Lords Chamber

Thursday 13th February 2025

(began 11 months, 3 weeks ago)

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11:07
None Portrait Introduction(s): Lord Pack and Baroness Alexander of Cleveden
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Charles Charles III, Charles III, by Charles III, by the Charles III, by the grace Charles III, by the grace of Charles III, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of our other realms and territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, to all Lords Spiritual and Temporal and all other our subjects whatsoever to whom these present shall come greeting. Know ye that we of our especial grace, certain knowledge and mere motion in pursuance of the Life Peerages Act 1958 and of all other Peerages Act 1958 and of all other powers in that behalf us enabling do by these presence advance, create and prefer our trusty and well beloved, Mark Anthony Pack to the state, degree, style, dignity, title and honour of of Islington.

And for us, our heirs and successors, do appoint, give and grant unto him the said name, state, degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Baron -- Pack to have and to hold unto him for his life. Willing and by these presence granting for us, our heirs and successors that he may have, hold and possess a seat, place and voice in the Parliaments and Public Assemblies and Councils of us, our heirs and successors, within our And And also And also that And also that he And also that he may And also that he may enjoy And also that he may enjoy and And also that he may enjoy and use all the rights, privileges, preeminences, immunities and advantages to the degree of a Baron, duly and of right belonging, which Barons of our United Kingdom have heretofore used and enjoyed or as they do at present use and enjoy.

In witness whereof we have caused these our letters to be made patent, witness ourself at Westminster in witness ourself at Westminster in

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I,

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I,, I,, Mark I,, Mark Anthony I,, Mark Anthony Pack,

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I,, Mark Anthony Pack, do I,, Mark Anthony Pack, do swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs His Majesty King Charles, his heirs ALL: ALL: Hear, ALL: Hear, hear.

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Charles Charles III, Charles III, by Charles III, by the Charles III, by the grace Charles III, by the grace of Charles III, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of our other realms and territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, to all Lords Spiritual and Temporal and all other Spiritual and Temporal and all other our subjects whatsoever to whom our subjects whatsoever to whom Know ye that we of our especial grace, certain knowledge and mere motion in pursuance of the Life Peerages Act 1958 and of all other powers in that behalf us enabling do by these presence advance, create and prefer our trusty and well and prefer our trusty and well beloved, Wendy Cowan Alexander To the state, degree, style, dignity, the state, degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Baroness Alexander of Cleveden, of Glasgow.

And for us, our heirs and successors, do appoint, give and grant unto her the said name, state, degree, style, dignity, title and degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Baroness Alexander of Cleveden to have and to hold unto him for for her life Willing and by these presence granting for us, our heirs and successors that she may have, hold and possess a seat, place and voice in the Parliaments and Public Assemblies and Councils of us, our heirs and successors, within our United Kingdom amongst the Barons.

And also that she may enjoy and use all the rights, privileges, preeminences, immunities and advantages to the degree of a Baron, duly and of right belonging, which Barons of our United Kingdom have heretofore used and enjoyed or as they do at present use and enjoy. In witness whereof we have caused these our letters to be made patent, witness ourself at Westminster in The third day of February in the third year of our reign By warrant under the King's sign-manual. I Wendy, baroness of Cleveden, do swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law.

So

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First First oral First oral question.
11:17
None Portrait Oral questions: Impact on the hospitality sector of the cost of the increase in employers National Insurance contributions and the savings from the increase in employment allowance for the smallest businesses
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My My Lords, My Lords, on My Lords, on behalf My Lords, on behalf of My Lords, on behalf of the My Lords, on behalf of the noble
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Lord Livermore Portrait Lord Livermore, The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Labour)
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Well, I am rather astonished that the noble Lord has gone on this particular line of enquiry but I am absolutely delighted that he has, because as he knows it is one of my favourite topics. I hope we can make it 60 times from this Dispatch Box. I talk about the £22 billion of unfunded spending we inherited from the previous government. The noble Lord will know that the OBR's review was into the meeting that they had with the Treasury, on 8 February, when under the legislation, passed by the previous government, the Government was obliged to disclose all unfunded pressure, against the reserve.

The OBR's review has established that at that point, the Government concealed from the OBR £9.5 billion. Now, before we dismiss a 9.5 Now, before we dismiss a £9.5, that is equal to the entire capital education budgets, the entire capital health budget, so that is not a drop in the ocean. That is £9.5 billion. The OBR then made ten recommendations are to stop this happening ever again. We have accepted all of those, in full. Of course that was just in February. The previous government then had until July.

What makes anybody think that because they thought they had got away with in February, somehow they stopped? Up until July? Treasury figures show that come the Treasury figures show that come the spring budget, well it was quite a long question... He asked me specifically to break it down. I'm answering the question. By the Spring Budget that number had reached a £16.3 billion, by July it had reached a £22 billion.
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None Portrait Oral questions: Effectiveness of enforcement measures against the illegal use of e-scooters
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Baroness McIntosh of Pickering.
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None Portrait Urgent Question Repeat: US steel import tariffs
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Questions as an answer to an urgent question asked in the House
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Lord True Portrait Lord True (Conservative)
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I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the statement but before I start, can I say that while the timing was revealed, it does not do here statement seven days after it took place. The clear constitutional principle is that if the executive, any executive, for its own advantage, which is to use Parliament for its policies, ministers must without provocation promptly and be fully accountable to both houses. We may not agree about policies but Parliament requires prompt answers and a 7-day wait is not good enough and should not become standard and that is nothing to do with the noble Baroness opposite who is always open and available to the House.

The Prime Minister is fond of words beginning with re - reset, review, relaunch, and now we are keeping reshuffle. -- hearing. Those of us on this site remember those dreaded briefings in the price and we have sympathy for those on the front bench you try hard to serve the House but are now reading this spin themselves. Let me saying how much I the Leader of the Opposition Mack, on behalf of the Opposition, how much we appreciate the noble Lords doing the job that they do on the front bench.

One point of agreement, the South is united on one thing good relations with European friends and allies. It was our government that organised the summit in July that the Prime Minister had doses reset idea and the purpose of the summit was to consider the challenge of a legal immigration facing the whole continent and continue the discussions carried on in Brussels. We have no quarrel with cooperation or sharing ideas but on illegal immigration, can be doubled by the Nextel as if any specific undertakings were secured in Brussels to combat this criminal trade? Perhaps she could meet Georgia Meloni and ask about her preference for migrants offshore? Or perhaps we give her a copy of a lecture from the Attorney-General and Warren Italy not to try to make her own rules.

When she responds, will be Baroness guarantee it will not return to legal frameworks such as the ECJ and European immigration policies? We hear a lot about the need to follow every aspect of the Labour Manifesto which says, "There will be no return to the single market, the customs union, freedom of movement." That is clear. Can she clear up statements about youth mobility, desirable though many see it. Did the Home Secretary speak for the government when she ruled that out? Can the noble Baroness tell us? Can the government deny it is considering rejoining the Mediterranean Convention on rules of origin? If not, how would the stand with the stated commitment to making a clean break from EU trade structures? For the government to support updates to the bill next week that would block powers to introduce dynamic alignment of regulations with the EU? If not, why We support international cooperation on security.

I may be an old man but on our continent I think that is The noble Baroness agree that the U.K.'s defence commitments must be made through NATO, the world's foremost security alliance and not through ad hoc European arrangements at the risk compromising our interest. That may or may not have been discussed in Brussels. And actually, specifically on security, does the promise to discuss cooperation with the EU, in the Indian Ocean? Against the Chinese challenge? Only last week, Russia announced an agreement to open a new naval base in Sudan.

France has two naval bases in the Indian Ocean. Both of these are sovereign of French territory, EU territory. When France, when the UN suggested that France should give the mark, France simply vetoed the resolution. That's what I call ruthless pragmatism. So will the government to scrap its foolish plan to give up the Chagos Islands and enter into full floated security cooperation, in the Indian ocean, with our allies, including France as part of the EU. I'd even be able to put the money saved on the deal into building new ships and creating British jobs.

Now the statement says, My Lords that the PM told the EU and I quote, from the statement, "To step up and project strength. " Well what on earth did he mean by that? Did the longer Stena jump from the planes? President Trump says he wants to see 5% of GDP spent on defence. What percentage of target on defence did the PM tell the EU would constitute, "Are stepping up and projecting strength. " With the noble Baroness Are remaining steady fast across this House in supporting the brave people of Ukraine.

I am glad that was reaffirmed in Brussels. There can be no peace without the consent of Ukraine. Yesterday My Lords, the US indicated that it did not envisage a practical place for membership of NATO, for Ukraine. Can the noble Baroness tell us the UK government's reaction to that, please. I think it is important we please. I think it is important we should know. On AI, which is material to our security, the UK attended the summit convened by President Macron, this month, but refused to sign the declaration.

Written and followed the US and vice president advance. We think the government is right to preserve our freedom of action but can the noble Baroness tell us why the UK declined to sign the declaration. The statement is silent on fish. When we left the EU there was a temporary arrangement to allow EU fishermen to adjust to change circumstances. Now, the pager fishing the folk of the UK expect full rights and full access to our own waters. Woman I Baroness assure the House that they can get their fair deserts or will fishing communities be depleted in the same way.

Finally a wearable ruthless pragmatism places in a battle which we hope will not happen between the new EU and US on terror. Does the research include coordinated policy on tariffs with the European Union. Or does it not. Will the noble Baroness please tell us. Baroness please tell us.
12:20
Baroness Smith of Newnham Portrait Baroness Smith of Newnham (Liberal Democrat)
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It is an unexpected pleasure to be following the noble Lord, Lord True this morning. He mentioned that he is, infrequently at the dispatch box these days and that may explain why he perhaps took a little longer stop so if I go over the 10 minutes for from bunch questions, and ability the Minister will understand why. It is a 10 minutes and normally for the questions, 10 minutes for the answers... It is a 20 in total including the answers.

Anyway, we are all vehemently agreeing it is 20 minutes in total, the convention I was taught was that for the Frontbench questions it was about 10 minutes and the responses about 10 minutes. But I will carry on. I'm now being told that I am a time wasting and they have to speak up My Lords, I have never been told in your Lordships' House that I need to speak up. I do want to agree with the noble Lord, Lord are true that bringing the statement a week after it was given isn't acceptable.

And in particular, the world has changed already so much in a week, that the musings of the Dove, from Washington, from Donald Trump and from his cabinet Ministers raised serious concerns about Ukraine, which were discussed this morning. We may, on these benches agreed with That NATO matters, but at the moment, the people who are putting Ukraine at risk, who are not supporting Ukraine are our American allies in NATO. And if they are not supporting Ukraine, we need to be working far more closely with our European allies, to make sure that there is no agreement on the future of Ukraine, without Ukraine, without the UK and without other European voices.

Does the noble Lady agree. Like the noble Lord, Lord True. I find that some aspects of the statement might be welcome, having cooperation, having meetings is desirable and in particular, if we want to rebuild our relations with Europe, we do need to have regular meetings. The Ministers Thomas Simmons and Doughty have had regular meetings on a bilateral and multilateral basis, with our European partners and here I declare an interest, wearing my academic hat am currently doing some work on the U.K.'s bilateral relations, with the EU generally and with Germany, in particular.

And the feedback that we get is very much that these meetings are well received, by our European partners, but what are they leading to? Because as of another Lord True said, we have researched, well not a rewind, we are not having a rewind. What is it actually mean? Because there is so little detail in the statement and references to the Simmons had with Mary surfing Bridge, it is always almost impossible to scrutinise what is going on, to hold the Government to account.

The noble Lady the Minister perhaps talk to her colleagues, in the other place, to see whether a little more detail could be given. What does the Reset mean? Finally My Lords, if we are having a Reset and ruthless pragmatism, will the noble Lady maybe tell us what is meant by resource pragmatism? Under the New Labour government, essentially, the approach was by rationalism stop to have bilateral relationships with as many polymers as possible, in order to achieve effectively short term goals.

When the UK got what it wanted, reciprocity was absent. Does his Majesty's government understands the importance of reciprocity if we are to rebuild our relationships with Europe. And ruthless pragmatism includes an understanding of that. Does it also include the need to compromise? Such as, for example, move on a youth ability scheme, which My Lords is not the same as free movement.
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Baroness Twycross Portrait Baroness Twycross (Labour)
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My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord True and the noble Lady, for their comments. A number have reported issues by the noble Lords, which I will attempt to address, in the time remaining. As the Minister for the Cabinet office said, last week, on 3 February, the Prime Minister attended the 72 EU leaders, President Conde lion included, clear step forward for the Reset as a relationship with the EU and is the first British Prime Minister to join a meeting of the European Council members, since the UK left the EU.

At the informal retreat was to discuss the common threats that the UK and EU face and the value that close to UK-EU Corporation in defence can bring. These were points he also discussed, early in the day, when he met the Secretary-General of NATO. The Prime Minister clearly outlined a number of steps to increase operational shared threats, including a cross- border crime and illegal migration while delivering growth and security at home. He called on Europe to step up and protect strength, to keep up the pressure on Putin, alongside a sustained military support, to Ukraine, to put it in the strongest possible position this year.

The response to the noble Lord, Lord True's point, our support for Ukraine is unequivocal. The Prime Minister also set out a strong case for European Security and defence and EU security partnership and a deeper role for Europe, within NATO. Our research priorities are to protect the and security of UK nationals and the wider collective security in Europe and support growth through removing barriers to trade. Shortly after the retreat we announced that the UK welcomed the presidents of the European Council and the European commission, to the UK, the first UK-EU summit, which This This government This government has This government has been This government has been clear This government has been clear that we are not hitting a rewind on the Brexit, we are here to Reset.

As we make clear in our manifesto, we are not on doing Brexit, we are not rejoining the single market and we are not rejoining the customs union, we we are looking to make Brexit work in a way even though Leader of the Opposition has made clear the previous government failed to do. This is the spirit that we are taking into discussions with the EU as we approach the summit and beyond. It is a win-win for both sides, with people across the UK and the EU benefit, and are fitting.

In response to Lord True's point on Mediterranean convention, we are always looking at ways to reduce barriers to trade, within our lines, because having a smooth trading relationship, with European partners is essential to thriving growth at home. This is one of the options we are open to looking at, to reduce barriers and it is right and responsible that we are looking at it to determine what is in the U.K.'s national interest. We do not currently have plans to join the pan- euro editor alien convention.

My Lords in relation to the question of youth mobility raised in the debate so far. As I made clear during the recent debate on this issue in your Lordship's House, this government recognises the value of schemes which give young people the opportunity to experience different cultures and work, or study, elsewhere. However, in response to elsewhere. However, in response to the noble Lords point, with the perspective on the EU. The Government has been clear that we do not have plans for youth mobility schemes, but will look at any proposals for the EU, on this in a range of other issues.

And, in relation to the other points that have been raised, if I do not get the opportunity to raise it in this debate I will write, but on AI, as we develop on regulating AI and recognise the need to engage with a range of international partners that include engaging with the EU three key science and technology partners, as well as working alongside them and other partners in the G7 OECD, UN and other international forums. We take a very close interest in noble Lords, being clear it is appropriate and how our largest trading partners and regulators in areas and regular exchanges with the EU are regulated and developments.

On a Chagos, as a noble Lords will be aware, the British Indian Ocean Territory deal is rooted in the determination to protect the UK national security. This deal will protect Diego Garcia and UK and US presence in the Indo-Pacific, for generations to come. I do think it was a slightly a along a stretch to raise it in a debate on the EU research, but I hope the noble Lord will be content with my response. In relation to the timing of this debate, My Lords, as the noble Lord opposite knows the statements are scheduled and agreed, and the usual channels.

As in the noble Lord will also know, the opposition and request every statement is repeated in this House, which is creating pressures on scheduling and I understand, from the Chief Whip, that work is ongoing, to improve this, after the recess. My Lords, in conclusion, the Prime Minister made the point in Brussels that the world is very different from that in 2016 and even in 2024. Noble Lords have noted that the world is even changing on a week by week basis. In this time and uncertainty, this government is stepping up to build alliances, in a bid to make our people safer and more prosperous.

That is at the core, at the core of our national interest and will contribute to this government's ambitious Plan for Change. It is through a new partnership, between the UK and the EU that we will deliver for the people of the United deliver for the people of the United deliver for the people of the United
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Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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Questions on the statement made in the House of Commons, yesterday, on the publication of the prevent

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learning review. -- Prevent. I rise to respond to this statement on behalf of his Majesty's Royal opposition, with deep sadness. So David Amess was not just a colleague and friend of mine, and the other plays, a true servant of the other plays, a true servant of the people. His warmth, kindness, keen sense of humour and unwavering keen sense of humour and unwavering commitment to his constituents, set an example to all parliamentarians. His murder was an attack on democracy itself and it is incumbent on all of us to do everything in our power to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.

The Government is right to publish at the Prevent learning review, into this case. Transparency is crucial and restoring trust in our counter extremist strategies. It is only by learning from past failures that we can strengthen our national security. Findings of the review are concerning. It is clear that the vulnerabilities of the perpetrator will not adequately assess the record keeping was inadequate. And the date miscommunication led to an incomplete ink intervention. More concerning the case was closed too soon, allowing a dangerous individual to slip through the individual to slip through the cracks.

I welcome the fact that all four recommendations in the review have been implemented. But we must go further. The introduction of the new independent Prevent Commissioner is an important step this role must have real teeth to scrutinise the system and hold authorities to account. The Prevent program must be laser focused and focus on countering Islamist extremism the ideology that led to the murder of Sir David. The independent review of Prevent by William Shawcross made it clear that too often a program has been distracted by a vague and politically correct policies, rather than the clear and present threat posed by radicalism is.

This must posed by radicalism is. This must change. The government must also address the broader weaknesses in our counterterrorism approach. The British people expect that those who pose a clear danger to our country are properly monitored and where necessary detained. We must ask whether current powers are sufficient. Whole life sentences for terrorist are welcome, but we should also consider greater use of terrorism prevention, investigation measures and enhanced, for those who leave Prevent but remain a risk. Additionally this review has highlighted a crucial issue of NP security.

Public service should not come with a threat of violence. The government must continue working with the Parliamentary security department, to ensure that MPs can serve their constituents without serve their constituents without fear. More must be done to clamp down on online radicalisation, which played a role in this case. Social media companies must take greater responsibility for tackling extremist content. Finally, let us never lose sight of what this debate is truly about. The Davies light does indeed remain, his service, optimism and belief in his community live on.

It is in his memory that we must commit to doing everything possible to prevent another tragedy of this kind. I support the government's effort to strengthen Prevent. But I urge Ministers to ensure that this program never again fails, as it did in this case. We must be ruthless in our commitment to national security and unwavering in our resolve to protect the values of Sir David and what he embodied. Can I ask the Minister what specific as will the new independent prevent Commissioner have at their disposal, to ensure greater accountability and effectiveness in countering radicalisation to stop secondly, given the concerns raised in the Shawcross review how will the government ensure that it remains focused on the most pressing threats, particularly Islamist extremism.

Rather than being diluted by other priorities. Can I ask the Minister what steps is that the government taking to enhance monitoring of individuals who leave the prevent program and may still pose a risk and should stronger legal powers, such as a TBI is to be considered. And can I ask the Minister he will the Government work with social media companies to crack down on online radicalisation and what consequences will there be for platforms that fail to remove extremist content. Lastly, what further reforms are being considered to improve NP security and how will the Speaker's conference ensure that lessons are from Sir David Amess's murder are fully learned.

murder are fully learned.
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Baroness Doocey Portrait Baroness Doocey (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, the murder of Sir David Amess highlights the urgent need to strengthen our counterterrorism strategy, if we are to prevent a similar tragedy in the future. The terrorist threat is continually evolving. More extremist and now following multiple ideologies, with the internet and social media fuelling self radicalisation. Conspiracy theories, personal grievances, misogyny and anti- government sentiment further blur the picture, making credible threats harder and harder to predict. To stay effective, our approach must adapt to this increasingly fragmented sorry and unpredictable fragmented sorry and unpredictable landscape.

The review that was made public yesterday highlights that Sir David a Mrs killer had his Prevent file closed, just to soon in 2016. A failure by the Home Office and counterterrorism police have known that since at least February 2022. Yet, as we heard last week, less than three years on, a similar pattern of failures has been identified, in the review, following the sale stabbings. This suggests that while much may have been done to improve the workings of Prevent, over the last decade, some critical lessons are still not being learned.

We therefore echoed the sentiments of Sir David's family in welcoming the fact that light has finally been shone on these failures are following yesterday's retrospective application of the 2022 report. The Liberal Democrats have consistently raised concerns about whether the Prevent strategy is the most effective mechanism for addressing radicalisation. Unfortunately, recent events confirm that its shortcomings are not isolated incidents. And I therefore welcome the government's decision to task the new prevent Commissioner with reviewing the handling of Sir David's case.

Can the Minister confirm that the Commissioner will have a broad and independent land date to conduct a thorough assessment of the event. With a garment commit to placing this role on a statutory footing, to ensure accountability and effectiveness. Any comprehensive review must also examine how Prevent collaborates with stakeholders, including Police and Crime Commissioners and elected mayors. And community engagement, essential to an effective Can the Minister outline how local communities will be consulted in the development of future extremist policies.

The current system is simply not equipped to manage emerging risks effectively. We live in a world where counterterrorism cases involving young people is increasing. And more referrals are now for individuals with a vulnerability rather than an effective ideology. To tackle both emerging and traditional forms of radicalisation, we urgently need a system that is built in the reality of modern extremism.
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Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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I am grateful to the Noble Lord and Noble Lady Baroness for their comments and contributions and I will try to answer the questions accordingly. I will begin with the press given to that later David Amis by the Noble Lord Davies. Like him, I have served in parliament in my case for 28 years with Sir David and shared a role on the chairman's panel sharing debates in Parliament. I found him to be an honest, open colleague, who stood up for his constituency with immense passion and I am very pleased that Southend is now a city as a result of the campaign that Sir David followed, but I also want to remember the fact that primarily so David is a father and a husband.

And the family of Sir David grieve much more than we will ever know and our thoughts are with today. The points made by the Noble Lord and by the Noble Lady relate around the failures of the prevent around the failures of the prevent system in the case of the committee of Sir David. There were a number of recommendations. Six findings which, again, have been highlighted in the report. We wanted as a Government to publish those findings to ensure that they were open and transparent.

And that the concerns that have been raised were not ones hidden behind a secret report. It is right that we did that this week. And it is important also that we look at the recommendations that were made. There were four recommendations made in that recommendation and to date the Government has committed and has completed all four recommendations to date on key issues which again I hope will give some comfort to those who have been victims of previous attacks.

Having said that, we recognise that there are a number of considerations. The report that the Noble Lord mentioned made a number of recommendations which, again, the Government has accepted, and is in the process of implementing I think 31 of the 32 recommendations to date and will complete those in due course. The Noble Lord has also mentioned the question of that we need to look at other forms of monitoring. The measures that are in place which is terrorism prevention measures to monitor people who are measures to monitor people who are on the radar is extremely important.

And that is certainly something that the Government keeps under review at a regular basis. He has mentioned the whole question of the prevent Commissioner, as indeed did the Noble Lady Baroness. We have given the Noble Lord Anderson of Ipswich a temporary position at the moment and I have asked him to do three things in effect. A quick sprint and review of what has happened the specific case of Southport and the that took place there. The murders that took place there.

And a quick sprint and review of what has happened in relation to the murder of Sir David Amis know the document has been published and a long-term review which may well be taken forward with the full-time Commissioner who is currently shortly to be appointed on the whole issue of prevent legislation as a whole and to add -- and so the Baroness Anderson Noble Lord that prevent review will look at legislation, prevent, the examination of any specific lessons from both of those two horrific incidents in Southport and the murder of Sir David and will look at their recommendations to bring back to Ministers to continue to improve the position to help ensure that we do stop future murders.

