the
“potential future risks from non-human, autonomous AI systems which may evade human oversight and control”.
Meanwhile, the UK’s AI Security Institute has warned:
“In a worst-case scenario, this … could lead to catastrophic, irreversible loss of control over advanced Al systems”.
The problem is that the companies developing superintelligence do not know the outcome and there are currently no barriers to the development. I urge the Government to take this really seriously and to start talking to other countries about putting some safety controls in.
Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)
My noble friend is right to mention the research of the AI Security Institute, which is advice the Government listen to and take very seriously. AI is a general-purpose technology with a wide range of applications, which is why the UK believes that the vast majority of AI should be regulated at the point of use. My noble friend is also right that collaboration with other countries is critical, and the UK’s approach is to engage with many other countries, and through the AI Security Institute with developers so that it has good insight into what is happening in development today.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
Let us have the Lib Dem Bench next and then the Conservative Benches.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI regulation and policy. In their manifesto, the Government promised
“binding regulation on … companies developing the most powerful AI models”,
yet, 18 months later, even in light of the harmful activities of stand-alone AI bots, we have seen neither the promised consultation nor any draft legislation. How can the Government credibly claim to be taking superintelligence seriously when they cannot get round even to publishing a consultation, let alone legislating?
Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)
As I mentioned earlier, most AI systems are regulated by our existing expert regulators, and they are already acting. The ICO has released guidance on AI and data protection and the MHRA is taking action to allow a sandbox for AI as a medical device product. We are working with regulators to boost their capabilities as part of the AI opportunities action plan, and where we need to take action—for example, as we have under the Online Safety Act—we will do so. We do not speculate on legislation ahead of future parliamentary Sessions, but we will keep noble Lords updated should and when we bring forward a consultation ahead of any potential legislation.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, in 1982, the then Government commissioned a philosopher, Dame Mary Warnock, to explore the moral and ethical frameworks around human embryology and fertilisation, long before many of the developments were really possible. I worry that the AI Security Institute is just trying to work out what it does, rather than what it should do. Will the Government consider a similar commission to establish the ethical frameworks for superintelligence?
Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)
The AI Security Institute looks at the science and the implications of AI, and collaborates with many other research institutes to examine some of the implications for our society and economy. That approach is bearing great fruit. The institute publishes findings so that we can all take account of them.
Lord St John of Bletso (CB)
Can the Minister elaborate on what economic and labour market risks are associated with superintelligent AI, as distinct from generative AI?
Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)
As I mentioned at the start, there is a lot of debate about the pathway that AI development will take and the pace at which it is developing. The AI Security Institute has reported a sharp rise in AI capabilities over the past 18 months, with continued growth almost certain, and it is looking at the implications of this. For example, one of its research focuses is tracking the development of AI capabilities that would test the limits of human control, which is one of the most pertinent questions for anybody thinking about the implications of superintelligence.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
My Lords, I want to build on the very important point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Given that AI research and development can be conducted, in effect, anywhere, regulation of the development of superintelligent AI is going to have to be global. Does the Minister feel that the UK is genuinely taking full advantage of our considerable convening power in this space to drive forward the global AI safety agenda? Further, might there be grounds for concern that our convening power may be diminished over time by the emerging political uncertainty that came to the fore over the weekend?
Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)
The Government have forged many extremely successful relationships; as evidenced, for example, by the number of trade deals secured over the past 18 months or so. These relationships with the EU, the US, India, France and many other countries include discussions on AI. In addition, the UK is the co-ordinator on related questions for the International Network for Advanced AI Measurement, Evaluation and Science, which aims to shape and advance the science of AI evaluations globally. Our engagement is on all levels, and specifically on the technical level. The noble Viscount makes an extremely important point. This is an effort of global development, so it is important that we engage with developers globally and with other countries.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I am and always have been a faithful. With tighter regulation in the future confidently anticipated, is it not often the case that its absence in the present can impede innovation rather than foster it? Given that many of those responsible for the development of AI—and, in some cases, the development of AI superintelligence—have repeatedly requested tighter controls on their activities, can my noble friend the Minister assure your Lordships’ House that the existing regulatory structures are adequate? Can she describe the mechanisms through which their salience and strength are kept under constant review?
Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very good point: our regulators need to be equipped and to have the capabilities, capacity and expertise to regulate a fast-advancing technology. We have put in place many actions and convening powers as part of the AI action plan, to make sure that our regulators have that capacity and capability. Through the AI Security Institute, we are making sure that they have the information they need to regulate. Many departments are thinking about this in concert with their regulators, to ensure that we are taking advantage of the opportunities and preparing for the risks that AI will undoubtedly bring.
Local Government (Exclusion of Non-commercial Considerations) (England) Order 2026
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
That the draft Order laid before the House on 2 December 2025 be approved.
Relevant document: 46th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 21 January.
Holocaust Memorial Day
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
That this House takes note of Holocaust Memorial Day.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, it is with great respect and solemn reflection that I move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. As I rise today, I do so with a heavy heart and a deep sense of responsibility.
As noble Lords will be aware, gradually, as time moves on, we lose many of the first-hand survivors of the Holocaust who were so engaged in the education of our young people and the rest of us. With the permission of the House, I would like to read the names of some of those whom we have lost during this year. Eva Schloss, MBE, who died on 3 January 2026, was a co-founder and honorary president of the Anne Frank Trust UK and stepsister of Anne Frank. Manfred Goldberg, MBE, who died aged 95 on 6 November 2025, was a Holocaust survivor and educator. Manfred’s story is part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s virtual reality Testimony 360 education programme. Harry Olmer, who died on 15 January 2026, was a Holocaust survivor and Holocaust educator. Vera Schaufeld died in January 2026, aged 95. Vera came to the UK on the Kindertransport and shared her story up and down the country, including with our staff at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Eve Kugler, BEM, was a Holocaust survivor who witnessed Kristallnacht and shared her story, again including with the staff in my department. Suzanne Rappaport Ripton died in June 2025. She was the founder member of the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association, now Holocaust Centre North. Ruth Posner died in September 2025. She was an extraordinary woman who survived the Radom ghetto, slave labour and life in hiding under a false identity. By the end of the war, Ruth and her aunt were the only surviving members of their family. After a dazzling career in theatre and dance, Ruth decided to begin sharing her testimony as a response to rising levels of antisemitism in the UK. I thank all of those who share their testimony and help us remember, and who will continue to make their mark on our remembrance of the Holocaust and its victims.
Tomorrow’s Holocaust Memorial Day is not only a date in the diary for me; it is a moment I return to each year with humility and resolve: a day that makes me pause and reflect on the stories I grew up hearing, and the lessons my parents impressed on me about the horrors of hatred. Tomorrow, we remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust, and the Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay men and political opponents who were also persecuted and killed. Each one had a name, each had a story and each was loved. Behind every number was a human being whose life was cut short by hatred and a machinery of persecution that sought to erase entire communities.
We also remember those who, against all the odds, survived. Many rebuilt their lives in the UK and dedicated themselves to sharing their testimony, ensuring that future generations understood both the horrors they endured and the hope they managed to hold on to. Many of us in this room have been privileged to hear these survivors speak with honesty, courage and an often extraordinary generosity of spirit.
My own family roots are in the East End of London, once home to a vibrant and close-knit Jewish community. Even those of us whose families were not directly targeted felt the shock waves as news of the camps emerged. In homes such as my parents’ and grandparents’, the stories of what had happened were spoken about with a kind of hushed reverence: an understanding that something beyond comprehension had taken place. They taught us that, while we could never fully feel that depth of pain, we had an absolute duty to learn about it, remember it and pass the lessons on.
This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day theme, Bridging Generations, feels especially poignant as we move into a time when survivors’ voices are fading. Many have now fallen silent. Yet it is our responsibility to ensure that their legacy does not fade with them. Bridging generations is not an abstract concept: it is the quiet question from a child trying to understand why people were hated for who they were. It is the moment in a school assembly when a survivor’s words change the entire mood of the room. It is the recognition that truth, when spoken plainly, has the power to transform hearts.
The Holocaust did not begin with camps and crematoria. It began with words: with prejudice that became normalised, then embedded in policy and then allowed to flourish unchecked. It moved from insult to exclusion, from exclusion to persecution, and from persecution to genocide.
Memory is our safeguard. Forgetting is the first step towards repeating history. I feel a profound personal responsibility to ensure that these stories are never lost. That is why I am proud that, in 2024, the Prime Minister pledged that every student in the country should have the opportunity to hear recorded survivor testimony. By enabling every young person to access first-person accounts, we build resilience against distortion and denial.
The Holocaust Educational Trust’s Testimony360 programme will allow students to virtually meet survivors and explore historical sites using virtual reality. Long after survivors can no longer be with us, young people will still be able to hear their voices, ask questions and engage with history in a way that feels deeply personal and immediate.
The Holocaust Testimony portal, created by the Association of Jewish Refugees and supported by the Government, is another vital initiative. The portal brings together thousands of interviews with survivors, refugees, rescuers and liberators, providing user-friendly access to decades of testimony. Generations to come will be able to learn from those accounts. Initiatives such as Generation 2 Generation ensure that descendants of survivors continue sharing family histories, preserving the human threads that connect past and present.
When I was a council leader, I set up a Holocaust memorial event in Stevenage—it was over 15 years ago—and I have been privileged to listen to family and first-hand testimony at that event each year. A couple of years ago, I listened to Anita Peleg speak about her mother, the sculptor Naomi Blake. I remember the hush in the room as Anita played a recording of her mother’s own words. It was the kind of silence that falls when truth settles on the heart: heavy yet somehow illuminating. Naomi Blake, who survived Auschwitz and went on to create art filled with hope and renewal, embodied the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. Hearing her voice reminded me that testimony is not merely information: it is a gift—of courage, of memory and of humanity.
Lord Lieutenant Robert Voss, whose parents escaped Nazi Germany, came to our meeting and gave an account of his paternal grandparents, who were murdered in the gas chambers of Sobibor in June 1942. That moment touched me deeply, and strengthened my resolve to ensure that these stories are never allowed to fade.
Other projects, such as Ordinary Objects, Extraordinary Journeys, a collaboration between the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, and the Jewish Museum of Greece, show how even everyday belongings can bear witness. A pair of glasses, a letter, a suitcase: these objects speak when words fall short. They provide a tangible link to lives interrupted and remind us of the profound human cost of antisemitism and hatred.
Restoring names to victims is another sacred responsibility. Yad Vashem’s project to identify the 6 million murdered Jews is a monumental effort grounded in the belief that every person deserves to be remembered. A name is the most personal thing we have: chosen with love and often carried through generations. For the Nazis, names became tools of persecution. For us, restoring them is an act of dignity, remembrance and defiance of those who sought to erase an entire people.
Yet today, all too sadly, Holocaust denial and distortion persist. We still see antisemitic slogans and graffiti on our streets and the trivialisation of the Holocaust in public discourse, online spaces and even protests. Antisemitism is not new to Britain; we know that it stretches back to medieval times and, tragically, that it has never disappeared. The Community Security Trust recorded more than 1,500 antisemitic incidents in just the first half of 2025. This rise demands a clear and courageous response. I pay tribute to the CST for all the work it does in supporting our Jewish community.
Education remains our strongest defence. Young people are bombarded daily with information, some unreliable and some deliberately misleading. We must ensure they have the tools to distinguish truth from manipulation and history from distortion. Teaching about the Holocaust is not simply about understanding the past; it is about shaping a future where hatred cannot take root so easily. That is why I believe that having the national Holocaust memorial and learning centre at the heart of our capital, beside Parliament, matters so deeply. It will stand as a daily reminder to decision-makers, visitors and future generations that this country takes its responsibility to remember seriously. There are differing views, and it is right that Parliament has debated them so fully, but I feel the duty my parents and grandparents felt to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are carried forward with honesty and integrity.
We cannot change the history behind us but we can shape the history ahead, and so I make this commitment: I will listen, I will learn, I will speak, and I will help those who come after us to do the same. I look forward to the debate ahead of us this afternoon.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I draw attention to the fact that I am the co-chairman of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. It is a great pleasure to follow the Minister. I thought reminding us of the survivors we have lost this year was a wonderful way to start a speech. Many of them were friends and people we knew, people we shared a joke or a meal with, and people we worked together with for Holocaust remembrance. I mourn them all, but I particularly mourn Manfred, who did such outstanding work. May all of their memories be a blessing.
Whatever the circumstances, we have a whole day’s debate here. I hope the Government will think long and hard next year and ensure that, if not in the precise circumstances under which this debate has occurred, we get a whole day’s debate. I agreed with the Minister’s sentiments and with her speech—as someone once said, I even agreed with the punctuation.
Holocaust Memorial Day challenges us to confront one of the darkest chapters in human history, but remembrance requires more than ritual. It is not enough simply to speak solemnly in Parliament, to stand in silence, or to light a candle once a year. Ceremony without action becomes ceremony without meaning. True remembrance demands leadership—moral, civic and institutional—that is willing to resist hatred in all its modern forms.
In 2025, Britain received a series of wake-up calls that showed how fragile our complacency had become: a violent attack on Jews in Manchester; the conviction of terrorists who planned the mass murder of Jewish people; the shocking murders at Bondi Beach; a pop star calling for the killing of Jews, broadcast on the nation’s media; and the disturbing failure of West Midlands Police, which chose ideology over evidence in describing an antisemitic attack. Each incident triggered brief outrage, followed by national amnesia—shock, condemnation, and then forgetting, and then the cycle begins again. But the danger has not passed. Britain, like much of the world, is sleepwalking into disaster.
We hear the word “genocide” thrown around casually, stripped of its precise and grave legal meaning. This trivialisation obscures the real genocidal ideologies—including those openly embraced by Hamas, whose intent is clear from both its words and its actions. Jew hatred has returned: violently in Israel, genteelly on British streets, and through silence in response to atrocities against Jews elsewhere.
The events of 7 October marked a turning point. The massacre that day was driven by a murderous ideology with deep historical roots. It reveals itself in acts of brutality that defy language: murder, mutilation, rape, and the kidnapping of children and the elderly. Yet almost immediately, the world saw denial, distortion, and the inversion of victims and perpetrators. Those are ancient patterns. Together with modern disinformation, they threaten not only Jewish communities but the principles of liberal democracy.
That is why we must confront the reality of antisemitism today: measurable, documented and rising. The data speaks with clarity. More than 1,500 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the first half of 2025, as the Minister said—the second-highest total ever for that period. There are more than 200 incidents every month. We saw sharp spikes following high-profile provocations, including the chants at Glastonbury, proving how cultural platforms can amplify extremism. University campuses show a slight reduction from the recorded highs of 2024, but a drop from crisis levels is still not normal. A campus where Jewish students hide their identity, avoid events, or face intimidation is not a safe campus, and it does not respect academic freedoms. Antisemitism is not a metropolitan phenomenon. The numbers in Manchester have been described as sickening, but incidents occur in cities, towns and rural communities across the country. This is a national problem.
Institutional responses remain inconsistent: policing varies dramatically from place to place; public bodies hesitate; cultural institutions falter under political pressures; and inconsistency creates space in which extremism grows. We can legislate against crime but we cannot legislate away hatred. The long-term defence is education, yet this is where new challenges have emerged. The number of schools marking Holocaust Memorial Day has fallen sharply, from 2,000 in 2023 to 1,200 in 2024, and only 850 in 2025. Teachers express uncertainty about discussing modern conflicts. Some refuse to mark Holocaust Memorial Day unless it is reframed. This is not just a moment to reflect; it is a warning, and there is a duty to deal with it. We are at a crossroads and we must address this. We need to ensure that leadership is there. We cannot educate children about the Holocaust unless those children are prepared to be in classrooms. We must recognise that this will affect all of us.
I conclude by dealing with a question that we have grappled with before. We have been worried about the nature of the Holocaust, whether it will be diluted by subsequent holocausts and whether we are going to do “Holocaust-lite”. The debate that we had the other day made it clear that this is not our intention. However, we must not forget the Roma genocide.
It was Danny Danon who reminded me most forcefully that the characteristics of the Holocaust applied also—almost exclusively—to the Roma genocide. People were selected not on the basis of who they were, what they did or where they lived but on the basis of the Nazis’ views on race. He reminded me that Adolf Eichmann, at his trial in Israel in the 1960s, faced charges against him for the Roma genocide. I sincerely hope that the Roma can commemorate their genocide at the new national memorial when it is built. I am pleased to announce that the USC Shoah Foundation in the United States is in negotiations to ensure that we host one of the main servers of that institution’s enormous records of Holocaust testimony. This will ensure that the United Kingdom can bring with it many of its methods of remembrance of the Holocaust.
There are many photographs that bring the Holocaust to mind, but for me two main photographs always bring it back to me. The first I suspect will be familiar to Members around the House: the young boy at the Warsaw uprising who has been arrested, with his hands in the air, surrendering to large German soldiers. I am pleased to say that there is good evidence that the young man survived. The second is of a frightened young girl in a scarf peering out of a cattle truck. She is Roma, she is on the way to Auschwitz and she will not survive. Those two young people show what we lost. They show the possibilities that we did not have. We must confront. We must do more than light candles. We must ensure that our children, our grandchildren and those who survive in a multicultural Britain remember the Holocaust and remember what happens when government goes bad. We will ensure that their memory will always be kept.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for their impressive speeches. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, that we must do more than light candles. I too look forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry.
I want to talk about the need, based on the experience of the Holocaust, for not only constant vigilance against antisemitism but the perception and courage to swim against a tide and stand up to the mob. That vigilance and resolve must, of course, extend to all prejudice and hate based on race, religion, ethnicity or any other characteristic. But there is something unique and specific about the 2,000-year history of demonisation of Jews and the depths of antisemitism which led to the Shoah, which must not be overlooked or forgotten.
How can we forget, in fact, when we are holding this debate not only two and a half years after the massacres of 7 October 2023 but shortly after the terrorist atrocities at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester and in Sydney, the dishonourable conduct of West Midlands Police towards Israeli football fans, and numerous antisemitic incidents?
I attended the event this morning to mark this year’s International Holocaust Memorial Day, hosted by the FCDO and the embassy of Israel, and I will come back to some of the words spoken at that event. I fell to wondering how many of those attending marches and demos supposedly in favour of Palestinians in Gaza and who chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free”, which implies the destruction of the State of Israel, and “Globalise the intifada”, which implies worldwide violence against Jews, actually felt uneasy about one or both of those chants but suppressed their doubts to be in the in-crowd.
I have watched three films about the Holocaust within the last 10 days. I belatedly caught “Nuremberg” at the cinema; “Schindler’s List” and “The Zone of Interest” have both been on the television, and I watched them again. In my speech on this day two years ago, I quoted Dov Forman, great-grandson of the late, great Holocaust survivor, Lily Ebert, and I do so again. He said that
“this dark chapter in history wasn’t only about mass murder. It was the destruction of a rich Jewish culture and civilisation that had thrived for thousands of years. To remember the Holocaust is to acknowledge both the Jewish lives and the Jewish life that was lost”.
I noticed to my surprise that “Schindler’s List” was not only broadcast pretty late, finishing at nearly 2 am as it had to wait for the live snooker to finish, but classified 15, along with “Nuremberg”, by the British Board of Film Classification. The justification for a minimum age of 15 for “Nuremberg” included that it contained
“images of real dead bodies”,
while for “Schindler’s List” it was that
“based on a true story, younger viewers may find the film’s depictions of persecution and the Holocaust emotionally upsetting”.
Well, yes, that is the point of Holocaust education: to teach people what happened in terms of dead bodies and physical and emotional horror. If they are not, in consequence, upset, distressed, outraged, and despairing at what inhuman persecution, murder and destruction people are capable of perpetrating against their fellow human beings, the basis for action to stop indifference is not laid. I think at least all secondary school-age children should watch these films at school, as well as at home, as the basis for a discussion about the horror of the Holocaust and other genocides.
I was six years old when I watched a serial on the TV called “The Silver Sword” from 1958 about child refugees from the Nazis. This is the synopsis I found online:
“On a cold, dark night in Warsaw in 1942, the Balicki children watch in horror as Nazi stormtroopers arrest their mother. Now they are alone. With the war raging around them, food and shelter are hard to come by. They live in constant fear. Finally, they get word that their father is alive. He has made it to Switzerland. Edek and Ruth are determined to find him, though they know how dangerous the long trip from Warsaw will be. But they also know that if they don’t make it, they may never see their parents again”.
I do not remember much of the plot, with only snatches remaining imprinted on my memory; and, unlike so many histories of the period, this fictional story had a happy ending. Notwithstanding that, what has persisted with me is the sense of fear and desperation, or, in the words of one online comment:
“Just an image—an image of devastation and loss—and a knowledge that this was something powerful and important”.