The Noble Lord Davies did focus and mentioned that there is a considerable amount of focus on Islamist and neo-Nazi potential terrorism. And that is considerably fuelled by online activity. And we are committed to looking at the implementation of the Online Safety Act. This will come into real effect on March 17 of this year, but my right honourable friend Home Secretary has also written to tech companies to ask them to be very wary of what I would turn Lee illegal criminals content and for them to remove that pending the government's own review of where there needs to be further action downstream to prevent it as a whole because online radicalisation is extremely important and is the driver of many of these sole single individuals who commit horrific crimes without any nature or organisation behind them.

They learn and that's of radicalisation via online is something that the Government is extremely keen on. The tense too, as the Noble Lady Baroness mentioned, it is extremely important that we do this. It is externally important that we look at both feelings that were identified before the recommendations which we have now implemented. There is, still, and I recognise the concerns that have been raised, but there is still a very positive story to tell about much of what is happening in prevent step since prevent has been put on a statutory footing by the previous Government in 2014 and onwards from 2015.

There are still about 5,000 cases where individuals have been referred and have been successfully through what I would turn D radicalisation programs. Where they have been identified as being vulnerable individuals with a range of tendencies that are driving them to potential activity. And that success has been positive even though there are terrible feelings which is so David murder and that three young girls in Southport, their critical examples. Lord Anderson which again goes back to the points the Baroness has made, will look at prevent legislation policy.

Overseeing and assuring recommendations from previous reports, from previous reviews including this one, of Sir David. Look at the coroner's process and look at general learning reviews. And will the independence of Government, I noticed Lord Anderson would be independent of Government and his job is to make recommendations, surveys critical issues, and to, along with the general political process of the House of Commons and the House of Lords hold them to account on the delivery of the recommendations. I just want to end with where I started, so Davies was a good man and did not deserve the death that he had.

He served his constituents well and we need to be concise to the fact that those who hold public office as elected members of parliament or members of this House that what happened to Sir David could have happened to any of us. It could have happened to any of us at a public meeting and I am extremely cognisant of the fact that is something that we need to address. And going back again to the fact that the no Noble Lord Davies made speaking in the conference is looking at security, operation, police Home Office response from Members of Parliament particularly is looking at security requirements generally.

On a case-by-case basis members of this House can be examined and supported by the operation and it is extremely important because actually the key thing that the murder of Sir David has done as well is unattractive on democracy. And it is an attack on all of us and an attack on the values that bring us to this House
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Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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I think the Noble Lord Carlisle for both his previous work on helping to support the development of counterterrorism strategies and also for his comments. As I mentioned to the Noble Lady Baroness there have been around 5,000 successful prevent referrals from 2015. And there are people now who are living productive, constructive lives, who may have fallen down the radicalisation route had that prevent intervention not taken place. But I also say to the Noble Lord Carlisle as well that when I was in the Home Office in 29 to 2009, when we dealt with it then it was an entirely different world.

There was no Twitter. There was no Facebook. The internet was still, relatively, in its infancy. In the 14 or 15 years and now I return to the Home Office there is a dark web, radicalisation, internet, fake news, a whole range of things. And one of the key issues that we have to assess in the future is particularly asking the tech companies to step up to the plate on what they need to do to help support that prevent strategy and to support that D radicalisation and that is why my right honourable friend has written to tackle the news following both Southport and Sir David's reviews to ensure that we can examine with them what their responsibilities are.

What is the online security act, the online data act, once it comes into effect on 17 March. I am grateful for the noble Lords support on this. He is right. Prevent can be a success and we should not throw it out on the basis of feelings which are self-evident, but which are not the full story of how the prevent scheme has worked.
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Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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I am grateful for his comments and I that the loss of Sir David was felt keenly across the House but particularly by those who shared in his particular party or indeed the closeness of the region to him. I also should mention again that he will be forever remembered now for the adjournment debate which is now the so David Amis debate in the House of Commons because so David, for those that do not know, was always first up to raise I would say about 46 issues to do on every adjournment debates, of which usually 42, 43 of them have led to positive outcomes for his constituents.

That is for someone on the backbenches, and I should also mention Basildon as well before Southend when he was a member of Parliament for Basildon constituency before then because of the Noble Lord raises an extremely important point, again. There is a criminal threshold, so individuals who promote Islamist terrorism or indeed neo-Nazi terrorism or indeed terrorism -related to any other form of just eight, misogyny, or any other form, there is a criminal threshold for that. And it is extremely important if that criminal threshold and evidence is brought forward and it is crossed that the police take action, via CPS, to ensure there are common activities taken.

The prevent program, in a sense, is about young people, particularly being radicalised by people who have that criminal intent and have put material on their which is a criminal source, or which are being radicalised by individuals who have crossed that threshold, but in the same sense they have their own grievances or immaturity is expanded by individuals for the purpose of The Event programme is about solving and helping people who are falling into that route whether criminal threshold is one which is for the police and the CPS determine and have my full support for taking prosecutions against anybody who is encouraging terrorist activity.

encouraging terrorist activity.
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Lord Hogan-Howe Portrait Lord Hogan-Howe (Crossbench)
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Fully support the Prevent strategy, it is one of the four legs of the strategy to pursue adverse the people who did it, Prevent, trying to rent the thing happening, and making sure that we prefer for the consequences -- trying to prevent. That is vital. One thing that does need to be addressed, and Lord Davies races, is there a handful of measures in place, for those who are unaware, it means people who are not charged but have appeared in court and conditions are put on, how they live and free society.

One of the most effective measures is that relocation but it's also expensive. And of course the surveillance that surrounds these people is also expensive. It has to be said that over time, the security services have suppressed the number of people on these. Once having declared them they have to follow them. And so did the police. I do think this needs looking at. Because, of course, we now complain that the police and others not look at these people to prevent them committing the awful crime we have heard of today.

I'm afraid that's just pressure, partly through sourcing but partly through accountability, this is no good. Whether it needs to be 200 or needs to be 50, I can't really comment. But it needs to be more than a handful because we are expecting other people to bear that risk and when it goes wrong we say, why didn't you do something? The reason is because we have suppressed the number of orders. The place to decide whether they should on them is caught and that hasn't happened in my view on sufficient cases.

in my view on sufficient cases.
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Lord Khan of Burnley Portrait Lord Khan of Burnley, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government) (Labour)
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My Lords, it is with respect and some reflection that I moved the motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the abrasion of our switchback and how, any of us attended Holocaust Memorial Day across the country including the His the king attended alongside Chief Rabbi, Holocaust survivors, and leaders of 50 countries. Last week, I had the honour of listening to Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg. What struck me was that although Manfred was now 94, he related what happened to him as a young boy as if it were yesterday.

He told us about the heartbreaking moment when, age 13, he and his mother were sent off to work by -- while imprisoned at the concentration camp. On their return, his little brother, Herman, was missing. They never saw him again. For over 70 years, Manfred held his small hope that somehow Herman survived and that one day they might be reunited, but sadly that was not to be. Manfred's story about his little brother brought home to me that while we remember the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, we often miss the 1.5 million Jewish children.

Manfred story touched me deeply as he spoke of his mother and the loss of her youngest son. I am the youngest son in my family and I recently lost my dearest mother. I meant in the opportunity to give my noble thanks to all of the noble Lords for their kindness shown to be in the last few weeks. It does not matter how old you are, the loss of a mother affect you deeply. My mother was an inspiration. One important thing she told me that is still relevant in today's debate is that we must never forget the lessons of history.

The history of the Holocaust provides lessons for the whole world. It shows us that what can happen when hatred takes over society. When barriers are created and fellow humans are treated as something different. Something to be despised. Nazi Something to be despised. Nazi ideology can be hard to comprehend. It was ruthless and fearsome. Children like Manfred's younger brother Herman were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution. Nazi Germany and its collaborators not only made of 1.5 million Jewish children but tens of thousands of Romany gypsy children, five to 7,000 German children with physical and mental disabilities, living in institutions, as well as many Polish children and children residing in the German occupied Soviet Union.

Along with elderly people, children had the lowest rate of surviving concentration camps and killing centres. People over 50 years of age, pregnant women, and young children were immediately sent to gas Chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centres. Until the mid- 1943, all children born in Auschwitz, regardless of origins, were murdered. Usually biphenyl injection or drowning. Later, non- Jewish newborns were allowed to live. They were entered into the camp records as new arrivals and tattooed with their prisoner number. Due to awful conditions in the camp, few lived long.

Children born to Jewish mothers were routinely murdered. Thousands of Jewish children survive this brutal carnage, however many, because they were hidden. With identities disguised and often physically concealed from the outside world, these youngsters faced constant fear, dilemmas, and danger. There is was a life in shadows, when a careless remark and enunciation or the memories of neighbours could lead to discovery and death. Of course, none of these stories could be preserved without the men and women that had the courage to tell them.

Women like the remarkable new bed MBE who died at home last year, each 100. Unlike after Auschwitz was that even in the face of unspeakable evil, the human spirit can triumph stop and Kurt PEM, who died earlier this year at the age of 96 and lived alone in London, aged 10, under Kindertransport, and dedicated her life to raising awareness about the horrors of Nazism. And was married to Bob Kurt PEM who also came to the UK on the Kindertransport and died late last year, aged 99.

They were a wonderful, dedicated their lives to sharing their story of how they left their home and parents as children and made new lives in the United Kingdom. I met Bob at a social club called togetherness for Jewish refugees. The couple married in 1915 and had two children. It was not until 1992 that they told their sons about their background after being invited to speak at an event commemorating this at Northwood Synagogue. It was during the couple speech that their children discovered the truth of their ringing.

I often think how hard it must be for survivors to give their testimony, to attend to those moments, to remember those darkest of days to recount how loved ones, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, were taken away. I want to also take a moment to debunk the idea that we did not know what was happening. From 1942 onwards, reports of the massmurderer of Jews in continental Europe began to reach Britain. As the tide of the war turned against Germany and its allies, the British Jewish community started to fight for post-war relief work Jewish aid workers began after the liberation to report that some children had survived the Nazi concentration camps.

In May 1945, Leonard Monteverdi, a well-known businessman travel to Paris to meet with the heads of Jewish organisations. Before returning home, he wrote to the Rothschild chairman of the British fund now of Jewish relief outlining a scheme to bring if you hundred children from Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald to Britain. On his return to London, to fury drew up detailed arrangements, not only how he was going to get the children to Britain but how he was going to give them the best possible care. The British Government approved the proposal and granted permission for 1,000 child survivors to be brought to the UK.

At this point, it was that no more than 5,000 Jewish children in Central and Eastern Europe at about the Holocaust and those were being cared for in allied and neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland, so the Home Office has 1,000 users was a fitting response. That said, the offer of help from the British Government was not without conditions. The children had to be aged 16 years or under and would only be granted permission to stay in the UK for two years. They stay in the UK for two years.

They were not to be costing the taxpayer a penny at the centrally front was to be financially responsible for the entire cost of looking after them. The money to do this was to be raised privately. It was later stipulated that only children who had been in concentration camps would be admitted to the UK, although the age limit was raised to 18 in 1946. In the end, just over 700 children were killed in Britain. The boys, as they were known, even though there were girls thereto, arrived in five groups.

The first group arrived in August 1945. This group is known as the Windermere boys and was made up of 300 children. The second group arrived in October 19 arrived in October 1945 and is known as the Southampton boys and was made up of 152 children. The third group arrived in March 1946. This group is known as March 1946. This group is known as the LG boys. The fourth group arrived in June 1946 and this group is known as the Palace was and was made up of 101 children.

The fifth group arrived in April 1948, known as the Shenfield boys and made up of 21 children. Their story is less well-known than the Kindertransport through which 10,000 Jewish children were saved in the aftermath of Kristallnacht in 1938. The boy said of the 45 society in 1943. They wanted to say thank you and to give back to the society that had welcomed them. Overtime, the running of the 45 society as for the children of the boys often referred to as the second generation.

The second generation are the custodians of the testimonies and life stories of the boys. They keep their testimonies alive and make them relevant for future generations to educational activities, community events, and fundraising. I want to thank these custodians but I really want to say a special word to the survivor also everyday that you have lived, every child and grandchild that your family support into this will have served as the ultimate rebuke to evil. And the ultimate expression of love and hope.

We only need to look at today's headlines to see that we have not yet extinguished an starkest impulses. None of the tragedies that we seek to do may arise to the full horror of the Holocaust. The individuals and the victims of such unspeakable cruelty make a claim on our conscience. They demand our attention and we will not turn away. We choose empathy over indifference, that our empathy leads to action. That includes confronting the rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world.

We have seen attacks on due in our street and in the streets of Midwestern cities. We have seen public places defaced by swastikas. Some foreign Governments continue to rinse their history and some are willing to recognise that the Nazis could not have done this at all. They needed willing partners. It is up to each one of us to forcefully condemn any denial of the Holocaust. It is up to us to combat not only anti-Semitism but racism and bigotry and intolerance in all their forms here and around the world.

We cannot eliminate evil from every hard or he hide it from every mind but what we can do, what we must do is to make sure the children and their children learn their history so that they might not repeat it. We can teach our children to speak out against a casual slur. We can teach them there is no them, there is only us. I have had the honour of attending many Holocaust Memorial Day events over the last couple of weeks. Each one different.

And all the more meaningful. My department funds the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust this year they granted an additional £80,000 to the existing grant to ensure that the Holocaust was televised on the BBC. We are told that 2 million people tuned in to that 2 million people tuned in to the ceremony. As we approach the anniversary of the stock and declaration it is important to take stock of the international Holocaust remembrance alliances achievements. remembrance alliances achievements. By HR8. Pronounced and best known for its non-legally binding definition on anti-Semitism.

There are many other tools related to safeguarding sites and a toolkit to fight distortion. These are just a few of the tools developed by the partnership and the expert and iPad tribute to the work of Lord Pickles in particular in this area. This is important because it holds each and every one of us to account. We all have issues with our history. The problems we face today are more complex and more subtle. It has been a long process, even for democratic countries to confront their own problematic histories, year-on-year we see countries rinse their history, re-abilities people, one anti-Semite morph into nationalists, become heroes in the fight against communism.

It was only in 1995 that the French Government accepted responsibility for the deportations and deaths of over 70 the deportations and deaths of over 70,000 Jews and Austria finally dispelled the myth of being Hitler's first victim and made amends to Austrian Nazi victims. In the United Kingdom, and then it instead, we need to come to terms with the fact that we did not open our borders and accept Jews fleeing the Nazis. Earlier, I mentioned the Kindertransport. In the case of the UK we accept the children but not their parents.

Most of the children never saw their parents again. The work of the Holocaust educational trust and the Association of refugees and the Holocaust Memorial day trust to ensure that we never forget is more important now than ever before. Especially as a number Holocaust survivors is bundling. Each and every one of us that has had the privilege of hearing first- hand testimony has a duty to keep their memory alive. That is why we remain determined to create the UK national Holocaust Memorial Day centre at Victoria Tower Gardens, a place where we can learn about the Holocaust.

A place where we can make sure that we never forget where it can lead. Subject to passage of the bill and to recovery of the planning consent we hope to begin construction before the end of this year. These words of Holocaust survivors and no but laureate are very important. Never shall I forget that night. The first night in the comfort. Which has turned life into one long night. Seven times coast and sometimes sealed. Never shall I forget that, the little faces of the children whose bodies are turned into reefs of smoke the blue sky.

It is 80 years since the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Americans liberated Buchenwald under British Bergen-Belsen. We own it to those that were murdered, those that survived, and those that liberated the camps to never forget and to ensure that every generation knows their hatred and the difference can make. Before I end, I would like to pay tribute to my Noble Friend. We all know how dedicated she is in tackling anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred. She has never given in, despite appalling levels of abuse.

She is someone to whom I admire. As a man of faith and as the faith minister, I think it is only fitting that I end with the following words penned by the late chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. We know that whilst we do not have the ability to change the past, we can change the future. Another well we cannot bring the dead back to life to ensure their memories live on and their deaths were not in vain. I look forward to everyone's contributions.

In particular, the maiden speeches of

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my noble friend's. I baked to move. The question is that notion be

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The question is that notion be I thank the noble Lord the
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook Portrait Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Conservative)
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I thank the noble Lord the Minister for bringing this important Minister for bringing this important debate to his Lordship's House. It has been my solemn duty to bring this debate to the House in previous years and I congratulate him on his speech. I'm also looking forward to hearing the maiden speeches of Lord Evans, of sealant, Lord Katz and bonus Levitt. And I know the whole House will join me in welcoming them to your Lordship's House. On Holocaust Memorial Day, every year, we remember the unspeakable crimes of the Nazi regime against the Jewish people.

We remember also the many political prisoners, Soviet prisoners, or Polish, Roma, lesbian and gay victims of the Holocaust. My Lords, it is on Holocaust Memorial Day that we remember the unique evil of the Holocaust. The killings of Jews because they were Jews. As part of the Nazi plan to wipe out the entire Jewish people. The history of the Holocaust is a better truth. And we must never shy away from repeating that truth. As such, our repeating that truth.

As such, our Some of the haunting names of the places where Jews were imprisoned, beaten, worked to death, tortured and exterminated, murdered, murdered because they were Jews. But not all the names of Nazi camps are so There were more than a thousand concentration camps operated by the Nazi regime, for the mass persecution and murder of Jews and the other victims. 80 years ago today, on 13 February, 1945, Soviet forces liberated Ross Rowson concentration camp.

By 1945, there were no Jews left there. Because on 2 December 1941, the head of the camp gave the order that no two was to remain alive by Christmas. On the 12 October 1942, lost 37 living Jewish prisoners were sent to Jewish prisoners were sent to Auschwitz. Isaac Egan, a Jewish man who was there, before being transferred to Auschwitz gave evidence after liberation of the camps that show the appalling treatment of Jews there. Giving evidence, he said " the sport of commandant Thurman, favoured in winter, was to have money Jews thrown alive pit and have them covered with snow until they were suffocated.

". We must never forget. In this 80th year of so many liberations, we must also remember the liberation was not the end of the story for the victims and survivors of Holocaust. Many Jews died early, because of the harm the Nazis did to them during that Holocaust. The wounds of families that were broken by the Holocaust were felt for many years, and are still felt today. Holocaust Memorial Day was intended to be a reminder of the suffering of Jewish people in the past, but my Lords, we sadly no that Jewish people are still not free from persecution.

Since 2023, we have seen a shocking rise in anti-Jewish racism as we have heard from the noble Lord the Minister, on our streets. Online, and in our schools. In 2024, the Community Security Trust recorded 3528 anti- Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom. The second highest total ever reported to the CST in a single year. Second only to 4296 recorded in 2023. Anti-Semitism in this country is growing. And it is shaming that the spike in anti- Semitism we have seen over the past year has directly followed the worst massacre of Jews since the fall of the Nazi regime.

When I move this debate last year, just months after the programme of October 7, I recounted the story of 91-year-old Holocaust viva murdered in the converts near Gaza. His home was hit by a rocket propelled grenade and then by hand made. To his 18 children and great children, may his memory be blessed. The deaths of 1,200 people who were murdered in 1,200 people who were murdered in the October 7 reminder of the importance of the work of the organisations like the Holocaust memorial they trust, and the educational trust.

They have never been more important. I would like to put on record my thanks to the CEO of the Holocaust Educational Trust who do so much important work to ensure our children and grandchildren are taught about the horrors of the Holocaust. I also thank the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and its CEO, and her team which delivered the annual Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony and the thousands of local activities across the country. 80 years on, and still the Jews experiencing persecution, discrimination, and at worst, fearful the lives across the world.

That is the imperative of our commemoration. We must not merely ensure the Holocaust is never forgotten, we must remember, actively respect and learn about the unique suffering of that Jewish people in the Holocaust. We must teach it to our children and remind our neighbours of the insidious threat of anti-Semitism. We must never forget. And hold the promise never again. Only by keeping our covenant to remember may we hope to stop anti-Semitism for good. I look forward to hearing the flexion of noble Lords across the House and my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and the families -- hearing the reflections.



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My Lords, never was the national anthem's Long live our King more apt tribute to and seeing the King spent hours at Auschwitz-Birkenau and hours at Auschwitz-Birkenau and paying tribute to the most sincere words possible, and I'm sure the entire Jewish community here and around the world was moved and
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Baroness Deech Portrait Baroness Deech (Crossbench)
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around the world was moved and grateful. For some of us, everyday is Holocaust Remembrance Day. My earliest memories are of my mother weeping over my bedside because of her inability to get her mother into this country out of Poland. And she blamed herself for her mother's death. On my father's side, he lost his mother and two siblings. His tiny ancestral village on the board of Poland and Ukraine during the war lay in the path of a Russian is coming one way and the Germans coming the other.

When the Germans arrived they summoned all the Jewish women to the village square with their valuables. Next door to my family, lived a Polish painter. He subsequently went to Krakow and became very well known. My aunt Helena on her way to the square rushed next door to him and thrust into his hands the set of silver cutlery wrapped in a linen cloth. Keep this, she said. Until we get back. Which of course she and her children never did.

He did a brave thing which would have cost him his life had it been discovered. He had the silver in the cloth in a box in his garden. And at the end of the war he took it with him to Krakow. There was no Internet then and he never knew what had become of my family. I happened to speak about my origins to the distinguished historian of Poland, Davies. In 2008 he wrote in a Krakow newspaper about my trip to the family village. The painter by then 102, was read this by his carer.

He declared he had something for me. And to cut a long story short, I returned to his flat in Krakow were in the presence of the media, and after a glass of schnapps, and some reminiscences, he presented me with the cutlery in the same linen cloth. They are the only artefacts I have that were touched by my lost family. And with attributed his bravery endemic in such small acts in those terrible times. He died three months later. So it is with some pain that I wonder what they mean when Britain's politicians and leaders support Holocaust remembrance.

What do they mean by remembering it, by never again? What I see is ignorance of the history of anti-Semitism, in the mistaken framework, that treats the Holocaust as consigned to the Nazi past. Not the preceding 2,000 years, and today. Maybe with good intentions the Holocaust has been globalised. That means it makes it seem as if Jews were just one of many casualties. It's therefore exceptional to focus on them or anti-Semitism. The notion of genocide can be spread far and wide and thin.

Jewish scholars will tell you that to assemble the Holocaust with other genocides reduces its meaning only to that fake -- that fake word of hatred. -- Vague. Restricting the Holocaust does not mean that the loss of Jewish lives is worth any more than any others. But the record in recent years shows a marked reluctance to acknowledge the specificity of Jewish suffering. The Holocaust is entirely different from the other genocides we remember, both in history, continuation, manner of execution, worldwide extent, collaboration and result.

The government by going along with the structure that the Jewish should not be commemorated on its own but in tandem with other targeted group and more recent genocides has opened the door to generalising the Holocaust. This goes on to enable the Jews to be forgotten, not mentioned by 'Good Morning Britain', or Angela Rayner, and marking Holocaust Memorial Day. And it leads sadly onto comparisons between the Holocaust and the Gaza war, most shockingly by the Irish president. Half a century has been assumed about evidence that learning about the Holocaust prevents lapses into anti-Semitism.

But it does not. That is in part because the Holocaust have been detached from the rest of Jewish. And because it's been used as a lesson in morality and democracy. It's easy enough to portrait the Nazis as evil and the Jews as innocent victims. The lessons go on to indicate that it was not this generation that committed those crimes, but we are not bystanders, that must not be allowed to be in absolution. It should not be allowed to place anti-Semitism firmly in the past.

That is wrong. We should not forget, even in this country, the massacre of Jews in 1190, the expulsion in 1290, and in my own hometown, Christ Church Cathedral is dealt right in the middle on top of the houses that were occupied by the Jews. There is too much politicisation, DDoS ocean and universalisation demonstrated on Holocaust remembrance ceremonies and that is counter-productive. The late Lord Sacks explained how anti- Semitism mutated from a hatred of the religion, then the race and now the Jewish state.

It is sadly only a state of one's own and the means of self-defence that stops genocide, as can be seen from recent genocides. If Israel had existed in 1938, rather than 1948, and had been able to take in refugees rather than being locked by the British, how many thousands or millions of lives might have been saved? The 1940s Israel was able to take on the Jews thrown out of other Middle Eastern states, whose prosecution we should also remember.