This is, of course, nothing compared to the ghastly memories of those who endured the Holocaust or the real and terrible losses of those whose families perished in it, but it is important that those deep feelings of fear, devastation and desperation continue to strike a chord with people of all kinds, both within and beyond the Jewish community, if the pledge of “never again” is to have any meaning. Hence the essential need for Holocaust education. I am grieved and disappointed to hear that fewer schools are delivering that.
I have always believed that Nazism, fascism and their like, with the combination of obedience to authoritarian rule and callousness towards human suffering, are viruses that can be caught anywhere, in any country. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney last week quoted in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos from Václav Havel’s 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless, which was about how the communist system sustained itself. He said:
“And his answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists. Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false. Havel called this ‘living within a lie’. The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true”.
Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, apparently saw himself as
“a cog in the wheel of the great extermination machine created by the Third Reich”.
American military psychologist Gustave Gilbert wrote of his discussions with Hoess during the Nuremberg trials, at which Hoess testified, that:
“In all of the discussions, Höss is quite matter-of-fact and apathetic, shows some belated interest in the enormity of his crime, but gives the impression that it never would have occurred to him if somebody hadn’t asked him”.
In a remark this morning at the Holocaust Memorial Day event at the Foreign Office, Meg Davis, a Holocaust Educational Trust young ambassador, struck a similar note, when she talked of how “compliance is the enabler”.
To my mind, Holocaust education needs to encompass not only the terrible history of antisemitism and where it led but the importance of an instinct and resolve against compliance and conformity. People who refuse to go with the flow, who have the guts to say, “This is not right”, and who are difficult and even objectionable to some minds are essential grit in our pledge of “never again”.
The warning signs tend to come long before the atrocities. The grandfather of the present noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, was the second Lord Russell of Liverpool. He was a deputy Judge Advocate-General to the British Army of the Rhine and one of the chief legal advisers during the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, and he wrote a book, The Scourge of the Swastika, on his experiences.
With the kind agreement of the current noble Lord, I would like to quote some passages from that book. First, the author noted that, a few months before the outbreak of war, a
“menacing German Foreign Office circular must have clearly pointed out the course of future events to all but those who did not wish to see it”.
That circular read:
“‘It is certainly no coincidence that the fateful year of 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the Jewish question simultaneously with the realization of the idea of Greater Germany … The advance made by Jewish influence and the destructive Jewish spirit in politics, economy and culture; paralysed the power and the will of the German people to rise again. The healing of this sickness among the people was therefore certainly one of the most important requirements for exerting the force which, in the year 1938, resulted in the joining together of Greater Germany in defiance of the world’”.
We were warned. The second Lord Russell of Liverpool thus observed quite rightly that:
“Persecution of the Jews in the countries which the Nazis invaded and occupied”
between 1939 and 1945
“was indeed on a stupendous scale, but it cannot have taken by surprise anyone who had followed the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933 or their Party program. Point Four of that programne declared: ‘Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race’”.
That was six years before the outbreak of the war.
These reflections strike a deep chord in me after the period since 7 October intensified the fears about how an attitude explained as anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel—the blood libel of our times—transforms so easily into raw antisemitism and the dehumanisation of Jews. An interview in today’s Telegraph with Professor Sir Simon Schama notes that his TV programme about the Holocaust, “The Road to Auschwitz”, was rigorous in its examination of how the Nazis found willing accomplices in mass murder while others looked away. The journalist notes how Marian Turski, one of the last survivors of Auschwitz, said:
“Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. Evil comes step by step”.
Professor Sir Simon Schama says:
“There has been a qualitative shift towards the sense that the Jews are kind of enemies among us. I think there’s been a shift from the fury about what Israel’s said to have done in Gaza, to essentially dehumanising Jews generally”.
Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich told us this morning of her experience at Ravensbrück:
“We were stripped of our identifiers and totally dehumanised”.
Let us react this time before we know precisely how bad it can get.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, for some of us, every day is Holocaust remembrance day. It is a pain we carry within our bodies, like a physical pain. It would be alleviated if only my parents had lived to see me in the House of Lords at an event like today, marking the grievous effect that the Holocaust had on them and, of course, their relatives, parents and wider family. We are grateful for national efforts to commemorate the Holocaust, but we remain troubled by the way the story of our lost families and the destruction of much of central European Jewish life is often presented.
I begin by paying tribute to the more than 1,200 victims of the atrocities of 7 October and the more than 200 people who were taken hostage—the worst massacre of Jews since the Second World War. Those killings were carried out with genocidal intent. Hamas has pledged to repeat them, if able, and its charter explicitly calls for the killing of Jews, not merely Israelis. As with the Holocaust, there are those who deny that the killings of 7 October occurred, or who falsely attribute them to Israel. That denial can be countered, among other sources, by the meticulous report on each victim authored by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Belgravia.
I hope the national commemorations this week will include reference to 7 October. That is important because antisemitism is a continuum. It did not begin in Germany in the 1930s and it did not end in 1945. It has existed for at least two millennia and arguably longer. The Holocaust was not a historical aberration but an eruption of a hatred that had long been embedded across societies. Today, antisemitism is again re-emerging, using the Gaza war as a pretext. Those who blame Israel for rising antisemitism ignore the historical reality that mass killings, pogroms and expulsions occurred long before Israel existed and would persist even if it did not.
So what should we truly be remembering? Condemning the Nazi regime alone is both too narrow and too superficial. Research by University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education shows that Holocaust education, while essential, does not reliably reduce antisemitism. The UK has invested heavily in museums, memorials, archives, survivor testimony and learning centres, but these efforts have not demonstrably shifted attitudes.
One reason is that Holocaust education often treats the subject as distant history. Students learn about it as a unique past atrocity with little connection to their own world. Antisemitism is framed as a Nazi phenomenon rather than a persistent, long-standing prejudice that still operates today. This fosters the mistaken belief that the problem ended in 1945. Students frequently come away believing that Hitler alone or a small group of Nazi leaders were responsible. This obscures the widespread collaboration across Europe from officials to ordinary citizens and the deep-rooted antisemitism that existed for centuries in many countries. Many students also believe that German soldiers would have been executed had they refused to participate, reinforcing the false idea that ordinary people had no moral agency.
At the same time, young people increasingly encounter Holocaust misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok, often with more impact on them than their formal schooling. Some are influenced by historically misleading fictional portrayals such as “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. More historically grounded films such as those the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned, such as “Survivor”, “The Commandant’s Shadow” and “1945”, would provide far better educational value.
Crucially, many students learn about the Holocaust without learning about antisemitism itself. They do not understand its history, its ideological roots or the social and religious narratives that sustain it. They do no learn that antisemitism is rising sharply today, especially since 7 October. Nor do they grasp how far-right extremism, far-left hostility and Islamist ideology—perhaps I should have said theology—increasingly intersect. Young people who march calling for Israel’s elimination, who persecute Jewish students or who call for violence against Zionists have often already received Holocaust education, yet they frequently refuse to distinguish between Israel and Jews. The fact that similar hostility is not directed at, for example, Chinese, Iranian or Russian students for their Governments’ actions exposes the underlying antisemitism.
The recent report on antisemitism by the noble Lord, Lord Mann, and Penny Mordaunt, to whom we should be grateful, also warns that some religious teaching in schools may perpetuate anti-Jewish beliefs. Initiatives such as the Winchester diocese’s work with Jewish communities to eliminate medieval stereotypes from religious education are welcome, and it would be encouraging to see similar programmes expanded nationwide. It is fortunate for us that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry will make her maiden speech today. We look forward to her many contributions to come, but today’s will be especially pertinent.
Another flaw in Holocaust remembrance is that it has become overwhelmingly a narrative of Jewish death rather than Jewish life. Jews are presented primarily as victims with little attention to the vibrant culture, traditions, faith and resilience that sustained Jewish communities for thousands of years up to today. Even more problematic is the failure to link Holocaust remembrance to contemporary antisemitism. If “never again” is to have meaning, students must be taught how antisemitic tropes persist today in activism, conspiracy theories and some religious or political discourse. They must understand how the term Zionism is often used as a proxy for hostility towards Jews. As the late Lord Sacks observed, antisemitism has evolved from religious prejudice to racial ideology to hostility towards the only Jewish state and the right of Jews to self-determination. This is politically uncomfortable, but it lies at the heart of the modern problem.
Nevertheless, many Holocaust remembrance events avoid mentioning Israel or 7 October altogether. Some councils and politicians even avoid using the word “Jew” when discussing Holocaust victims. This erasure weakens historical accuracy and undermines the credibility of remembrance.
Another difficulty lies in the insistence, by successive Governments over many years, that Holocaust remembrance must always be merged with other genocides. Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur were appalling tragedies and deserve their own memorialisation. However, collapsing them all into a single narrative prevents meaningful understanding of why Jews were targeted, how antisemitism developed and how it persists. It also risks relativising genocide and enabling distorted claims, including those weaponised today against Jews themselves, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles.
Students are supposed to learn lessons from Holocaust education, but lessons have become overly moralised and insufficiently historical. In an effort to put the education to use, students are taught general lessons about tolerance and being bystanders but are not given the historical knowledge or intellectual tools needed to recognise and challenge antisemitism in its modern forms. As survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of Auschwitz, observed when giving evidence to the Commons Select Committee, a new learning centre here would not achieve anything that has not already been learned in the 80 years since the Holocaust. Lasker-Wallfisch labelled the plan to build it next to Parliament “a completely idiotic idea” and “dangerous”. She said:
“A Jew, unlike a Rwandan, is not safe anywhere now”.
What is needed is serious historical education and a clear understanding of antisemitism across time.
Young people, and society more broadly, should also learn about contemporary Jewish communities—their culture, contributions and place in national life. Jews should not be portrayed only as historical victims but as the active participants in civic, intellectual and cultural life that we are. This is why Holocaust education requires a fundamental overhaul. Teaching a narrow, Nazi-centric narrative of historical murder has not succeeded in changing attitudes or countering modern antisemitism. That is also why plans for yet another Holocaust memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens represent a missed opportunity. Its proposed learning centre appears to literally set in concrete many of the shortcomings already identified. It does not meaningfully address contemporary antisemitism nor the central role of Israel in Jewish identity. If it presents a primarily British perspective on the Holocaust, it risks appearing evasive.
Britain itself has a complex history in relation to its Jewish community. The massacre of 1190, the expulsion of 1290, the slow and relatively recent restoration of full civil rights, the restrictive refugee policies of the 1930s and 1940s, Britain’s failure to admit large numbers of Jewish refugees, its restrictions on immigration to Mandatory Palestine and its post-war treatment of displaced persons remain difficult chapters. Even the Kindertransport and the Winton rescues were privately, not nationally, funded, and the children admitted were separated from their parents because they were more readily assimilable and not a threat to job seekers. If only Israel had existed in 1938, courtesy of Britain, rather than in 1948, how many thousands or millions of lives might have been saved?
Against that backdrop, many in the Jewish community feel that contemporary antisemitism has been allowed to grow. Hate marches, biased policing, hostility on campuses, conspiracy theories spread by doctors, lecturers, teachers and students, vandalism and open calls for violence are increasingly common. Anti-Zionism has become a socially acceptable mask for antisemitism, even as Israel’s role in Jewish safety and continuity becomes ever clearer.
The Jewish community sees Governments tolerating extremist rhetoric, hesitating to challenge hate preachers, imposing restrictions on Israel’s self-defence, cutting themselves off from security and defence exchanges, and giving credence to Hamas-derived narratives. It is therefore unsurprising that some Jews feel sceptical about official declarations of “never again” and announcements of yet another Holocaust memorial while present-day antisemitism goes insufficiently challenged. It looks like an attempt to deflect justified criticism.
We expect more than platitudes. Will the Government call upon Christian and Muslim leaders to take responsibility for addressing religious teachings that perpetuate anti-Jewish ideas? Will they act decisively against extremist preaching? Will they commit to a serious reform of Holocaust education, one that drops vague moral messaging and treats the Holocaust as a uniquely Jewish genocide, and equips students to recognise antisemitism in all its historical and modern forms? The task of remembering has been accomplished, with the recording of testimonies, the collection of data, many memorials and 21 learning centres already existing in the UK, including the National Holocaust Centre in Newark and the Imperial War Museum galleries, but nobody has ever looked into what effect, if any, they have on those who visit, or into who does not visit. It is just assumed that they combat antisemitism. Finally, if Holocaust remembrance is to mean anything, it must affirm not only the memory of those murdered but the legitimacy, dignity and security of Jewish life today, including the central role of the State of Israel as a symbol of Jewish continuity and self-determination.
The Lord Bishop of Coventry (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is my privilege to make my maiden speech in this debate on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day. First, I express my gratitude for the kindness that I have received from your Lordships on entering this House, and especially for the support, patience and care of the staff across the departments since my appointment to Coventry.
Being of Jewish heritage myself, I cannot recall a time when I was not aware of the Holocaust. I am grateful that this was a part of our family history that was never kept from me but held as a marker of an inhumane world, from which I was charged to do all I could to make the world a better place. Since then, I have served in Yorkshire, Uganda, Surrey, Sussex, Durham and now Coventry. I have a deep love of singing, especially the high notes, and running, unimpressively, and a nice glass of Sauvignon. Coming to Christian faith through youth ministry, I think I am now qualified to say, at the risk of current cliché, that I am and have pretty much always been a faithful.
I will focus my contribution on the importance of educating our children and young people in their religious understanding of the world, as I was, having been among the first cohort of children to journey through the GCSE curriculum, with an outstanding religious studies teacher whose support remarkably continues to this day. He ensured our introduction as teenagers to Judaism, Christianity and Islam without prejudice or favour. From this firm foundation I was privileged to have the opportunity to study Judaism as part of my first degree, with a special interest in the literature generated by the Holocaust.
I am now honoured to serve the diocese of Coventry, covering Warwickshire and part of the West Midlands, with Coventry city at its heart—a city that has always welcomed the refugee and the stranger, and which has benefited greatly from the rich culture, skills and contributions they have brought. Coventry knows that we cannot take for granted the understanding which builds relationships between communities, the tolerance which enriches communities through diversity, and the peace which overcomes. We know that we have to act in order to make a difference. Coventry is a city of peace and reconciliation, with a strong multicultural community and interfaith network, supporting each other’s festivals, celebrations and challenges. This has a long history, including the welcome of 50 Kindertransport children on the eve of the Holocaust. In the decades before and after, Coventry has continued to welcome those who have faced genocide and destruction from countries around the world.
The Jewish community of Coventry was founded by immigrant watchmaking families, who produced the best watches in the world and contributed so much to the life and well-being of the city. They had faced hardship, persecution, oppression and pogroms, only then to face antisemitism in their adopted land while serving the city. The German-born Jewish mayor, Siegfried Bettmann, faced not only antisemitism but extreme xenophobic, nationalist, anti-German sentiment, forcing him to retire from office and public life as World War I approached, despite his devotion to his adopted country.
In this debate, we recognise that the families of every member of the Jewish community are impacted for generations by the horrors and carry the burden of antisemitism today, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has rightly reminded us. As a bishop, while recognising the deep sensitivities of the present moment, I was proud to discover that there are Anglican clergy who are taking some responsibility for addressing this impact in their communities, rather than remaining silent.
Tomorrow, in the town of Bedworth, Nuneaton, renowned for its pride in holding the longest-held Armistice Day event, unbroken since 1921 and attracting up to 10,000 people, in which schoolchildren line the streets, All Saints Bedworth is holding a special event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day for the first time. Though many schools across the nation have chosen not to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in recent years, as the noble Lord reminded us, recognising the deep sensitivities around the terrible and humane suffering of the people of Palestine in Gaza, Reverend Dave Poultney has taken the decision to offer a space in his community to remember the Holocaust, to educate the children of the three schools in his parish, and to lament, as the Psalms encourage us, but to remember, so that they are invited to build a world in which this will not and cannot ever happen again. This is especially important, as the Minister reminded us, at a time when survivors of the Holocaust who can testify as eyewitnesses reach the end of their lives, and in a culture where truth is contested and must be defended.
I pay tribute to those among the Jewish community here in the UK and other parts of the world who have faced dreadful persecution and attacks that can never be justified. It is a source of sorrow to my soul that the antisemitism that caused such fear in our family continues, such that communities are having to be on constant alert, afraid for their children and for themselves. This cannot be right.
As this House will know, Coventry Cathedral has a worldwide ministry of peace and reconciliation, founded the very day after the destruction of the old cathedral in World War II. These relationships continue and are deeply precious to us. Just last month, we stood side by side with the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, who laid a wreath for peace in the ruins of Coventry’s old cathedral. Representatives of all walks of life, including the Armed Forces, and of all ages, shared together in gathering to mark our mutual challenges in peacebuilding and social cohesion to inspire a new generation to work together for peace in each of our countries.
Every day at noon, the cathedral prays the Coventry litany. This is used across the world by the Cross of Nails community that flows out of the cathedral and stands to heal the wounds of history, live well with difference and celebrate diversity, and work for communities of justice and peace. The litany begins:
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”.
It goes on to pray for:
“The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class”,
inviting the response,
“Father, forgive”.
Interestingly, it does not say, “Father, forgive them”, for in 1940, the then provost Dick Howard recognised that the hatred that had caused the destruction of his cathedral church lay not simply out there among the perceived enemy, but within us all.
It is of great concern that, despite all the deeply significant efforts towards peacemaking and reconciliation, our times are more divided, not less, in these days. We know that the study of human behaviour which led to the evil of the Holocaust begins by using words—words that separate us through the language of othering, words intent on harming rather than healing. Words are our currency in this House, as they are in the wider world. Our words matter, and we can use words towards hostility or towards peace.
May this House and His Majesty’s Government stand for justice and kindness for all, so that every community of this nation may meet in understanding and respect, united by love of goodness, keeping far from violence and strife. May our children and the generations that follow be educated to live in peace, and may this nation find its honour and greatness in the work of peacebuilding and reconciliation today and for all our days to come.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate, and I congratulate her on her excellent and poignant maiden speech. As we have heard, she joins us with a wealth of pastoral experience, both in her current role, since 2025, as the 10th Bishop of Coventry, and in a variety of positions before that, ranging from Burgess Hill to Bradford, and Guildford to Uganda.
As a severely disabled Member of the House, I particularly welcome the right reverend Prelate’s interest in and commitment to supporting disabled people, including by running the London marathon for Mencap in 2022. I cannot think of a better preparation for life in your Lordships’ House, where I am afraid she will find that the glacial speed with which any Government move makes having plenty of stamina a prerequisite for getting anything done. She may find that she has an advantage because, as she will know, the Spirit can move far more quickly than us mere humans.
That reminds me, as someone who joined the Movement for the Ordination of Women when I was at university in the early 1990s, of a beautiful verse from chapter 9 of the Book of Wisdom, with which the right reverend Prelate may well be familiar. It is addressed to God, and it reads:
“With you is wisdom, who knows your works, and was present when you made the world, and who understands what is pleasing in your sight and what is right according to your commandments. Send her forth from the holy heavens and from the throne of your glory send her that she may be with me and toil … for she knows and understands all things, and she will guide me wisely in my actions”.
Quite apart from exposing the absurdity of viewing God purely as male, I cannot think of a more powerful affirmation of the multidimensional nature of God, embodying spiritually all that is beautiful in his creation of humanity, including she as much as he. I cannot promise the right reverend Prelate that your Lordships’ House will always do as she advises, but we look forward to benefiting from her wisdom.
There is something else that strikes me as absurd, and which I find completely counterintuitive: our implicit construction, as a society, of a hierarchy of racism. Hitler could not have been clearer: his fanatical hatred of the Jews informed the 1935 Nuremberg laws, which classified Jews as
“enemies of the race-based state”.
That racist hatred, in turn, informed the genocidal logic of the Shoah, or Holocaust. In other words, everything revolved around race. Yet, here we are, 81 years on from the Soviet Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, still mouthing with sincerity the mantra of “Never again”, but not calling out the attack of 7 October 2023, the banning of the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, the attack on Heaton Park synagogue, the Bondi Beach shooting or the prevention of Damien Egan, in the other place, from addressing pupils of a school in his own constituency. We are not calling out these events for what they are: racist.
If Hitler knew what it was about—and as my noble friend Lord Pickles reminded us, it was about race—why do we not? After all, within 20 years of the liberation of Auschwitz, your Lordships’ House had passed the Race Relations Act 1965, which, as noble Lords will know, made the promotion of hatred on the grounds of race, colour, and ethnic or national origins an offence. The toxic abuse and now murderous violence being visited on our Jewish communities, such as in Manchester, clearly violates the Act. Unless we are saying that the Act applies only to skin colour—which would be factually incorrect—this is racism, pure and simple, so why does society seem to pretend that it is not?
What sort of message are we sending to our beloved Holocaust survivors when, instead of the theory of “Never again”, they see only the beginnings of “Yet again”? What about impressionable young people who get most of their news, as we heard earlier, from social media? The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is bridging generations. What sort of bridge are we building when we fail to call out racism and our police imply, as happened on camera, “Well, it depends on the context”. Really? So it is okay to be racist if it is not about skin colour, or it involves abusing Jewish people or Israel.
I fear we are in danger of legitimising racist prejudice by default. As the Minister said in her powerful opening remarks, the Holocaust had its roots in prejudice that began with words. Deborah Lipstadt tells us:
“Anyone who thinks this only impacts Jews is ignoring reality. This is an attack on Western liberalism, democracy, and international security and stability”.
We can be sure that, even as we speak in this debate, there are those who are determined that the answer to the question posed by the Daily Telegraph, “Should Jews feel safe in Britain?”, should be a resounding “No”. These racists must not be allowed to achieve their goal, for the cost of surrendering to such a racist creed is far greater than the millions spent on policing the demonstrations that have paralysed our capital city weekend after weekend.
In conclusion, my childhood Jewish refugee surgeon, Hanuš Weisl, fled for his life as a teenager from racism: a racism that would kill all the relatives who came to see him depart on the last train out of Prague before the Nazis closed the border. Surely, we owe it to him today to take stronger action to ensure that racism, in all its forms, is confronted with the full force of the law, so that “Never again” never becomes “Yet again”.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and to have heard the brilliant speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry—I am pleased to welcome another sort-of West Midlander—and so many powerful speeches from all noble Lords. I look forward to listening to the rest of the debate and, if I may be allowed to say, particularly to my fellow West Midlander, the noble Lord, Lord Austin, whose father was my inspirational head teacher at secondary school.
My father, Jim Ramsey, was a soldier during the Second World War, in a flail tank in the Westminster Dragoons and he was part of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. Sadly, he died in 1990 but, while I was growing up, he told me what he had seen there. He was deeply shocked and appalled, and told us, his children, about it during the 1970s and 1980s because he wanted us to know, and for us to then tell others what he had told us, making a reality of Bridging Generations, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day.
Survivors of the camps are now dwindling to tiny numbers and their stories must live on through their families and fantastic organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, to which I pay tribute. I share my father’s conviction of the importance of bearing witness by continuing to repeat accounts by the men and women who saw what had happened in the camps. This extract was kindly given to me by the Westminster Dragoons Regimental Association; it is taken from a report on the concentration camp at Belsen, Germany, by a fellow member of my father’s regiment:
“Belsen is a small village 11 miles from Celle, which is in the province of Hanover. About a mile south of Belsen there is a concentration camp … The conditions at Belsen camp were ghastly. Obviously it was used as a place where the prisoners could be exterminated slowly and with least trouble to the Reich. This extermination took place in the form of slow starvation; the rations were a bowl of swede or turnip soup per person every day and a loaf of rye bread between 12 persons every week. Thus the bare minimum was given; a minimum which would not allow anyone to die quickly of starvation, but which would make him or her gradually waste away into a living skeleton. When this happened death either followed by typhus or mere collapse. It was reckoned that at least 400 persons died every day.
When the camp was first entered by British troops, they were met by a sight which we in England would think impossible of a ‘civilised’ nation such as Germany. All over the grounds of the camp lay the bodies of what had once … been men and women. It was impossible to miss seeing bodies. Two over there—nine in front of the barbed wire, a large pile of 40 outside one of the huts—it was hard to walk without stepping on them as they lay on the ground. They were there because to begin with the prisoners were too weak to move their comrades away to bury them, and secondly because the SS guards were either too lazy to move them or because there were too many to move, and as they were buried more died. In one part of the camp there was a large pit. It was 80 feet deep, and in the bottom there was a mass of corpses, half buried with earth. It was said that the pit had been 20 feet deeper, but that the last consignment of bodies had filled up that 20 feet. At this moment Hungarian guards are digging another pit for those prisoners whom our doctors know will die shortly from typhus.
Today is the 25th of April 1945. The British have been at the camp for almost a week. They buried 1,200 people yesterday and 1,700 the day before, and there will be more to bury tomorrow. But things will gradually become better as the food we are giving them builds them up.
It is quite probable that many of the people in England who read accounts of this concentration camp, despite the fact that there are photographs to prove it, will think that the whole thing is vastly exaggerated and that it is just a move in the effort to foster the feeling of hate against the Germans—a feeling which admittedly the average Englishman does not like to show. He believes in sport and fair play … and anyhow, how in the world could another country do such terrible things when we don’t do them? Also we haven’t seen with our own eyes so we don’t believe, and it’s better forgotten anyhow”.
I have read only extracts from the report; I apologise to Members for how upsetting it is, but, bearing in mind the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, it seems appropriate to read them today. The final line written by that solider is:
“Do you think it’s better forgotten?”
I do not know who he was addressing that to, but I think he agreed with my father.
That anxiety that the testimony of returning soldiers would either not be believed or not be passed on to future generations was shared by my father, as well as the utter horror of what he had witnessed. How dismaying it was therefore to learn, from the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s October 2020 report, that the Labour Party had been dealing so inadequately with antisemitism under its previous leadership, and that complaints of individual members sharing Holocaust denial on social media had not even been investigated.
When Keir Starmer became leader, he was determined to root out antisemitism in the party. As part of this vital endeavour, I was asked to lead the work needed to address the recommendations made in the commission’s damning report. It was terrible that such work was necessary, but what a fitting opportunity it was for me to honour my father. The EHRC had identified political interference in the handling of antisemitism complaints, so I had the task of developing an independent complaints system from scratch. I also established a proper process to engage with Jewish community stakeholders, and I oversaw the devising and delivery of a programme of antisemitism awareness training for use across the party for all staff and parliamentarians.
I worked closely with the Jewish Labour Movement, which was led so effectively at that time by my now noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, as well as Dame Louise Ellman, Rebecca Filer, Peter Mason and Adam Langleben. I worked with Danny Stone of the Antisemitism Policy Trust and Adrian Cohen of the Jewish Leadership Council, as well as Marie van der Zyl, the then president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and her successor, Phil Rosenberg. I also came to hugely respect Dave Rich and all those at the Community Security Trust; obviously, that work is ongoing, for reasons that other noble Lords have mentioned today.
Under Keir’s leadership, and with the support and challenge of all those wonderful people, the Labour Party succeeded in turning things round. The EHRC lifted its legal enforcement action against the party, and no longer did the Chief Rabbi find himself needing to intervene publicly in the general election, as he had done in 2019. But, of course, antisemitism is still very much with us today, as we all saw last October with the horrific attack on worshippers at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. Therefore, Holocaust Memorial Day retains its vital role in ensuring that we all remember and—more than this—that we all do whatever we can to tackle antisemitism wherever we see it.
Lord Massey of Hampstead (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath. I thank her for all the work that she has done to combat antisemitism. I also thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for arranging this debate and for commemorating so kindly those who witnessed the events we speak of who passed away this year. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on her excellent maiden speech and thank her for her recognition of the multigenerational trauma experienced by those of us of Jewish heritage. That is a very significant thing, in my view.
Memorialising the Holocaust has never been more important. We know that this grotesque event was based on an ancient hatred, and yet the events since 7 October have produced a level of antisemitism in this country that few of us could really have imagined. Jews in the UK, as has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and my noble friend Lord Shinkwin, can no longer attend school or synagogue without security protection. Israeli football fans have been banned from watching their team play. Members of the other House have been stopped from attending schools in their constituencies, and there have been deadly antisemitic terrorist attacks on our streets. The open statements about killing Jews and the demonisation and vilification of Israel have been normalised to a rather terrifying extent.
I will focus my brief remarks on the term “genocide”, which was the basis of the Holocaust and is now a term, as my noble friend Lord Pickles mentioned, that has been deliberately weaponised in some quarters to inflame a new version of hatred against Jews and Israel. For Jews to be falsely accused of this crime has been one of the most painful aspects of this war of words.
Let us look at the origins of the term “genocide”. It was invented by the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin during World War II and entered public discourse for the first time when it was included in the indictments against the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg.
What is genocide? Lemkin’s definition was that it was the extermination of racial and religious groups in order to destroy particular races and classes of people. The genocide convention of 1948 defines the term more broadly, but the key is the intent to destroy a racial or religious group. As we know, the Nazis devised their final solution in 1942 in a state-sponsored, institutionalised programme to exterminate the entire Jewish population of occupied Europe, which totalled 9 million people at that time. They managed to kill 6 million of them.
Let us contrast this with the alleged genocide in Gaza, which was a war of self-defence—Israel’s sovereign right—following the atrocity of 7 October and the kidnapping of 251 hostages, the worst pogrom since World War II, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. Whether you agree or disagree with Israel’s conduct of the war, there was never an intent to exterminate or eliminate any group or race. Israel’s war is against a terrorist group pledged to destroy it. It has nothing to do with the idea of genocide. Furthermore, Hamas bears responsibility for casualties in Gaza by refusing to release hostages and embedding itself and its weaponry within the civilian infrastructure. It is therefore vital that the Holocaust is remembered for its unique evil. The public need to be reminded of what constitutes a genocide. Understanding the term might prevent its misuse for political ends.
We are in dangerous waters now in terms of Holocaust denial and distortion, as opponents of Israel seek to undermine the unprecedented character of this event with false equivalence. This must begin in schools. As we lose living witnesses to this darkest history, we cannot afford a growing vacuum of knowledge in schools about the Holocaust, or, worse still, for it to be replaced with an ideology that questions it. So I urge the Minister to devote even more resource to ensure that the public understand the Holocaust, what constitutes a genocide, and how fragile societies can become in the face of antisemitism and racism. By doing so, we can make sure that it never happens again.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow that brilliant speech by the noble Lord, Lord Massey. It was a privilege to listen to the fantastic maiden speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry.
In March 1939, a 10 year-old Jewish boy in a town called Ostrava, in what was then Czechoslovakia, was woken up in the middle of the night; he got out of bed, looked out of the window and saw German troops marching into the town square. It was the day that Hitler had invaded. A few days later he was put on a train by his mum and teenage sisters. It was the last time he would see them, because they were eventually rounded up, sent first to a ghetto and then to Theresienstadt, before being murdered in Treblinka in October 1942.
That boy came to the UK—he was able to speak only three words of English, which were “hot”, “cross” and “bun”—but he grew up to become the youngest grammar school head teacher in the country and educated tens of thousands of people, including my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath. But, much more importantly from my point of view, he brought up four kids, of whom I am the second. In later life, he worked with black and Asian communities in Dudley to establish the racial equality council, raised funds for the Holocaust Educational Trust and spoke at its events. I pay tribute to it and its work.
We have heard in this debate references to statistics about Holocaust education. These are worrying figures, it is true, but HET, which engages with schools all year round, reports that across its programmes, it is working with hundreds more schools than in 2023, before the barbaric attacks on Israel by Hamas, and that this will increase still further with its new Testimony360 programme.
Last week I went to listen, as did a number of Members of your Lordships’ House present here, to the brilliant historian Simon Sebag Montefiore deliver an absolutely riveting lecture at HET’s annual parliamentary event. He said that teaching about the Holocaust and antisemitism is “more vital than ever” as:
“The last witnesses are passing away, while Holocaust denial, distortion, inversion, and what I would call perversion—now joined by eliminationist antisemitism—have made an alarming comeback”.
Those are the points I want to focus on today, but first I pay tribute, as others have done, to the survivors who have died this year; in particular, Manfred Goldberg, Eve Kugler—with whom I travelled to Poland for March of the Living in 2018, along with the noble Lords, Lord Pickles and Lord Shinkwin, and got to know well subsequently—and Harry Olmer, who died last week.
Many Members of your Lordships’ House will have known Manfred Goldberg; I thought he was a great man and a real hero. He survived the death camps, came to the UK after the war, got married, brought up three sons and made a huge contribution to our country in so many ways. He was absolutely appalled by the increase in antisemitism we have seen since Israel was attacked on 7 October.
I pay tribute too to the Community Security Trust and the brilliant work it does, led by Sir Gerald Ronson and Mark Gardner. We saw how important its work is on Yom Kippur last year, when two Jewish men, Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz, were killed when an Islamist extremist terrorist attacked Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester. This was not a random attack on a shopping centre or in the street; Jewish people were attacked, at a synagogue, because they were Jews. It was murderous, brutal racism.
Then we saw a court case in which Islamist extremists were convicted of planning to murder Jewish people at schools, businesses, synagogues and even a march against racism, in what the police said would have been,
“the deadliest terror attack in UK history”.
These attacks do not happen in isolation. A recent YouGov survey suggests that more than one in five British people now hold entrenched antisemitic views—twice the level of four years ago. The CST’s research shows that antisemitic incidents are running at record levels, and Home Office statistics show that Jewish people are 10 times more likely to be the victims of religious hate crime than any other group.
On 7 October, at the same time as terrorists were murdering and kidnapping civilians and committing the greatest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust, people here in the UK celebrated on the streets. Weekly marches then made central London and other city centres no-go areas for Jewish people. I went to watch some of these marches. I did not see any banners calling for peace, for hostages to be released or for a two-state solution but—and this is the distortion Simon Sebag Montefiore was talking about—plenty comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, its leaders to Hitler and Gaza to the Holocaust. They say the victims have become the oppressors and that Jews are doing what the Nazis did. Even before the conflict, Gaza was called a “new Warsaw Ghetto”.
What could more offensive than routinely accusing a country built by Holocaust survivors—the only democracy and equal free society in the whole of the Middle East—of genocide, crimes against humanity or committing another Holocaust? These disgusting comparisons are designed to demonise and delegitimise Israel and undermine the very reason for its existence as a safe haven for the Jewish people.
Protesters demand that Palestine stretch
“from the river to the sea”,
which would mean the destruction of Israel and the murder of its citizens. They chant for Israel’s destruction, for “death to the IDF”—even on the stage at Glastonbury and broadcast by the BBC—or to “globalise the intifada”.
Last month, unbelievably, extremists in Birmingham paraded behind a banner saying “One Solution, Intifada Revolution” with the Hamas symbol—the symbol of a proscribed, banned terrorist group—yet the police did nothing about it. The intifadas were terror attacks with suicide bombings, ramming people with cars and attacking them with knives—exactly what happened in Manchester.
It is good that the Met and Greater Manchester Police have finally said that they will start prosecuting people who make these statements, but this has been happening since 7 October. We need assurances that other forces will be required to do the same and that people who do this will be prosecuted with the same speed and determination as those who incite other forms of racism, as we saw, for example, after the Southport attack.
Over the last few years, we have seen Jewish kids attacked on the way to school, students targeted at university, Jewish patients hiding their identity when going to hospital, synagogues smeared with faeces and homes daubed with swastikas, and businesses attacked just because their owners are Jewish. As the Chief Rabbi said, this is a tidal wave of “Jew hatred”.
In Bristol, a Jewish MP was banned from visiting a school in his constituency. It turned out, extraordinarily, that the inclusion and diversity co-ordinator at the trust running the school had praised Hamas’s 7 October massacre as “heroes fighting for justice”. In Birmingham, Jewish people were banned by the police from going to a football match. Here in London, a mob gathers each week to scream abuse at the staff and customers of a restaurant owned by Jewish people. Of course, people have the right to protest in a democracy but not the right to harass Jewish people outside restaurants or synagogues. These people should be arrested and prosecuted. These incidents should be dealt with much more seriously in future.
What is the context in which all this is taking place? Parliament debates Israel more than any other issue—not just more than any international issue but more than any other issue. During the conflict, Parliament debated Israel and Gaza three times more than the NHS, crime, poverty or immigration. How can it be that MPs spend more time on a conflict thousands of miles away—which, if we are honest, though I am not pretending to be an expert on this, many of them know probably not very much about and can do even less to solve it—than the schools or the hospitals in their constituencies that they are responsible for? In Sudan, famine has killed 500,000 children, 10 million people are starving, and tens of thousands of civilians were murdered in just a few days. The UK is the UN Security Council penholder, yet we hardly ever discuss it.
Two weeks ago, on the very first day back after the new year, there was a Statement which was supposed to be on the Middle East and north Africa, but many MPs queued up to speak only about Israel and Gaza. MPs falsely accuse Israel of the worst crimes possible, but the Government concluded that Israel is not committing a genocide—so I would like to hear Ministers start to push back when Back-Bench MPs or others claim that it is.
We see the same obsession, bias and inaccuracies at the BBC, too. For example, when the Government concluded that Israel was not committing a genocide, the BBC pretty much buried the news. When the UN said it might be, it dominated every bulletin for days. The IHRA definition of antisemitism, the official definition that the Government subscribe to, says that demonising Israel, singling it out for criticism, holding it to standards never applied to other countries—which is clearly what is happening—are examples of antisemitism. All this matters because the obsessive demonisation of the world’s only Jewish state obviously drives hostility towards people who are identified with it, which is the vast majority of Jewish people. This is a large part of what drives antisemitism in the UK.
People cannot really promise to oppose antisemitism but then support boycotts, sanctions or embargoes that would prevent Israel from defending its Jewish citizens. People say that there is no place for antisemitism, but this has become meaningless when it is running at record levels, when Parliament and the BBC are fuelling it and when the authorities are not doing nearly enough to deal with it.
We need to be much more robust in standing up for our values. Migration is now a permanent feature of global life: in just four years, 3.5 million people came to live in Britain. Some will have come from places where antisemitism is more common than in the UK—places where the Holocaust is rarely taught, not understood or by many, probably not even believed. So, it is crucial that Holocaust education is increased, expanded and improved.
We have to be clear and say that, if people hate Jews or think Israel should not be allowed to exist, they should be prevented from coming to Britain or staying here to live. The Government and the police must clamp down much harder on extremist preachers making hate speeches in mosques. NHS staff or university lecturers responsible for racism should be sacked. Hate marches cannot be allowed any longer to take over our streets every week; the Government should change the law to curb them, if necessary.
No more empty promises or meaningless platitudes—taking antisemitism much more seriously and dealing with it much more robustly is not just a matter of standing up for the Jewish community, vital though that is; it is fundamentally about what it means to be British. Living in the UK means believing in democracy, equality, freedom, fairness and tolerance. That is what our country stands for. That is exactly what heroes like the late father of the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, and his comrades were fighting for in the war. Those values define what it means to be British.
Of course, Holocaust Memorial Day is an opportunity to learn about history’s greatest crimes and pay our respects to its victims, like my dad’s mum and sisters. But expressing our sympathy for people murdered 80 years ago is not enough. Holocaust Memorial Day is the opportunity to dedicate ourselves, especially those of us in positions of leadership and responsibility, not to stand silently by or to mouth empty promises or meaningless platitudes, but to do all we can to fight hatred and prejudice and stand up for the victims of racism today.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, it is a somewhat daunting privilege to follow another passionate and erudite speech from the noble Lord, Lord Austin. I too congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on an outstanding maiden speech—the huge impact that she will make in this House is clear. I thank the Minister for leading this debate so candidly and emotionally. I declare my interest as a member of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. I did not get a chance last week in ping-pong on the Holocaust Memorial Bill to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Pickles for the huge amount of work that he is putting into the Holocaust memorial. He and his co-chair, Ed Balls, are extraordinary to watch at work together. We are incredibly grateful for the work that my noble friend does.
It is an honour to speak in this debate after such emotional, personal, erudite speeches. I always feel a fraud when I talk about the Holocaust because I am not Jewish. I did not come to Holocaust education and commemoration because of family and community links; my journey to this debate was far more prosaic. In 2015, the then Prime Minister, my noble friend Lord Cameron, asked me to serve on the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation to bring my digital experience to the project’s objective not only of being a physical memorial and learning centre but of bringing the content and the experience to everyone in the country.
On the premise that when your Prime Minister asks you to serve you should say yes, I did, without really understanding what I was committing to, and so my personal Holocaust education journey began. I did not learn about the Holocaust at school. I went to a Catholic convent where the religious education consisted of rote learning the Bible. There was no Holocaust Memorial Day when I was growing up. I began to learn the true horror of the murder of over 6 million Jewish men, women and children only through my involvement with the Holocaust Memorial Foundation.
I too had the privilege of my life in meeting Manfred Goldberg and watching and experiencing his testimony on Testimony 360. If noble Lords have not had a chance to experience it yet, I recommend it, because he is there in front of you as if he was in front of you physically. We are so lucky that Manfred and the other survivors were so brave to give their testimony.
My journey has involved visiting various museums and learning centres around the world, but it has also involved deep personal introspection. First, I needed to learn the facts; as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has pointed out, it is hugely important that we understand the overall historical context. We need to feel empathy for the heartbreak that this most atrocious of human acts has brought. However, as many have said this afternoon, I know that I cannot possibly fully comprehend what that multigenerational trauma must feel like. I know enough to know that I simply do not know.