In 2023, we sought the new Holocaust threats from the invaders into Israel from Gaza and the desire to repeat it. This government is rightly keen on the Holocaust remembrance, but the government should accept that it has a special responsibility for the protection and safety and understanding of the state of Israel. It should also acknowledge that it has failed to stop anti- Semitism demonstrated in our universities and on our streets. Holocaust remembrance is ineffective unless backed up by a supporting and understanding the safe and strong Israel, the real meaning of ensuring never again.

We also need to teach that the Holocaust did not succeed. Since the end of it, 24 Nobel prizes, business leaders, philanthropy, cultural achievements philanthropy, cultural achievements and a new state. Distinction feature of the community down the ages is survival. The Tasco on on an upbeat note. We survived against all the note. We survived against all the

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It is an honour to participate in

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It is an honour to participate in this debate. And I anticipate hearing many more thoughtful and powerful contributions like those we powerful contributions like those we have already heard. In particular, I look forward to hearing the words of look forward to hearing the words of the Noble Lord who will follow me and I congratulate him on making his and I congratulate him on making his Maiden speech today as will Baroness Maiden speech today as will Baroness Levitt. I declare my interest as a former Chair of the Council of Christians and Jews, with that in mind, I was very glad to see on the speakers list to do my honourable friend the Noble Lord shrink when who shared with me as a trustee and I look forward to what he has to say.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the lives of the 6 million Jewish men, women and children, along with other groups. Who were murdered by the Nazis. And this year has been particularly significant as it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. As the Noble Lord the Minister has pointed out as each year goes by the number of living people who have their own personal accounts of surviving the Holocaust diminishes. It is all our responsibility to ensure that their lives do not simply become statistics in a history book but they are but as people each with their own stories and experiences.

And in that regard I commend your
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Lord Bishop of Lichfield Portrait The Lord Bishop of Lichfield (Bishops)
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Lordships that forever project and the interactive experience that I visited at the Beth Shalom Holocaust visited at the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire. This project gives people the opportunity to hear from and to have a question to hear from and to have a question and answer session with a hologram of a Holocaust survivor. Through of a Holocaust survivor. Through using AI and voice recognition, it is an innovative way to preserve is an innovative way to preserve their memories and to enable future their memories and to enable future generations to learn about their experiences.

Those memories serve as a reminder and a warning of where anti-Semitism can lead when left unchallenged. And we must be alive to prevent such atrocities from occurring. This is why commemorating her cause Memorial Day each year is so important. It is a matter of fact and it is a matter of shame that through a distortion of Christian theology the church in almost all its branches has historically contributed to the events -- immense suffering and injustice suffered by Jewish people over the ages and it follows that the church must have a vital role and duty in partnership with others in actively standing against anti-Semitism.

And this is a major task through renewed theological understanding today. The theme of this year's Holocaust Memorial Day is for a better future. But to build such a future we cannot be passive. It requires commitment and action from each one of us. Genocide is not inevitable, nor does it happen overnight. It is gradual. Beginning with the other ring of those who we consider different from ourselves. And the normalisation of acts of discrimination. And while the horrors of Schmitz move further into history, sadly anti-Semitism does not.

One persuasive analogy from anti-Semitism I believe is that of a virus which mutates over time and re-infects society in different forms. The most recent statistics published by the community trust cited by the noble Baroness Scott underline the dimensions of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in our own time, in our own country. And the use of social media has only fuelled this, exposing more people to hateful content and enabling anti-Semitism to spread further and anti-Semitism to spread further and faster.

But this is preventable. We can choose to shape a better future build on our shared humanity and strengthening the fabric of our communities through mutual understanding and trust. We cannot afford to be complacent bystanders. We must actively challenge anti- Semitism and all discrimination wherever we see it. To seek understanding rather than fearing those who are different from ourselves. We must personally questioned the small remarks, whether they be so-called jokes or throwaway comments. Which can appear insignificant.

But can so easily build to destructive hate on a greater scale. Interfaith dialogue I believe plays an important role in this, as well as an example of how those different beliefs can come together to find common ground and connection. On Holocaust Memorial Day this year, the Council of Christians and Jews organised a profound morning of testimony reflection and prayer as a testament to the power and significance of that dialogue. I finished with some words that provide Charlie shared at that meeting.

They said, "Optimism, in this sense, is not the denial of pain. But that radical choice to imagine and work towards something better. Something more just. Something that can heal the divisions we face. This vision of a better future is not a distinct dream. It is a call to action. It is a call to reject the forces of hate and division. And to embrace the transformative power of empathy, connection and unity. " Let us not forget the horrors of the past.

But let the memory of those who experience them spur us on to build division.
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Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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It is an honour to speak in the debate opened by my Noble Friend the Minister and to be able to hear from so many noble Lords on the subject. In a few minutes time for my Noble Friend whose wise words continue to inspire. I would start by thanking noble Lords from across the House for the welcome that I have been given in the few days that I have been here and also, of course, the doorkeeper's in attendance and all the staff of the House that have been so supportive, have done their best, often in vain, to stop me from getting lost.

I also wish to thank my supporters, my Noble Friend boat Kensington of Southwark and Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and also my Noble Friend Lord leader Lady Barran as Smith of Basildon, for all the support and encouragement that they have given. As the memory of the Holocaust, a single act of evil, fits into the distance, the number of survivors can bear witness to the cruelty of this diminishes we must redouble our efforts to subsequent genocides into our collective network. I want to add my voice to that of other noble Lords today in thinking that Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the educational trust for all the work that they do to ensure that this happens.

But they face this task. Research in the claims conference published last month found that 52% of those surveyed in the UK did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. And nearly 1/3 could not name any of the camps or ghettos established in World War II. Those figures underscore scale of the challenge in the face of social media missed permission, that seeks to downplay, distort, or even deny the reality of the Holocaust. One of the most documented events in world history.

Our truth is, indeed, under attack. And this is our responsibility. Debate is coarsened and conspiracies are fed when senior politicians compare this to Nazi politicians or doubt their loyalty to the country. My family was one of the lucky ones. My dad's father was the last of my forebears to come to Britain, making the perilous trip from Bialystok then in Russia now in Poland to the East End of London in 1911. Sadly, we know little of what and who he left behind.

We cannot be sure, but it seems highly likely that some of my family would have perished in the war. Simply for the crime of being born a Jew. He was a Taylor. As was my mum's father. You insisted that before putting down a deposit on you houses being built in Edgware in the 1930s, the site foreman walked into the school and was promised to be if you're minutes away. He knew, as so many immigrant families do, of the power of education to transform your life chances.

His daughter, my dear mother Doreen, spent her life teaching and passing the lesson on and as someone who attended a Cumbrian that had never before me and sent to Oxford I understand all too well the importance of decent education in promoting the opportunity from especially from the earliest years to university access and vocational education. This is a vital part of the government's economic agenda which views human capital as important as physical capital when we talk of removing obstacles to growth.

I say this as someone who has spent the last two decades working in transport, specifically real, including both for an operator and for the Royal union. I have great pleasure in working for the Noble Lord, much missed from this place. And so I appreciate Governments strive to invest in infrastructure that our country so dearly needs to thrive. Along neglected subject I am pleased to see it as a real focus for this Government. I do not argue real for real but for what it achieves connecting communities, enabling prosperity, and, again, promoting social.

We need more real, more integrated accessible public transport. And I hope to be a strong advocate for this in this place. More widely, be must build our way out of the economic delays we have inherited, not just infrastructure but housing and to address the crisis that young people face. I support the government's ambition on housebuilding and I must definitely will in this regard. Nor can we fall into the trap that investment is a zero-sum game geographically. I am, I must admit, born and bred, but I will insist that investing in London will continue to be good for the rest of the country and vice versa.

One should not and one must not come at the expense of the other. I would just was to reflect that we speak so highly on both my party and, more importantly, our country. That little over 100 years since they stepped off the boat, fewer than 80 years after Solomon Goldberg left the east end and found a synagogue there. Their grandson is a peer of the realm. This is but one threat in the realm. This is but one threat in the special tapestry woven by millions depicting the contribution they have made and continue to make in a thousand different ways.

Sadly, the tolerance and generosity of this nation that helps so many immigrants settle and thrive is not to be found for Jewish people in the name of the Labour Party between 10 to 15 and 2019. As Chair of the Jewish labour movement, the social society, affiliated to the Labour Party since 1920, we found ourselves defending our members who faced the vile toxin of left anti-Semitism which had been allowed to enter and fester in the party's bloodstream. In action and passivity for that then party leader sent a clear signal this discrimination was tolerated.

The party that so many of us have tried because we believed in equality and fought discrimination, doubled down rather than face the difficult truths and double down out of political convenience. Too many suffered during those years and it would be truly remiss of me not to mention my Noble Friend Lord Baroness Hodge Barkin, Baroness Anderson, my soon-to-be Noble Friend verger and Dave Louise, who are the particular targets for much of the hatred. The impact, of course, on the wider Jewish community how was even greater.

Considering that at the height of the Labour Party's leadership they had in the Bishop of London 400,000 and there are 300,000 Jews in this country. I will never forget dear strict conversations with people in Hendon and Mill Hill, left non-Jewish labour voters telling me they simply could not trust the party, our party, any more. How could we have let them more. How could we have let them It is to his credit that the first thinker stammered it was to apologise for anti-Semitism in the party.

-- Keir Starmer. He understood and he succeeded. Working with my noble friends Lord Evans of sealant and Baroness Ramsay of Wall Heath, we challenged cajoled and drove Labour to meet the challenges set down by the Equality and Human Rights Commission following that bodies landmark ruling that the party had broken equalities law. Process and rule change was part of that story. Education and leadership as ever much more so. I will forever be proud of the role we in the Jewish labour movement played in helping to save the Labour Party.

My party is still in the foothills of the building trust with the Jewish community but we have returned to place where Jews voting in the general election last year made their choice on policy platforms, not out of fear as they did in 2019, we must ever ever allow that situation to rise again. Indeed, if the 20 Indeed, if the 29 election was in part about anti-Semitism, the 2024 election was in a smaller part about anti-Semitism and the whole country.

As we have heard from a noble friend minister and the noble Lady Baroness Scott of Bybrook, following 17th of October, which saw the largest lot of Jews since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism has risen to unprecedented levels. Not nearly as a reaction to the groundwater that started but from the seventh itself, anti-Semitism is the largest of sleepers, and excuse, an excuse. We'll stir it to life. On our campuses, on our streets, around our homes, synagogues, schools, the levels of anxiety and fear British Jews feel is palpable.

The worst I have seen in my lifetime. The Prime Minister has been clear the spike in anti-Jewish hate is intolerable, just as he has been clear that the remaining hostages taken by Hamas on that fateful day are being held in Gaza still, must all be brought home now. My Lords, it surely cannot be difficult for people, for us all, to grasp, we must not blame British Jews for the actions of the Israeli government just as we do not blame British Muslims for the actions of Hamas.

From this basic proposition, surely all else must follow. As ever, it is through education that we must tackle hate on all sides. Integral to this, my Lords, is ensuring that Holocaust is in the words of our Prime Minister, a truly

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national endeavour. It is a privilege and honour for

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It is a privilege and honour for me to follow the speech of my noble friend, and may I congratulate him
14:18
Lord Dubs Portrait Lord Dubs (Labour)
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friend, and may I congratulate him on what he has done and what he has said today in his speech. As we know, he was national chairman of the Jewish labour movement, he has a the Jewish labour movement, he has a long history in that movement, and he also served on Labour's national policy forum and retains a keen interest in transport matters. He has served as a local councillor representing Kilburn for council from 2010 to 2014, he was a Labour candidate for Hendon in 2017, and citizens of London and Westminster in 2001, in which I preceded him and lost many years before.

And he was recently awarded an MBE for political and public services. I always enjoy meeting colleagues who have been able councillors when I have something in common and I do understand the contribution local councillors make to life in their councillors make to life in their communities. Now, he might also have talked about his family history, and I think it's appropriate, on this day, when we are debating this topic, that we should remember the family history of people like him, and what it led to this country becoming the country it is.

And of course he talked based on anti- Semitism, the scourge in any country and scourge on this country. And I found the anti-Semitism painful. I found it personally upsetting. And I still find it upsetting. Just recently, the Prime Minister invited to tea in number 10 Downing Street, the first I have been there in many years. He invited both Holocaust and Kindertransport survivors and above all the children and grand children. There are not many left, who actually came to this country, and the Kindertransport, and few are sadly of those who survived the horrors of accounts.

I remember there was an occasion here when there was an event which the Holocaust Education Trust organised and there were Holocaust survivors, and they asked me what I was, and I said, I just came on Kindertransport. I said, compared to what you want to, I just got in train and two days later I arrived in Liverpool Street station -- I got on a train. What you went through was unbelievably appalling and we respect what you have been through and your sense of purpose and tenacity.

Sadly there are not many people left in either category. Either in Holocaust five is or Kindertransport people. That is why it is interesting to be repeated again, and to have tea with the Prime Minister. I noticed King Charles has also been doused which unspoken strongly -- has been to Auschwitz. October 7, some of the events in Gaza, in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Syria, what has happened to the Yazidis, it doesn't seem we are learning what we should be learning as well.

I wonder if I can refer to the Hughenden who organised the Kindertransport to this country and I became good friend of his, before he died. We were good friends and we chatted occasionally. And I think he was a marvellous example of a human being who devoted himself to helping other people. He got to Prague, he saw what was happening in 1939, and unlike other people who said, this is awful, and walked away, he said, this is awful and did something about it.

If I can put in a plug for the film One Life which came out about a year ago, I have seen it twice and I have to say how important it is every time. It was a remarkable tribute to a remarkable and visual. On the Kindertransport, Britain took 10,000 children mainly from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Sometimes one must argue that 10,000 was not a large number, but if we did it then we can do it now but that is for a future built on another occasion.

It is interesting to read the Hansard of the time when Britain is debating whether to take in children, and the voices we have heard more recently. The fact is, this country did it, it took the people. I'm sure your lordships will be aware, just off the central lobby, and House of Lords, there is a plaque in the Lords, there is a plaque in the corridor, a thank you plaque on behalf of the 10,000 children who arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport banking Britain for having given the safety, and I often take people on a tour.

I show them that. And I say, this is why we are thanking Britain for what they did to save us. Like many people, I have been to some of the camps, I went to our -- Auschwitz. It was painful and it is even painful to think about today. I was with a friend who had also fled from text of Acura and we were looking at the suitcases. In those days, people had initials on the suitcases. -- Somebody who also fled from Czechoslovakia. We were looking to see if there were any people we knew who had died in the camps.

I didn't see any of those. More recently, a member I mentioned this last year, I was invited to Berlin along with a journalist, for the commemoration of Kindertransport the commemoration of Kindertransport and they had an exhibition about Kindertransport, it was a very moving thing. All the more so it took place in violin in Germany. May I just reflect on the experience, I think I made this debate last year. Sometime ago, I was invited to a school in East London.

And it was all Muslim boys. The project they were working on was Kindertransport in the Holocaust. And I did my little piece about refugees and so on. In the Holocaust. And the first question in the Q&A came from a 14 or 15-year-old boy who said, what do I say to somebody who denies the Holocaust ever happened? And I think that question was such a powerful question. It is assigned the school was doing a good job and assign the message was getting home that this was a question that he wanted to be able to repudiate, if somebody mentioned it to them elsewhere -- it was a sign the school was doing well.

Whenever I talk to schools about these issues, schools really get it. They do understand what's going on and it is very rewarding to talk to school students and indeed that's why I pay tribute to the Holocaust Education Trust and the Holocaust memorial day trust for the Holocaust memorial day trust for the work they do and if any thing is going to come out of the tragedy of the Holocaust it's the next generation who will carry it forward, when those of us who were closer to it are no longer here.

That's why I was so shocked when Elon Musk was photographed doing a Hitler salute. Maybe he didn't mean it, maybe he didn't understand. I find something quite shocking when the sorts of things happen. I sometimes wonder whether decency and the values that we uphold, whether there isn't another thin veneer, and that things can even be swept aside. I remember one of the things I read about some years ago was a German soldier working in Auschwitz, he wanted his wife back in Germany and said, make sure the children clean their teeth.

What a contrast between somebody who was murdering Jews, measuring them, gassing them, day in day out, and yet he was worried about whether his children were cleaning the teeth. I find that difficult to understand. Last year we saw some riots. Tragically. And again it made thing, sometimes there is a thin protective layer of decency in countries and our job is to make that layer much quicker. A thin protective layer because the way these rights exploded and the people tried to petrol bomb hostels, housing refugees, I find that deeply shocking.

Can I say, has spoken to many of the faith groups who are supportive of the cause of refugees and I think it's a tribute to the many Jewish groups that I have spoken to that they are very supportive of refugees, which are much all of the refugees happen to be Muslims but the Jewish community is very supportive. That's the sort of thing that should be said more often. I would like to finish with one story. I was in a refugee camp in Jordan.

A decent, actually. It had sanitation and prefabricated buildings and so on. I said to a boy, what your situation? He said, I finished my education in the camps. He said, I have had to get a job in the camp, I can't get a job elsewhere. And it made me think, human beings, and I refer to Holocaust fivers, human beings, can put up with terrible situations if there is some hope for them at the end of the line. If there is a bit of hope.

And our job is to make sure that there is hope and that the scourge of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are eradicated in our job is to spread that word. That is why I welcome this chance to be able

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to take part in this debate. I very much welcome this debate

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I very much welcome this debate initiated by the government during its presidency of the international Holocaust remembrance alliance and I congratulate the noble Lord Lord congratulate the noble Lord Lord Khan on his speech. It's an honour to follow the noble Lord Lord Dubs
14:29
Baroness Ludford Portrait Baroness Ludford (Liberal Democrat)
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to follow the noble Lord Lord Dubs as it always is to work with him. We are blessed today by three maiden speeches, of noble Lord Lord Evans of sealant and Lord Kalms and noble Lady Baroness Levitt, all on the bench opposite. Only Lord Has spoken before me and I think the chairman of the Jewish labour movement has shown what a great contribution he will make to this House. If I may squint at my phone, I'm going to have two scratch a few words later on.

I have found an interview he did with Jewish News. Explaining his family originated in Bialystok, then Russia, Napoleon. He recounted his preparation for his introduction to this House. I was asked by this very nice man, we just wanted to check whether any of your family has been enabled. I thought to myself in the past some of my family may well have been on the run from Russian been on the run from Russian been on the run from Russian This year we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in January January 1945.

I was grateful to be invited to the secretary -- ceremony. There we heard both from survivors and from a young woman, among many others, and she, like myself, being non-Jewish, but spends a lot of his bedtime on Holocaust education because she can see how vital it is to all of us. I recognise that special name for the Jewish community, but as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust says, the Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation. And prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all.

Holocaust Memorial Day is for everyone. And the Holocaust educational trust, another trust that does such great work, notes that as the Holocaust moves from living memory to history, this Holocaust Memorial Day provides a key opportunity to bring the Holocaust to the forefront of our national conscience. This was a scene emphasised by prime Ministers are key as timer crossing that is the number of Holocaust survivors regrettably diminishes with the passage of time, the responsibility for remembrance rests far heavier on our shoulders and on those of generations yet to come.

The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task and in so doing we inform our present and shape our future. My Liberal Democrat colleague made a similar point in the debate to weeks ago in The Other Place, as the living memory of the Holocaust reduces it is more important than ever that each of us keeps it alive through our own annual act of remembrance and in calling out anti-Semitism and all active discrimination linked to groups because of their faith,

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nationality or identity. Last October we sadly lost 100 year old Holocaust survivor Lily bit. And she did so much to ensure that the Holocaust would not be that the Holocaust would not be forgotten and I delighted that her mantle has been taken up by her mantle has been taken up by her impressive great ransom. I was impressive great ransom. I was struck by a comment that her minister about how in Auschwitz he saw photographs of nutty guards saw photographs of nutty guards standing with Jewish prisoners staring at the camera, completely indifferent.

And in one case even smiling. The Prime Minister said it showed more powerfully than ever how the Holocaust was a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary individuals, utterly consumed by the difference. The Holocaust was not only a crime wider than the SS but it did not come out of nowhere. Since preceding it there were years, centuries, millennia, of discrimination and persecution of both groups and as individuals. As my colleague states there was a decade before the Holocaust, a whole decade of dehumanising a whole community.

Dehumanisation of people which has been called the fourth stage of genocide is the key to enabling not only persecution but extermination. Amid all the terrible weakness and horrors of Auschwitz I found the arch over the entrance gate emblazoned with the phrase work makes you free, chilling in its auto cynicism. When I go to Jewish and Holocaust museums or indeed to version which I visited twice, I I not only find the photographs of persecuted Jews subjected to programs or victims of the Nazi's hugely emotional, but I also find desperately poignant the photos of hard-working bourgeois successful Jewish families in German and towns and cities who strove to fit in to do everything to become respectable citizens of their own country, there sought to prolong and they were still destroyed.

I have on my bookshelves at home which I have had for about 20 years a book by Vienna born Amos Elon called the pity of it all, a portrait of the German Jewish epilogue. It describes how over two centuries from the 14-year-old Moses Mendelssohn, of course later famous philosopher, into Berlin in 1743, entry through the wasn't all tour, the only guide permitted to Jews. Until 1933, so from 1743 to 1933 German Jews increasingly and hugely contributing to Germany's intellectual political and economic development.

With the Weimar Republic being the high point of the assimilation and integration of German Jews into German life. The writer notes that alongside the German anti-Semitism there was a Germany of enlightened human concern, civilised rule of law, Government, social security, and thriving social democracy, but none of that saved Germany's or Europe's Jews, because it is discontinuing disco and into attitude with fellow citizens that had never been removed and was there to be exploited. Over stories that London's Jewish memorial closed in 2023, we do have the very impressive Holocaust galleries, War Museum on the Holocaust library.

We are privileged to have as a member of this House Lord Daniel Finkelstein, grandson of German Jewish scholar and nutty campaigner. From the library in 1933 in order to one world of that nutty threat. I hope he does not mind me referring to him and quoting him in his absence. Within weeks of the appalling attacks by her mass on October 7, graffiti was dawned on the Holocaust library and Lord Finkelstein, still tweeting as Danny think understandably reacted. I am so upset by this graffiti attack, grandfathers library.

Alfred had a PhD in Islamic studies and care deeply about Arab people. To see his Holocaust archive vandalised in this way suggests an attack on Jews, not a critique on Israel. So, I would just finish, as I must, that we have seen since October 7 distressing rise in anti-Semitic speech and attacks with hostility to the very existence of the state of Israel. Where people chant from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. This is not equal for the state before the destruction of Israel based not only on anti-Zionism but anti-Semitism.

We have pledged never again, the political developments around the not least in Germany are deeply troubling. Our vigilance must be constant, vocal, and vigilant.

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I draw attention to the House to the entry in the register of interests, particularly those relating to Holocaust members. I congratulate them a wonderful speech. It reminded me very much of speech. It reminded me very much of how I felt when I first arrived here. I can remember being given an office on the third floor of the office on the third floor of the court and then spending the next two weeks trying to find it again. I weeks trying to find it again.

I thought he give an informed speech thought he give an informed speech for a maiden. It was very clear that it, that his contribution is going to make a very big difference to this House and I welcome him here, he comes with a magnificent reputation and I personally looking forward to hearing him speak again. A couple of weeks ago I stood close to the railway arch in Auschwitz-
14:39
Lord Pickles Portrait Lord Pickles (Conservative)
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Birkenau. Close to where over 80 years ago my honourable friend, Ivor years ago my honourable friend, Ivor Pearl, would last two talk to his mother. On that separation he jumped mother. On that separation he jumped lines to join her and his little lines to join her and his little sister. I want to be with you, mum. sister. I want to be with you, mum. He replied calmly, no. No and be in the other line with your brother. He the other line with your brother.