My learning journey has taken me to looking inwards and asking myself some very uncomfortable questions that others have alluded to this afternoon. Would I have turned a blind eye to antisemitism as it set in again in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s? Would I have put up the equivalent of the greengrocer’s notice, as Václav Havel sets out? Would I have opted for a quiet life or, worse still, would I have joined in?
Sadly, that learning journey continues, because today, as we bridge the generations, as Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow asks us to think about, we cannot ask those questions in the hypothetical; I am afraid that we have to ask them in the present tense. Holocaust Memorial Day and Holocaust education in the round forced me to ask myself, “Am I turning a blind eye?”—as the noble Lord, Lord Austin, has just challenged us. Am I standing up for my Jewish friends as they question whether the UK is safe for them to live in today? Am I going with the populist flow, or am I fighting antisemitism as only a small minority of people did in the run-up to the Second World War in Germany?
Holocaust Memorial Day calls on all of us never to forget, but as many have said today, that is only the beginning of the journey of learning. To truly bridge the generations, to learn from and not repeat the Holocaust, we have to learn to act, not just learn.
I fear, as many have said, that we are living in a time when people are scared. The world order is shifting. Mark Carney encapsulated it completely brilliantly last week. He set out eloquently how the rules-based world order that I have been lucky enough to grow up in is shattering. People across the world are scared; they are angry; they are looking for easy solutions. History teaches us that that is very fertile ground for antisemitism.
My involvement in the Holocaust Memorial Foundation has taught me, as others have said, that you win and lose this battle day in and day out. It requires all of us, in whatever role we play, in public and in private, to recognise how easy it is for populist rhetoric to turn into antisemitic actions. To prevent history repeating itself yet again, we all need to stand up and be counted today, on Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow and, I am afraid, every day.
Lord Morse (CB)
I am very honoured to follow that excellent speech; and I take the chance to acknowledge the very brilliant maiden speech that we heard earlier as well.
I am intending to speak quite briefly on this subject, because it has been very fully covered already, and I am sure nobody will mind that. First, I should declare an interest. I am a member of the APPG on British Jews, although I am not Jewish. I believe that it is really important for all British citizens to show their support for each other in the face of antisemitism.
This needs to be offered with humility and a sense of how little—certainly for me—we know. I have not experienced the emotions that my Jewish friends have experienced or the loss that they have experienced. I have read about the Holocaust. I understand it to that extent, but I do not have the deep empathy that so many noble Lords in this Room have.
What I do have is a feeling of absolute fury when I think about children not being able to go to their schools, or going in while concealing their identity; or schools having to look like fortified camps because of fear that something may happen to the children or that they may be attacked; or indeed, Jewish friends I know who are beginning to have discussions about whether this is much of a country to live in any more and whether it is a safe country for Jewish people to live in. I was absolutely horrified to hear some of those discussions, but this is where it seems to be going.
Our country—my country—is surely much better than this. Our Jewish people and fellow citizens, who have contributed so much to this country and who continue to do so, are entitled to expect much better of the whole country and to expect our vigorous and committed support.
Religious hate crime, I am afraid, is growing significantly. We might try to believe otherwise, but it is not true. It is directed not just at Jewish people—a significant number of hate crimes are directed at the Muslim community as well, and it is important to remember that—but when you come down to the intensity of number of hate crimes per 10,000 people, the Jewish population suffers three or four times more than the Muslim community. So, although others do suffer from hate crimes, it is the Jewish community that is the most heavily struck.
When HM Government take a clear stance against hate crime and antisemitism, we have to acknowledge that, but, equally, we have to say when it is not working very well.
Antisemitism is advancing, and our Jewish fellow citizens feel that they are subject to pervasive threat and that their life, in many cases, is being made miserable as a result of these threats and antisemitism. Notwithstanding what HM Government are already doing, I believe they could and should go much further and start by setting hard, measurable targets to reduce and stamp out hate crime by specific target dates, and be willing to be held to account against them. What is measured generally gets done; that is my experience in life.
Even in this very serious matter, I think we need to be tough with ourselves—not sanctimonious, but tough—about what can be done. The best tribute we can offer, in my mind, to the horrors of the Holocaust is to act vigorously now, to fight against antisemitism and to keep on fighting until we win.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I was born a Jew and I am proud to be a Jew, albeit a non-practising one. This has been an amazing debate, and I want to pay tribute the right reverend Prelate—I did not think I would be paying tribute to a a Jewish one—for an amazing speech. There have been some amazing speeches during this debate.
I want to give some experience of my life. We were Dutch Jews on one side of our family. My father changed the name because he wanted to sell more insurance, and he was good at that, so I suppose it was a good move.
Where we lived in the East End, I never experienced any antisemitism. It was a mixed street, mainly Jews. The synagogue was round the corner, and the rabbi was round the other side. I think we had a good upbringing.
When I was 15 years old, I was a precocious reader and I came across a book—
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord’s name is not on the list to speak, but if he would like to keep his remarks short, that would be okay.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
I am sorry. I will endeavour to keep my remarks short. I did not realise that I had to put my name down.
Anyway, when I was 15 years old, I came across a book, The Scourge of the Swastika, which, ironically, was written by the grandfather of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. That taught me a lot about what goes on.
Bearing the mind the strictures that I have to keep my remarks limited, I will do. I think this is a really important debate. I thank the people who have made contributions about needing to do more to ensure that antisemitism remains something that we fight against. I will leave it at that.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I wish to welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry. I did take the opportunity to visit Coventry cathedral—both the old, original one and the new one—and I believe she will make a fantastic contribution to your Lordships’ House. Also, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, as many noble Lords already have, that that was an excellent introduction to this debate.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned a couple of films, “Schindler’s List” and “Nuremberg”, and made a very valid point about their certification. “Nuremberg” is worth going to see, not least to see Britain’s Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, skewering Goering at the dispatch box. I can recommend one film for your Lordships to see that really gives an indication of what actually happened in the Holocaust. It is called “The Grey Zone”, from 2001, and it tells the story of the 12th Sonderkommando uprising in Auschwitz in October 1944. It is certificated 18 because it is a little bit more graphic.
There is a large Jewish community in Manchester. As noble Lords can probably tell from my accent, my family comes from Manchester. I come from a council estate just south of Manchester. I remember that, growing up in the 1970s, we had a lot of veterans from the Second World War and the First World War. My mother remembered the Manchester blitz and hiding away in the garden in very dark Anderson shelters. She remembered the sound of German Daimler-Benz engines as they went over to bomb Manchester and the docks.
My mother also told me about the propaganda the Germans used to send out: “Germany calling, Germany calling, Lord Haw-Haw”. The Germans knew where the Jewish community in Manchester was. For those of your Lordships who do not know Manchester, just in the suburbs, in south Manchester, in a place called Didsbury, there is a large Jewish community and a synagogue—you could call it the south Manchester synagogue, as opposed to Heaton Park in north Manchester. William Joyce—Lord Haw-Haw—used to say exactly where the Jewish community was, because there was a tram terminus. He said, “We’ve got you marked out. We know where you are”.
As a coincidence, my mother worked for a company called Granada Television. This is where I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, and the story of her father, the Second World War and the liberation of Belsen. Sidney Bernstein was a Member of your Lordships’ House. He set up Granada Studios in Manchester, but his wartime service was documenting exactly what happened in Belsen. He became a fellow of the British Film Institute. I remember my mother telling me what a good man he was. I never met him, but I have read up on him.
The films Lord Bernstein produced were made specifically so that future generations could say that this happened and could not be denied. Noble Lords can look this up on YouTube, but I remember seeing a member of the Cheshire Regiment, a sergeant. He was being filmed and was asked, “Where are you, who are you and what is happening?” In the background, there was a mass pit. SS prisoners were putting the bodies into a pit, as he described, in an accent not dissimilar from mine, that he was Sergeant Smith from Cheshire, and that he was in Belsen concentration camp. What he witnessed there was unbelievable. Those were his words.
Last year, I had the privilege of meeting Mervyn Kersh, a Jewish soldier who fought in the British Army. Although he was not there on the exact day of the liberation of Belsen, he came in about a week later. He witnessed the clear-up. He saw how the medical services saved as many lives as possible. It was wonderful to meet Mervyn. In the same room was a Holocaust survivor who was liberated by the British Army in Belsen. She subsequently married a British soldier. She thought that the British Army was the best army in the world, and who can argue with that?
I remember speaking to Mervyn last year. His family had escaped from Germany into Holland and then to the safety of Britain. He had volunteered for the British Army and ended up going to liberate Europe. He said to me that his father knew, in the 1930s, what was coming with the Holocaust. He said to Mervyn, as a very young man, “If they land on the south coast of England, we need to head to Wales, we need to head to Anglesey, and we’ll get ourselves to America”. Standing there, in the third decade of the 21st century, and hearing that memory of a very young man reminds us of where we are; I am afraid to say, “Here we are again”.
I turn to the future. Noble Lords have mentioned the fantastic work that the Holocaust Educational Trust has done, with Karen Pollock and her colleagues reaching over 100,000 people each year, ensuring that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten. Each year, tens of thousands of young people hear the powerful testimony of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Survivors travel across the country to talk to many schools. Through the Lessons from Auschwitz project, tens of thousands of young people have stood on the site where around 1 million Jewish men, women and children were murdered. They return as Holocaust Educational Trust ambassadors, committed to sharing what they have witnessed.
More than a thousand teachers are trained each year in how best to teach this challenging and sensitive subject. Testimony360 is a digital project that is transforming how the Holocaust is taught and understood. Using AI-powered search technology, thousands of students have already come face to face with survivors, engaging in natural language conversations as if they were in the room together. Paired with virtual reality headsets, students can also explore key sites connected to each survivor’s testimony, all without leaving the classroom.
Remembrance is no longer enough, though. Action must be taken to counter antisemitism here today. This year, we mark Holocaust Memorial Day with increasingly heavy hearts, just months after the deadly attack at Heaton Park synagogue and weeks after the barbaric attack on Bondi Beach. Since 7 October 2023, antisemitic hatred has intensified, rhetoric has spilled into violence, and what was once whispered is now said openly and proudly. We have seen it in protests outside a Jewish-owned restaurant, a Jewish Member of Parliament being barred from visiting a local school, and visitors to a London synagogue being forced to walk through a gauntlet of hate. It is no longer enough to remember the past or to say that antisemitism is not acceptable. Action must be taken to tackle antisemitism and to foster social cohesion.
Holocaust education faces significant challenges, but the Holocaust Educational Trust is reaching more young people now than ever before. Today, young people arrive in classrooms with views shaped by social media trends rather than by evidence. Some teachers are anxious about how their communities will respond when a Holocaust survivor shares their testimony, fearing a backlash from parents. Survivors themselves are being asked to navigate questions about contemporary conflict just because they are Jewish.
In response, the Holocaust Educational Trust is expanding its work in classrooms across the country and is now working with hundreds more schools than in 2023, before the barbaric terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. Its reach will continue to grow and new programmes are being rolled out. The Holocaust Educational Trust knows that the Holocaust cannot and must not be taught in isolation. The antisemitism that culminated in the Holocaust was not invented by the Nazis; it was rooted in 2,000 years of anti-Jewish hatred. Likewise, we know that antisemitism did not end in 1945; it has continued to evolve and to adapt right up to the present day. It is up to us all to make a stand against antisemitism.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on her moving and illuminating maiden speech.
I rise with a profound sense of solemnity and responsibility. Holocaust Memorial Day is not merely a day of remembrance but a day of moral reckoning—one that calls on us all year after year to confront the darkest capacities of humanity and reaffirm our shared commitment to ensuring that such horrors are never repeated.
The Holocaust was a heinous crime—an atrocity of the worst kind in human history. Six million Jewish men, women and children were systematically murdered, alongside millions of others, including Roma, disabled people, political dissidents, and members of the LGBT community. This was not an accident of war but a deliberate and industrialised attempt to eradicate an entire people. We must continue to remind the world that such inhumanity to humanity must never be allowed to happen again.
We also remember that many of those responsible were ultimately brought to justice. That matters. Accountability matters. It reaffirms our fundamental principle that no state, no Government and no individual are beyond moral or legal judgment.
However, Holocaust Memorial Day also invites us to reflect broadly on the lessons of history. It asks us not only to remember one atrocity but to recognise and remember others committed across different times, different continents and different cultures, so that memory itself may serve as a safeguard against repetition. In that spirit, we must acknowledge other grave injustices that occurred that scar our collective past.
One such example is the Amritsar massacre of 13 April 1919, when hundreds of unarmed men, women and children were brutally killed at Jallianwala Bagh. They had gathered there peacefully, yet they were met with indiscriminate and lethal force. This was a profound moral failure and a tragedy that continues to resonate, particularly for British Indians and the wider Commonwealth. There have been other atrocities across the world as well, such as Rwanda, Srebrenica, Cambodia, My Lai and many more. Each reminds us that the promise of “never again” must be renewed continually, not spoken once and then just forgotten.
Remembrance without reflection is hollow. Reflection without responsibility is incomplete. Acknowledging historical wrongs does not diminish a nation. Rather, it strengthens its moral standing and demonstrates the courage to confront uncomfortable truths. In reflecting on the lessons of the Holocaust, we are also invited to look with honesty and humility at our history.
Amritsar remains a source of deep sadness, particularly for those whose families were directly affected. In that context, I respectfully ask my noble friend the Minister whether His Majesty’s Government have any plan to offer a formal apology for the Amritsar massacre, in recognition of the hundreds of innocent men, women and children who were mowed down on that tragic day. Such an apology would not undo the past, but it would carry a profound symbolic weight and reaffirm our enduring commitment to justice, humanity and historical truth.
Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words in the gap and to pay tribute to the many excellent speeches that we have heard in this debate, including, particularly, the admirable maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate.
As I have mentioned before, my grandmother was killed in Auschwitz, and I was partly brought up by an aunt who not only survived Auschwitz but, as she told me, survived being put into the gas chamber when that evil and macabre operation was aborted because on that occasion the system malfunctioned, so this subject is very real for me.
Last week, in the debate on the Holocaust memorial, my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for whom I have great respect, said that the Nazis intended to kill 6 million men, women and children. As I told her afterwards, I almost intervened during her speech because she was wrong. The Nazis intended, as my noble friend Lord Massey said, to kill many, many more. One of the most chilling documents of the Holocaust, which I am sure many of your Lordships have seen, is the map that was in front of the participants of the infamous conference at Wannsee in 1942 that planned the details of the final solution. That map showed every country in Europe and the number of Jews that those at the conference estimated that country contained. It showed not only the countries that the Nazis then occupied or planned to occupy, but the neutral countries in Europe and this country.
Those of us who are familiar with the events of the first three weeks of Churchill’s premiership know that an argument raged as to whether terms should be sought from Hitler. An argument raged in the War Cabinet itself for 10 days, and there is no doubt at all that, had it not been for Winston Churchill, such terms would have been sought, and much the same deal would have been done as the deal that Marshal Pétain and the French did at that time. If that had happened, even if by some miracle your Lordships’ House had survived or had been revived in the intervening years, I would be very unlikely to have been here to contribute to this debate today. Therefore, I am at the forefront of those who insist that the Holocaust must be remembered, even if the antisemitism that brought it about was just a matter of history, but, of course, we know that it is not.
A few months ago, I attended the funeral of Adrian Daulby, one of the victims of the Heaton Park attack. It was, as your Lordships would expect, a very moving event. It was an event of a kind that I never expected to attend and that I hope never to attend again, but unless the efforts of our Government and our society are increased and stepped up, I fear that I may.
Not long after 7 October, I was invited to give a talk at a synagogue in central London, and then I was told by the organisers that they had been advised that it would not be safe for that event to take place. Rather meekly, I accepted that advice, and the event was postponed, although it did take place at a later date. Looking back on it, I think I was wrong. I should have insisted that that event went ahead on the original date. It is the duty of government to ensure that its citizens can go about their lawful business in safety. The police have the responsibility of discharging that duty, and, alas, they have not always distinguished themselves in discharging it in recent months. More needs to be done, and I hope that this memorial day, this debate and the debate that is to take place in the other place help to get that message across.
At the annual memorial service that used to take place in Hyde Park and now takes place at other venues, which I have attended for many years, a rather beautiful song is sung. Its title and refrain are the words “Never Again”. It is our duty to ensure that those words are given their full meaning.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on her excellent maiden speech and welcome her to this House. Since she tells us that she enjoys singing, I invite her to accompany me after the debate to the crypt chapel for a rehearsal of the Parliament Choir, which has often sung in her cathedral. I hope that she feels at home in your Lordships’ House.
When I get up in the morning and dress to come to your Lordships’ House, I remember my mother as I put on the little ring that I am wearing, which belonged to her. When I think of her, I also think of my father, who had such ambitions for me. When I walk into this Chamber, I often look up and wish that they had both lived to sit in the balcony and see me admitted to your Lordships’ House 25 years ago. I have always tried to make them proud, because I am one of the lucky ones who grew up with my own parents and grandparents around me.
Although my father served in the British Army to fight the Nazis, he survived the war. However, millions of the survivors of the events in the terrible time of the Holocaust, especially the children, either have little memory of their parents or nightmarish memories of family members who died. I often think of what it took for Jewish parents to say goodbye to their children, who left on the Kindertransport or by other means, knowing that they would probably never see them again. To us human beings, as to many other species, our children’s lives are even more precious than our own.
We often use things—places, photos and situations—to trigger memories of those who went before. That is why we want physical memorials, events and activities to help us remember what we will never want to forget and ensure that future generations will not either. Art can often do that for us. A wonderful example is the collection of ceramic replica shoes made by Jenny Stolzenberg, now displayed in the atrium of Portcullis House. It reminds us that the Shoah, and the other Holocaust mass murders of human beings, was not about mathematical numbers, such as 6 million; it was about 6 million individual people with 12 million feet that took them to their terrible fate.
We should ask ourselves the question: why did it happen? I have my own theory. I have always felt that there are many different ways of being human and that we should treat all with kindness and respect. Indeed, that is a fundamental part of my political philosophy and the way I try to live my life. The fact is that the Jews were persecuted by the Nazis because they were seen as “other”, as they had been for centuries. That expression, which was also mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry, is now used to indicate people who are different from the majority—people with a different skin colour, gender identity, religion, nationality, language or culture, or different traditions, values or ways of life. That othering can lead to discrimination, inequality of opportunity and even hatred and violence. That othering of other human beings is the danger that we should all fear most in today’s world.
It is not just about slavery, which we all thought was stamped out years ago but know is still happening; othering is happening in many different ways today: racial discrimination of all kinds, antisemitism, the bombing of Ukrainian people by the Russians because they do not want to be Russian, the repression of women in Iran who do not conform to the way that men want them to live, the persecution of people suspected of being “other” by ICE on behalf of the state in the United States. How ironic that indigenous people—yes, indigenous people—are having to carry their tribal ID with them on the streets of Minnesota.
All these things, if allowed to take hold in a society, can lead to disaster and inhumanity. We need to be very afraid if we see signs of it happening in our own country, and we need to stop it before it can take hold. After all, we have all heard the warning of Pastor Martin Niemöller from his own sad experience. Here is part of it:
“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist”.
It then goes on, ending with:
“Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me”.
We should speak out and speak up loud and clear for the kind of country that we are and should be.
That is why the theme chosen for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is so right. Bridging generations is vital if we are to alert our children to the danger to our country of every kind of othering, because, although we are reminded that the Holocaust was about the slaughter of 6 million Jews and the suffering of millions of others who survived, it was also a slaughter of other groups who were regarded as “other”, and therefore a danger to those in power. Power is so dangerous when it is linked to ignorance, greed and inhumanity. That is why I am glad that Holocaust Memorial Day is not just a big concert in a big concert hall and memorial services around physical memorial installations but small community events all over the country—in towns, villages, schools and homes, with their candles in their windows.
Tomorrow evening, when we look up at our public buildings lit up in purple, let us remember those who died in the Shoah and other Holocaust events, and let us celebrate and protect those who live on. Let us also vow that we will do everything we can to bring up our children in full knowledge of the Holocaust, and always to treat others with kindness and respect, no matter how different they are from ourselves.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for bringing forward this take-note debate on Holocaust Memorial Day, which falls tomorrow, and for her very thought-provoking speech. It was passionate, and I could feel that she felt it very deeply. I am also grateful to all noble Lords for their thought-provoking, passionate and moving contributions to commemorate all those 6 million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. I also congratulate the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Coventry on her excellent maiden speech. I look forward to hearing more such speeches in the years to come.
Having spoken in and brought forward this debate in previous years, it is a privilege to speak in this debate once again. This year’s theme, “Bridging Generations”, is not only an invitation to remembrance but a call to action. With each year that passes, we are left with fewer and fewer survivors and eyewitnesses to the Holocaust; it is increasingly up to us to pass on their memory.