He obeyed. They would never see each other again. By the time he was allotted a hot, both the and daughter were dead and cremated and their ashes cooling will stop Ivor remembered that it was a beautiful remembered that it was a beautiful warm spring day. Noble Lords may recall that I first inspired UK presidency of the international Holocaust alliance in plain sight. The Holocaust did not happen in dark corners, but in bright sunshine. With the whole world watching.

The UK holds the presidency at the cusp of a significant change. Within a few short years, Holocaust survivors will move from contemporary memory into history books. How we deal with the loss of witnesses, has received vigorous debate for the last few decades. When I took up the role as specialist envoy 10 years ago, the feeling among some was that empathy was the key and that everything would fall in place naturally. I had my doubts. Unsupported empathy is fragile and fickle.

If you doubt that, consider the difference the world has shown to the Israeli hostages. Consider the reaction to humanitarian agencies to those who are emaciated people, hoping to reunite with a family long dead. Not a single word of comfort came from any of the self described humanitarian agencies. The UK presidency in our strategy this year as a trip has adopted a triple track approach across three headings. To support, landscape, archives and testimony and objects.

It landscape the IRA adopted the safeguarding science charter. Which sets out guidelines for the preservation of murder and attention sites. UK played a pivotal role in the drafting of the charter, across the killing grounds of the Holocaust sites are deteriorating with the passage of time, with neglect, and with wilful destruction. The charter lays down a set of advice aimed at preserving the sites with dignity. Complimentary to the charter, there are reminders that people, buildings and places, our presidency is keen to engage with young people.

And we did this through a remarkably successful in my hometown project. Which invited schools across our member countries to look during the Holocaust informer occupied countries and those receiving victims of the Nazis and their collaborators, produced original and moving projects. Schools, participated from as far a field as Argentina to Greece, the United States, to Poland. And member countries including the United Kingdom. Most projects attracted favourable media attention, linking familiar buildings and places with Holocaust locally.

On archives, the presidency worked with the Association of Jewish refugees on our legacy project, the Holocaust testimony portal which pulls together for the first time testimony from the UK Holocaust survivors and refugees who made their homes here. This includes testimony from the AJR refugee voice initiative, the UK Holocaust foundation, the sure foundation, and many more archives. Hopefully more archives, particularly the smaller and more specialist, will join commitments. The portal allows you to see testimony from individual survivors across the decade in one place.

They formally establish the archive that will encourage the flow of information between archives. I am the posture of the archives which is the world's most comprehensive archive for victims and survivors of the Nazis and their collaborators. The collection has information of over 17.5 million people and belongs to UNESCO's memory of the world, in recent years they have improved their public access to the archive. To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation they broadcast over social media 80 objects.

A digital project of one minute clips featuring 80 objects from film testimony of to Holocaust survivors and refugees. The objects represent personal histories and experience of Jewish Holocaust survivors during Jewish Holocaust survivors during Objects like a teddy bear, spoon, watch, take on special meaning. A passport with the J, a bittersweet reminder of a lost world. Again I thank the Association of Jewish refugees for their help. And creative help with the 80 object.

The UK is very lucky to have such a widespread support of Holocaust organisations and use the London plenary to showcase the UK's veracity of these institutions. Even in these challenge times the museum continues to have an excellent reputation in the field of remembrance. Education and tackling the anti-Semitism. Our policy was described as gold standard for others to follow. The UK Presidency address to pressing problems, we have had special conferences that have dealt with the problems of artificial intelligence, and bringing people together across the various differences, and we organised a conference to deal with the teaching of the Holocaust after 7 October.

We will continue to look at tackling Holocaust denial and distortion and we will continue till the end to look at the Stockholm Declaration tweak we will meet again to look at the next 25 years. We have moved now, that moment that we saw a couple of weeks ago, it was poignant on all kinds of levels. We will never see the like again. 10 years ago, they will not be Holocaust survivors to speak. We are now the custodians of their memory.

And we have a duty to remember and to tell the truth. Thank you.

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My Lords, I begin by
14:47
Baroness Levitt Portrait Baroness Levitt (Labour)
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I I pay I pay tribute I pay tribute to I pay tribute to the I pay tribute to the head I pay tribute to the head doorkeeper who told me when humour when I should say good morning and when I should say it afternoon depending on whether it was before or after prayers. To all my colleagues, thank you for the warmth of your. I thank my supporters and my noble friend. It has been a privilege to have the support and encouragement.

Two other supporter, I should say a few words. In my professional life, I was taught as an early stage that you start all addresses by summing up the purpose of your speech in a the purpose of your speech in a single sentence and mine is this - I am a criminal barrister. This explains what I have been doing for the past 40-odd years and illustrates what I would like to achieve in the House and why I wanted to speak in this debate.

I will guess that when I said I was a barrister, you thought you could predict who and what I am. Perhaps establishment or convention might have crossed your mind but I thought I should reveal more about myself including perhaps a few things that not many people know but some might be able to tell. It will all be OK. I was astonishingly badly behaved as I was astonishingly badly behaved as a child and when I was 14 I was disobedient and a bad influence on the other girls and my unfortunate and worried parents had to find a new school for me in the middle of the academic year and in the middle My parents made weekly trips to the headmistress's office to try to persuade her not to expel me for the second time.

Somehow, I just about lasted the course, but decades later, I was visiting the school and my married name because I was a little unsure of my welcome when a familiar voice shouted in a voice you could have heard in Latvia, Alison Levitt, the worst girl I ever taught. This was my old history teacher. She went on to say that in school I was a total nuisance, always questioning, challenging everything, but some years later, she discovered that I had become a criminal barrister and she said, and then it all made sense.

I'm not sure how my fellow barristers would feel about typical barrister being described as a perennial nuisance but they properly would agree that constant questioning of the established order is something that we all do and something which we are rightly proud of. I was called to the bar in 1980. Women barristers were having a pretty terrible time of it generally at one of the most demeaning things that we were not permitted to wear trousers in court. Skirts and dresses only, even when you are having to trudge through the snow to some far-flung court where your client was charged with sexual assault sit there looking at your legs when you are trying to take instructions and pull down your skirt with your other hand.

Fast forward to 1995 when I was chair of young barristers and my monthly meeting the then chairman of the bar, noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, he asked me about what can I do for the young bar, I took my courage in both hands and I replied, trousers. A little bit surprised but entirely characteristically, keen to do what he could for diversity and inclusion at the bar, he spoke to the Lord Chief Justice and within days the rules were changed. As late as 1995 it was a novelty for women to wear trousers in court.

I ask you. This remains a moment of pride. By now you may have noticed a bit of a theme about me. If I wanted to expect aspect two it is endlessly and exasperatingly insisting on swimming upstream. But one of the reasons I'm so delighted to have joined your Lordship's House is that I have a lifelong interest in the purposes of legislation which creates criminal offences. For this reason, sometimes, laws are entirely pragmatic and designed to achieve particular ends, like wearing a seatbelt, but sometimes a law does something else as well.

The things that we may criminal about what our society sees as acceptable, and the example of this is the law that made rape within marriage and offence stops and said there would be hardly any prosecutions because it would be impossible to prove lack of consent but I was in favour because I thought doing the sender strong message that our society does not believe that women are the property of their husbands. Decades later juries to regulate the effect of this offence, so sometimes we legislators can bring about social change.

Conversant this is that if there are laws which we do not enforce, the society that we do not think these transgressions matter. Why not catching and not punishing shoplifters, for example, we run the risk of beginning to legitimise so- called low-level dishonesty for which I predict there will be a very high social price to pay. I have said I'm a criminal barrister, but for the last three years I have been a judge doing criminal jury trials at the epic Snaresbrook Crown Court.

I resigned to hours before the announcement of my elevation to your Lordship's House or have a recent experience about the sharp end of our own justice system which I hope I will be able to put to good use in your Lordship's House was to others will speak about and for the police, prosecutors, solicitors and barristers, and the part they play. For now, I want to say something appreciative about my former colleagues, the judges, because I can tell you that the great extent it is their hard work and their goodwill that is holding the legal Crown Court system together and they deserve our thanks.

Also, as old habits die hard, if I occasionally address noble Lords as members of the jury, I hope I shall be forgiven. Why make my maiden speech as part of the Holocaust Memorial Day debate? I said a few moments ago I would come back to my other supporter, my noble kinsman, he and I have been married fully 20 years. Some of you may have assumed that because of my family surname, I am Jewish. But in fact, I'm not. But he is, at least his family were.

My husband's parents were both Holocaust victims and survivors. His father's entire family first wife, parents, sister, niece, were murdered in Poland by the Nazis. The only one to survive was my sister- in-law, hidden in Poland from the age of two till the war came to an end and she was reunited in the UK with her father. My husband's mother and her family survived in Poland by ducking, diving and assuming a non- Jewish nom de guerre. This is the most terrible up close and personal reminder of what happens.

In a society that forgets where the rule of law matters. In the 1940s, my husband's parents arrived in the UK from Poland as refugees from the Nazis. I never met his father, who died years earlier, but I knew and loved his mother. This is not my story to tell. It is my husbands. There is one reason why I wanted to speak of it today. His parents who survived the Nazis but then trapped in Poland by the Soviet regime had got through the war by selling a few diamonds which was all they had managed to salvage off their earlier comfortable life.

After the war, they came across the remaining diamond ring which they then smuggled out of Poland by making it into a cake and sending it to my mother-in-law who by now was living in Lancashire. This bit of the story my husband cannot illustrate but I can. This is the ring. Which I wear every Holocaust Memorial Day and I'm wearing it today because it conveys the simple message. They survived, they are still standing, right here in the UK House of Lords. So I, too, say, never forget, never again.



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Well, I have been looking forward greatly to today's maiden speeches. Without trepidation in the case of the noble Lords Lord San Lord Evans the noble Lords Lord San Lord Evans of Sealand. And I congratulate Lord cats on his maiden speech and I know cats on his maiden speech and I know I look forward to Lord Evans, they will bring much to your Lordship's will bring much to your Lordship's House. At this point, I have the heart felt and I use the word deliberately, the heartfelt honour
14:58
Lord Carlile of Berriew Portrait Lord Carlile of Berriew (Crossbench)
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deliberately, the heartfelt honour of thanking my noble kinsman, I had to check with the clerks what was the right publisher -- kins woman. For her remarkable .c determination and a critical faculty of which I have some experience. All of which will make her a valued member of your Lordship's House. Her contributions on many subjects, I think, declaring my interest family, will be welcome, especially those founded upon her unusual and profound knowledge of and contribution to our criminal justice system.

And I should add, that she brought me closer, much closer than I have ever had been before, my Jewish heritage, and I thank her for that. I turn now directly to the subject of the debate. I say that the Holocaust was the event of the most unnatural scale and horror in the history of humanity. It brought the end of the 6 million lives, some my own close relatives. People who had no interest in politics, no interest in government, no interest in how their country, Poland, was ruled.

I was denied meeting one pair of grandparents because they were murdered. My sister, half sister's mother, died in Auschwitz after spending three years there, on her death certificate it says, typhoid. But we know she became ill and was shot against Uppal outside a shared shot against Uppal outside a shared Visiting there was an extraordinary experience for me. In my view, what happened to those people has left an indelible mark on the living. I want to talk a little bit, nobody has yet, but about what is generally referred to as survivors' Guild.

It is the best I can do at the moment like this. I do not know how many of you have seen the remarkable BBC you have seen the remarkable BBC series 'The Last Musician of Auschwitz'. It faces musicians who face the dilemma of whether they should play music while others in the camps were marching to their deaths as slave labourers and what happened to them is that survival won the debate and that is what survival guilt is about.

Survival has often won the debate and they were right to do what they had it did not go away after they had done it. I have seen it in close quarters. My father, all of his family died of murder except for my beloved half-sister who is now a lovely old lady living in a nursing home, speared by dementia from the memories of experience as a child. -- spared. Before she became ill, she wrote a remarkable book published by Bloomsbury, the publishers, about what she remembered of her childhood aged 2- 7, when she was hidden in Poland.

She was hidden by an audacious young woman called Federica who was a cousin and ensured that my sister, Renata, survived the war. Then she brought her to her father who had been a medical officer in England been a medical officer in England and they had a speedy romance and married and I am the son. Until I was 10 years old, I knew nothing about that background. My parents converted to Christianity and my father was a general practitioner in Burnley.

My mother walked into Manchester Cathedral and demanded to see the Bishop and that is how that happened. I was not told until I was 10 years old that Renata, who was 20, was not my full sister. It was put to me that she had had another mother. Did us for the rest of our lives and it still does. It is an extraordinary early example of what survivors' guilt is all about. Another example from my family, my cousin left Poland when he was 17, just before the war.

He went to Israel, came to Europe, became an art dealer in Basel. How did he express survivors' guilt? He discovered a painter who is referred to in books which refer to paintings about the Holocaust. The painter became a reputed Holocaust painter and artist. Survivors' guilt - that painter was an alter ego of which she had invented to express his experiences before and the loss of his family in the Holocaust and I'm proud to say that I own two of his works.

And then there is my cousin Eva - she came to lunch with me in this place and looked at me as if it was weird to be here and wondered what was going on and we've all had experiences like that and I can see Baroness Anderson nodding. She told me she was in a concentration camp with her mother and the baby and the baby died and she helped her mother to commit suicide. One day, she was sitting in a room with a number of women in the concentration camp and the Nazi guard came in and took the 13-year-old girl by the hair and dragged her out of the room and a few minutes later she returned weeping saying she had been raped and a few minutes later the guard came back and stood her up against the wall in front of all the other women in the room and shot her dead in the back of the head.

My cousin had survivors' guilt so much so that she married an American and had two fine sons and did not tell them until nearly she died that they had a brother or sister who had died in a concentration camp. People have to live with these experiences and what I say to your Lordships is the importance of the Holocaust and memorialising it is that we must make sure that the rest of society lives with these experiences so that when the noble Lord, who's done wonderful work, and I've watched him in Parliament for more decades than I care to mention because we're all getting older now, but the wonderful work he has done demonstrates that it is very important to educate so that people know that the Holocaust not only really happened but was the worst event in history.

And so my real point is that Holocaust Memorial Day is not really a day in which we remember but is very much part of the present. When you carry the sort of history I have, you appreciate the huge public support that comes through Holocaust Memorial Day. It stands as a memorial under reckoning, loving all of us to celebrate the innocence of our grandparents and other close relatives and their death. And also for those of us who suffer the benefit of survival, as my parents and cousins did, and as I do, to a lesser extent, coming to terms with a past of which I know nothing, because I was 10 years old.

For now, it is enough that in the debate like this, I say about the past that we have the opportunity to learn important lessons for the future. important lessons for the future. -- Ballyhome is taking part remotely. There is a great honour to take part in this debate and to follow the long list of excellent contributions we have heard. I welcome and look forward to hearing from Lord Evans, the next speaker, in his maiden speech.

I would like to congratulate Lord Pack and Baroness Alexander on excellent maiden speeches and I'm glad I followed Lord Carlile rather than precede him. It would be wrong and with risk matrimonial disharmony if I was to come between husband and wife and I look forward to hearing further contributions in the future, having made such an excellent start. The Nazis inflicted great atrocities across a wide range of communities and many of them have already been mentioned today and it is right that we acknowledge and remember all of them.

Evil is evil. It's particularly true that the Holocaust, the infliction of an attempt to wipe out the entire Jewish community from the face of
15:08
Lord Weir of Ballyholme Portrait Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party)
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the earth, stands alone as being the greatest act of evil in the history greatest act of evil in the history of mankind. The murder of 6 million of mankind. The murder of 6 million Jews, and that is Jews, not just people, is something that we must people, is something that we must commemorate at all costs. When we mention 6 million, it is sometimes difficult for all of us to get our heads around what that means in heads around what that means in practice.

Stalin once said that the death of a single person is a tragedy and the death of 1 million people is a statistic. We cannot afford the deaths of 6 million Jewish people and the Holocaust simply to become a statistic. We should always remember that behind each one of those 6 million is an individual life and individual story - a father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, friend. It is the case that if there were no other reason simply to commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and their families, that would be reason enough to hold the Annual Holocaust Memorial Day but sadly there are other reasons which also compel us rightly to keep this uppermost in our mind.

Firstly it is clear that humanity has not learned the lessons of the atrocities of the Holocaust. Since 1945, and it is a word that the sometimes overuse, but there's clearly been a range of genocides inflicted throughout the world - from Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia. And therefore, ensuring we learn the lessons of history is critical to ensure that it does not repeat itself. Secondly, and even within this country itself, it is clear this country itself, it is clear that anti-Semitism does not begin with the Holocaust and even more sadly does not end with the Holocaust.

The last 18 months in particular has seen a heightening of anti-Semitic behaviour across the UK. We have seen it on our streets, our schools, across our communities on the hall with the terrible statistic that 2024 is the second highest number of anti-Semitic attacks in history. I was struck the speech Lord Wilson gave some time ago and this House. When he gave the contrast that he was of greater concern over his young daughter who lived in London whenever she would go into London on a Friday or Saturday night to socialise, that he was in great fear for her than for his son who served with the Israeli Defense Forces.

For many Jewish people, that is an experience that is all too commonplace in our society. The voice and cancer of anti-Semitism is still with us and that is why we must ensure we constantly confronted and do everything in our power to eradicate it. Thirdly, I think that we must understand and know the Holocaust to ensure that we learn lessons from it and make sure it does not happen again. I think that is a dangerous and historically mistaken belief that the Holocaust was one of 10, perpetrated by a few evil fanatics at the top of the Nazi regime.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Holocaust was the most extreme example but built upon centuries of anti-Semitism across Europe. We think of it as a terabyte for is most chilling about it are the efforts that remain by the Nazi regime to make everything appear as ordinary and as normal as possible. That was done for the purposes of trying to make sure that the Jewish victims of the Holocaust went to the deaths as compliantly as possible, to the extent at which fictions were created of for example the showers in the concentration camp.

It was not built purely upon terror but trying to create a sense of being ordinary and that nothing unusual was happening. Thirdly, it was not just the actions of a handful of people. The Holocaust was brought about by the active participation and often the acquiescence of tens of thousands, if not millions, of people who helped to facilitate it. People in other walks of life that was simply regard as being ordinary and unremarkable. That is why it is wrong for us to see this as someone of event.

Drags us into a place of complacency and believe that it could not happen again. By acknowledging the evil perpetrated by so many during the Holocaust, it's important that we acknowledge the bravery and dedication of many other people in Europe during that decade or so. Many people who acted with bravery and risk their own lives in sheltering members of the Jewish community and others and protecting them, often at the expense of your lives. And in the UK I'm very proud that in my constituency in the village of my loyal, there was a refuge for Jewish people, directly before the war, just after it, helping to look after some of the children from the Kinder Transport, just before and during the war and indeed became a home, shortly after the war some of those who had survived from Auschwitz itself.

That bond with the past has been built upon in my constituency in the local primary school has recently opened a Holocaust more garden. That is a living way in which a current generation can acknowledge what has happened, in acknowledge what has happened, in the past. Finally, it is the case that for many others, I suspect most lords have had the great honour and privilege, like myself, of both meeting Holocaust survivors and listening to the very moving and telling first-hand testimony of those survivors.

But as we know, the passage of time, the number of survivors is becoming less and less. In another perhaps five or 10 years there will not be the opportunity for anyone else to receive that first-hand testimony. Which is why it is important that the mantle passes to the rest of us to carry on that critical message. Whether through the work of organisations, such as the Holocaust education trust. Lessons for Auschwitz and indeed no better exemplified than by the actions of our sovereign, who gave a truly remarkable example, to the rest of us, by becoming the first member of the British Royal family to visit Auschwitz, this year.

That is the sort of leadership of example that we need to pursue. A former leader of mine, Peter Robinson was described, described it as a never ending a relay race. For the survivors of the concentration camps, their races individuals on this earth is an early run. It is up to all of us are now, the generation post-war, to grasp hold of the Button, to carry on the message of the critical nature of the commemoration, of the Holocaust.

To ensure, not simply in words, but also in deeds, that we fulfil the It is humbling and, I must say slightly daunting to follow in this debate, such a moving and important contributions, particularly from my noble friend Lord Katz and Baroness Levitt, I will do my best. I would like to do three things in this speech, give some thanks, to briefly tell the story of why I am here and of course to contribute to this debate. First summer thanks.

To my noble friend, Lord Kennedy and Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath, for introducing me. To Baroness Smith for her brilliant leadership and support. To the doorkeepers and all the Lord's staff, who have been a credit to this House and an enormous help to me. And with all these maiden speeches, I hope they feel cherished. They certainly deserve to. I would of course like to thank my noble friends, but I have been made to feel so welcome right across
15:18
Lord Evans of Sealand Portrait Lord Evans of Sealand (Labour)
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this House. And after only three short weeks, it is clear to me that this House is an extraordinary place to stop it certainly has its foibles to stop it certainly has its foibles and it isn't perfect, but the quality of expertise, scrutiny and quality of expertise, scrutiny and debate is world class. Dig under the partisan froth, which occasionally partisan froth, which occasionally bubbles up, even here, something terribly important is happening. The terribly important is happening. The foundation of so much we have as a nation, it's a democracy at work.

So nation, it's a democracy at work. So why am I here? It started with my parents, both working class, their values were family, fairness, decency and hard work. Together, they were greater than the sum of their parts and they worked so hard to get my brother Rob and I the start in life that everybody should start in life that everybody should have. Safe, secure, loving. So many people have helped me and encouraged me, but I will just pick out three.

Dennis Wiseman, my English teacher saw something in me that I didn't see it myself. My honourable friend and a mentor Len Collinson who told me I knew nothing about business and then dedicated to so much to teach me so much. And the exceptional Baroness Margaret McDonagh, of this House, sadly no longer with us. Noble Lords will all have their own stories about what got them into politics. Over the years I've worked with some brilliant people, from all mainstream parties.

All wanting to change places and lives for the better, but disagreeing on exactly how. Which is what democracy is about. And you cannot have a democracy without political parties. And the disrespect in which they are held, by too many, is a great jeopardy for us. I can remember the day I first got involved in politics, like it was yesterday. It was May 12, 1979. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected on a landslide. But it wasn't at that election that called me to action.

I was meeting my brother, Rob, in our local High Street. I was late and as I approached I saw him being bullied, mocked and taunted, by a group of teenagers. Rob has a learning disability. I sorted those kids out, but on the bus, trust me I did. On the bus on the way home I realised that I wouldn't always be there for him. I needed to do something to make the the place better, safer, kinder. Why did those better, safer, kinder.

Why did those kids think it was I wanted a country that brings out the best in people and discourages the worst. I joined the Labour Party that day. I'm fortunate though to have three families. My own, wife, brother, daughter. The Labour Party and thanks to the only unkind thing my father ever did, imposing on me the life sentence of supporting Chelsea Football Club. I have Chelsea Football Club. -- Chester football club. I blessed to have them. Politics was alive and well when I was cutting my political teeth in the 1980s with the National Front on the rise.

In 1988 I visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp many of the mechanics of the Holocaust were developed, before implementation in the larger camps. It was a profound experience which she lives with me, today. The mundane, everyday things in the world, hearts, living quarters and not statistics. Those that perpetrated the atrocities were people as well. As Stephen Pinker has said, we have to be prepared to believe that evil doers always think they are acting morally. Yesterday, I witnessed a raw footage collected by the IDF, in advance of going on a delegation to Israel next week, after the October 7 atrocities.

Still happening today. Were they monsters? Well, maybe, but they were also people like us. Which is difficult for us to conceive, but despite technological, economic and social advances we are still constantly rocked and astonished, as atrocities are committed today. It is too easy to demonise perpetrators as simply evil. In 2006, 12 British National party councillors were elected in Barking and Dagenham. elected in Barking and Dagenham. Change, poverty, deindustrialisation all played a part. Little parties, including my own were also culpable.

I'm proud to be of the work I did alongside others notably, Baroness Hodgson, to regain the confidence of residents in mainstream politics. I became a general secretary of the Labour Party, in 2020. I was alarmed to find anti-Semitism, alive and well in my own family, the Labour Party. My friend, Damon Louise Almond, who suffered a terrible anti-Semitic abuse once said to me, only now can I really fully understand how ordinary people can do terrible things. That chilled me.

This was in the 1940s, in another country, this was England in the 21st century, within a progressive political party. It was such a personal pleasure to welcome Louise back into the Labour Party membership, in 2021. Keir Starmer provided a first-class leadership and it fell to me, as a general secretary to root out anti-Semitism. It wasn't easy. I witnessed the certainty of the self-righteous. Indestructible narratives that resist the challenge and even true. resist the challenge and even true. , so many in that task including my noble friend, Baroness Ramsay, who led the transformation of our complaints process and did so much to restore the battered confidence of the Jewish stakeholders.

The noble friend Lord Katz provided exemplary leadership and the Jewish labour and they would brave resilience and other Jewish leaders trusted us when they could have been forgiven for not doing so. It was tough, but together we changed the Labour Party for good. There can be no complacency. There is still a toxicity in our politics and sadly it is growing. I saw it in the recent general election, all too clearly. It is easy to descend to the lowest, easy to proffer simple solutions to complex problems.

My fundamental belief remains that with the right environment, support and nurture, the overwhelming majority share the values that my parents taught me, generosity, kindness, and love. The work done in your Lordships' House macro is a noble, in the best sense of the word. But it could be too easy for us to become cocooned against the harsh political reality, in this House and the other place. There has never been a more volatility, or less affinity with mainstream parties. This is a real danger.

Very little in politics is inevitable. But it is a functional democracy is certainly a precondition for the worst, to prevail. As my noble friend Lord Dubs, who knows more about this than most of us said "We must never be bystanders to hatred. " That can be difficult, but thanks to the support of so many, I was able not to be a bystander to hatred in the high street, with my brother in a 1979, to the BNP in Barking and Dagenham, also tackling anti-Semitism, in the Labour Party too.

It is up to us to Labour Party too. It is up to us to spot and stop the small acts of hatred, wherever we find them, before they become the norm, before they burgeon the accelerator of social media, before it's too late. David Baddiel has said anti-Semitism is unique, in its ability to shape shift. It exists both in the far right and the far left, in conspiracies, in populism and even amongst those who claim to fight racism. So no party represented here is immune.

I am so proud to be a member of your Lordships' House, but we do need to do more. We are the doorkeepers for our democracy. If we allow democracy to fray and Cray and it is doing exactly that, on our watch, it could open the door again to the kind of atrocities we are marking today. We must simply never let it happen.
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Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath Portrait Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Labour)
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It is an honour and a pleasure to follow my noble friend, Lord Rivers of Sealand and to be 1st to congratulate him on an inspiring maiden speech. I have known the noble Lord for many years and can confirm that he has definitely no bystander. He has always been a man of action and I don't include his support for that peculiar football team, Chester. Whether supporting his brother on the High Street or taking on the BNP in East London and at the antisemite, regrettably for me, in the Labour Party.

He will be a great asset to your Lordships' House. I was so pleased to be able to support his efforts, when he was a general secretary, under the leadership of the now prime Minister, Keir Starmer, to tackle the scourge of anti-Semitism in our party. Which, as you could hear from the noble Lord, my noble friend is one of his three families. The need to do the work that we did, hand- in-hand, with my noble friend, Lord Katz and Baroness Anderson and with so many others is proof, if anyone needed that marking Holocaust Memorial Day is more important now than ever and I bear in mind that the comments are that the noble Baroness, honest each.

On this subject. We must always be vigilant and determined, men and women of action. And that is what I am seeing right across this House. I saw it when I was working for the Labour Party and I went to help the parties response to the damning report, from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, into anti-Semitism in Commission, into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. I saw it then, for example calm roles that the later commented Lord Kerslake of this House and the wonderful Baroness Prosser it made in making and overseeing the recruitment of the independent adjudicator's to ensure that anti-Semitism and indeed all acts of discrimination can be rooted out.

In the unwavering support and work by the noble friend, Baroness Hodgson, Royle, Lawrence, alongside Jewish communal stakeholders. Including and I'm very anxious I'm now going to leave out some names, but the then President of the deputies, Mary Vander seal, the current deputy, the Jewish Council current deputy, the Jewish Council on ageing -- Aidan Cohen. The fantastic Community Security Trust. I have seen it too since having the honour of joining your Lordships' House macro. I forgotten if I may, GLM members who were so fundamental, Peter Mason and Andrew Lincoln Berg I've also seen it since joining myself including powerful maiden speeches from my noble friend Lord Katz and Baroness Levitt.

I've been inspired by the way in which the noble Lord brings the horrors of the Holocaust alive to today's to originals by telling his family's terrible testimony in his writings, among other things. And I'm inspired by the spirit of my noble friend and hearing has remarkable experiences and listening to the noble Lord Carlile and his family experiences and, as I mentioned, Baroness Deech. Listening to Baroness Deech, I found deeply moving because I also heard the testimony of hers today.

It was only a adjoining the House that I learned from the noble Lord Austin that had been inspired by another child refugee from the Holocaust some years ago. Without realising it at the time, his father was my head teacher at secondary school and the reasons I only heard of his experiences decades after being taught by him was I assume that back then people did not really talk about it, at least not outside of their families. And yes, it was from my family that I learn the full horrors of the Holocaust.

My father told me when I was growing up that his time in the Westminster Tank Regiment which landed on the Beach on D-Day and drove across northern France and eventually he found himself part of deliberating forces. My dad never forgot what he saw the over. I'm not going to talk about that because others have spoken so eloquently about those horrors and with even more experience than I have, just feeling about it. He said, "I should never forget what I told you about and what I have seen." You body the children to know and to remember and to speak of it as I am doing today in his honour and he worried, even then, when we were children growing up, and as teenagers, that some people were denying that it happened and forgetting about it.

By continuing forgetting about it. By continuing to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, as all the Bulldogs have done eloquently today, we can and must

**** Possible New Speaker ****

make sure that no one ever forgets. My Lords, it's been a great

**** Possible New Speaker ****

My Lords, it's been a great honour to have heard three such interesting and heartwarming
15:34
Baroness Eaton Portrait Baroness Eaton (Conservative)
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interesting and heartwarming speeches from the three maiden speakers, Lord Katz, Baroness Levitt, Lord Evans. It's a great honour to follow Lady Ramsay this afternoon. Today, we are all here gathered in silent remembrance and the speeches we have heard have been heartbreaking and full of sadness and many of us are moved. 80 years ago on this very day, the world witnessed the liberation of Auschwitz which is a name etched in information for its wickedness and the place where 1 million souls perished.

Auschwitz was not an anomaly, nor was it the whole story. It was part of a network of extermination camps which sought to systematically eradicate 6 million Jews. We must resist the temptation to speak of the Holocaust as a horrific event that took place during the Second World War. To do so would be to diminish the full- scale of atrocity which spanned nations, yours, generations of suffering. Today is a day of reflection and must also be a day of reckoning because the hard truth is this - anti-semitism did not die with the fall of the Third Reich.

It was not buried in the rubble of Berlin and was not raised by the words 'never again'. It persists, is alive, is growing. We've heard about the community trust which found the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents documented in a 6-month period. It is no wonder they also uncovered that nearly 1 third of British Jews believe that they have a future in the country and 50% have considered leaving altogether. It is truly an anomaly to me that in the UK, a nation which has been a beacon of opportunity for Jewish people, there are those who fear for their safety and the future of the children and their very place in society.

How do we arrive at the moment where British Jews who have contributed so much to national life feel unwelcome in their own country? Crucially, what do we do about it? We rightly place great importance on the Holocaust and it is an opportunity to remember and educate and honour those whose lives were stolen. It can come at the expense of acting against anti-Semitism. We must not fail to confront the anti- semitism of today.

I put it to the House that each Holocaust Memorial Day should not just be a day of reflection but at the commitment to tackling contemporary anti-Semitism in all of its forms. This must be explicit and your targets and clear objectives and unwavering political will. Without this, the fight against anti-Semitism will continue to be overlooked, sidelined, de- prioritised on the political agenda. Let us be honest, the pervasive nature of this indicates that we are beyond easy solutions.

It cannot be solved overnight. That's must not deter us. We need a patient and sustained effort and an approach that acknowledges the scale of the issue while refusing to accept it as inevitable. We have skirted around the sub decked forward too long and it is time to take it seriously and as we do, we must ensure that Holocaust Memorial Day remains firmly rooted in the historic reality of what happened. We remember all victims of hatred but lead us not shy away from the fact that the Holocaust was first and foremost the attempted extermination of the Jewish people.

This is not merely historical detail but the very essence of why this day exists. To obscure or generalised this is not only a disservice to the past but a dangerous mistake to the future. Making the historical and contemporary link both honours the memory of those murdered and there is the best antidote against history repeating itself. The Holocaust was not inevitable. It was the result of unchecked hatred, institutional complicity, and the silence of too many for too long. That is why we must act now.

My Lords, today, as we remember the liberation of Auschwitz, let us liberate ourselves from complacency. Let us not merely remember, let us resolve. That has not not only more and, let us act. -- mourn. It is not only a phrase, there's a reality we strive towards. there's a reality we strive towards. I urge people to stand firm against anti-Semitism and make this a moment of real commitment to ensure that British Jewish people can live in this country with the same security, citizen.



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My Lords, I want to share a few

**** Possible New Speaker ****

My Lords, I want to share a few thoughts with you on the Holocaust Memorial but before we talk about it we have to ask why we would want to we have to ask why we would want to remember the Holocaust. What do we remember the Holocaust. What do we want to remember? These are the questions this debate was expected
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Lord Parekh Portrait Lord Parekh (Labour)
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questions this debate was expected to answer. Was it something unique in human history or has there not been more collective killing and more suffering? The first thing to ask is what is the specifically and uniqueness of the Holocaust? What is unique about it is that never before and never after have these four things happened in a way that they did in the 1940s. First of all, the Holocaust is articulated through the agency of the state.

It is not people going berserk and killing each other. And then working through the state and the state systematically aiming at particular groups and wanting to eliminate them. Secondly, there is a them. Secondly, there is a particular ideology of racism, pure race, white race, and there are different races and they must be eliminated and this helps you to identify those you want to get rid identify those you want to get rid of.

This is not an ordinary day. -- Death. This is death that is treated as an impersonal event. I suggest that we look at this using the state. Using ideology to identify particular groups and mobilising the state to kill people who you have identified as undesirable. Even this is so and the question is often more. Why is this in some sense unique? Why not see it as a representative for other kinds of suffering. It is a long lasting suffering.

It is a long lasting future of human life. You look at collective genocide cases and there have been other genocides in history so why are we concentrating on the Holocaust? The question has been answered and the kind of suffering involved in the Holocaust is unique. It is unique for the following It is unique for the following reasons. There is death which comes only really in slavery. There is the human relationship between the slave owner and the sleigh.

That kind of humanity is there in almost all kinds of suffering except for when you come to the Holocaust when the individual is not just dehumanised but in humanised so the language used is one of cockroaches, worms, and so on. I have seen human beings referred to in such an inhuman way in no other instance and it is very Even this is so, I hope this is so. The question about other forms of suffering, the places that they have learnt about other forms of suffering cannot be applied to the Holocaust.

For example, in the common we try to understand how the Holocaust occurred. People say, well the Nazis hated Jews. It wasn't as easy as that. Jews as mistresses, Jews as friends. They didn't hate Jews, they hated human beings as a whole, misogynist. They were ill persons, wicked. That is not right either. Evil is a shallow, superficial. It is not borne out of the needed layers and so on. That leaves us puzzled. How do we explain the behaviour of a man or a dog, or animals to his friends, to his mother comitatus father, going to the concentration camp knocking off a few people, returning home if nothing happened.

It is at this. In order to be understood it is this question. Why did they come what kind of human beings turn into kind of human beings turn into machines of death. That cannot be answered if you look at other forms of killing. Developing from those forms of killing and then applied automatically. It simply wouldn't work. These questions, simple questions, why? How? The answer can begin. A new concert, the evil. She had made a study of concentration camps.

Came to the conclusion that these people were shallow. You expect people to have death of every kind. My suggestion simply is that if we want to learn any lessons, we haven't even started learning lessons. These questions, what are we learning from the Holocaust? All over the world. I want to end with a very simple conclusion, there are many others of the follow from this and that is when we say that, for example, Holocaust is evil, or whatever, we are making a point as well.

What is our judgement of it? It's evil, but what else? Is that enough for us to learn? Here I want to suggest that in the case of the Holocaust and in the case of lessons we can learn, we need to be asking certain questions that are in relation to other forms of suffering. It is a simple example. That is to say we have judged it in a way as all our discussions today has been in terms of the Jewish people.

It is the Holocaust entirely moral property of the Jewish people? Should it not be seen as a human problem? Of course Jews whether primary target, the intended target. But there were other intended targets. That is one point to ask. The other question to ask is of a slightly different nature and that it has happened, what of the moral consequences of this? Does it mean, for example that all of us, the price that Jews had to pay to win the state of Israel? How you slip into a way of thinking, a way of talking.

Therefore the Jewish people deserve... Whatever they do is forgiven. In that case we do injustice. The simple thing is we have a lot to learn, we haven't

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started learning the basic lessons of... I apologise to the noble Lord,

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I apologise to the noble Lord, but can I ask him to come to the end of his remarks please.

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These are the lessons we need to

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learn and I hope we can learn fast. I want to begin by paying tribute

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I want to begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord who sadly is not able to be in his place today. As the noble Baroness Ramsey of Wall the noble Baroness Ramsey of Wall
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Lord Bishop of Manchester Portrait The Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops)
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Heath reminded us in her excellent speech, as the son of a Holocaust survivor, it was he who helped me understand the significance of this understand the significance of this day, long before will be worth part of your Lordship's House. Unlike my of your Lordship's House. Unlike my present diocese, Derby, where I was the Bishop and the noble Lord Alstom was MP, didn't have a very large was MP, didn't have a very large Jewish population. Nevertheless at his instigation every year we sent to young people from Dudley College to young people from Dudley College to Auschwitz.

They reported back to our annual Holocaust Memorial Day our annual Holocaust Memorial Day event was held in the college. I told a very moving stories of what they had seen and how it made them who feel. Their witness, along the testimony of Holocaust survivors helped inspire young people who were born almost half a century after the Holocaust to understand why we come up to date, must be constantly on the vigil, against those voices and they seek to denigrate the common equal humanity and dignity of every single human being.

Those who denigrate, despise, ultimately seek to destroy those who imply, as a Christian will always declare is being created in the very image of God. And I live in Salford, in the midst of the largest community outside of London. The boundary, amidst many of my Jewish numbers to undertake tasks such as pushing wheelchairs and prams on the sabbath and other holy days is my garden wall. This year I've been delighted to see the success of the Holocaust Memorial Day schools exhibition we have held in Manchester Cathedral.

It preaches the work of Church of England primary schools, across the whole of greater Manchester, from many culturally, racially and divided communities. The children respond to key themes of the Holocaust, in a number of ways. Some of them are created origami paper cranes as prayers for peace. Others reflected on the butterfly that was written in a concentration camp. There was every creation of a pile of children shoes from the children who lost their lives Auschwitz. It was very difficult to look at, My Lords.

A collection of human portraits from many different cultures to celebrate our differences. Meanwhile local authority, Holocaust Memorial Day events in Greater Manchester, speakers who are Holocaust survivors, it can be when I attended in Manchester town hall, from their families. Respect was shown at these respects by numbers of all our main faith communities, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, seek... I had the

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privilege of leading representatives of all major faiths --$$TRANSMIT . We are good friends and good neighbours. The multifaith neighbours. The multifaith challenging hate that is hosted by my Cathedral undertook its own visit to Auschwitz, led jointly by Mike Dean and by my wife for being part Dean and by my wife for being part of that trip in March 19 my wife for being part of that trip in March 19, 2019. Have bilateral groups, our 2019. Have bilateral groups, our Jewish Jewish Muslim Forum with relationships forged over many years.

So vital when we find years. So vital when we find ourselves in a tense times. And I privilege to work closely with the Jewish Representative Council, to use my voice here in your Lordship's House, to raise concerns that they and other faith communities are first brought to me about. The Church of England teaching document, entitled God's unfailing word that was published in 2019, speaks of attitudes towards Judaism over many centuries. As providing a fertile seedbed for murderous anti-Semitism and for the need for Christians to repent of the sins of the past.

Towards the Jewish neighbours. And the part played by flawed Christian theology, in promoting and negative stereotypes of Jewish people. I'm grateful other liberals, including a Baroness Deech and my right reverend friend the right Bishop of Lichfield have reminded us of anti-Semitism did not arise in the 1930s. It was nurtured and grown, over the preceding millennia. There can be no overlap between the truth about our witness to Christ, which is the task of theology to articulate and the darkness of anti-Semitism.

The duty as Christians to be alert to the continuation of such terrorist and to be resisted. My right honourable member was member that wrote this document, he referred to that in his speech earlier. Remembering the Holocaust serves as a bulwark against the ever present forces of that across the world seek to resurrect vile violence and murderous anti-Semitism. All to perpetrate fresh genocides against other perpetrator groups. 30 years as of this breach of MAC's Kuh women and girls were killed by the Serb forces.

I'm proud that in Manchester we, again, together as all faith in others she never reached the memorial day. In Britain we take pride in our pluralistic society, a society where people are free to practice their religion, express their identity and should be able to live without fear of persecution. We must never take those freedoms for granted. They are the product of a long history of the struggle and sacrifice. As other liberals have said, they remain under attack. Even in the UK, even today.

We must make sure that atrocities, such as the Holocaust never happened again, we must speak up, act up, when anti- Semitism, racism, xenophobia happen. As a schoolboy, in Manchester, I studied alongside many fellow pupils who are Jewish. Most of them would have lost family members in the Holocaust. Simply being boys together, we didn't have girls in my days in my school, they still don't. Taught me that we will one humanity. The only practical difference between being Jewish or Gentile seem to be my Jewish friends got to go home a lesson early on a winter Friday afternoons.

As others have said, with each anniversary, the memories of the Holocaust to slip away from living memory. Against evils, fascism and other extreme ideologies, as indeed we must, as each generation of survivors passes on, it is incumbent on all of us to remember the past. Today's debate plays a vital part in enabling that and I thank all noble Lords, Lord Khan of Burnley, good friend, for himself doing so much work to promote strong relationships between different faiths and communities. He has spoken so strongly and movingly in our debate today.

I thank you for giving us this opportunity to build for a better future, to quote the theme of this year's Holocaust Memorial Day.

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It is a pleasure to follow the noble pallet and a particular noble pallet and a particular pleasure to speak in a debate where we have heard three such varied, enjoyable, interesting and
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Viscount Eccles Portrait Viscount Eccles (Conservative)
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enjoyable, interesting and informative maiden speeches. I was 14, at the end of the war. I was at boarding school, in Winchester and my memory tells me we didn't know about Auschwitz. However, we were told about Belsen and you all know, I'm sure, white Belsen came into the knowledge of the general public, in this country. It was the first of the camps that we really knew about. We learnt about the camps in stages and we learnt about what had been happening, in stages.

Arbitrary imprisonment, forced labour, cruelty, neglect, disease, starvation and industrialised murder. This was so far beyond our 14-year-old experience, knowledge and imagination. It was a shattering and imagination. It was a shattering blow to our experience of the war. After all we had been through a period where it seemed we were going to lose the war. And now, look at this and what we were supposed to understand. And I think at evening prayers, whoever took them, faced a very troubled congregation.

And then we thought to ourselves how could people have found who could run such a system? Guards, bookkeepers, commandants, narratives. Would have found it very difficult to cope with found it very difficult to cope with that. Then, the misfortunes and the betrayals and the widespread collaboration. All of these aspects came out, stage by stage. And then we got to hear about the final solution, the text on the final solution. Then, it was quite beyond our comprehension.

All we could conclude was that it was unattainable and massively evil. But time goes by and our nature is such that we have to learn to cope and I think the way that we came to cope, we didn't, I think, at that time, ever have the 6 million label. We came to cope by thinking that what had happened was a whole series of had happened was a whole series of And that was the way somehow to cope about thinking about what had happened.

It was individuals to bridge the things happened and the effect upon their close families. I think that is still probably the way that I think about the Holocaust. It is a massive list of individual stories. I think 80 years later there are two other ways in which we might think about the Holocaust. How did Europe come to create the conditions where the Holocaust was mounted. From the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Ottoman Empire through Bismarck, rearmament, the First World War, to Versailles, to the rise of Hitler, and to the Second World War and the final solution.

My belief is that we have looked at the story, that long journey in some detail and looking at it in evermore detail and we tried to come to some resolution of how this could have happened because whatever one thinks about the high -- the Holocaust, it was one outcome of the journey and there is a second journey we have to think about and that is what has happened since 1945 and during National service, some of my colleagues had come very recently from Palestine, which was still briefly demanded condition before the creation of Israel and they told the stories of the stone gang and the stories of the stone gang and the pretty wild and dangerous stories and it beholds us to consider that since 1945, what part has the Holocaust played in the geopolitical outcomes and indeed up to today, what part does that appalling event play in the way that we think about where we are now and where we are going.

And again, I feel that the study and research about this matter is of extreme importance. And so, my Lords, I think, in summing up the situation, we do our best in our efforts to cope with what is happening to us and around us and I think in coping, we have more than enough to think about the study and the research and about the study and the research and

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My Lords, when the Nazis came to

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My Lords, when the Nazis came to power in 1933, my father was dismissed from his job as a medical researcher because he was a Jew and researcher because he was a Jew and he made his way to this country and was taken in and made his home and was taken in and made his home and raised a family and became a distinguished scientist. Historically, this is a reminder that although or perhaps because the Holocaust originated in Germany, Holocaust originated in Germany, many had time to leave before the final solution was initiated as the Jews in Nazi-occupied countries did not have that opportunity.

This was described in a number of speeches. Personally, my father's reception in
16:06
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury Portrait Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury (Crossbench)
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this country has made me forever grateful to the UK and, for a while, grateful to the UK and, for a while, very suspicious of Germany and that suspicion was reinforced by the fact that a number of members of my that a number of members of my mother's family died in concentration camps. Subsequent concentration camps. Subsequent experiences and my contact with experiences and my contact with German judges has given me two insights and the first for the way that Germans have come to terms with that Germans have come to terms with what has happened and to try to take steps it doesn't happen again.

And also to make sure there is not a signal of retreat from that. And secondly the realisation that while it has been said more than once to be, the Holocaust could have happened anywhere. We delude ourselves if we think lessons can be learned so nothing like it can learned so nothing like it can happen again. History shows us that these issues have been features of human existence for as long as records go back and that anti- Semitism has been sadly present for 2000 years.

That is not of course to say that everyone is racially prejudiced or everyone has predisposition for balance, let alone committing genocide but one only has to read about how many other decent German soldiers were prepared to massacre helpless Jewish women and children because they were ordered to by officers to realise how skin deep civilisation goes in extreme circumstances and that point was made by my noble friend earlier. An important component of combating such tendencies in any country is the rule of law coupled with strong democratic institutions and that point was made by the most recent winners of the Nobel Prize for economics.

It has shown that the quality of life with those features significantly outperformed that in countries that lack those features. There is democracy, the constitution, and the court in Germany which crumbled and did so quickly in the face of ruthless Nazi aggression, setting Germany on course for the Holocaust. The rise of Hitler shows that democracy is not enough. The Nazis came to power through the ballot box. Had there been humane laws enforced by an independent judiciary, I suggest the story would have been different.

Of course, the judges cannot stand on their own, even if they are supported by advocates of talented as the noble Baroness, who I congratulate on her maiden speech. They need to have an embedded culture which believes in respect for all people and respect the rule of law. Without that, the road to partition beckons. As Baroness Ludford reminds us, the price of liberty and the price of a decent society is eternal vigilance and on that score I think we are in danger of drifting into choppy waters.