The Minister read out the names of the heroic Holocaust survivors who have died this year. To their families and friends may their memory be blessed. It was this month that, sadly, Harry Olmer MBE died aged 98. Harry was born in Poland. His family was subjected to forced labour following the German invasion. In 1942, Harry, his brother and their father were sent to Plaszów labour camp in Kraków. After a year, when he was just 16, Harry was moved again to work in the chemical factories where many thousands died from poisoning, epidemics, starvation and exhaustion. Weakened prisoners were simply shot by the SS. In July 1944, shortly before the German retreat, a selection of those prisoners resulted in Harry being sent to Schlieben in Germany, a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp. As one of the surviving prisoners there, he was transported yet again, this time to Terezín ghetto in Czechoslovakia, and it was from here that he was finally liberated on 8 May 1945.
Harry came to the UK with a group of child survivors known as the Boys. Recalling his arrival, he said, “It was freedom”. The suffering he experienced clearly did not hold him back. He qualified as a dentist and became a British citizen in 1950 in order to serve in the British Army. He retired reluctantly at 86, and his commitment to educating the next generation continued all those years. We are lucky to have called Harry a fellow countryman. His memoir was titled My Revenge on Hitler is My Family, and I take this opportunity to offer, on behalf of your Lordships’ House, our sincere condolences to Harry’s children, his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. It is an understatement to say that his story is an inspiration. It is a profound loss that he is no longer here to tell his story himself. Let his memory be a blessing.
“Bridging Generations” reminds us that memory is not passive. It is something we must actively carry and pass on. It is particularly alarming, therefore, that the number of UK schools commemorating the Holocaust has dropped by nearly 60% since the 7 October pogrom carried out by Hamas and the massacre of over 1,200 Jewish people. This is shocking in this country. I commend, and indeed recommend as a matter of urgency, the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, as well as all the other organisations, museums, teachers and volunteers who commit to educating the next generation about the Holocaust.
Now more than ever, at a time when social media spreads misinformation to children, and when antisemitism is on the rise, as we have heard said so passionately today, they need to be taught about the horrors that took place and how it is that they came about. These horrors occurred not just because of a few monsters at the top, but because of ordinary people and the monster that we all know humans are capable of becoming. Moreover, children need to be instilled with, and we ourselves need reminding of, the values that prompted people to think critically, to be courageous, and to stand up to evil in daily life. What lessons could be more valuable or more important? Those educators who are denying our pupils the chance to participate in Holocaust Memorial Day are doing our children a disservice, and I dare say in some cases doing so out of moral cowardice.
Furthermore, the work of organisations such as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust should not be confined to the classroom. It was not schoolchildren who committed the terrorist attacks in Sydney, Australia, or on the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester. We on these Benches welcome the Government’s interventions in education, but also in security and taking action within our institutions. It is a source of shame that these measures have become necessary, but it is also a wake-up call that we all need to do more to uphold the dignity of every human life and to cultivate cohesion in our country.
In this vein, I give thanks for the work of His Majesty the King and all the Royal Family who, in the last year, have led the way in marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and indeed of Europe. I also note that today in 1482 the first printed edition of the Torah in Hebrew was completed in Bologna in Italy. This set the model for the page format still in use. The contribution of our Judaeo-Christian heritage to our civilisation today is undeniable and Jewish communities continue in this country to contribute to our society in most extraordinary ways. I end by saying that my thoughts and prayers are with those victims of the Holocaust, their families, and all those who continue to be affected by antisemitism on British soil and abroad to this day.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, as ever on these occasions I am struck by the depth, dignity and sincerity of the contributions we have heard. I am not sure I can do justice to every powerful point made today, but I will do my best. I start by congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on her excellent maiden speech and welcome her to the House. She reminded us of the way Coventry is linking its devastation in the Second World War and the hatred that led to that with the importance of speaking to our young people about peacebuilding and reconciliation. I am grateful to her for her words and hope she enjoys her time here in this House.
This debate is one that year after year brings out the very best in our House. It reminds us not only of the weight of our shared responsibility but of the compassion and the urge for moral clarity that unites us. We come together in remembrance of 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust—as well as thousands of Roma, Sinti, disabled people, gay men, political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the victims of genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Srebrenica. Their memories guide us, challenge us and call us to account. I particularly thank those noble Lords who have given their own personal testimony from themselves or their families today—the noble Lords, Lord Austin, Lord Evans and Lord Shinkwin, the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, and the noble Lord, Lord Howard—and I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for her tribute to Harry Olmer. The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, asked us in a quote, “Do you think all this is better forgotten”? I hope the fact that we are debating this today means that none of us thinks that at all.
At this point I pay tribute to Stevenage Liberal Synagogue, particularly to Terry and Gillian Wolfe and Rabbi Danny Rich, who have supported me in my attempts to continue to educate myself about the Jewish faith and the life of Jews in Britain today. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, spoke about the Torah. It was an absolute marvel to me to watch Danny Rich pick up the Torah, which, in case people have not seen it, is the scroll that is unrolled in a synagogue. There is no punctuation and there are no spaces in it, and he explained to me how he navigates his way around that Torah. It has been a real education to me, and I am grateful to them for all of that.
A number of noble Lords, starting with the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, spoke very powerfully about the continuing scourge of antisemitism. The noble Lord, Lord Massey, reminded us of what an ancient hatred that is, but, of course, with a current and very present shadow that hangs over us all. Antisemitism is completely abhorrent and has no place in our society, which is why we must all take a strong lead on tackling it in all its forms.
Sadly, we have seen how events in the Middle East are used as an excuse to stir up hatred against British Jewish communities. The horrific terrorist attack on Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, mentioned by many noble Lords this afternoon, was an attack on the British values that unite us all. We stand together with British Jews and with all Jewish people. We condemn unequivocally the hatred and poisonous extremism that has led to these attacks. As we think about that attack and the dreadful massacre at Bondi beach, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, raised powerful issues around 7 October and how we think of those and made a powerful plea that, as we face today’s antisemitism, we continue to keep alive the work that is being done to link the antisemitism we think of in terms of the Holocaust with what is going on today all around us.
I am grateful for the mention of the report from the noble Lord, Lord Mann, and Penny Mordaunt: I am very grateful for their work in this respect. The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, spoke powerfully about how we must confront failings in the organisations we are close to, even when it is painful—what the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, referred to as the very uncomfortable introspection that we need to undergo through our thinking about this. The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, is right: speaking out is a duty for all of us, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, reminded us of the powerful words of Martin Niemöller.
Much of this antisemitism is feeding into some of the awful words we hear about Holocaust denial and distortion. The noble Lord, Lord Massey, spoke powerfully about denial, and the Government condemn any organisation or individual that attempts to deny the Holocaust. We are implacably opposed to people such as the revisionist historian David Irving and have spoken out recently against the Iranian Government, who are attempting to cast doubt on the facts of the Holocaust. The Government deplore attempts to deny the Holocaust, including those views expressed in a pseudo-intellectual manner. It is of course the case that if Holocaust denial is expressed in a way that is threatening, abusive or insulting and incites racial hatred, or is likely to do so, it is unlawful under the Public Order Act 1986. The noble Lord, Lord Howard, and others, said how important it is that these laws are upheld: they are there for a purpose and we must all make sure that they are taken seriously.
The noble Lords, Lord Massey and Lord Austin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, referred to the impact of the current conflict in Israel and Palestine. We profoundly welcome the ceasefire agreement, of course, and are working intensively to support the 20-point plan for peace. It is vital that both parties uphold the agreement as we implement phase 2 on governance, stabilisation and construction. We continue to mourn the devastating loss of life on 7 October and afterwards and the ongoing desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza. We are deeply relieved that all living hostages have now been released and we continue to insist that the body of the last remaining hostage is returned. Even with the hostages released, we recognise that the trauma and terror Hamas’s actions have inflicted on hostages and their families endures, and we continue to work with partners to maintain the ceasefire and ensure the provision of urgent humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza. Diplomacy, not more bloodshed, is how we will get security for Israelis and Palestinians, and that requires a political process and a political horizon towards a two-state solution. Over time, only that will ensure long-term peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians.
Much of the debate this afternoon has focused on issues around education and it is right that it has done so, particularly in view of the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day this year. The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned Dov Forman and Lily Ebert. I remember very well listening to Dov and to Lily. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, mentioned the distortion of social media for young people and how it is almost as if they are trying to educate themselves but they are getting a distorted picture because of what they are picking up from social media. The Department for Education actively supports schools to provide high-quality teaching on the Holocaust through the funding of two core programmes and we are also funding a two-year programme, the Supporting Holocaust Survivor Testimony in Teaching programme. Lessons from Auschwitz gives students aged 16 to 18 the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau and funding for 2025-26 is £2,300,000. The Centre for Holocaust Education’s CPD programme supports teachers in their professional development, with the Pears Foundation and UCL contributing match and in-kind support of the same amount as the Government, which is £500,000. The Supporting Holocaust Survivor Testimony in Teaching programme will support schools in using recorded Holocaust survivor testimony in their teaching. Funding is being provided for that and being delivered by the Holocaust Education Trust.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry referred to what is I think is the most important thing in this education, which is when you get an outstanding teacher who can inspire and educate you on these topics. Then there is the much wider programme of support for tackling antisemitism in schools, colleges and universities. Some £500,000 of this money has been awarded to the University Jewish Chaplaincy for student welfare on university campuses, where we know there has been particular difficulty. Training for university support staff delivered by the Union of Jewish Students began in November, with 600 sessions planned over three years, and the scholarship programme will provide in-depth training and a learning network, with delivery commencing from this month.
A tackling antisemitism in education innovation fund is launching shortly to promote tolerant debate, and successful projects will commence from April. The Department for Education’s Educate Against Hate website provides schools and parents with free quality-assured teaching resources, helping to navigate discussions over sensitive topics and aiding our efforts to end hate and prejudice in our schools. On 5 November, we published the final report of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, alongside the Government’s response. The report’s recommendations for curriculum reform will help tackle hatred and prejudice by ensuring that, in areas such as citizenship and religious education, the refreshed national curriculum and its supporting resources reflect our modern society. There will be a renewed focus on improving young people’s media literacy, helping them think more critically about the content they consume.
There have also been incidents of antisemitism on university campuses, as we all know. There were 35 incidents reported to the CST in the first six months of 2025 in which the victims or offenders were students or academics, or which involved student union societies or other bodies. Of these, 16 took place on campus or university property and 13 occurred online. That is a drop of 64% from 98 higher education incidents reported in the first half of 2024, but each one of those incidents affects somebody deeply and for a long time. The total is twice the 17 incidents that were logged across January to June in 2023, which was not impacted by a trigger event in the Middle East. The Secretary of State wrote to university vice-chancellors in October, urging them to take steps to protect Jewish students from harassment. Where lawful protest crosses the line into harassment, intimidation and the glorification of terrorism, we expect universities to use the full extent of their disciplinary processes to take swift and decisive action to tackle it.
Turning to the commemoration on Holocaust Memorial Day, our national event, and education and community activities, the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, spoke of the reduction in the number of events taking place in education establishments. According to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, in 2023, more than 2,000 secondary schools held commemorative events, but on 7 October that year, things changed. In January 2024, just a few months after the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust, the number fell dramatically to fewer than 1,200, and in 2025, the figure, which I think the noble Lord gave, was just 854 schools choosing to hold an event, so we must redouble our efforts in terms of commemoration here.
On our Holocaust memorial and learning centre, mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Harding, and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, I agree that we must face our past. The Government are determined to deliver on the long-standing commitment to build a new national memorial to the Holocaust. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for all the work he has done on this.
The memorial will stand as a reminder to all in Parliament, and the whole nation, of our responsibility to remain vigilant against intolerance and bigotry. The new Holocaust memorial will honour the 6 million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust and all other victims of the Nazi persecution. There can be no more powerful a symbol of our commitment to remembering those men, women and children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators than placing the memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens, prominent among the buildings and memorials that symbolise our nation and its values.
I want to reflect for a moment on the comments made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on faith and belief in the UK. For millions of people in this country, their faith and belief identity is a crucial part of their lives, and our nation is enriched by a diverse tapestry of faiths and beliefs. The Government are committed to harnessing the power of faith for national renewal, helping us to make progress against our missions and improving social cohesion.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, spoke about the importance of leaders of faiths other than Judaism speaking out against antisemitism; that is a really important point. I say to my noble friend Lord Sahota on the Amritsar massacre—a tragic event and one quite separate to today’s debate—that previous Prime Ministers have called the massacre deeply shameful, and the incident is a shameful scar on British Indian history. I understand the pain that it still causes in our Sikh community, and I am happy to discuss it with my noble friend outside of this debate.
I express my deep gratitude to the remarkable organisations in the UK that work tirelessly to ensure that the Holocaust is remembered and, crucially, understood. Their work goes far beyond commemoration; it shapes minds, builds empathy and confronts ignorance. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Evans, I pay special tribute to Karen Pollock CBE, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, and Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Their leadership has ensured that survivors’ voices continue to reach new generations.
It remains profoundly important that the Holocaust is the only historic event that is compulsory within the national curriculum for history at key stage 3. This Government have made a firm commitment that it will remain a compulsory topic in the reformed national curriculum, including in academy schools when the reforms are implemented.
Our Department for Education continues its active support for high-quality Holocaust education through University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education and its continuous professional development programmes and through the Holocaust Educational Trust’s transformative programme for 16 to 18 year-olds—which I mentioned earlier—and the survivor testimony in teaching programme.
As many noble Lords have touched on today, we are approaching a moment in history when no Holocaust survivors will remain to share their testimony in person. This is a profound and sobering reality. The survivors who have spent their lives retelling the most painful chapters of their past so that we might build a better future will not always be with us. That is why the responsibility now falls to all of us to redouble our efforts, to preserve their stories, to speak the truth when others distort it and to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never diminished, never denied and never forgotten.
I thank noble Lords for the dignity, compassion and commitment they have brought to today’s debate. It has been a privilege to listen and take part in it. As we face a world where the comfortable world order so many of us have grown up with is disintegrating around us, it is even more important that we continue to remember these things. In this debate, we put aside our party politics for our compassion, our determination to remember and our common humanity.
I want to close with the words from the noble Lord, Lord Austin, that we must pledge ourselves not to platitudes but to action. Listening to the debate today, I think that we are all determined to do that to make sure that this is not just about memories but about creating hope for the future that this will never happen again.
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given by my honourable friend the Minister of State for Europe, North America and Overseas Territories to an Urgent Question in another place on the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill. The Statement is as follows:
“On 22 May, the Diego Garcia treaty was signed and laid before the House. As the Defence Secretary told the House on the day of signature, the treaty secures the strategically important UK-US military base on the island of Diego Garcia. The Diego Garcia military base is essential to the security of the UK and our key allies, including the United States. It is essential to keeping British people safe. It is also one of our most significant contributions to the transatlantic defence and security partnership, because it enables rapid deployment of operations and forces across the Middle East, east Africa and south Asia, helping to combat some of the most challenging threats, including threats from terrorism and hostile states. Its unique strategic location creates real military advantage across the Indo-Pacific. The facility has also helped the collection of data used to support counterterrorism operations, including against high-value Islamic State targets in recent years.
As we have made clear many times, the UK will never compromise on our national security. As we have repeatedly made clear, the agreement that we have struck is vital for protecting our national security, guaranteeing the long-term future of a vital base for both the UK and the United States, which had been under threat, as the Opposition fully understood and on which they were briefed. The deal secures the operations of the joint UK-US base on Diego Garcia for generations. It was publicly welcomed by the US, Australia and all other Five Eyes partners, as well as key international partners, including India, Japan and South Korea.
Just last week, the House spent two hours debating the Lords amendments to the Bill. The Opposition will know, of course, that programming of business in the other place is a matter for them and not for us. However, the Lords consideration of Commons amendments has been delayed because the Opposition tabled a wrecking amendment hours before the other place rose and on a day before a scheduled debate. This is irresponsible and reckless behaviour from the Official Opposition in the second House, using programming tactics to frustrate the implementation of a treaty on a critical national security matter.
I have to say that it stands in stark contrast to the reasoned and constructive criticisms, questions and suggestions from Members in other parties, and indeed from Cross-Benchers, which we have engaged with in good faith at every stage, and we will continue to do so. This is on the Opposition, because their amendment is not only unnecessary; it is toying with our national security. It is only right that we take some time to consider next steps on programming, because we remain confident that this treaty is the best way forward.
The Lords will consider the Commons amendments in due course, and that will be announced in the usual way. The Government are committed to the deal that protects the joint UK-US base on Diego Garcia. Some have sought to sabotage the process through procedural Motions and parliamentary stunts. We are instead focused on delivering this Bill to protect our national security”.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating that Answer. In repeating it, she has accused my amendment of being “wrecking”. That is simply not true, and I have it in writing from our excellent clerks that the amendment is dilatory and not fatal. It is not wrecking. I hope the noble Baroness will take the opportunity to apologise when she answers those questions.
Instead of answering many of the serious concerns raised from all opposition parties about Chagossian rights and many other serious flaws in this agreement, all we heard in the other place from the Minister was bluster and an accusation that those of us asking those questions are somehow playing parliamentary games. This is a serious issue, so let me ask a couple of serious questions to the noble Baroness.
First, in her letter, sent to me, somewhat bizarrely, at 11.30 pm on Friday—she is lucky to have such dedicated private office staff—she referred to international arrangements needing to be in place before they can ratify the Mauritius treaty. For the benefit of the House, can she confirm that what she means by that is that the US Government must formally agree to amend the 1966 treaty and that, by failing to do this before they concluded the treaty, the Prime Minister has, in effect, given Trump a veto on this deal?
Secondly, if the Government do persuade President Trump to update that treaty—which looks unlikely—can she confirm that the amended 1966 treaty would then need to go through the full CRaG process in this Parliament before they can ratify their new deal?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am glad that the noble Lord opposite has finally reread my contributions in this place from, I think, November, when I talked about an exchange of notes that would be needed with the United States in relation to the 1966 treaty. I am glad he has internalised what I said then as a fact. There would need to be an exchange of letters, and that is in hand. He asked whether that would then necessitate a CRaG process, and we will look at that when we get the detail of the letters. If it does then we will do that, but it may well not.
On whether or not the noble Lord’s amendment is a wrecking amendment, it is wrecking in its effect. As I understand it, the only wording in it that would be binding on the Government is the date, which he put as 23 March. This would breach the agreement we have with Mauritius. It may be a self-imposed deadline, but that is the deadline we have set ourselves as part of this agreement.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, with regard to the 1966 treaty, it is worth acknowledging that Article 2 is the basis upon which, under the euphemism of what the treaty calls an administrative measure, the expulsion of a population from that archipelago, and its forced depopulation, took place. That treaty is the basis on which this Government, and, I hope, every subsequent Government, will feel shame.
However, that treaty is the basis of the relationship with the United States. Therefore, it is quite extraordinary that the terms under Article 11, which stated that the treaty would expire in 2017 and then have an automatic extension for 20 years, were not chosen to be extended by the previous Conservative Government. This treaty—which we should now all depend upon for our long-term security relationship with the United States—would, under the previous Government, run out in 2037. Article 1 of the treaty, however, states that
“The Territory shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty”.
Can the Minister confirm whether, when the previous Government opened negotiations with Mauritius on the basis of ceding sovereignty, there were any diplomatic messages to our ally the United States that Article 1 needed to be reviewed and updated?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is my understanding that the situation with regard to the 1966 treaty has certainly been understood by my Government, and, I am assuming—I cannot see that it would not have been—by the previous Government. That makes this rather late-in-the-day pseudo-alarm seem rather strange—but here we are. I agree with the noble Lord about the shame we should feel at the forced displacement of the population. He is right to bring that up and I feel that way.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister suggested that this agreement was supported by our Five Eyes partners, including the United States—the Secretary of State to the US made a statement to that effect. I know from briefings we have had in the ISC the important nature of this base for us, the United States and our Five Eyes partners. They were looking for stability, which this agreement gives. In the other place today, it was suggested by some that the National Security Adviser has misled the United States in this agreement. Can the Minister tell the House that that is completely and utterly untrue?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I thank my noble friend, the chair of the ISC, for drawing that to our attention. I was not aware that that accusation had been made, but of course it is completely untrue and unfounded. I can only think that these things get bandied around in the heat of debate, but whoever said it might want to consider their words.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, when challenged about the defence and security implications of the UK-Mauritius treaty, the Government have prayed in aid the United States, Five Eyes and AUKUS. Last week, the President of the United States called the treaty an “act of great stupidity”, Five Eyes is not a military operation alliance, and that leaves only AUKUS. What recent engagement have the Government had with the Australian Department of Defence and what was the response?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We talk with our allies and partners on this constantly, and we continue to talk to our friends in the United States because they are integral to this agreement.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Minister in the other place called the House of Lords irresponsible, not just the Opposition. I find that very offensive. Many of us have spent a long time trying to get this issue debated properly. I have a simple and straightforward question and I hope I will get a straight answer. Can the 1966 treaty be rewritten unilaterally?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I do not know of any treaty that can be rewritten unilaterally. As for the words of my honourable friend Stephen Doughty, I will let him know that this House considers its role as a revising Chamber to be very serious. I know that the vast majority of Members of this House, on all sides, see that as their job. We will continue to do that to a very high standard, in the way that this House has always done.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, the Minister appears to be in a parallel universe. Can she comment on what the President of the United States, Scott Bessent and Marco Rubio said last week? Is it not perfectly obvious that they are not going to agree to amend the 1966 treaty?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I do not know about it being perfectly obvious. There were many things said last week that it is probably best we do not treat as emblematic or representative of the nature of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. We continue to have detailed conversations about this particular treaty and many other issues, as we can all remember talking about recently.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, we are told by the media that four-star generals and admirals have written to President Trump saying:
“A base held under lease, subject to international arbitration, political pressure, or third party treaty obligations, is inherently less secure than one held under sovereign authority”.