I am struck by how ignorant and uncaring people are about our constitutional arrangements and the rule of law and the role of the courts. Even those at the top of the constitutional tree and what we coyly refer to as the other place are often remarkably ignorant about such issues. Such ignorance helps to bring prejudice and that can metastasise into persecution and sometimes something worse. Education and research are key. It is through education that we are able to recognise and combat racism in general and anti-Semitism in particular and it seems essential that young people are taught to disavow racism, anti-Semitism, intolerance, and are educated about the constitutional systems and the rule of law.

10 years ago, I would have said that this country had a reasonably good record for anti- Semitism. Recent events have been well described by Lord Cass and Lord Evans and they have shown that things had deteriorated that people on here, doing their best to reverse this disturbing development and they deserve our support. When it comes to education, I would take the example of the work of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, home to German-Jewish studies of which I'm proud to be President.

For over two decades, there is a scholarly inquiry into the history and thought of Jewish refugees and German-speaking lands. This is by actively engaging with This is by actively engaging with students and the wider academic community, it is important that is informed by past knowledge and experience. And the noble Lords today, the recollections they have had, and it did from a different perspective to Viscount Eccles and they realise how important it is that the stories and experiences are related to the young.

As has been said, 6 million people killed is a shocking figure. Stalin has already been there and there is something about figures that the personalises and so to get the full horror, you have to hear the stories we have heard today and if we can get back to our young, we can be on the way to achieving something. I like to think we the same country that took in my father 90 years ago and he responded in his research by the Counsel for at Risk Academics which was funded the same way my father came here.

My wife is supporting a Ukrainian family, one of whom is a lawyer, whose research is supported by the same organisation. That somehow epitomises the fact that the good and the wicked are always with us and that reminds us that we must fight to suppress the wicked and

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commend the good. My Lords, can I begin by congratulating our three newcomers, congratulating our three newcomers, congratulating our three newcomers, large -- Lord cats, Lord Levitt, Baroness Evans. I'm sure they will Baroness Evans. I'm sure they will make a contribution and all three maiden speeches were worth listening
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Lord Balfe Portrait Lord Balfe (Conservative)
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maiden speeches were worth listening to. I have not intervened in the past, partly because I have no family history to relate such as the harrowing stories we have heard today. Secondly, because I am a Roman Catholic, I have not felt that our religion's performance allowed me to say much about the Holocaust. I was in the Foreign Office as an official during the 6-day war and I saw the way in which the Foreign Office reacted and it was very interesting because the Arabian departments did not want anything to do with it and frankly had it not in for Harold Wilson, would probably have made a lesser contribution to the 6-day war and the aftermath that we did but the combination of Harold Wilson and Lord Carrington did end up with Britain having quite a up with Britain having quite a The reason I mention this is because they had to draft together the special department of the Foreign Office, which I was posted to, because I was in the Arabian department and suddenly they put together this department.

One of the things I noticed, which I'm going to come back to later was an inability of some people to see both sides of the story. And that was not because they were malicious, it was because they were just blind to an extent. I fully support the Conservative Friends of Israel and I've been horrified by the Hamas attack and in particular the failure, it seems of the British press to realise that it was Hamas that attacked Israel. Israel didn't do any attacking, Hamas attacked and when you look at the three released hostages last week and the gloating of the Palestinians around them.

I'm sorry but I cannot feel much sympathy for them and I just wonder the damage they are doing to their own population. It is absolutely astounding. What is quite so saddening to me is what I perceive is the bias in reporting on the British press. I do not see it as evenhanded. It is all this and this and on the other hand that. The people of Israel were attacked, they have a right to defend themselves. Full stop, as far as I'm concerned.

Full stop, as far as I'm concerned. Now, what I want to speak about, briefly, is I was 25 years at the European Parliament. I had a lot of time to talk to politicians, from other countries of Europe, many of whom who had been alive during the war. Some of whom had actually fought during the war. A good friend of mine was a German general. He joined the war, at the very end of the war, in the boy soldier's brigade, in Berlin.

I also spoke to a lot of people around Germany. The fact of the matter is that many Germans blanked themselves out from what was going on. And if you want to know what I mean, it is the way in which we blank ourselves out from what is going on in British prisons, this very day. Rats running round, atrocious overcrowding, in the prisons. But no one knows about it, no one writes about it, no one deals with it.

And I'm afraid talking to many of my German colleagues, it was quite clear that many of them had just blanked it out. They lived, or their parents had lived through the terrible 20s, when the Wine bar Republic was frankly a very unstable and Germany was a horrible place to live, the massive inflation of life and then along comes this little man, who nobody particularly liked, he wasn't from their class but who somehow, the country became richer.

Things started happening. We often overlook the fact that the dispossession of the effects of the Jewish community were largely to distributed to the remaining Germans was that many Germans got better flats, they got more furniture, they got more sorts of things. And they turned their face to the wall and pretended they didn't know. Because they didn't want to know. They blanked it out. And that also applies to my own church, the Pope at that time, Pope Pius XII put Eugenio Pacelli which was his family name, came from one of the most established families in the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

He was probably the most upper-class Pope we have had, in the last 200 years. He cut his teeth, so to speak in Germany. He spoke fluent German but in 1870, when Italy was reunited and the papal rounds were confiscated. That was a devious direct floor blow to the Catholic Church. The Pacelli family refused to deal with the Italian estate. Then along came Mussolini who signed the Concord act, who regularised relations, with the Roman Catholic Church.

And Pacelli was influenced by that, he was by that time, he had left there, he became the Secretary of State which is like being a Foreign Minister. And then he became of course the Pope. He turns, also he blanked himself as to what was going on. He was looking for Catholics who had been, Jews at that been baptised as Catholics, they could be saved. The rest were cast aside. When I was a little boy, at school, at a convent school, I was told quite firmly that we should not be sorry for the Jews, because they kill Jesus.

That was in 1953. And that was what was going on. So my final point is this, a plea to the Minister. If we need one good thing, we do need Holocaust lessons in schools, but we need education. People do not understand the different religions. And we need some education, so that people understand what the Jewish religion is, the Muslim religion, the Christian religions, that is what is needed. Because at the base of tolerance is a knowledge education.

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Thank you. My Lords, what a special maiden speech we have heard here today. I would like to welcome all. A special mention to the noble Lord, Lord mention to the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Sealand, which is up the road from Buckley, we are almost road from Buckley, we are almost neighbours. Some of my academy of ideas colleagues, My Lords are organising a summer school, in July organising a summer school, in July entitled People, Why Politics Needs entitled People, Why Politics Needs a New Language.

I've been thinking quite a lot about disputes over meanings of words. In this House of late we have had tortuous debates about the meaning of everything from extremism, hate speech, terrorism, God knows what far right means these days and some can't even find what a woman is. But one word there is recently becoming on mould from its meaning is the Holocaust. The Holocaust is now used as a free- floating cattle to describe all and every violent geopolitical event, or even a general human evil.

Well my plea is that words matter and very much, in the theme of the noble Baroness, Baroness Deech is a spot- on speech, we must insist that the Holocaust word refers to a particular unique event in history. The Nazi death camps were generic, they were part of what cancer survivor explains the Holocaust was to annihilate the last you and the planet. Even Auschwitz, a death camp has been turned into an all purpose similar cruelty to stop Unesco describes the World Heritage Site as a universal symbol of humanities cruelty to all its fellow human
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Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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beings, in the 20th century and this way the Holocaust is, I'm afraid being ripped out of its historical context. Meanwhile, celebrity social context. Meanwhile, celebrity social justice activists, Naomi Clyne, said justice activists, Naomi Clyne, said that the quite bit out loud in it in that the quite bit out loud in it in the Guardian last year, she wrote, "We are entering a new intellectual era, one which people are openly asking if the Holocaust should be asking if the Holocaust should be seen, "Exclusively.

" As a Jewish catastrophe or something more catastrophe or something more universal? Is quite perhaps that the universe was not a, "Unique rupture in human history, but rather a homecoming of earlier colonial genocide. " This Alexa-it should be a red flag. Remember in the decolonisation and narrative, as well as been identified as at the epitome of the state, Jews branded as the embodiment of white supremacy, they deserve... Client also notes that the increasingly people are demanding greater recognition of the other groups targeted for extermination, by the Nazis.

As although this was in any way on a par with the targeting of the whole Jewish race, for extermination. The on the Guardian's comment pages, it does seem that because we live in an area which treats victimhood as a virtue and confers on its moral authority. There appears to be a queue of identity groups laying some claim to the Holocaust experience. And there even seems to be resentment. That when a Jewish voice is a demand we recognise it was they who were central to the Holocaust it is treated as though they have been driven by narcissism.

Actually this is expanded into demands that any reference to the Holocaust must also mention victims of other international atrocities. Whether it is Rwanda, colonial era massacres, and inevitably contemporary events in the Middle East. So the Islamic human rights commission wrote to UK town halls, asking them to boycott this year's Holocaust Memorial Day, on the grounds that it was morally unacceptable that Gaza is not considered the genocide in Gaza, alongside the Holocaust. The problem is that renting the Holocaust from its historically specific context, in which all are victims of relative rises and almost normalises it and renders it banal.

One of the most devastating consequences is that it makes it difficult for the public, especially new generations to understand the true nature of this industrialised act of anti-Semitism 's crutch anti-Semitic barbarism until we rip barely remember that the Jews were the victims at all. Brendan O'Neill is a new Palace's at the de Judith occasion of the Holocaust, was more than evidence on Holocaust Memorial Day as we heard from Baroness Deech who reminded us that a whole swathe of commentators and politicians got to even mention the Jews.

And are listed almost everyone else that was killed, apart from the victims, the Jews. I'm not suggesting such errors of omission are conscious and active erasure. It somehow feels even more chilling that they are more likely examples of unconscious bias and careless forgetting. The problem with relative icing on the specific Holocaust is that it makes a mockery of it lest we forget and we can expect a lot more forgetting if we are not careful, the consequences of this deed unification of the Holocaust, in my mind is that increasing numbers, especially of young people do not even recognise when the iconography and language of historic Nazi Jew hatred rear their ugly heads today.

It is always so jolting when I talk to students involved in BDS campaigns and critique their calls for boycotts of Israeli foodstuff, as they wrench them off the supermarket shelves or their demands to blacklist and centre entire countries of academics, artists, scientists and sportspeople. Or when I, looking on are scenes of blood light red paint, shopfronts, when I mention the echoes of 1930s Germany, they look at me blindly. I rather nervously disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I know that is nerve wracking.

On his Elon Musk arm gesture point. While whole swathes of young activists I know would be queueing up to denounce that as a Nazi salute, to see far right fascist around every corner. When the same people then see starving, emaciated Jewish hostages, paraded, jeered and humiliated, by Jo Heidi baying mobs, or they see political activists standing out UK synagogues, screaming baby killers at Jews and those activists of my tribe. Suddenly they get a blind spot, they can't see any Nazi salutes or Nazi symbolism or anything stop I don't recognise the de Judith occasion trends of the Holocaust past and their re-emergence today in that story.

How do we counter this? We all reach a formal education but it bodes badly for the educational boast that the new Holocaust Memorial Trust is in that is going to solve it all, when shamefully our very own Parliament planned the Holocaust more exhibition, from Westminster Hall, because it was too political. I'm not Jewish. There is exactly more politics, political solidarity, that I think we need. It's why we were so pleased that grassroots complainers took the street exhibition at Parliament Square, the weekend before Memorial Day to stop young people explained that their aim was to urgently inform the public what a real genocide looks like and sent to that on the murder of 6 million Jews.

Our urgent educational and political task must also include exposing the rise of the newly powerful forces who are acting to exterminate Jews now. Yes, never again is now. Yes, I mean Hamas and Iran. Closer to home, the radical Islamist and the numerous apologies, who if we are honest are influential in many political, cultural and media institutions. Too many others look the other way, by turnips and won't name and shame. It is about time we name and shame.

It is about time we
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Lord Shinkwin Portrait Lord Shinkwin (Conservative)
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I congratulate the new members all of which were deeply moving. It somehow seems fitting that I should be making my first speech since be making my first speech since recent surgery to repair an undiagnosed fracture to my femur which has led to me hobbling for months. It was after all my childhood Jewish surgeon who put me back together again more times than I care to remember. He lost almost all his family in the Holocaust.

I think of him today and of his family members and the wonderful Holocaust library and what they have library and what they have established in the summer of 1974. May they rest in peace. Inevitably, all of us, as we have heard in this debate, also turn our thoughts to pressures Holocaust survivors and to the words promised after the war, "Never again." I ask myself, what does 'never again' mean? Does it does 'never again' mean? Does it mean no more concentration camps? Or no more of the structures that the Soviet troops stumbled on in disbelief.

Does it mean no more Nuremberg trials which were implicitly referred to in terms of implicitly referred to in terms of the Nazi administration being discriminatory in terms of rights discriminatory in terms of rights and property. I asked myself, how do we counter the challenge that remains? How do we put forward the task of replicating what the noble Lord described in his brilliant opening remarks as man's darkest impulses? The insidious and poisonous prejudice which has grown by osmosis and over remarkably short period of time the culture underpinning the abomination that was the Holocaust and that it still exists.

We have already heard about the IHRA in plane site and that reminded me of something Holocaust survivor mentioned earlier and they said to me about never again. Manfred told me he had genuinely taken it for granted that the promise would protect and he took it at face value at the time, for all time. I know he is horrified that the hatred is back and that brought home to me that it is not enough for me to say that we will always remember you and the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

It is an age of pernicious poison spread by social media and we have two acknowledge the racism on the streets of the capital most weekends. I refer to the demonstrations in central London, the first of which the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign unbelievably started organising while the October 7 program was underway. As well as being the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 2025 is the 60th anniversary of Labour's Race Relations Act receiving Royal assent and we are talking about hatred on the grounds of race and the vile ritual being visited on Jewish communities runs counter to this.

This is racism, pure and simple, and it is happening in plane site. Can I ask the noble Baroness, the Minister, to say in her closing Minister, to say in her closing remarks if she would agree to act to ensure that 'never again' means exactly that. The government should be even more clear that what is happening on our streets is racism and will not be tolerated. One supposedly innocent child can be taken as an example.

They are saying, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." It means destruction, the mass murder of Jews destruction, the mass murder of Jews and it means a one-state solution, not a 2-state solution. It is understandable that in our desire to see peace in the Middle East, some want to believe that we are dealing want to believe that we are dealing with a peaceloving entity in Hamas. If there is one organisation that does not want a two state solution it is Hamas and rather it wants to kill Jews and destroy the state of Israel.

The statement made in October, January, June, and October and October 2024, there were racist remarks on the grounds of race in plane site. I want to take up the challenge set by my noble friend in her excellent speech. I welcome the assurance given by the noble Lord of Hungary that Hamas can play no part in the future of governance in Gaza. Can the Minister also assure us that supporters in the UK will not be supporters in the UK will not be allowed to reduce the renewed complexity of 'never again' to a minimalist mantra which is recited to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day.

Surely we can all agree that that is the least that our survivors and the millions of victims of the Holocaust deserve.

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It is a privilege to follow on

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It is a privilege to follow on from the noble Lord and indeed from so many of the exceptional speeches
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Baroness Brown of Silvertown Portrait Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour)
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so many of the exceptional speeches that we have heard today. Can I first paid tribute to the maiden speeches of my noble friend. They were powerful speeches and I hope that my noble friends will agree that they will be influential and strong voices in this place. As we have heard today, the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day was for a better future and I want to pay tribute to an organisation and the people and if you are seeking to create a better future for us all by educating the ever-changing world about the horrors of the past so that we don't replicate them in our futures.

Generation to generation is a charity which enables descendants to tell family stories to a range of audiences across the UK and they have 41 speakers and are recruiting more. To date, the speakers have been brought to deliver family stories to more than 390 audiences, reaching over 45,000 people. I am sure the noble Lord will agree it is impressive. The key aim is to ensure the Holocaust is not forgotten nor denied and to challenge racism and discrimination in all forms.

Last Sunday, I was privileged to speak to volunteers who wanted the stories of their families to be told and not forgotten and to be an education to the world in which propaganda and misinformation is right. And I tell you about Sabina Miller who was born in 1922. She was Jewish and one of five and grew up in a comfortable and loving happy home in Warsaw. The Nazis invaded in 1939 and her home was taken from her and they were forced to relocate to the ghetto.

400,000 people were crammed into just over one square mile. Hygiene was impossible and food was scarce and disease was rampant. Like many, Sabine contracted Titus. She was overwhelmed with the disease and unconscious for 18 days. She remembers her mum standing at the end of her bed saying, "You have got to live, you will live, you must survive." When she awoke, her mother and father had died. The situation was desperate and so she covered her Star of David and found an escape and she was 20 years old and digging potatoes and digging out stables and forced to sing anti Semitic songs while they worked.

While she was there she received a postcard from her sister, Esther. It said, "I am on a train. I don't know where I'm being taken. If anyone finds this card, please help." She must have card, please help." She must have thrown the card from a train and someone in a simple act of kindness delivered it. These were the last words that her sister would ever address to her. Shortly after, address to her. Shortly after, Sabina heard that the ghettos where the remainder of her family had been taken had been, to quote the Nazis, liquidated.

Her family were all gone. She said later that the fact that people have families and I have not is something which hurts dreadfully. That was just the beginning of her amazing story of survival as she spent the winter of 1942 begging for food and she changed her identity many times and she was interrogated on four separate occasions by the estoppel and sent to a forced labour camp in Germany where she remained until the end of the war.

It is unlikely she would survive she did. I did another girl who was born and sent to Auschwitz with the rest of her extended Greek family. She was the only survivor. And 50,000 Jews lived in Salonika before the war and 96% of them were murdered in Nazi death camps. I want to mention a Polish Jew who survived two concentration camps and who hit in the German army and finally escaped to Finland, skiing for three days over the frozen sea to Sweden.

Tony, while he was serving in the German army a huge personal risk, shared his meagre rations with the women cleaning the barracks. A Jewish woman held in a prison camp. Years later, he attended a Holocaust event and heard that two women had survived the time in a Nazi camp by sharing scraps of food that one of them had been given by a German Sandra, and Jacqueline volunteered for a generation to generation. Three women told me how the relatives completely rejected any notion of bravery or resilience.

Instead these survivors ask why me? And they answered, I was lucky. The stories are dotted with unexpected acts of kindness, from Jews and non-Jews alike. Perhaps that was part of their luck. We know, in this place that anti-Semitism, Rachel hatred and genocidal violence still hatred and genocidal violence still with us. I hope and I know that the generation of volunteers also hope by sharing the stories of survivors, that one day, people will no longer be dehumanised, she greeted as other, humiliated, terrified, murdered, because of their race, creed or religion let's remember that horror and the evils of the Holocaust.

Let's not rest until justice is done, where genocide justice is done, where genocide

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again threatens our humanity. It is an honour to follow

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It is an honour to follow Baroness silver town. I would like to add my congratulations to Lord to add my congratulations to Lord Katz, Lord Evans of Sealand and Baroness Levitt, on their excellent contribution and maiden speeches contribution and maiden speeches today. I have no doubt they each today. I have no doubt they each have you will make a great have you will make a great contribution to this House. From my position here I was able to see that your husband was smiling, right through your presentation with such pride but I also want to tell you that I've come away thinking that there is no such thing as a quiet breakfast in your house.

If I may, as Lord Khan in opening this debate as Lord Khan in opening this debate as Lord Khan in opening this debate Mr Goldberg. How Mr Goldberg. How miraculously Mr Goldberg. How miraculously he managed to survive the majority of the suffering imposed on him by the Nazi regime to stop unfortunately now, Manfred is now in the minority. Many few people and survives in are alive to tell us of their experiences and to give us a first- hand testimony could to the wickedness imposed upon them and millions of others.

Unless we continue to remember the Holocaust and the wickedness are shown to minorities and other minorities across Europe. There is no guarantee that this will not happen again. The photograph of a released hostage a lighter Robbie, captured by Hamas, on October 7 hostage a lighter Robbie, captured by Hamas, on October 7, 2023 -- Eli Sharabi. Midas reminded Belsen. -- Reminded us of Belsen for the 528 cases reported by CST in 2024. Across Europe, in Australia, Canada and the Europe, in Australia, Canada and the
16:49
Lord Gold Portrait Lord Gold (Conservative)
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USA, makes this a repetition a real possibility particularly worrying is possibility particularly worrying is the raise of it in our universities. Although a lot can be done, Although a lot can be done, especially our children and the Holocaust became a part of the English National Curriculum in 1991. Hearing from survivors who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust is the best way of Holocaust is the best way of achieving this. If this cannot be achieving this. If this cannot be done, giving our children the opportunity of hearing from survivors remotely is that the next best thing.

It's commendable therefore that the recent Holocaust educational trust dinner, our present Prime Minister announced a national ambition that every school child should hear the recorded testimony of a Holocaust survivor. Other initiatives include investing a further £2 million for Holocaust education announced by the Chancellor in her budget and making it compulsory for the teaching of the Holocaust to continue to be compulsory, in state schools and expanded to include academies, both announced by the Secretary of State, following a curriculum review.

All this is excellent, but to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, and to inform and educate today's and tomorrow's generations, the creation of Holocaust sentiments and memorials, all around the world are so important. That is why I strongly support the building of a memorial. While the Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum are impressive, building a lasting memorial here, right in the centre of Westminster, next to our Parliament, there is always listed for liberty and freedom, all around the world, is making a massive statement that we hear, in the UK will remember now and will not forget in the future the events of the 1930s and 19 not forget in the future the events of the 1930s and 1940s resulting in a six resulting in a 6 million Jews and other minorities being slaughtered.

Let the world know that we hear, in this wonderful United Kingdom are, will always stand against tyranny and prejudice, where ever it raises its ugly head. The 2015 at Prime Minister's Holocaust mission report recommended that the building are striking and prominent new national memorial to be located in central London and there can be no more prominent location than right here, in Victoria Tower Gardens. Objections have been raised to this location. It argued that there are security and traffic issues.

That the atmosphere of Victorian car park will be changed, that access may be restricted. Too many people might visit the memorial. Alternative sites that could be chosen. Frankly, I do not believe that these objections stack up. Security and traffic issues, will arise where ever the memorial is located and we will sort them, as we always do. As the atmosphere in the park, I know how sensitive those responsible for the memorial are to this issue. And truly believe, as do I that the park can be improved.

The building of the memorial and learning centre here, we are raising awareness of the Holocaust and acknowledging its importance, just as it was achieved, last month by the visitor and King Charles to alter its on Holocaust Memorial Day. Commemorating 80 years, since the declaration of Auschwitz. No other memorial, and any other location in the world would be as prominent as

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this one. Very moving and compelling

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Very moving and compelling speech. A number of us have avoided burying this debate, in a difficult discussion about the Victoria Tower Gardens proposal. And I wonder if he Gardens proposal. And I wonder if he would do the same, too. And move on

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to another subject. Thank you for that intervention.

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Thank you for that intervention. It so happens that through on this. I just wanted to add one last word which is I think it should be with this. I will accept your intervention and I've nothing else to say except that I would like to pay tribute to everyone who has spoken here today. I think everything was speech has been most moving. moving.
16:54
Lord Sahota Portrait Lord Sahota (Labour)
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I've been in your Lordships' House for just over two years and this is the first time I'm taking part in this Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a humbling experience to listen to all of the moving speeches and as we all know, the word Holocaust is commonly associated with the Nazi genocide of the Jews, during the Second World War. It is one of the darkest and most horrific episodes, in human history. It highlights a man's humanity to man.

6 million Jews, not one, not two, but 6 million. How could it happen? When I watched the grainy black- and-white footage of the concentration camps, it feels as though it happened yesterday. Not in some distant time, not 100 years ago, but it feels as though it happened yesterday and I can attach it. How could anyone conceived the idea that they could eradicate an entire race of millions of people, from the face of this earth and not be held accountable by the future generations.