Are they wrong?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I do not think they are wrong. The problem, however, is that that option was unlikely to be available to us indefinitely. We needed to find a solution that was legally secure and that could not be challenged. Had we waited, as noble Lords opposite have encouraged the Government to do, for a binding judgment, then what kind of deal would we have been able to seek? The price was only ever going to go up. It was much better to seek a solution before a binding judgment could be reached, following the advisory opinion. I am assuming it is for James Cleverly, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and others to explain what on earth they were doing negotiating, on repeat, for the same deal that we achieved. Why were they doing that if they had no intention of ever securing the base?
Chinese Embassy
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s decision to approve planning permission for a new Chinese embassy at the Royal Mint Court site is profoundly troubling. We should be clear about the nature of the regime with which we are dealing. This is a state that our own security services have warned is actively seeking to undermine our democracy, has placed bounties on the heads of Hong Kong democracy campaigners living here in the United Kingdom, has spied directly on Members of Parliament, supports Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and systematically infiltrates our universities and businesses to acquire, and often steal, sensitive intellectual property.
Yet the Government’s response to this mounting threat has been characterised by confusion, equivocation and weakness. Ministers have shrunk from calling China what it is: a national security threat. They show a singular lack of transparency by refusing to publish their China audit. They have failed to place China in the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme and properly support the prosecution of two men accused of spying on MPs in the other place. Now, astonishingly, they have waved through the creation of a Chinese super-embassy in the heart of our capital.
On the eve of the Prime Minister’s visit, one thing remains strikingly absent: any clarity whatsoever about this Government’s approach to China. From these Benches, we have been clear about what a serious and responsible policy on China must look like. It requires relentless scrutiny of the national security threat China poses and firmness in the defence of sovereignty. It requires the courage to call out, clearly, plainly and without equivocation, the systematic human rights abuses inflicted on millions of people in China and across its sphere of influence.
We are equally clear-eyed about the realities of the global economy. China is the world’s second-largest economy, and engagement is unavoidable. But engagement must never mean acquiescence, pragmatism cannot become passivity and economic interaction must be matched by strategic resilience, moral clarity and a willingness to confront wrongdoing wherever it occurs. This Government have failed that test. What they have offered is not balance but capitulation. Their failure of clarity, resolve and principle leaves this country weaker, not stronger, on the world stage.
On the question of the embassy, let us be clear about what has just been approved. This will be the largest embassy in Europe, not for one of our closest allies but for a state that spies on us, represses people on our soil and backs an aggressor waging war on our allies in Ukraine. It will be an embassy so vast that it includes a 208-room underground complex, with a basement running just metres from cables carrying some of the most sensitive financial data in the world and linking Canary Wharf and the City of London. The question for the Minister is simply: what is the purpose of such a large embassy? What is it for? Why have the Government approved such a facility for a country described by our intelligence agencies as a national security threat? Why does the Chinese embassy need to be on such a scale?
Perhaps most alarming of all is the fact that the Secretary of State who approved this development has admitted that he did so without seeing the unredacted plans. How can a Government that claim to put national security first possibly maintain that the risks were properly assessed when the decision was taken on the basis of redacted documents? I ask the Minister directly: how is that compatible with any serious conception of responsible national security? It has been reported, furthermore, that the Chinese authorities could legally refuse access to UK inspectors during or after construction. If that is true, we will not know what is being built beneath our feet. Does the Minister dispute these reports, and has China said that it will allow access?
This decision cannot be divorced from the wider pattern of behaviour we are witnessing. China is spying on us. It is subverting our democracy by attacking our democratic institutions, the Government and the custodians of our electoral system. It is engaging in transnational repression on British soil, intimidating dissidents, targeting Hong Kongers who have sought refuge here and attempting to coerce British citizens themselves. The Secretary of State’s permission letter made out that, so long as China undertook
“lawful embassy use of the site”,
everything would be fine. I ask the Minister: is it lawful to assault Hong Kong activists on our streets? Is it lawful to operate so-called “police stations” on British soil? Is it lawful to place bounties on the heads of people living under the protection of UK law? Is it lawful to pressure neighbours of Hong Kongers to lure them into embassies so that those bounties can be collected? The answer to every one of those questions is no, and yet we are now proposing dramatically to expand China’s diplomatic footprint here, adding hundreds of additional staff, despite clear evidence that, wherever China expands its embassy presence, transnational repression increases. Does the Minister seriously dispute that pattern?
The truth is simple: China poses a security threat on multiple fronts. That means that, yes, we need to engage, but with our eyes wide open. We must remain vigilant and call out national security threats. It is the first job of government. Giving China exactly what it wants is a damaging capitulation. The Prime Minister might benefit from easier small talk during his imminent visit to China, but it is the British people who will pay the price and the impact of this decision will be felt for years to come. This House should be deeply ashamed that such a decision has been allowed to stand, and the Government should think again, before they discover, too late, that the risks they waved through so casually are risks that the country will be left to bear.
In closing, I emphasise that all this plays into a wider narrative of neglect and disregard for our national security. At the same time the Government are greenlighting the Chinese Government to build their mega-embassy, they are also paying millions of pounds to surrender the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which is itself in a long-standing friendship with China and has committed to supporting China’s core interests and major concerns so as to further deepen their mutual strategic partnership. As my noble friend Lord Callanan and other noble Lords have tirelessly pointed out, it is not our allies who welcome the Chagos deal but those who seek to harm us. It is Russia and China who have been fully supportive of the UK giving up its sovereignty of a key strategic asset.
I briefly touch on the Hillsborough Bill, on which the Government have been forced into yet another unedifying U-turn. When we debated this matter last week, the Minister was unable to answer the questions on national security that I raised, and this episode only reinforces the wider concern that the Government do not grasp what national security means in practice and instead treat it as something that can be traded away or manipulated for political convenience. The Government are fond of reminding the House that the first duty of any Government is the defence of national security. On that test, I regret to say, they have fallen at the first hurdle.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, I was reminded that it was only in 2015 that the then Chancellor George Osborne declared the creation of a “golden decade”. I wonder how long it lasted.
At the very least, this decision will relocate China’s comprehensive security and surveillance efforts on to one huge 21st-century site. We believe it will amplify the threat and potentially endanger the security of vital financial data. It seems a clear indication of political weakness that the Government have taken this decision in the hope of furthering our relationship with China. This concession, along with issues such as the Government’s consistent failure to place China in the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme and their total failure to invoke sufficient legal protection against transnational repression of Hong Kongers, reinforced this message of weakness.
The Statement talks about the Government’s desire for a relationship with China and it says that the Government do not trade security for economic access. I agree, because given the scale of the trade deficit we have with China, we are actually increasing our security risks while continuing to give China virtually unfettered economic access. It is a win-win situation for China. There seems very little on the plus side of this relationship for us, except perhaps allowing Chinese Government-controlled firms to take large financial stakes in our critical national infrastructure.
Having made this announcement, what, if anything, does the Prime Minister hope to bring back from his visit? It is a transactional world. If the Prime Minister was to negotiate the freedom of Jimmy Lai, secure the removal of the bounties from the heads of Hong Kongers and close the university-based Chinese police operations then perhaps the extra risk that our security services describe flowing from this super-embassy might be worth taking. However, if all he gets is a handshake with President Xi, then he will have conceded—we will have conceded—a lot for absolutely nothing.
I will say a final word on the scale of this embassy. The plans for the super-embassy include the provision of 232 flats. I believe there are currently 146 embassy employees, which means that there will be accommodation for nearly 90 extra people—an expansion of at least 60% in the number of embassy staff. So what realistically does the Minister expect all those extra people to be doing?
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their points and questions on this matter, which rightly concerns us all.
To reiterate, this was a quasi-judicial decision taken independently by the Secretary of State for Housing. I also remind noble Lords of the premise of the Statement made by the Security Minister in the other place, which focused on the national security considerations of China’s proposal to build a new embassy at the Royal Mint Court. This concludes a process that began in 2018, when the then Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson—who I believe may have been a Conservative—gave formal diplomatic consent for China to use the Royal Mint site for its new embassy, subject to planning permission, and welcomed it as China’s largest overseas investment. I think we have seen how much has changed in a few short years on the Opposition Benches. Nevertheless, I am aware of the significant interest that this issue has provoked in your Lordships’ House, and as such I am grateful for the opportunity to provide an assurance of the work that the Government have undertaken to ensure that UK national security is protected.
I am very fond of the noble Baroness, but her comments about the Government’s prioritisation of national security were outrageous. National security is our number one priority. The Home Office and the Foreign Office both provided views during the planning process on potential security issues around the build and confirmed in writing when these were resolved. We have engaged with key allies throughout, and our security and intelligence agencies have been integral to the process. As the director of GCHQ and the director-general of MI5 wrote in their letter,
“as with any foreign embassy on UK soil, it is not realistic to expect to be able wholly to eliminate each and every potential risk … However, the collective work across UK intelligence agencies and HMG departments to formulate a package of national security mitigations for the site has been, in our view, expert, professional and proportionate”.
They also judged that
“the package of mitigations deals acceptably with a wide range of sensitive national security issues, including cabling”.
Indeed, they noted that there were “clear security advantages” from consolidating China’s diplomatic estates in London.
I am also grateful for the close consideration and scrutiny that my noble friend Lord Beamish and the Intelligence and Security Committee have given this matter. His committee concluded:
“On the basis of the evidence we have received, and having carefully reviewed the nuanced national security considerations, the Committee has concluded that, taken as a whole, the national security concerns that arise can be satisfactorily mitigated”.
National security concerns that have been raised in media reports again in recent days are not new to the Government or the intelligence community, and an extensive range of measures has been developed to protect national security. We have acted to increase the resilience of cables in the area through an extensive series of measures to protect sensitive data. The Government have seen unredacted plans for the embassy and have agreed with China that the publicly accessible forecourt on the embassy grounds will not have diplomatic immunity, thereby managing the risk to the public. Based on all that and our extensive work on this matter, we are content that any risks are being appropriately managed.
On our approach to China, I note that it is a fundamental and normal part of international relations that countries agree to establish embassies in each other’s capitals. The Government are engaging with China confidently and pragmatically, recognising the complexity of the world as it is and challenging China where we need to. Of course, we recognise that China poses a series of threats to UK national security, from cyber attacks, foreign interference and espionage targeting our diplomatic institutions, to transnational repression of Hong Kongers and China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Government have responded and will continue to respond to these challenges.
However, taking a robust approach to our national security also includes engaging with China. Indeed, it is only through engagement that we can directly challenge China on its malicious activity. By taking tough steps to keep us secure, we enable ourselves to co-operate in other areas, including in pursuit of safe economic opportunities that are in the UK’s national interest and in areas such as organised immigration crime, narcotics trafficking and serious organised crime. That is what allies do and what we are doing: delivering for the public, putting more money in their pockets and keeping them safe through hard-headed, risk-based engagement with the world’s most consequential power.
I would like to clarify some specific points raised by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. The noble Baroness asked what this is for. She knows what this is for: as a result of a quasi-judicial process and a planning application, this is the consolidation of seven different sites into one. There are significant security benefits that come from that.
On the planning and building processes, I reiterate that this is a British planning application that has gone through a quasi-judicial process. The normal building inspections will apply as the building is developed.
As I said, national security is the first responsibility of any Government, and especially this Government. Any other suggestion is frankly appalling.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, I say that we will see the results of the PM’s visit when he returns and I look forward to discussing it in your Lordships’ House at that point.
On FIRS, we are looking carefully at whether other countries should be added to the enhanced tier. Any decision will be brought before Parliament in the usual way. Countries are considered separately for specification, and decisions are made on the evidence. The Government have a range of capabilities to manage and mitigate threats emanating from foreign states. FIRS is one of many tools that we use.
I will touch on the number of diplomats who will be present at the embassy. Under the Vienna convention, having an embassy is not a reward for like-minded partners but a necessity for any country with which we have diplomatic relations. On the issue of pragmatism, I say that we are talking about a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the second-largest economy in the world and our third-largest trading partner, so a level of diplomatic relations would be wise. It is also a fundamental and normal part of international relations that countries mutually consent to other nations having embassy premises. However, as the Vienna convention states, the UK has control over the number of diplomats in the UK on diplomatic relations. Any diplomatic position at the Chinese embassy must be approved on a case-by-case basis by the FCDO’s protocol department. The FCDO will work with allies on any additional extensions of that. As I have said, the Government have seen the unredacted plans. It is based on this and our extensive work on this topic that I am content that any risks are being appropriately managed.
The noble Lord raised a very important point about transnational repression. Noble Lords may be aware that I ran Index on Censorship until the general election and spent a great deal of time campaigning on these specific issues. The Government condemn the Hong Kong police’s efforts to coerce, intimidate, harass and harm those living in the UK and overseas; these acts of repression will never be tolerated in this country. We have raised these concerns directly with Chinese authorities, reaffirming that the extraterritorial application of Hong Kong’s national security law is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in the UK. The safety and security of Hong Kongers in the UK, including those on the British National Overseas visa, is of the utmost importance. The UK will always stand up for the rights of the people of Hong Kong. This is demonstrated through the bespoke immigration route for BNO status holders and their eligible family members.
The UK’s response to tackling state-directed threats is world leading. Appropriate tools and system-wide safeguards are in place to robustly counter transnational aggression. Following the Defending Democracy Taskforce’s TNR review, we have strengthened our response by implementing the National Security Act 2023, which provides a comprehensive suite of powers to counter the threat of TNR. We have rolled out training across 45 territorial police forces, including the upskilling of 999 call handlers to improve front-line identification of and responses to state-directed threats. We have published practical guidance on GOV.UK for individuals who believe they may be at risk, with advice to help them protect themselves physically and online. We have deployed tailored support and security assistance for individual victims, where we have become aware of them, that are proportionate to the threat and varied in scope and approach.
This Government will always welcome the knowledge and experience of noble Lords and Baronesses in your Lordships’ House, particularly when they pertain to matters of national security. So let me again reassure your Lordships that upholding national security is the first duty of government and we will continue to take all measures necessary to disrupt these threats. Based on the extensive work on this topic, the Government are content that any risks to the UK’s national security are being appropriately managed.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement. She made a great deal in her remarks of the quasi-judicial process that has been used. No reference, though, has been made to the Royal Mint Court Residents Association’s decision to open a judicial case challenging the mega-embassy on the Royal Mint site. Has the Minister considered imposing a moratorium while that legal process continues?
She also made a great deal about transnational repression, and I salute the work that she has done in a previous incarnation on that important issue. I thank the Government for providing time on 26 February for a full-scale debate in your Lordships’ House on the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights on transnational repression. May I appeal to the noble Baroness to make available a copy of that report and a copy of the committee’s report on the use of slave labour in our supply chains, which touches on a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, about how we cannot compete with a country that uses slave labour? Will she ensure that those two reports are in the hands of the Prime Minister before he travels to Beijing?
I have two questions for the noble Baroness. It has been claimed publicly by Richard Holmes of the i paper and Caroline Wheeler of the Sunday Times that, during 2025, while both journalists were working to uncover the risks associated with the sensitive cabling below the mega-CCP embassy, government media officials sought to discredit both journalists and denied that there were any such cables. Is it true that government officials denied the presence of sensitive cables? Is it true that these two good journalists were smeared by officials, who well knew that they were working on a true story, which the Government have themselves now admitted? If the noble Baroness does not have the answers to those questions immediately, I would be grateful if she would agree to write to me.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I think I am agreeing to write to him. I genuinely do not recognise, nor have I been aware of, that report regarding the journalists. I cannot comment on specific mitigations or on some of the issues. The noble Lord will have heard, both during my comments and those of the Security Minister, that we have discussed the cables. So I would find that concerning, but I will write to the noble Lord.
With regard to getting things into the hands of the Prime Minister, I will give it a go, but I assure the noble Lord that I will get the reports into the hands of someone in No. 10, in the hope that they will get to him before he leaves.
On the potential judicial review, the noble Lord will be aware that the Government are completely adamant that our actions are lawful and, on that basis, we will continue to proceed with the appropriate processes.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend, in her answer, referred to the ISC. The ISC has looked at this very closely. We were given access to all the confidential and sensitive documentation, and we took evidence from our security services and Ministers; I thank them for that. We came to the conclusion that Ministers, in making their security assessment, had been given all the information available, and also that the mitigations that could have been put in place on some of the issues that did concern the embassy were satisfactory and could be put in place.
In saying that, in 2023, we published our China report, in which we were very clear about the threat that China poses to the UK in terms of security. It also, as was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, laid out the golden era that opened up many aspects of our society, business and academia to the Chinese state under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. Does my noble friend agree that this Government will take a very strong and robust approach to our national security when it comes to China, while recognising, as she said, that China is one of our main economic trading partners, but what they will not do is put that in the place of our security, which the last Government did?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for the work that he and his committee have done, both in terms of ensuring appropriate scrutiny of the Government and more broadly. He raises a really important point, which I should have done earlier on. As ever, we need to thank the intelligence services, which work every day to keep us safe. One of the things that is so important in this space is that MI5 has 100 years of experience in keeping us safe and managing risk. It is at the forefront of our national security, especially in this space, and we are grateful for it.
My noble friend is absolutely right that there is a clear threat posed by China. We fully recognise that China poses a series of threats to UK national security, from cyber security attacks and foreign interference and espionage targeting our democratic institutions to transnational repression of dissidents in the UK. That is why, since we came into government, we have done the following: we have launched the new cross-government state threats unit; we have done the training models, as I spoke about earlier; we have invested £600 million in our intelligence services; we have strengthened support for political parties in the Elections Bill; we have provided £170 million for a new sovereign encrypted technology and £130 million for integrated security funds, and we have removed surveillance equipment that would be subject to the National Security Law companies. We are acting because there is nothing more important than national security. That is the first responsibility of this Government and that is what we are acting upon.
Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)
My Lords, in 2015, if I recall, we were in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and I think that Nick Clegg clearly agreed with George Osborne’s position on China. But I did agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fox, when he highlighted the numbers of staff who will be allocated to this embassy. I wonder whether there is ever a limit on the number of people who can come here when an embassy is either created or expanded.
I turn to the point. The reality is that the regime in China is up to its neck in committing heinous crimes against its own citizens. It is up to its neck in supporting Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. It is up to its neck in the attacks that took place in Israel, and now in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where thousands of unarmed civilians are being slaughtered as we speak by the Ayatollah and the IRGC. Cyber attacks here in the UK are on the rise and are becoming much more frequent. So how can the Minister and this Government be so naive as to justify permitting the approval of this site?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I would like to clarify a couple of points. First, unless I missed something, the coalition ended in 2015. It was 2010 to 2015, so that was a matter for the noble Baroness’s party, not for the Liberal Democrats at that point. Secondly, on the number of diplomats, as I said earlier, that is subject to the Vienna convention. The Protocol Minister decides on a case-by-case basis on any additional applications for diplomats.
I have been very clear on the range of threats that China poses, but there are 370,000 British jobs that are dependent on our relationship with China. We need to have a level of pragmatism and a sensible relationship with the second-largest economy in the world and our third-largest trading partner. We just need to remember what we are doing and why we are doing it. The idea that this Government or any British Government are naive in their approach to foreign policy is frankly insulting.
On the specific matter that the noble Baroness raised about our relationship with China and where they have sat, the Prime Minister said, when he met President Xi at the G20 in 2024, that he also wanted to engage honestly and frankly in those areas where we have different perspectives, including on Hong Kong, human rights and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
We have genuine debate, we make our position clear, as we have on the national security law and on a range of issues, including Jimmy Lai’s status and the ongoing trials. You can have those conversations with allies only if you talk to them. While the world is as volatile as it is, I suggest that more words rather than fewer are important, which requires more people to have those conversations
Baroness Alexander of Cleveden (Lab)
My Lords, the events of last week and this week demonstrate to us the difficulties of managing superpowers and the challenges they present, as well as the opportunities. So, while the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, is right to suggest that China presents areas where we must oppose, there must also be areas where we seek to co-operate when we can. Does my noble friend the Minister recognise the need for expert advice to guide embassy location decisions, and is that the way to avoid the sort of ricocheting we have seen from the golden age that has already been referenced tonight to the ice age that we have also been presented with?
Can my noble friend the Minister also just confirm that the heads of MI5 and GCHQ stated that
“this consolidation should bring clear security advantages”?
Did she have the opportunity, exactly a week ago today, to hear this point reinforced by the director-general of MI5, speaking in this place, when he reiterated and dwelled on the fact that the greater threats surrounding espionage come not from within an embassy building but often from activities beyond an embassy that dominate much of the work of our security agencies? Finally, does my noble friend agree that, as we go forward on the question of embassy locations, we should be led by the UK’s most senior intelligence officers in our decision-making?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her questions. One thing that is really clear, given that this Statement is about our national security, is about being led by our national security experts, who, as she rightly said, have been clear in their opinions about the mitigations that are required but also about the nature of this. With regard to the location of embassies, this is a piece of land that was bought in 2018 and was granted the diplomatic permission to move forward as an embassy, subject to planning permission, under the last Government—or, in fact, as I said, under Boris Johnson. But what is clear is that a quasi-judicial process has since followed. There is a 240-page document which outlines why that decision was made and how it was made, and it is all available to all Members of your Lordships’ House online. But she is absolutely right: my honourable friend the Security Minister in the other place and the directors-general of MI5 and GCHQ, have all made it clear that there are also clear security benefits to the amalgamation of seven sites into one.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the Minister acknowledged earlier the concern among Chinese dissidents in the UK about the embassy. She may have heard the comments from Chloe Cheung, a British resident and former Hong Konger—a young woman who has a bounty on her head from China. She has said she feels betrayed by the agreement to this embassy: it looks like a Chinese castle, and it sends a message about overweening Chinese power. Can the Minister sympathise with and understand the fear felt by those dissidents—and more widely than just those who are explicitly identified as dissidents?
I note that the Statement refers to a closed meeting with vice-chancellors that is going to be held next month. We of course have huge numbers of Hong Kong and Chinese students at British universities, and we have had experience of them being intimidated and subject to physical violence. What can the Government do to ensure that universities can protect those students? If we think about a Chinese student who has always followed the line and come here and just starts to ask some questions, what are we going to do to make sure that that student is safe here in the UK?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, I have met many Chinese dissidents who live in the UK and did significant work with them in my former iteration. It is really important that we make sure that their voices are heard and that on British soil they have the protections afforded to everybody here.
On academic interference, any attempt by a foreign state to intimidate and coerce universities to limit free speech and academic freedoms in the UK will not be tolerated. The new Office for Students’ guidance makes it explicitly clear that universities should not tolerate attempts by foreign states to suppress academic freedom.
With regard to the closed meeting with the Security Minister, which will be held shortly, there is a reason why that meeting is closed: to make sure that the advice received by people is for them as regards how they manage and mitigate their risks. It would be inappropriate for me to go further on that.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, I would be grateful if the noble Baroness, if she does not have the figures available right now, could send me a letter and put it in the Library as to how many diplomats from the People’s Republic of China are accredited to the United Kingdom and how many United Kingdom diplomats are accredited to the People’s Republic of China. It would be very interesting to see what the figures are. She mentioned a quasi-judicial process. I suspect that the head of the planning department in Beijing would have very little say in whether we built a super-embassy there. It would be dealt with by other people. Only we could come up with that kind of process.
As regards Hong Kong, since the crackdown started, we have done virtually nothing and, in my opinion, we are going to do virtually nothing, because that is what we do well. I fear that the universities have laid themselves wide open to interference and pressure—money talks. The Minister has just pointed out that we have to be pragmatic because 370,000 jobs are at stake with regard to Chinese companies. But as long as we have a trade deficit of the scale that we have, and as long as we cannot invest in China under the same terms as the Chinese can invest here, that is the major letdown in the security of our country, because we are making ourselves, in effect, at their disposal. Will the Minister bear those points in mind and, if she will be kind enough, make the figures available to the House?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I find it very wise always to listen to the noble Lord and to bear his comments in mind. On the number of diplomats, I will have to write to the noble Lord as I do not have the figures to hand. As my noble friend who is the Minister for MHCLG in your Lordships’ House is here, I will leave her to ponder the noble Lord’s suggestions about revisions to the planning regime.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, I certainly support the noble Baroness our Front-Bench spokesperson and the noble Lord the Lib Dem spokesman. This is a regrettable decision but we now have to move on. I am being pragmatic; I accept that it is going to happen, and we have to make the best of it. China wanted this embassy very badly, the Chinese will be delighted at this decision, and it will undoubtedly create a lot of good will. Just to build on what the Minister said about trade and investment, when the Prime Minister comes back from China, can we have a full audit of all the deals that have been agreed and the investment decisions that have been discussed, so that we can get a very clear picture of exactly how that bilateral trade relationship will move forward?
I will ask the Minister another question. I have visited getting on for 60 UK missions abroad, and one thing that has struck me is that we have always been very strong at employing locally engaged staff. Normally, it is a ratio of probably 2.5:1 or maybe even 3:1. My impression of China is that it employs very few locally engaged staff. We heard about the increase in accommodation that is going to be required in the new embassy. Can the Minister say something about the representations that she and the Government are going to make to the Chinese about employing more local British people in what is going to be a huge operation and a massive project?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, there are several things to unpack there. First, I highlight the fact that while the Prime Minister is going tomorrow, the UK has been an outlier since 2018 in terms of our engagement with China. President Trump met President Xi in October and will visit China in the spring. Since 2018, President Macron has visited China three times, German leaders have visited four times, and Chancellor Merz is soon to travel to Beijing. Prime Minister Albanese went in July last year and Prime Minister Carney was there this month. There has not been a prime ministerial-level visit to China—the second-largest economy—since 2018, when the noble Baroness, Lady May, travelled when she was Prime Minister. There is a challenge here about how we chose going from one extreme to the other: a golden age to a golden ice age.
With regards to the trade agreements that will come out of the Prime Minister’s imminent visit to China, noble Lords will have the opportunity to discuss that in due course. What I would say is that this Prime Minister is going to China to deliver for the UK, and I look forward to discussing the details of what comes from that meeting in your Lordships’ House. With regards to the employment of local British people, I think that everyone should always want to employ local British people, but I will leave it for my colleagues in the relevant department to make that case.
Water White Paper
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, we welcome the progress made by the Government on the recommendations of the Independent Water Commission. In particular, we welcome the proposed integrated regulator to replace Ofwat and combine functions of the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Drinking Water Inspectorate.
However, I would first like to respond to some of the criticism levelled by the Minister at the Conservative record on the water system. In 2010, the previous Labour Government left us in a position where only 7% of storm outflows were monitored; now it is 100%. The Water (Special Measures) Act last year also took on Conservative regulatory proposals, which we welcomed. We also established the water restoration fund to ensure that the money received from fines imposed on water companies would be ring-fenced to pay for water restoration efforts. Can the Minister therefore recommit to the water restoration fund and, if not, explain how the money received is being spent?
We on these Benches are supportive of improving water security and streamlining the regulatory framework. We welcome the White Paper’s commitment to reform the 2013 specified infrastructure project regulations, as suggested previously by my noble friend Lady Coffey during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act.
With regard to the new regulator, we have pushed the Government to ensure it will be accountable to the Secretary of State and, by extension, to Parliament. Can the Minister outline exactly how ministerial oversight of the new regulator will function in practice? Will the new regulator take responsibility for the initial nutrient neutrality environment development plans debated at length in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill’s passage and the sites acquired currently in the remit of Natural England? How will that impact the intention to use that learning experience and the intention to extend these EDPs to species and features that will presumably still come under Natural England?
We welcome the longer-term planning horizons but ask that the funding strategies are made transparent. In addition, will the new regulator be established in time to oversee the next price review scheduled for 2029?
We also propose leverage limits on water companies to avoid some of the mistakes made in the past with debt levels. The White Paper says the new regulator will work with companies to ensure that they do not accumulate unmanageable levels of debt. Should the Government not go further and put up stronger guardrails to prevent financial risk becoming such a major issue for the industry in future, as we proposed in the Water (Special Measures) Act?
Moreover, the White Paper promises new customer panels. Can the Minister explain how many panels will be created and what the estimated cost will be? If the Government are serious about wanting to streamline, we cannot end up with yet more arm’s-length bodies than before.
We are also concerned about the pace and apparent lack of urgency from the Government. Not only was the White Paper expected to have been published last year, but it has not accompanied by a full transition plan. When can we expect this, and when can we expect the water reform Bill to be brought before Parliament?
Farmers need financial support and clear advice and guidance to make their contributions to cleaning up our water. Simply relying on increased regulation and environmental inspections to force compliance will not work with an industry that is both critical to our national security and struggling financially, with low grain prices, high costs and destabilising government measures around inheritance tax and SFIs, in particular. Enforcing these regulations on our farmers in the way described in the White Paper will place them at even more of a competitive disadvantage versus those overseas, as they will be forced to comply with higher environmental and welfare standards and costs.
We understand the department is considering extending environmental permitting to cattle farming, which would add further administration and financial burdens on businesses. As has been flagged by my noble friend in other debates, farmers have already raised concerns that they might not be able to afford the changes necessary to remain compliant. In terms of supporting farmers to adapt to new regulations, the Government have promised to increase the number of Environment Agency inspections to 6,000 by 2029, but will they consider introducing new financial incentives to offer a carrot rather than simply a stick?
We, of course, support water reform and wish it was progressing more quickly, but it also must be coherent and considerate towards the agricultural businesses on which our food security relies. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement repeat this evening. Some proposals in this White paper are indeed most welcome, including the scrapping of Ofwat—something we have long called for—but it falls short of the fundamental reforms water customers are so desperately in need of. True reform demands root-and-branch change within the water companies themselves, because until profit is no longer their driving force, shareholder payouts will continue to be prioritised over investment and the urgent need to end the scandal of sewage in our rivers and seas. We therefore advocate a move towards mutuality, not the costly nationalisation that others propose but a shift to public benefit companies, a model that has proved so successful elsewhere, particularly in the United States.
I have a few questions. How can the Government claim there will be nowhere to hide when the White Paper rules out structural reform, including changes to ownership and profit extraction? What action is being taken to stop water companies evading the bonus ban, given evidence to the Public Accounts Committee only recently that they have reclassified such payments as “retention incentives”, even in the past year?
If this is truly the biggest overhaul since privatisation, why does it fail to confront the broken ownership model which has enabled pollution, underinvestment and profiteering for decades? Did the Government consider alternative models, such as mutuality, and, if not, why not at this stage, when the current funding system so clearly prioritises shareholders over customers, in turn using huge debts to fund dividends?
What guarantees can Ministers give that a new regulator, potentially more than a year from being operational, will be able to deliver immediate improvements, rather than the risk of extended regulatory failure? What assessment has been made of the cumulative impact of historic underinvestment and excessive dividends in today’s water bills, and how will this White Paper address that inequity? How will the Government work with farmers to tackle agricultural pollution in genuine partnership with them, rather than the slight blame culture that currently exists? Will Ministers commit to ending the sewage cover-up by requiring full publication of sewage volume data, not just the spill duration, as is the current system and the one we had under the last Government? Given record sewage dumping and rising bills, what measurable standards will define this White Paper as a success if river and coastal water quality, for instance, continues to decline?
Finally, and no great surprise from me, when will we see the necessary legislation on our precious chalk streams, which have a very welcome inclusion in this White Paper but which were promised urgent action when we were discussing the Planning and Infrastructure Bill? There continues to be a danger that it will be too late for the chalk streams.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their interest and their questions on the water White Paper, which we published and laid in Parliament on 20 January. The White Paper outlines how we will work together with water companies, investors, communities and the environment to transform our water system for good, because we need to ensure a sustainable water system for future generations.
The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, asked why it had taken so long and when we were going to see change. As noble Lords know, we have already taken action. We brought in the Water (Special Measures) Act and took action to ring-fence water company investment. The transition plan will be published later this year, which will provide a road map for implementing the changes. We will bring forward a new water reform Bill during this Parliament, alongside which we will make progress with reforms that do not require primary legislation. That will include a shift to a supervisory approach to regulation, with dedicated teams with an understanding of how each company operates. There will be the piloting of regional planning approaches across the country. The water reform Bill will be a priority for the department going forward.
The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, mentioned the extension of environmental permitting to cattle. As the White Paper sets out, we are considering extending environmental permitting beyond pig and poultry to cattle, because cattle are a significant source of water pollution. However, we are working closely with the NFU and others, because we need to take a balanced approach to that issue.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, mentioned Ofwat and regulation. We have already done something on this, with the Water (Special Measures) Act, which shifted the burden of proof from the regulators to the water companies in order to enable automatic fines. The new regulator that will be set up will require us to change legislation. We feel it is really important to make sure that we get this right. The existing regulators will in the interim retain the powers they have until we have the new regulator in place.
The Environment Agency is carrying out record levels of funding and inspections, and is currently on track to deliver 10,000 inspections in the year 2025-26. We are going to issue interim strategic policy statements to the regulator as part of the transition plan, which will provide legally binding instructions on what the regulator’s priorities should be and how they should act during the transition period. We will reform the approach to the strategic policy statements and issue wider strategic guidance to provide long-term direction to the entire water system, alongside specific, measurable directions to the new water regulator.
The noble Earl asked when we are going to make appointments to the regulator and when it will be set up. We intend to make formal appointments to the board of the new water regulator at the earliest opportunity. We believe that providing early leadership will help the new regulator begin to develop its internal strategy, to build a new culture, which is very important, and to deliver the industry-wide approach from the start. As I said, during that transition the existing regulators will retain their full powers and responsibilities. We are considering the funding arrangements that will be needed. The new regulator will have the power to deliver its responsibilities in full and will balance the interests of customers, investors and the environment.
The noble Earl asked about accountability. Clear oversight and accountability will be an important design principle of the new regulator, and we anticipate that the regulator will be accountable to Ministers, and by extension to Parliament, in the way that it carries out its functions. We will consider how parliamentary accountability is handled through the legislation, any sponsorship arrangements and the framework agreement. We recognise the importance of appropriate independence, particularly for economic regulation, in supporting the credibility of the new regime and investor confidence, so we will ensure that there are mechanisms in place, including within the legislation itself, to protect regulatory independence. We will look at other relevant public bodies as we draw that up.
The noble Earl asked specifically about the water restoration fund. We are doubling our funding for catchment partnerships in order to bring together farmers and stakeholders to tackle agricultural problems. I am not in a position yet to say whether we will be continuing with the water restoration fund.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked about bonuses, which I think everyone feels strongly about, particularly in the light of what has been happening recently with South East Water. We introduced criminality for water bosses who cover up illegal sewage spills and the power to ban unfair bonuses. Some £4 million in bonuses for 10 water bosses was blocked last summer. We absolutely expect water companies to follow both the letter and the spirit of the law, and Ofwat is considering what further action can be taken to ensure that companies are held to account. The water White Paper goes further in order to ensure that water companies have nowhere to hide on poor performance. That includes a new supervisory scheme, which will ensure that the regulator has a stronger grip on exactly what is going on in each company.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked about mutuality and models of ownership. Mutual or co-operative ownership is not something that we are opposed to in principle. The White Paper says that, if a company’s owners propose changes to the ownership model, the new regulator will assess any proposals carefully against transparent criteria. But to take a company into mutual or co-operative ownership, either the current owners would need to propose this or the company would need to be bought first. We would therefore need to think carefully about how that transition would actually take place. We are not opposed to it in principle, but any mandatory changes in ownership would be costly and complicated, and would not deliver the material benefit. That is why it is important that it is the company’s owners who are proposing any such changes.
The noble Baroness also asked how the White Paper was addressing pollution; we talked about a number of issues there. As we have set out in the White Paper, there are several measures that we are taking to tackle pollution. Importantly, we are looking to strengthen collaboration in planning at catchment and regional level. This will help to identify lower-cost, higher-impact solutions to tackle pollution and include opportunities for farmers—which the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, was asking about—water companies and other stakeholders to work in partnership to ensure that the action taken is effective. We are also developing a new and strengthened approach to monitoring, because we do not want companies marking their own homework, as they have been doing for years. We are looking at how we can strengthen that.
We are shifting the emphasis towards tackling the root causes of sewage pollution by reducing the volume of rainwater and pollutants that enter the sewerage system in the first place and freeing up sewerage capacity for development and growth. I will give some examples of how we are doing that. We are building on the ban on wet wipes, which contain plastic, to stop sewers from getting clogged up so much. We have introduced a national standard for sustainable drainage systems which will help to improve drainage quality. That will be a requirement for all new developments and will have drainage implications beyond that through the National Planning Policy Framework. We are also committed to ensuring that funding looks at how to improve nature and the environment more broadly. This was mentioned when we talked about the PIB.
Overall, we need to improve transparency and ensure that the public can see what is happening in their local waters. That is important if we are to get back consumer confidence and boost protection for customers. We want people to see that this is serious action that we are taking to improve the water systems.
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, I very much welcome the Statement and the White Paper, as the Minister knows, and I am particularly pleased that the Statement refers in its opening paragraph to
“putting consumers and the environment first”.
We had a discussion in this House at the time of the Water (Special Measures) Bill on whether the environment was given a voice equal to that of consumers. I was always in favour of giving more voice to the environment, so I am pleased that the Secretary of State has recognised that.
I have mentioned many times in your Lordships’ House the necessity of a single, strong regulator, and I welcome this. That involves abolishing Ofwat and taking over parts of the work of the Environment Agency and other regulators. We must recognise that Ofwat over many years allowed the balance sheets of the water companies to be transformed by private equity-increased leverage. That was agreed by Ofwat without any regard to the consequences for the environment. Despite the Environment Agency always claiming that it does not have enough resources, it has considerable resources. The problem is that it never gave sufficient priority to controlling pollution in rivers and on beaches.
I have some questions for the Minister. Of course, we are all anxious to see all this put into effect. The White Paper was delayed. The Minister said that there should be some guidance later this year. I hope that there will be a new water Bill in the next Session of Parliament. Can she confirm that? Fundamentally, when can we expect to see the new regulator in operation? That is what we are all looking forward to and what the public now expect.
The Whip is making a face at me, but I think that I am allowed to ask a second question. Will the new regulator have sufficient budget to fulfil its very considerable responsibilities? We all want to see a favourable outcome to this policy in development.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I thank the noble Duke for his broad support for the White Paper. He has been a champion of improving the situation with our water systems.
He asked about the new regulator. We intend to make formal appointments to the board of the new water regulator at the earliest opportunity. We want to get cracking with this. I am not in a position to say whether the Bill will be in the next Session or when it will come, but I reassure the noble Duke that this is a top priority for Defra. We are working very hard to bring this forward as soon as we can.
We are considering the funding arrangements that we will need, but I assure the noble Duke that the new regulator will have the power to deliver its responsibilities in full. We want to make sure that any new regulator is able to do the job and do it well.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on producing this White Paper and on putting into effect the excellent work that Sir Jon Cunliffe did in his review.
The water industry has been an example of the worst of the capitalist system—not value creation but value extraction in a major way. Obviously, a major concern of any Government is keeping down the cost of living. My fear is that we will create a situation where the Government and the regulator are under pressure from the companies to allow environmental standards to be further weakened to make the finances add up and to save them from bankruptcy. Can my noble friend assure me that we will not tolerate any of that nonsense?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Absolutely; water companies have done an extremely good job of trashing the environment and causing pollution. This White Paper and the water Bill that we will be bringing forward are designed to stop that, to have a water system that people can trust and to have water companies that behave as we would expect them to behave. They have a responsibility for the environment. They should take that responsibility much more seriously.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, one of the areas that the White Paper does not even mention is the voluntary sector, particularly citizen science, which has been fundamental in calling water companies to account—in the Wye valley and other areas. As well as not mentioning citizen science, the White Paper does not mention either science or citizens, which is perhaps more worrying. What are the plans of the Government to keep this whole area of citizen science, which has been so positive in putting pressure on the water companies regarding water pollution and in motivating them to continue their work, and to somehow include this in the future? It is a resource that is wide, large, educated, willing and desperate to make sure that we have a better future.
Also, why is artesian water not mentioned in the report? In terms of long-term assets, it is one of the most important that we have. Although it is okay at the moment, it will be severely challenged in the future.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I think that much of what the noble Lord has talked about is what I need to feed back to the department. Obviously, this is a White Paper; it is not the final version of what any Bill must look like. The noble Lord makes some very important points, particularly on citizen science. I have a personal interest in this because before I ever came to this place, I was part of the Consultation Institute, which has worked in citizen science, so I appreciate what he is saying.