Where was the reason? The right man Chris reminded the men and women at that time forgot how can a nation that gave the world great literature, great philosophy classical music, descend into such barbarity. It is said that when the first news of what was happening in these concentration camps reached London and Washington, political establishment refused to believe it. They thought that it was not simply possible. And yet, due to some complex geopolitics Germany was taken in by this evil, grotesque taken in by this evil, grotesque ideology.

Led by unscrupulous men, resulting in this mass murder, on industrial scale. Learning about such horror should remind us all of the danger of nationalism. Xenophobia and rhetoric of hate. Regardless of our political differences, it is our responsibility to oppose politicians and leaders, who prey on people's fear and promote hate. It is up to us to defend democracy, freedom, life and liberty. Over the centuries, mankind has committed countless, horrendous mass murders. Massacres, atrocities.

Some have faced justice, others have not. The German playwright and anti-Nazi activist, Berthold Brecht wrote, " When crimes begin to pile up, they become invisible. When a suffering becomes unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. " In 1948, the UN established the Genocide Convention, which remains the main international, legal instrument, for preventing genocides. And yet, tragically this has not prevented further atrocities being committed. In July 1995, right at the heart of Europe, 8,000 men and boys were murdered in cold blood, by Bosnian Serbs in what is known as the Srebrenica massacre.

In July 1994, in Rwanda, over one million people in Rwanda, over one million people were slaughtered. Back in 1995, the Turkish army systematically murdered well over a million Armenians and widely regarded as genocide. In 1968, American troops slaughtered hundreds of unarmed civilians, in a Vietnam village and gang raped women and girls, in what would be known as a massacre. The only man convicted of this crime was later pardoned by President Nixon and that speaks volumes about our present-day justice system, My Lords.

In November, 1980, after the assassination of the Prime Minister of India, we witnessed the planned massacre of many thousands of innocent Sikhs, seek men, women and children. 40 years had passed and children. 40 years had passed and children. 40 years had passed and In India on 13 April on 13 April, 1919 General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd of over 20,000 people, killing hundreds. British historian Nigel Collet in his biography of General Dyer titled the butcher Obama sat claimed that over 800 men women and children were mowed down in just 10 minutes with hundreds more dying minutes with hundreds more dying from their wounds.

I could go on with many more examples. The history is full of such atrocities and massacres. But above all the Holocaust is the worst of them all,

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it happened. Thank you. It is always a pleasure to follow
17:01
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Portrait Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative)
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It is always a pleasure to follow Lord Sahota to to wind up from these Lord Sahota to to wind up from these benches, debating a lot of house, but it sometimes also a privilege. Today clearly falls into the latter category. It has of course been a pleasure to listen to the many fine speeches from all parts of the House. I hope I will be forgiven if I single out right at the start the three impressive maiden speeches we have heard from, Lord Evans of sealant and the diamond studded Maiden speech from Baroness Levitt who not from the first and perhaps not the last time, left Lord Carlile following in her wake.

I must say in all seriousness I heard the noble Lord speak many times in this chamber, today's speech even by his standards was outstanding and extremely moving. The fact that the three main speakers chose a nonparty political topic for their speech means I can congratulate them even more fulsomely than usual, I know we speak for everyone here when I say that we are looking forward to their many contributions in future years. In this debate, as the annunciators remind us, we are asked to take notes of Holocaust Memorial Bill.

Although that is the traditional form of the question for such debates in your Lordships house, may I suggest that a debate asking us to take note is particularly appropriate for this topic. Because the Holocaust happened because people did not take note. They did not take note of what was being said on the streets. They did not take note of what was being decided in the Parliament. They did not take note when extremists marched through the streets, when shops were boycotted, when Jews were disseminated against in Public Services, in professions and in the public square.

They simply didn't take note. As Lord Balfe said, they blanked themselves out. Because the Holocaust did not happen overnight. As the Bishop of Lichfield reminded us. It was planned. The plans were made public. It was actually founded on and in law and one of the overlooked casualties of the Holocaust, Lord Newbury of Holocaust, Lord Newbury of Abbotsbury remarked, was law and justice will stop because the murders in the gas chambers were preceded by concentration camps, the camps were preceded by ghettos, the ghettos by discrimination, and that this commendation was rooted in law and upheld by the German courts, their lawyers and yes, there judges.

The fact that it didn't happen overnight prompts us to ask, why did people not take note? Why -- where weather protests. As the late Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks pointed out, unlike others I missed his presence especially on days like this, there were no protests when on one day in 1933 all Jewish lawyers in Germany painted their offices and cleared their desks under compulsion of law let us remember, there was no protest. Nor was there a protest when the doctors had to do the same, and then all the other professions.

There was simply silence, indifference, no one took note. Nor was there any protest in Austria and on one day in 1938 16 of the Vienna's population, the Jews, were banned from owning property. One sixth of the city, not a single process. If Holocaust Memorial Day is to mean anything it must encourage us to speak out and call out injustice. We have a duty to take note. I suggest that as part of that duty to take note we should consider Holocaust Memorial Day now 1/4 of a century old and pay tribute to the work of many organisations including the Holocaust Memorial Bill trust, the Holocaust Educational Trust so ably led by Karen Pollock which work so hard to commemorate and to educate.

May I also commend respectfully the work done by Lord Pickles in this area. Let me make three points. First, let us be clear about the unambiguous aim of the Holocaust. It was a systematic and industrial murder of Jews with the aim that there would be no Jews left in the world. The Holocaust was put into effect by means of laws which explicitly referenced Jews and made special provision for them. The Nazis had no trouble using the word Jews. They knew who their victims were, and just as importantly why they were the victims.

The Jews were to be murdered simply and only because murdered simply and only because they were Jews. And so I ask, in common with Baroness Fox of Buckley, why do so many organisations seem to find it so difficult to use the word Jews or Jewish when commemorating Holocaust Memorial Bill? The Royal Free Hospital, millions of people during -- killed during the Holocaust no mention of Jesus to Barnet Council, the victims of the Holocaust, no member mention of Jesus.Cambridge Council another entity for you the word Jews appears to have become the boatswain.

This isn't a party political point so let me single out for praise Islington Council with its solid Labour majority who referred to the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust stop if they can do it so can everybody else. Of course we can and we should, and we will, and we must remember other victims also. And why they were victims, because they were gay, or Roma, or had mental or physical disabilities. But the overwhelming majority of the victims of the Holocaust were Jews because they were Jews and they deserve to be remembered as Jews.

So first we do not remember the victims of the Holocaust by denying who the victims were or why they were the victims. Second, let us be clear about the uniqueness of the Holocaust stop just as we do not remember the victims by denying why they were victims, we do not commemorate the victims by lumping the Holocaust together with other genocides and other tragedies will stop we mustn't globalise the Holocaust as Baroness Meacher put it. There is space in the human heart for all victims.

To recognise the uniqueness of the Holocaust in terms of its numbers, its industrialised systems of murder, use of entire state apparatus for one purpose only, to rid the world of Jews, to recognise the uniqueness of that appalling enterprise is not to denigrate or demean or ignore other genocides, whether in Bosnia, Rwanda, or Sudan, or anywhere else, point powerfully made also by the noble Lord. Second we do not remember the victims of the Holocaust by denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Third, we certainly do not remember the victims by denying that there was a genocide at all or by using the murdered Jews of the Holocaust in some perverted form of inverted history to attack living Jews.

We are used to the ramblings of Holocaust deniers and those who refuse to confront the reality of the Nazi genocide and we rightly ignore them. But denial comes in many forms, to give the most egregious example the president of Ireland in his speech at the National commemoration event began by saying that the Holocaust started with the manipulation of language, and then astonishingly referred to the Holocaust as an attempted genocide. Twice. If you talk about an attempted genocide you are denying it was a genocide.

The president of Ireland also used his speech at a National commemoration event for the Holocaust let us remember, to deliver himself of his views on Israel and of course Gaza. I will not trouble the House with what he said, they do not merit repetition in Hansard or frankly, anywhere else. His words were so incendiary that I was -- Irish Jews who protected presidents views or should I say misuse of that sacred platform were forcibly removed from the venue. Jews being manhandled out of a Holocaust commemoration event, how could that happen? It happened because there are too many people who are only too willing to attend and speak at events commemorating dead Jews, but are nowhere to be seen when it comes to protecting living Jews.

The Right Reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester was with respect absolutely right when he reminded us that the hatred of Jews did not begin in Nazi Germany in 1933, and Baroness Eaton was equally right to remind us that the need to protect Jews did not end in 1945. For living Jews today the Jewish community, for all the talk of a Jewish dye aspera, is overwhelmingly based into locations overwhelmingly based into locations only. North America and Israel. The former can at least of the moment look after itself but the latter needs and deserves our support.

Because it's not just that Israel was born in the shadow of the Holocaust, it's that if there had been an Israel there wouldn't have been a Holocaust. It really is that simple. When the first Irish -- Zionist congressman in 1937 no one knew then various strategies for the survival of the Jews will prove successful. Would need to embrace communism or socialism, would it advocate for Western assimilation is a more even join forces with Arab nationalism? They all had their supporters, but which was the right path? Today we know the answer to that question.

The Holocaust gave that question. The Holocaust gave its final bloody say and the answer of history was found in the piled bodies and heaps of ashes at Auschwitz, Treblinka and elsewhere. As in 1945 so also in 2025 simple fact is that Israel and Zionism which is no more and no less than the right to Jewish self- determination, is essential for the future of the Jewish people as a nation. You don't have to like modern Israel any more than you like or don't like modern Greece.

You can agree or disagree with its government or its policies or its actions. But you can't commemorate Jews who were victims in the Holocaust because they couldn't defend themselves if you deny Jews today whether individually or collectively the right and indeed the means to defend themselves. So are others did not take note we will take note and we will do more. The noble Lord asked what does never again mean? I will answer that wide question with a short answer building upon a point made by noble friend Lord Gold, it means that we will not stand by silently at a timeworn pictures of staff and emaciated Jews who have been starved and it emaciated only because they are Jews and were Jews, which we saw as black-and-white pictures in our history books, have now reappeared as colour images of released Israeli hostages on last night's TV news.

In accordance with Jewish tradition I will not end these remarks on a sad note. Let me end by congratulating the usual channels, the powers that be if I can borrow William Tindale's magnificent phrase, for arranging this debate today because the Holocaust Memorial Bill a was of course a few weeks ago. But today is a very appropriate date for this debate. That's because today is actually a Jewish festival will stop known as to be tracked, celebrated each year on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shabbat.

It is one of the four new years in the Jewish calendar, the monarch may have two birthdays but we have four new years for each serves a different purpose for top Rosh Hashanah in the autumn begins the Jewish New Year for many purposes but also that there was the day for calculating the agricultural site -- calendar for tithes, in modern times been the celebration of ecological awareness when many trees are planted, it's often known as the New Year for trees. On Holocaust day we commemorate the many Jewish communities who were uprooted.

The millions of individuals, men women and all too many children who were cut down. Family trees like mine shorn of many branches, because they were consumed in the fire and the horror of the Holocaust. There but Of the holiday we will today pledge ourselves not only to take note of the destruction wrought by the Holocaust, but to plant afresh, to nurture new growth and to help those communities both in Israel and throughout the Diaspora to blossom and flourish again. 80 years after the liberation of our twits we must loudly and confidently proclaim the

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My Lords, we have had a powerful
17:15
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Portrait Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour)
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and moving debate. This debate, as ever, is your Lordship's House at its best and it's a privilege to follow Lord Lawson who delivered an incredible speech. And I wish him and the trees... Before I move on to the substantive part of my speech I will stop offering, there might be a bit of Yiddish in my speech. Good luck, Hansard. To my noble friends who have made such wonderful maiden speeches. I want to thank with my very good friend Lord Katz, the chair of GLM, who was chair of GLM when I was the Parliamentary chair of GLM was not it would be fair to say he was my partner in crime and my friend as we fought for the heart and soul of our party.

It was a rollercoaster but because of him and many members of your Lordship's House, we won. And today, I know that the... Would have been so proud to see him deliver his maiden speech. I would like to follow by talking about Baroness Levitt whose speech was spectacular. I love the idea of her as a 14-year-old getting expelled. I, too, have always been naughty but been too scared of my teachers to be that naughty. She was quite clear about why she is here and the rule of law but I think all members of your Lordship's House are going to remember the jewellery.

Lord Carlile, I don't know how you are ever going to match additional gifts to your wife but she did an extraordinary peach. You may be lucky to have her but we are now benches are delighted to have her, that was an incredible speech. And turning to the third maiden of today from my noble friends Lord Evans of Stevenage. I think we didn't quite celebrate his role in defeating PE for of the politics of Jeremy Corbyn. My noble friend was the man who helped rescue my party from the brink and who suspended Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party.

I will always be grateful for the work that he did. He delivered on the now Prime Minister's commitment to rip out anti-Semitism from the Labour Party by its roots. And importantly, for the side of the House, he is also the man who was leading, he was General Secretary of my party when General Secretary of my party when we won the general election. It is also an honour to close this debate today which was so well opened by my noble friend Lord Khan.

This House is very special and the fact this debate, of all debates, is being opened by a practising Muslim and closed by the 'ooh aah... Just a little bit more' just says how far little bit more' just says how far This was the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And attended by His Majesty The King, a symbol if there was everyone to the Jewish community and the world about the importance of the state other place holocaust shares in our history.

This was the last major anniversary where it is the words of survivors, not ours, that touch our hearts. Which is why I am as ever in all of my noble friend Lord Dobbs who has reminded us of his modesty. It may just have been a train that he got on but we are so grateful that he did. And that his parents were brave enough to put him on it. Nicky Winton as he reminded us gave us a blessing, gave us the noble Lord, but also provided us with a clear example of how one person truly can change the world.

It's been a privilege to hear so many laws share their personal experiences and reflections during the course of this debate is the Right Reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield reminded us, for many of us this is now our responsibility. If the words never again are to be made real than the onus is on us and on every generation going forward to tell the stories of our families. As we heard from the noble Lady Baroness Deech, and offer families heartbreaking stories, from a, her story will always now be demonstrated that survival by silverware, story that I won't ever forget.

And the noble Lord Lord Carlile whose personal testimony about his family reminded us of the impact of the Holocaust on those that survived the impact of survivors, guilt, theme also touched on by the noble Viscount Viscount Eccles. I also think it's important on days like today that we remember those who liberated us because they, too, had to live with what they saw. And I would like to thank my noble friend Baroness Ramsay for her speech and also highlighting the role her father played in the liberation.

My story is a personal one. When I spoke in this debate last year I spoke about my family arriving in the UK in the 1890s. Fleeing the pogroms of czarist Russia. As far as we know one of those who chose to remain in the survive might not one of those. I'm proud to be British but I also realise how lucky I am to be. For my family, anti-Jewish hatred is not an academic exercise. It is formative to my understanding of my place in the world.

It helped shape not my existence but my worldview. My family as do many in Lordship's House know only too well where hate can lead and the importance of security and freedom. And the requirement, to fight for those core human rights we take for granted at our peril, a powerful point made by the noble Lord Lord Newburgh. We are here to remember those who were murdered because of who they were, not what they did. Because they were apparently easy targets for ideologues and dictators, who sought to gain and abuse power by scapegoating communities, amplifying troops and embracing hate and fear of hope, building on the thousands of years of hatreds towards my community.

As my noble friend reminded us, they also used the tools of the state to murder Jews. But at a time when my community and many others are once again scared, I want to find some hope in this horror. Some light in the darkness. As we do this, I want to thank the noble Lord Lord Pickles for his work, his dedication to Holocaust memorial and the fight against anti-Semitism, both here and across the grade, not just recognised but celebrated.

And I am grateful for his service. He is one of the lights in the darkness. In Holocaust Memorial Day, people across the world came together and lit candles to remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust. And the hundreds of thousands of others killed for being gay, disabled, black, trade unionists, Jehovah's Witnesses and anyone considered threat to the Aryan people. As the noble Lord Lord Weir of Ballyholme reminded us, behind each of the statistics and people we talk about, there was a person, family and a story.

But I want to reassure the noble Lady Baroness Fox that this government is clear on that unique evil that the Holocaust was. And the specific devastating impact on the Jewish community. In 1933, there were 9.5 million Jews living in Europe. They weren't in 1945. Language does matter, but so do cymbals. And the candles flame when we talk about lighting the darkness represents the human soul and serves as a reminder of the frailty and beauty of life. As we remember the appalling acts of the Holocaust, it has become so much more than that.

This frailty and beauty is ever present at the children's Memorial which represents one point million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust. -- 1.5 degrees. The underground chamber the flame of a single candle is reflected by countless mirrors. While the names, ages and hometowns of children who were murdered in Hebrew, English and Yiddish. Each reflection reminds us of a life not lived. A child who was murdered before they could make a mark on the world. A family that was never going to grow.

The wrenching power of the sacred memorial to what was lost, for me at least allows us to see the totality of the true scale of that loss. I know if I were to visit a thousand times, each time my heart would break. It allows to see the depravity to which man can sink when we begin to see our fellow human beings are somehow less than us. Less worthy of dignity and of life. See how evil can triumph when good people do nothing and we see how silence led to 1 of the most appalling crimes in history.

How people were targeted for who they were, how they prayed for who they loved. But it is more than just a memorial and museum to remind us of man's capacity for evil. They provide us with hope, the stories of the righteous among the Nations who refused to be bystanders. And it is here we need to find our hope. A reminder we are not impotent, that we can all stand up against the politics of hatred and that our actions can change someone's world, can be a light in the darkness.

As the noble Baroness, noble lady Baroness reminded us, listing two first hand with this is vital and provides a light in the darkness, a source of hope and inspiration. At a special ceremony held in Parliament to mark Holocaust Memorial Day earlier this year we had the testimony of Alfred Garwood who was born in a Nazi ghetto in 1942. Imprisoned and liberated by the red Army when he was being moved to another camp. Before his third birthday. He survived only because his father had been born in London and was considered valuable to Nazis.

He spent the rest of his childhood in Britain. And grew up in the centre of the community of Holocaust survivors. He has devoted his life to understanding the psychological implications of trauma related to genocide. His words will stick with me forever. If you are consumed by hate, the only people you successfully hurt it yourself. He is a light in the darkness. As many members of your Lordship's House have stated, we cannot ignore what is in front of us.

What is in front of us as was reported by the CST this week are shocking levels of anti-Semitism, on our streets, which are scarring our towns and cities. The report released by CST yesterday recorded 3528 anti-Semitic incidents in 2024. There are only 250,000 Jews in the UK. They will not be a Jewish family who was not touched by anti- Semitic incident in the last year. 10 are being reported every day. This is the second highest number on record. Surpassed only by the appalling figures of 2023 where there were 4296 incidents.

The majority of which followed the programs of October of October 7. -- Programs. As Mike Macey grieved about events abroad, where they were worried about their families in Israel, they were being targeted at home. The only crime was to be Jewish. This is not acceptable in 21st-century Britain. These rising numbers are wake-up call for us all. How can it be that one of the smallest minority communities in the UK is facing such hatred? While the number of incidents is high, we must not lose, site of the fact that not all hate crimes are reported.

How many members of your Lordships chamber who are regular targets of the racist report every incident? Even I do not. My life has to be more than their hatred, and sometimes, I do not want to pick up the phone and say what happened to me in the street. But we must appreciate the scale of that challenge. But while it is easy to be disheartened, that is not the approach I'm prepared to take. The work of the CST, the anti-Semitism policy trust, the Holocaust Education Trust, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Association of Jewish refugees ensure that they are all lights in the darkness.

As is generation to generation, so strongly promoted by my noble friend Baroness Brown of Silverton, as she told such powerful testimony and I'm delighted she is working with them. All of the groups, all of the organisations, that are working together, demonstrate that we are never powerless in the face of hatred. And I for one and very aware that I own my own safety and security the dedicated team of professional staff and volunteers at CST who have protected me when I have been in the middle of a racist storm.

CST, HET, lots of initials, HMDT and AGR are actively out there every day tackling anti-Jewish hatred, educating about the dangers of where hatred can lead and remembering that crime of crimes, the Holocaust. Their work shows that we all have choices. We can choose to be the light. We can call out those who hide in dark places. We have the choice to ignore what happens to others or to act on behalf of others. My Lords, it's much easier when someone stands in front of you when you are being targeted and you have to fight for yourself.

This is our obligation, not simply to bear witness but to act. As the noble Lord Lord Shinkwin made clear. What does this mean today? It means confronting bigotry and hatred in all its forms. It has no place in the classrooms of children, on the campuses of our universities, in our hospitals in the corridors of power, nor does it have placed on the street of the United Kingdom. We must never forget that our children are not born to hate, they are taught to hate.

And as the Right Reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester made clear, they can also be taught about love and history, as Holocaust Memorial Bill has reminded us this year that history is too fragile there is a strong response military to do all we can to protect and cherish them. As Lord Balfe reminded us both in the international context and the scale of anti-Semitism, and as Lord Sahota who spoke so movingly about the banality of evil and how many other acts of violence they have been in our society.

But today we get to reflect on where we are when we were and where we are going. I would like to give the final word to be that of Holocaust survivor of the late Sir Ben has cut he said, my Holocaust experiences may have hardened me, made me more realistic about human nature, that I was repelled by the evil eye witness. I despaired but I did not let cruelty and injustice break my spirit. I refused to poison my life with revenge and hatred for hatred is corrosive.

Instead I was left with a dream, to live in a world understanding, compassion, fraternity and love for my

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fellowman. The question is that this motion

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The question is that this motion has agreed to. As many are of that opinion say, "Content", and of the contrary, "Not content". The contrary, "Not content". The "Contents" have it. Perhaps a little pause before we move to the next Question Question for Question for Short Question for Short Debate, Question for Short Debate, bank closures and the impact on people in closures and the impact on people in rural communities. Lord Bishop Newcastle.
17:33
Lord Bishop of Newcastle Portrait The Lord Bishop of Newcastle (Bishops)
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I want to thank all noble Lords who are taking part in this short debate. I look forward to listening to each of the contributions that they will bring. What this debate has its focus on diverse rural communities, I know that the issue before us today is not solely a rural one. Last month Lloyds Banking Group announced that they will be closing 136 bank branches across the country. The Tyne Valley and Northumberland will see another three branches close their doors, two in Hexham and one in product.

Meaning that customers in Hexham will need to travel over 15 miles to visit their nearest Lloyds branch. Lloyds announcement comes a decade after, after a decade of decline in the number of High Street banks was figures from which show that 6266 bank branches have closed across the bank branches have closed across the UK over the past 10 years. Representing 63% of branches open at the start of 2015. If bank branches continue closing at such a rate, we face living in a society where those unable to bank digitally are financially excluded.

However it is not the closure of banks that is at the heart of this issue, but stripping away of essential services without adequate alternative provisions. With the number of customer transactions at the Lloyds branch having almost halved in the last five years, its closure is understandable. Online banking is indeed far more convenient many, but where does that leave those who rely on the services that in-person banking provides? Those living in rural areas whose internet broadband is unreliable? Those who struggle to understand online systems and fear the risk of fraud? Those on low incomes who rely on cash to manage their budgets.

And those in need of advice to set up a mortgage or business for whom a phone call cannot compare. The rise of online banking has increased the ease of managing money for many, the support that face-to-face services provide continues to be vital, especially to some of the most vulnerable people. An Age UK survey reveals that the use of online banking is as low as 14% among the 85+ age group. A complete transition to digital banking risks financially excluding many older people, making it harder to manage their money and fully participate in society.

The closure of banks also reflects the wider issue of declining High Street services. We should not underestimate the contribution of such services to fostering a sense of connection and diverse communities. This is not, as I said, solely an issue of morality. -- Reality. In the context of a culture with increasing isolation and loneliness. Access to cash also remains essential with 5 million people continuing to use it every day. The closure of rural banks puts pressure on rural businesses some of which experience a lower footfall because of less access to cash in their area.