We have talked about working regionally. We have talked about working with stakeholders. We have talked about the importance of that local connection if we are to succeed in making the changes that we want. Citizen science—the noble Lord is absolutely right—can play a role in that.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, in responding to the Front-Bench questions, the Minister said the Government are not opposed “in principle” to mutual or co-operative ownership. I am sure that will be delightful news to the Co-operative Party, which of course has been in an electoral partnership with the Labour Party since 1927.
That question of ownership is one we keep coming back to. The Minister also said that we will get a regulator with a tighter grip. But will that grip not be resisted and see coming against it the force of the damage of private ownership that the noble Lord opposite just referred to? The legal responsibility for the managers of private companies is to maximise returns to shareholders. That is going to come up against, as the Statement says, this reform being for customers and the environment, but those are set in opposition to the profit motive. Surely the only way we are going to get a water system that does indeed work for customers and the environment is if we have a public organisation managed for the public good.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about science and there not being a lot of it. One thing we are going to do is bring in a new chief engineer to bring more technical scientific expertise to the new regulator, which, just to come back on his point, is important.
On the modelling, the difficulty in moving away is how you are going to do it, because any new model needs to work. The evidence has shown that where there have been problems around the globe, the model has not been the problem; it has been the way that the owners have managed and dealt with the company and any problems that arise from that. I do not think we can just blame the model. We can blame the behaviour of the companies, the fact that there was not enough done to stop that behaviour sooner, and the way that the regulator has been set up—these are the problems we now want to tackle. Rather than just focusing on the model, we should focus on how we can restore confidence to consumers, how we can improve the environment and how we can set up a new system that makes sure this kind of behaviour can never happen again.
Lord Inglewood (CB)
My Lords, I am sure there is agreement around the whole House that the state of the water industry in this country at present is very far from satisfactory. In her remarks about the White Paper, the Minister referred to a whole number of possible initiatives and changes and regulations. Does she agree that, at the last resort, we as a society have to generate enough resources focused on these specific problems to actually bring about change? Is she confident that society will be able to generate those resources, because if not, various things are simply not going to happen?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his comments. It would be useful for me to perhaps have a cup of tea with him and understand specifically which resources he is referring to, because it could be very wide-ranging.
As I have said, we want to ensure that the new regulator is set up with the sufficient funding and resources to ensure that the water companies deliver what they are supposed to be delivering—what their contracts expect them to deliver.
As the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, pointed out, this is about a balance between proper consumer support, decent water and the environment, because consumers have been treated very badly by water companies over the years, as has the environment. We need to get that that right, and if those are the resources the noble Lord is talking about, that is absolutely what we are fixed on delivering.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, since there is time, following on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about science and citizen science, one thing that some of that sampling is starting to expose is the level of contamination from new areas of concern, such as PFAS, pesticide contamination and microplastics and nanoplastics. My reading of this report is that it does not seem to focus on the way in which new science is uncovering new concerns for public health and environmental health from those kinds of contamination. Is that something the Government are going to look at as they go forward with the new plans?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I can completely assure the noble Baroness that these issues are being looked at outwith these proposals. These are concerns that we are taking very seriously in the department.
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, as there is still time, I will ask one further question, if the Whip will allow me. The White Paper mentions cutting leakage. The previous Government had a target of reducing leaks by 50% by 2050. It seemed to me—I asked a question in the House of the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon—that surely that was not ambitious enough. Do this Government have an intention to change the target to something more ambitious than a 50% reduction by 2050?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The problem with targets is that half the time they are not met. With the water White Paper, we are looking at ways in which we can improve the infrastructure and get proper funding into it that is also for the long term, because there is no point in putting a plaster on it if it explodes later on, which is what has been happening all the time. We need proper investment to ensure that we do not have continued leakage. That is why we are bringing the new MoT checks on water infrastructure; that is, health checks on assets such as pipes, pumps and treatment works to stop them just being left to crumble. It is about getting ahead of problems before they come into place. That is the way we resolve issues such as leaks. Up to now, water companies have mended them as cheaply as possible by just doing a mend. We had it where we live in our village; they mended it, and then it started leaking somewhere else, and so it continued—you do not resolve the problem. It is really important that we are bringing in these MoT checks and a new performance improvement regime, so that if the water companies do not do what they have agreed to do, we can really crack down on them, because this is the way we need to move forward.
Local Government Reorganisation
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, we are considering today a Statement of real constitutional significance. It concerns the decision to cancel scheduled local elections, and in doing so, raises fundamental questions about where responsibility lies, how accountability is exercised, and how seriously we take the rights of the citizen to choose who governs them.
The Secretary of State has made no secret of his views. He has spoken of a system he regards as wasteful, of the need for greater focus and capacity, and of elections which he has described, in his own words, as “pointless”. If that reflects a settled judgment, noble Lords in this House are entitled to ask why it has not been stated with equal clarity here, and why Ministers have appeared reluctant to accept openly the consequences of that position.
At the centre of this lies a more troubling question. Are elections now to be treated as an optional feature of local democracy, to be set aside when they become inconvenient or administratively awkward? Elections are not a discretionary exercise. They are the means by which consent is renewed and authority sustained. They are an integral part of our democracy.
That leads, inevitably, to the issue of responsibility. By asking councils to make the request, Ministers avoid coming to the Dispatch Box to say plainly that they have chosen to deny more than 3.7 million people their vote. Is this not, in effect, a means of shifting a difficult and politically uncomfortable decision away from those who have in fact taken it?
This sits uneasily alongside the broader story of reorganisation itself. A year on from its announcement, there remains little clarity about boundaries, structures or timetables—by timetables, I mean for the whole project across the country. Councils are being asked to manage disruption and cost while certainty moves ever further out of reach. When it will happen seems still unknown by the Government, or, if it is not unknown, it is unannounced.
From our consideration of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, we know that this legislation centralises powers, risks increasing costs for working people and leaves communities with a diminished voice.
Elections have been postponed before, but never on this scale and never in this manner. In the past, elections have always been postponed in a planned way, with plenty of time for councils to organise themselves and, particularly, plenty of time for them to talk to their communities who are affected and give them a voice and some clarity.
Democracy is not strengthened by avoidance nor protected by the quiet displacement of responsibility. If Ministers believe that elections should not take place, they should say so plainly, take responsibility for that choice and defend it openly. Surely the Government have learned from their mistakes at last year’s elections.
The Electoral Commission has been clear that scheduled elections should proceed as planned and that capacity constraints are not a legitimate justification for delay. I ask the Minister: why was the independent guardian of our electoral system not consulted before a Labour Government took the decision to cancel local elections, and what does that say about how lightly this decision was made?
Finally, will the same thing happen again next year?
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, the Government are presenting this latest round of election cancellations as an unexceptional administrative move that is justified by precedent, but I think that is fundamentally wrong. Cancelling elections should be a matter of last resort, triggered by global war or a domestic catastrophe. We should take pride in our commitment to democracy. We should have a pride that crosses party boundaries and enthuses Ministers about the value and preciousness of democracy. Instead, unfortunately, the Government seem to be treating elections as an administrative inconvenience, something to be brushed aside rather than cherished.
I could get all fire and brimstone and dust off grand quotes from Churchill, Gandhi, Lincoln or Fawcett, but, really, I am just disappointed by how lightly the Government seem to be treating this matter. Exhibit A is the comments of the Secretary of State, who said that fixing potholes was more important than running scheduled elections—no regrets, no apologies and no reluctance about cancelling but, instead, that poverty of low expectations, as if fixing potholes and running polling days are just too much and just not possible.
The Government claim that there is precedent for all that they are doing, but I have listened and read very carefully what has been said: all the peacetime examples that have been cited extended the time in office of councillors only by up to an extra year. But rather than one or two extra years, the Government’s plans will mean that many councillors, elected for a four-year term of office, will end up being in power for a full seven years—three years on top, in a completely unprecedented way.
This is not what the Government said they were going to do. The Minister said last March, when we were debating a previous round of election cancellations:
“We have no plans to postpone district council elections in 2026”. —[Official Report, 24/3/25; col. 1516.]
Likewise, the Minister also said that it was a
“postponement for 12 months only”.—[Official Report, 24/3/25; col. 1514.]
We are, of course, now in a rather different situation. That U-turn has not been justified by precedent, and certainly not by the need to fight the scourge of potholes; it is a U-turn, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, that flies directly in the face of the Electoral Commission’s very specific advice that
“we do not think that capacity constraints are a legitimate reason for delaying long planned elections”.
It also strikes me as being an unwisely short-term perspective to cultivate a culture in which elections are so often cancelled and in which terms of office that are meant to be four years get extended up to seven. Is that really a wise legacy to leave for a future Government of who knows what political complexion?
As the Government seem set on this course, let me ask three specific questions of the Minister. First, will the Government reimburse councils for the cost of preparing for elections that are now being cancelled? Secondly, given how much the Government have talked up the benefits of their plans to introduce elected mayors, which are part of the wider picture of election delays, will the Government publish estimates of the cost to economic growth of those delays in bringing in the elected mayors? Thirdly, given the importance of protecting our democracy—even in the face of potholes—will the Government commit to giving the Electoral Commission proper independence and removing the Government’s power to give it instructions over policy and strategy? That would show a real commitment to protecting and valuing democracy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, in 2024, councils were on the financial edge and sat as part of a patchwork map that did not make any sense to anybody—it did not to me, and I have been involved in local government for 30 years. The consequences of that and 14 years of funding cuts were the crisis in social care, the decline of our high streets, and councils not feeling empowered to build homes or grow their economies. Inevitably, this contributed to a decline in trust, and division on our streets, as people felt they had no say in the area they see every day when they walk out of their front door. This is important because, in the past, it had always been true that people had more faith and trust in their local council than in the Government, and that was starting to slip away.
I do not think anyone can dispute that, in July 2024, local government faced a crisis. Across this House, we may have differing views on how local government got to this point, but we cannot just snap our fingers and reverse the last 14 years. We can commit to a better future and to doing something different for that, with local councils empowered to make the right decisions for their communities and with communities really feeling empowered because they have councils that look after the full range of services that support them.
Let me be absolutely clear: this Government do not take lightly the postponement of elections. Democratic accountability is fundamental and of course elections are not optional. The vast majority of elections will be going ahead, but we are undertaking the most fundamental reform of local government for generations, and I think it is important that we are doing so.
These temporary postponements, where they have been requested, are intended to help us move to unitary councils quicker and strengthen local democracy, not weaken it. They apply only where the councils themselves have demonstrated a clear case, where reorganisation is already under way and where holding elections now would risk the transition to new councils by introducing confusion and duplication, and by wasting money.
Governments of all political colours have postponed local elections during periods of structural reform, including under the previous Conservative Government, and there is clearly statutory precedent for doing so. What would be truly irresponsible would be to press ahead with elections for authorities that may shortly cease to exist, and when councils party to those elections have told us they could put at risk services being ready for the transition to new councils.
Some have argued that the Government are acting out of political convenience. That argument does not withstand scrutiny. The postponements are driven by local views and circumstances, not partisan interest. Indeed, Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Labour councils have all come forward with concerns, on which we have acted. We have had that as formal feedback, but I have also had many conversations with local council leaders.
Those of us who have worked in local government know both the direct demands of running elections and the wider organisational impacts, including the diversion of critical senior officer time and focus during the pre-election period. Freeing up that capacity allows councils to prioritise service delivery and manage the reorganisation effectively. Running elections for short-lived authorities while simultaneously preparing for new unitary councils would impose avoidable expense while councils are focused on setting up new authorities and protecting front-line services.
Reorganisation, done properly, offers the opportunity to reduce duplication, clarify accountability and redirect resources to essential public services that have suffered years of neglect. Councillors’ terms are being extended for a clearly defined period, and fresh elections for the new unitary authorities will take place in 2027, once reorganisation proposals are agreed. Residents will have their say on stronger, more coherent councils, with one set of councillors with clearer responsibilities. This is a pragmatic decision, taken in partnership with local government, grounded in precedent and evidence, and focused on delivering better public services for the communities we serve.
I turn to the specific questions that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord asked me. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, has mentioned the lack of a timetable several times, both here and during debates on the English devolution Bill. There is a very clear timetable. Something is clearly causing confusion here, but I will briefly set out the timetable again. For Surrey, there will be elections to the new unitaries in May 2026. In April 2027, the new unitaries will come into force. For the six devolution priority areas, the consultation is now closed. Decisions for them will be taken by March 2026. In May 2027, there will be elections to the new unitaries. In April 2028, the new unitaries will come into force. In May 2028, mayors will be elected to Sussex, Norfolk and Suffolk, Hampshire, and Essex mayoral combined authorities. For the remaining 14 areas, in February 2026, we will launch our consultation. By May 2026, the consultation will close. Decisions will then be announced around the time of the Summer Recess in 2026. In May 2027, there will be elections to the new unitaries and the new unitaries will come into force in April 2028.
We do not believe in imposing these things on local authorities, which is why we have done it in consultation, rather than sitting in MHCLG, drawing a map and saying, “That’s what it’s going to look like”. We have been working very hard with our local authorities. That is why we did not set the boundaries ourselves. We have asked local authorities to work together on geographies that made sense to them, which was absolutely the right way to go.
The noble Lord, Lord Pack, asked about the delaying of elections and this not being a new phenomenon. I have set out before in the House that this has been done by previous Governments when they were doing reorganisation. We have always set and maintained a high threshold for postponements. As we have done before, we are responding to serious concerns raised by councils in the reorganisation areas that the 2026 elections were putting at risk their ability to deliver on local government reorganisation.
The noble Lord asked me about the funding for elections. Spend on elections is, of course, a matter for local authorities. Our announcement was in response to representations received from councils in local government. Postponement, of course, also avoids the cost of holding elections to councils that are proposed to be abolished.
The noble Lord asked me about the cost to economic growth. We need to take a clear view on this: where councils cover all the services in their area and are empowered to take on economic growth, the delivery of housing, transport powers and all the things that drive the economic growth of their area, the aim is to have councils that are able to deliver that for their communities.
The noble Lord asked me about the Electoral Commission, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. I have had two meetings with the Electoral Commission in the last 10 days or so. We have had discussions. I spoke to the Electoral Commission only last week when the announcement came out about the postponement of elections. I have spoken to the commission extensively about the elections Bill, which is coming forward shortly, and we will work very closely together on that Bill. We have also had some very positive discussions around the capacity issues, because the commission had a view that the capacity issues we were raising were around the capacity of election teams; election teams in local authorities, particularly in district councils, are quite small. It is not that capacity that I think councils and councillors were worried about; it is the wider capacity of local authorities to manage such a significant, once-in-a-generation reorganisation alongside these sets of elections.
I hope that has answered all the questions, but I am happy to take any more.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Pack, referred to the some 250 councillors who could face seven-year terms under the Government’s plans. Four of the county councils are majority-Tory led, and they last held elections in May 2021. Noble Lords will have to cast their minds right back: Boris Johnson was Prime Minister; since then, we have had two Tory Prime Ministers and, thus far, one Labour Prime Minister; Suella Braverman had only recently been sacked as the Tory Attorney-General—for the first time. Politics is changing fast, and sometimes the Government are asking electoral officials to act fast also. The Gorton and Denton by-election is going to be held on 26 February, on the fastest possible timetable. As a measure of the degree of change in that, I note that, at the last election, the Labour Party got more than 50% of the vote, and a notional calculation for 2019 gives the Labour Party 67% of the vote in that seat, but the bookmakers today have the Green Party as favourite to win that by-election. With politics moving so fast, is this not a particularly dangerous time to be postponing elections and not giving voters a democratic say? Is this not damaging and dangerous, threating the whole concept of democracy by taking it away from people when there is so obviously a desperate desire for change?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am certainly not calling the result of the Denton by-election at this stage. I do not think we even have a candidate yet, so I think it would be unwise.
In response to the noble Baroness’s question on timing, we have been clear throughout that elections should go ahead unless there is strong justification otherwise. Many of the local elections that are due to take place in May will take place. We were very clear that if councils said they had no reason for postponement then we would listen to them, but that where a council voiced genuine concerns—we had significant evidence from those councils whose elections have been postponed—we would take it seriously. To make sure that everyone knows that this was not a rubber-stamp exercise, where anyone who asked for a postponement got it, there were two councils where we did not think the evidence was sufficient, Nuneaton and Bedworth and Pendle, and their elections are going ahead. We do not do this lightly. However, with an unprecedented reorganisation going on in local government, it is right that we took account of what local government was saying to us.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
Like my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook, as a councillor in central Bedfordshire I have already been through unitisation. That did not involve cancelling elections; in fact, we had an additional election after two years. We were able to do that because we had a proper plan that was locally developed and supported by residents. Is not the reason that elections are being cancelled that the Government do not have plan, do not know what is happening, and have not been communicating to councils and leaders what they should do or when they should do it? It is taking too long, and we end up in the difficult situation faced by council leaders of not knowing. Can the Minister commit that the Government will provide a clear timetable, as asked for by my noble friend, for local government reorganisation and for when elections will be held? Democracy matters; it is from where local government derives its authority.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am afraid it was the failure to bite the bullet and get on with this kind of radical reorganisation for decades that has meant that we have decided that we cannot go on any longer with a broken system. Services in local government are not sustainable, the finance system is not working, and we now need to make sure that we get local government on the firm footing it deserves, that we are distributing funding more fairly, and that councils are the right size and shape to be effective to deliver efficiently key public services, as the public that we serve deserve, and drive forward our economy, housing and transport in the way that we all want to see, right across the country. The current system results in confusion and waste. We have got to get on with the job. We have had to take this unprecedented step to make sure that we are taking account of what local government tells us about its need for resources.
On the timetable, I have just set it out again. I do not understand the confusion about the timetable. We have been very clear about it and we will move ahead with that. Local authorities are working, and have worked, very well within the timetable we have set out. We work closely with them on that, as on all the other matters related to the reorganisation.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I too have been through this process. We are 15 months out from the next lot of elections and the new authorities, but these authorities do not yet know on what geography they are going to be based. To take Essex, it could be five or three, and the same is true with Norfolk and Suffolk, which could be three, four or five. Once you know that geography, I know, and I think leaders who went through what I went through will know, that one year is not a long time to deliver that change, particularly if you do not know what it is going to be at this time.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
As I stated earlier, decisions on the six devolution priority areas will be made by March 2026. Their geographies will be decided by then. We are going out to consultation on the remaining 14 areas, and it is important that we do that. The local authorities have come forward with their proposals. We want to find out what the local views on them are, so they have gone out to consultation. That consultation closes in May 2026, and we will make decisions on the geography of those remaining authorities before the Summer Recess.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
The Minister said, and I very much agree, that the officers, staff and structures of the councils that have asked for extensions are extremely stretched—I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. One of the alternatives would have been for the Government to provide the resources to ensure that those councils were able both to hold elections and to continue with the plans for reorganisation. Can the Minister say whether the Government made any calculation for what allocation of funds from the Government here in Westminster would have been necessary to allow those elections to go ahead? What would the cost have been if those resources had been provided?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
With respect to the noble Baroness, putting in new resources at this stage would not really help matters. Councils have their programmes of work under way. They are all working very hard on the reorganisation programme, as they are on the transition. They have an enormous job to do on working out the transition for key public services and on how they are going to drive growth and housing programmes going forward and put new resources into that. When you have new councillors and council officers coming in, it takes quite some time for them to get up to speed and be able to deliver at pace. Councils have considered that very carefully and will have made their own decisions. That is why we had 29 of them submit requests to postpone their elections.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
As there is still time, I will come back on a couple of things that the Minister said. The Minister spoke of the need for fundamental reform. Can the Minister answer the following questions that I have asked previously? What real additional powers, and what funding, will come to local government from the Government? Secondly, the Minister said that local government funding was not sustainable, so why, through the Government’s unfair funding proposals, will many councils suffer some of the sharpest cuts that they have seen?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The fair funding formula that we announced this year has given local government a significant increase in funding. Having spent the 17 years that I was a council leader cutting budgets every year, I know that has been a welcome change for some of our councils.
On the new powers that local councils will get, I know that we are in the process of considering the English devolution Bill and that we will debate it tomorrow afternoon. The seven areas of competence that are included in that are just the starting point for devolution. We want to see a widespread devolution of things that are currently decided in Whitehall; we want to see them being decided in local areas by local people. Once those combined authorities are established, the mayors will be able to apply for further powers that they see as necessary for their areas. It is important that those are driven by mayors. We have seen that existing mayoral areas have different needs. Some areas have a much greater need for powers on skills, for example, while others have greater need for powers on health and transport, and it can be all three. It is very important that that is driven at a local level. The very wide-ranging competences that we have set out in the English devolution Bill will enable local governments to take the powers that they need to drive their local areas forward. That is a huge move forward, and I welcome it.