Any owners are forced to travel further distances to deposit cash and carry out their banking. Leading to reduced opening hours. There are also those with special needs for whom using banking apps is not an option. I welcome the new duty that the Financial Conduct Authority has placed on banks to assess the impact that the closure of a branch will have on access to cash in the area and to ensure adequate services are implemented ahead of closure. However cash assessments only address part of the issue.

These regulations do not protect vital face-to-face services that people rely on. The assessment of cash access completed by Link last month deemed that there are already cash access facilities within a mile radius of the Lloyds branch that will close this coming May. It therefore concluded that no further services such as a banking hub are needed. The assessment does not however consider the impact on access to face-to-face services within the community, as they lose the town's one remaining physical bank branch.

I fully support the introduction and rollout of banking hubs, enabling communities to access the fundamental function of banks from a range of providers in person were bank branches are scarce. I praise the government for their commitment to open 350 hubs over the next five years and particularly the recent announcement of plans to open 10 new hubs including Alnwick and Amble in Northumberland and Whitley Bay in North Tyneside. Nevertheless I remain concerned about the pace of the roll-out. According to cash access UK provider of banking hubs, it takes approximately 12 months to open a hub as they must secure a suitable property and appoint operators and community bankers.

So what steps are the government taking to speed up the rollout of banking hubs in light of increasing banking closures? What certainty do they have in the FCA to fulfil its duty of ensuring that no community is left with a gap between the closure of a bank and the opening of a banking hub? Considering the current rate of bank closures, and the Lloyds recent announcements I am concerned that 350 hubs will not be enough to fill the gap in services that the rapidly closing bank branches are leaving.

So I ask, is the government open to increasing this target to meet the needs of diverse communities? Finally, whilst banking hubs are essential in providing face-to-face services, I also believe that they have a key role to play in bridging the digital divide. Banking hubs are well placed to offer training and support those who do not find it easy to manage their finances online and to equip them with the digital skills to do so. What steps the government taking to encourage banking hubs to provide training to enable people to manage their finances online and promote digital inclusion, and thereby reduce digital poverty? Online banking is an innovative tool to manage our personal finances.

But it should not come at the expense of removing essential services from rural communities. Nor the digital and financial exclusion of some of the most vulnerable people in society. I urge the government to ensure that no one is left behind and I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.
17:41
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Portrait Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Conservative)
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The Right Reverend Prelate deserves our congratulations and thanks. For raising this topic today, crucial as it is to the strength of communities throughout the country and therefore to the country itself. She is not only reverent, she is right. I declare my interest as a member of the Horizon compensation advisory Board, the relevance of that is that it will come as no surprise to your Lordships that I want to talk about the post office. I believe in the post office, despite all that it has done, despite the mayhem and trauma it has inflicted on sub-postmasters throughout the country, despite the appalling scandal of the Horizon saga, the post office is essential to communities up and down the country.

I will go so far as to say I love the post office. Not because of its management obviously, nor because of its structure, nor its behaviour, but because of the relationships that the sub- postmasters have with their communities. It was because of those relationships that the post office brand was the most trusted brand in the country. The sub-postmasters know their communities, they help pensioners with any issues that they might have, they keep an eye out for people who haven't been around recently and therefore might need their help, they hold the community together.

They lead the community and all of that is one of the reasons that it was so disgraceful of the post office management to use and abuse that most trusted brand in the country, to prosecute and persecute the people who had generated that trust. This debate, for which I again thank the Right Reverend Prelate, gives me an opportunity to say that the post office may form the basis of a wide-ranging solution to the problems that she rightly sets out.

The U.K.'s banking network has worse than halved since 2015. The link network says there are about 3,000 bank branches left, the Minister for small businesses speaking in another place last week said there were below 5,000, either way it is not enough. Age UK has briefed your Lordships on how this hits the elderly particularly hard. The elderly may be less digitally adroit than younger people, they may need to be protected from online scams.

They may rely more on cash, they may need face-to-face advice. The solution to these issues is the post office. This government has the ambition of banking hubs and they are rolling out 350 of these, over 100 of which are already up and running and that is excellent. But it's not ambitious enough. Hubs are the key to holding communities together. Those hubs could include, and in my opinion should include not just banking but social interaction. They could include that essential ingredient for all civilised life, ingredient for all civilised life, And over the coffee and cake people could connect to discuss what they do they feel digitally excluded.

They could bring their laptops and, work out how to upgrade, how to protect themselves from scams they could access all manner of government services, local and national, possibly even other services, including driving licences, powers of attorney, they could work out how to deal with planning applications. They could buy things and not just coffee and cake. Perhaps there could health Centre hub. So they could be told they were drinking too much coffee. And all of this would not just be a major step forward in relation to convenience, it would be good for the resilience of the country.

Resilience is the new black. A couple of years ago I chaired a Select Committee which examined risk planning and risk management. We found that the key to dealing with risk is general resilience, and that resilience is most in evidence when it is bolstered and disseminated by strong communities, and if the post office is about anything, it's about communities. So the lasting the government should be doing, doing, which sadly happened in November, is closing Post Offices.

As banks closed their branches we need more Post Offices, not fewer. We need bigger Post Offices with postmasters getting back to their role as leaders and enablers of their strong

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communities. A pleasure to follow my noble
17:47
Lord Holmes of Richmond Portrait Lord Holmes of Richmond (Conservative)
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A pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot and to have the opportunity to congratulate him again and being recognised as parliamentarian of the year for all parliamentarian of the year for all the work he did to represent the postmistress's and postmasters postmistress's and postmasters through that terrible, one of the darkest periods in this country's legal history. Can I also thank and congratulate the Right Reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle for securing such an important debate. I declare my technology and financial services interests, not least as adviser to eco-spend and trust Lee.

I would like to concentrate on connectivity, cash and community. Connectivity is the essence of being human. How we relate, how we connect with one another in real time, in the physical world, with bank branches retreating from our high streets, when it comes to gaining financial services, this is becoming vanishingly impossible in real vanishingly impossible in real world. So what is the solution? For people who want to do their daily banking. Not just individuals, but two and small businesses as well.

-- Micro and small businesses. The stats house that you can be in a certain percentage of mile away from your nearest branch, or 3 miles. But when one looks at other elements of connectivity, that's as good as being 300 miles away, if you can't get there. I would like to focus on the key role I believe the post office can play to bring forward solutions in this space. A brand that has been in our communities and in our society for over half a millennia.

There has to be such future for such a brand to deliver to the financial challenges, to the digital inclusion challenges, to the community cohesion challenges, the connectivity. And what happens for people if they find themselves without a banking branch or Easy Access to post office? Well, you can go online, we are told. But what about if you can't? If it's not accessible or indeed you don't want to because many reasons, not least the fact we are in the midst of a The three largest economies on planet Earth, number one, the United States of America, number two, China, number three, economic crime and fraud.

Would the Minister agree that the government understands why people may not choose to go online? And what are they doing to further help people online and to help them when they are in that online world? Particularly with something as personal and serious as finance? Connectivity. What happens if you have no bank branch and the broadband and mobile coverage isn't all that in your area? Not least in real communities but also in some city not spots.

You can be as financially savvy, as digitally smart, as you want, you can have the best device. But with no broadband or mobile connectivity, that payment isn't being made. What's the government plans look at all of these elements of connectivity to enable everybody to have the financial inclusion and the digital inclusion, not only do they deserve and need, but the financial inclusion and digital inclusion that is vital if the government are going to level, and if they are going to deliver to their growth agenda.

The bank branch has gone, no bank bank branch has gone, no bank branch, no bus, no broadband, difficult to see financial inclusion and digital inclusion. The question of cash. A lot of good work has happened around access to cash. What is the government's medium-term commitment to enabling access to cash, to the very service that underpins cash and the ease of being able to access it across our communities, across our country? And with access to cash, can I ask the Minister whether there is a continued commitment to free access to cash out all ATMs across the country? And what of cash acceptance? What the government's plan in terms of cash acceptance? Put it in terms, what currency cash, if no place to spend it? And as my noble friend order but not said, cash is such a key underpin for resilience, financial resilience for individuals, many of whom do not want to go online or want to run their businesses with cash for reasons of control which similarly to the economy, what is the government's view as to the resilience of continuing cash system if and when things go wrong in the digital space? And finally, on cash, what is the government's plan in terms of further innovating around access to and acceptance of cash? I was fortunate to bring an amendment to the financial service now act 2021 which enabled cashback without the need for purchase.

Measure of success, well, in terms of financial inclusion, most of the transactions that occurred as a result of that service were £20 and under. Really delivering to financial inclusion. To the third C, the most important, of community. Because yes, we can build digital communities and they can be incredibly effective. But ultimately, it is how we meet, where we meet, where they come together and relate the physical space, the human world, some may say, IRR. But ultimately, it's that community space where so much human potential, economic, social and psychological good can get done.

So a quartet of final questions for the Minister. If I may. How many hubs by the end of this year? And I agree that we can be more ambitious. Would the Minister not consider setting an ambitious target of 1,000 hubs by the end of this Parliament? Because it will take at least 2,000 hubs to properly cover the branches that have disappeared and continue to disappear. What's the government's thoughts around increasing business banking services within these hubs? Again, for micro and small businesses this can be an absolute lifeline.

They don't have time to get into a vehicle and go 5 miles to another town, another branch. They want to run their businesses. So what plans around increasing business banking facilities perhaps? And while we are on these issues, the financial inclusion, and asked the Minister what the government's views around flatscreen card payment devices? Completely inaccessible for blind people and many people. The worst thing about it, it's taking something which was previously accessible, the card payment machine which had buttons on, perfectly accessible, able to make payment independently, now completely inaccessible.

Will the government consider looking at this and giving a view as to whether they breach the qualities legislation? My Lords, financial inclusion, digital inclusion, often walk hand in hand. It's the government's role, it's all of our role to play a part in bringing them about because the social, the human, the community possibilities that come about as a result of that is what makes it worth being in a country such as the United Kingdom. I look forward to the Minister's response.

Ultimately, it's an issue for rural communities, it's an issue for all committees. Because finance at its heart is how we enable possibilities. That's the purpose. Individual possibilities, business possibilities, community possibilities. I think the Right Reverend Prelate again for giving us the opportunity to discuss these

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matters this evening -- I thank. Let me join in their thanks to
17:57
Baroness Kramer Portrait Baroness Kramer (Liberal Democrat)
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Let me join in their thanks to the Right Reverend Bishop of for obtaining this debate. It may be a short debate but as others have said is an exceedingly important one and is an exceedingly important one and I think I can say if it wasn't the last debate before recess there would be a much big attendance but the range of comments would probably be very much the same. This is an area where the House has been of one voice in its general concerns, but hasn't always initiated through to the greatest banking community.

The Right Reverend Bishop described very accurately that the whole banking landscape has changed beyond recognition really in the last five years. I accept the number of about 3,000 branches remaining open in the UK but more of them closing almost on a daily basis. And that's compared to about 10,000. And that's compared to about 10,010 years ago and over 20,000 in the late 1980s. -- 10,000, 10 years ago. The rapid transition to cash this way of life suits a lot of people.

But there are increasing number of people and committees, most especially people who might have disabilities, people who might be older, but again particularly people in rural areas, who are being left behind because their basic banking needs are barely being met by the system as it is today. Andrew Northern Ireland is probably an extreme example of some of the -- as an area of particular concern and Northern Ireland. Many areas can be described as banking deserts, with no reasonable bus I wonder if the Minister will be able to comment on whether she thinks it's adequate and also tell us whether or not sanctions have been applied to banks which seem to fade the basic intent of that guidance.

-- Seem to evade. It is not just individuals affected. Many small businesses, especially independent shops, are being very adversely impacted and bank closures have added to that growing sense of desolation in many High Street. Surveys show that many customers feel they are being force in to a new way of banking which they find far less convenient and secure, and customers whose local branch has been shutdown not only travelling long distances if they want to talk to someone about the money, but that they feel that that whole closure process is happening without proper engagement with them, without engagement with customers and certainly without the consent of many vulnerable groups and communities.

It simply being done to them and they feel powerless. It would be naive not to recognise that the banks are saving something like £2.5 billion annually by these changes, so they are very motivated to close bank branches and move away from providing that face-to-face activity. 5 million people still looking on cash as a necessity and Far too often the debate is framed solely around access to cash. It really does fail to recognise that some people want and need face-to- face banking without having to make a long journey.

It might be something like registering a death, probate, powers of attorney, support with fraudulent activity, larger payments and transfers, helper mortgages and loans. As Lord Holmes was pointing out, small businesses often find that face-to-face discussion is necessary for them to have the confidence to begin to branch out and acquire the knowledge they need to borrow and then grow, so it's very much part of the government's economic agenda. I'm concerned that banking hubs along with the post offices are being positioned as the key solution, we on these benches have always supported shared banking hubs provided they provide a good range of basic banking services, including the presence of community bankers from all the main banks on a regular and frequent basis.

I asked the government when it has its next Financial Services Bill it would amend the legislation to reflect that much broader need. What measures are Treasury and indeed what measures the regulator taking to make sure those additional banking services are very much the norm and very well represented within banking hubs? I would join with Lord Holmes and Lord Arbuthnot to say the rollout has been quite grey seal, -- glacial, there is a severe lack of ambition in 350 banking hubs, I will assess the double perhaps even travel are necessary.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds shut says she is championing sufficient access for all as a priority. In them and tell us what sufficient actually means? As Lord Arbuthnot has been saying in any small or medium-sized rural towns where a banking hub wouldn't be viable, the post office is now the only remaining financial institution where consumers and SMEs can do basic banking. I am really taken with his focus on these Post Offices is functioning in many ways is the heart of the community and building relationships within that community as well as providing service.

What assurances can the Minister provide on the survival of these Post Offices? The small business minister Gareth Thomas said he wanted 99% of people to live within three miles of the post office, I remember trying to deal with this issue when I was an MP and we had a huge battle because within three miles or even one mile that required you to be able to swim across the Thames to be able to actually get to the post office that had been identified. Do we now have a commonsense approach to try and work out if these distances make sense for people in the way that they actually have to travel? What is the timetable, and also can the Minister tell us how many Post Offices are surviving and being protected in rural areas? It's important they are in deprived parts of urban communities but rural areas are a greater challenge, the Minister's views would be extremely helpful.

Community access to cash pilots have been recommended in some of these areas supposedly with tailored solutions. Can the Minister tell us if these pilots have actually taken place? Just a pickup the concerns raised by Lord Holmes on digital exclusion, he has the House is expert in this area. I found it interesting that he doesn't consider digital exclusion to be sufficient, he points very much that this goes hand-in-hand with the ability to receive face-to-face services. With 17% of social tenants without any internet access at home and with so many others in areas where internet access is unreliable and difficult, what action is the government taking on access to skills, Lord Arbuthnot said why not use the post office for teaching? Access to skills and also, what is it doing to upgrade the technology as part of financial inclusion? Access to banking services is not a necessity, -- is a necessity not a luxury inclusive growth absolutely requires it, our rural communities cannot be left disadvantaged.

If the government ready to get a grip on this issue? If necessary be radical and make sure that both individuals and businesses have the financial

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infrastructure that they require. I declare my recent directorship of the cooperative which has tried of the cooperative which has tried hard to maintain a good branch network notwithstanding the widespread closures of bank branches
18:05
Lord Altrincham Portrait Lord Altrincham (Conservative)
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widespread closures of bank branches all over the country's for the past 30 years was that I commend the Right Reverend Prelate for raising this important issue for rural communities, perhaps also for Newcastle and the north-east and really the whole country. The church plays an important role for the vulnerable, perhaps for society but banks do as well. In the sense that financial services is a mirror to society. Banks and regulators have a tendency to conflate this issue with access to cash.

The distance to the nearest cash machine hopefully not swimming as the noble Baroness pointed out. Banks of course like to say that technology change have created a demand for online services and a reduction in the use of branches. In this, banks are conveniently in line with regulators who focus on cash machines. The FCA last year wrote to the banks with guidelines around cash services despite efforts made in Parliament during the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Act in 2023 to protect counter services.

But people like bank branches because they need help. They may need help with fraud. A young person might need help in finding out how to get a mortgage. Someone recently married might ask about opening a joint account. They might have questions around children. Or divorce. They might ask about getting a power of attorney for a parent or about death. In this way bank branches become part of the life-cycle of people and a community much as we tend to, and as they close that help and that connection inevitably fragments to social media and elsewhere.

Alas, the number of bank branches has fallen everywhere down to about 5,000 or so in 2023 and probably as we have heard, number close that to 3,000 today. This has been unintended consequence of financial regulation over many years. It started with the FSA and FCA, regulations about giving financial advice which had the consequence of banks ceasing to provide services that provide financial advice this was a good example of well-intentioned but naive regulation where to improve consumer protection consumers then consumer protection consumers then get no help at all.

Then there was cost pressure on the banks partly as a result of regulation that made it hard to maintain buildings and branches it's regrettable that the theoretical advantages of the ring fenced bank, theoretical concept of regulation which comes as an actual not theoretical cost of over £1 billion per year to the economy, has had the real world consequence of the reduction in consumer utility by the closure branches. While the banks are safe, the banks have as a matter of fact closed.

Lord Arbuthnot referenced the plans to provide some support through Post Offices and the new banking hubs and they may be charity initiatives that could maintain a degree of branch services well. As of this year only 100 hubs are operational, we understand the government is committed to achieving 350 hubs 2029 and the post office we think has indicated a higher number of 500 by 2030, fairly these numbers are insufficient as other noble Lords have pointed out. This is rather urgent in areas without any bank at all, nevertheless hubs are unlikely to wrap cake the services and knowledge of a working bank branch.

There is some evidence that closures are now slowing, particularly as Lloyds bank gets to the end of their closure program. There may be some competitive advantage with the remaining banks with branches led by Nationwide which now has the largest network of around 700 branches. The regular three pressure to reduce the number of branches notwithstanding Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 a be partly offset by the needs of small businesses, which do need branches and do need to have cash and for then we must be thankful.

Branch closures are part of a wider retail shutdown going on at the moment, and all the more reason to ask the government to intervene. Perhaps by asking that the banks hold their branch networks now at the level of around 3,000 branches. We could call this level the 3,000 number the Newcastle number. In honour of the Reverend prelate. We do need to mark at some point where the bank closures end. This is as good a time as any to do it now particularly because the process is slowing.

At the very least we should give time for alternative folk -- services to grow before the situation becomes acute in rural communities but actually acute everywhere in the country.

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Can I start by thanking the Right Reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle for this very timely debate, I would just like to debate, I would just like to reassure her, I'm sure on behalf of all of us that the number taking part is no reflection of the significance of the debate, rather significance of the debate, rather reflection of the time of day today and the run-up to the recess next and the run-up to the recess next and the run-up to the recess next week.

Can I thank other noble lords for their significant contributions to the debate today. Just by way of context to say I live in a small market town myself. I have witnessed personally the decimation of the number of branches, I think we are left with one building society branch, I have to say we do have a community hub has opened up so I have a lot, I do have personal experience of the issues that have been raised. I think the important thread running through all of this, of course we are talking about the rural economy and how it's going to survive throughout this, but I think the comments that have been picked up mostly by noble Lords today are around communities, around vulnerability, making sure that we are inclusive in all of the work we have done.

We've heard the statistics of the rapid closures statistics of the rapid closures today I don't need to repeat those. I would just like to emphasise the comments of the Right Reverend Prelate in terms of her concerns
18:13
Baroness Blake of Leeds Portrait Baroness Blake of Leeds (Labour)
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around the speed with which this is happening. I think we have to acknowledge the change that has acknowledge the change that has happened in banking in recent years and I know again from personal experience the impact of the COVID experience the impact of the COVID pandemic, my family making sure that I got my act together and got fully included. So they didn't have to worry. I think we have to acknowledge that this has opened up a whole new tranche for people and many people have benefited from the digital innovations that have happened.

In 20 1714% of UK adults regularly use the bank branch, by 2022 only 21% of UK adults stilted -- 40%. Almost 9 in 10 adults banked online or use their mobile act. This actually includes 65% of the over 75's. I want to emphasise that it is this government's ambition to ensure that all consumers can benefit from digital services and that is why in the Autumn Budget in 2024 the government announced funding of over £500 million next year to deliver digital info structure act upgrades through Project Gigabit and the shared rural network, nonetheless let me assure my noble Lords that the government understands the importance of face-to-face banking to communities across the UK and continues to take action to realise the full economic potential of rural businesses and communities picking up on the points that Baroness Kramer made.

For example, the government intends to introduce permanently lower tax rates for High Street retail properties with the value below half £1 million from 2026/27. In many comments around connectivity and Lord Holmes I did here his comments, about connectivity made very powerfully. That is why on December 17 the government introduced the bus services built this House putting power over local bus services back into the hands of local leaders, addressing the concerns that have We have heard a lot about the target around the banking hubs services and we are working closely with banks to roll out the 350 hubs by the end of this Parliament, and as we know, over have already been opened.

I want to reassure noble Lords of the extent of the service on a -- offer. They provide services for postal account holders and to business customers so that they can withdraw cash, deposit checks, pay bills. But they also have separate rooms where customers can see community bankers from their own bank to carry out the wider banking services that have been raised here today, such as registering a bereavement or help with changing a PIN, whatever they need that services available.

The government is committed to working with industry to ensure banking hubs beat customers needs. Some of the hubs are trialling opening on Saturday mornings which is something I think we could all look at with interest. And we will drive forward the rollout of hubs. I can't say how many hubs will open this year. This is work in progress. But I do recognise the ambition around this and I also recognise the training needs that have been highlighted today. I think it might help if I set out the FCA's rules that underpin the rollout of banking hubs.

When a bank announces a branch closure, link, the operator of the U.K.'s largest ATM network will carry out an impartial assessment of communities access to cash needs, where link recommends a banking hubs, cash access UK, a not-for- profit, funded by the major banks, will provide it. Where closure triggers an assessment, the branch cannot close until any Link recommended services have been installed. I hope that does give some reassurances to the concerns some reassurances to the concerns raised.

Link does consider publish in size, the number of small business, that levels of affordability, and they also consider the distance to the nearest branch, and cost and travel time via public transport. Anyone who feels is needed, including members of this House, can request an access to Cass Review directly through the Link website. As Baroness Kramer did physically highlight, access to services, the government is determined to see local communities get what they need when it comes to cash in banking services and is continually working to improve this.

I would like to call of course, pay enormous tribute to the noble Lord Lord Arbuthnot for the work that he has done with the Post Offices. I recognise absolutely what he was saying about them being the hub of the community. I remember going on a weekly basis to pick up Child Benefit and the people you met when you did that, people knew you were OK, and this is something I'm afraid that we have lost. I was a proud owner of a gyro bank account as well.

And I'm delighted that Post Offices are stepping up to the plate in terms of offering banking services. We recognise that they have a duty to serve the communities and I think that is at the heart of and I think that is at the heart of the debate. And recognise that 99% of personal banking, 95% of business banking customers, can do their everyday banking at the 11,500 post offices around the country. And the comment 's from communities, from the noble Lord Lord Holmes, absolutely fits in.

I do want to reassure noble Lords that the Secretary of State for the Department of business has met the post office chair, to discuss the post office network. It is absolutely central to our thinking absolutely central to our thinking as a government. And I do appreciate that post office closures can be very concerning to communities. Unfortunately, branches can shutdown for a variety of reasons and many of these are outside of the post office 's control. Post Office Ltd works with communities to ensure that services are maintained and the government sets access criteria to ensure services remain in reach.

I think running throughout this discussion today is the issue of financial inclusion. Timeframe The financial inclusion strategy is carrying on and being developed alongside a support chaired by Mike colleague. The mission is to tackle a range of barriers to inclusion for excluded groups and this includes work being taken forward by subcommittee of consumer and industry representatives, focusing on key issues including digital inclusion and access to banking services which met for the first -- and I recognise the whole issue of fraud.

I think we have to emphasise this. It is one of the most cynical crimes in the country, targeting the most vulnerable, targeting the elderly. And I would just like to respond to the noble Lord Lord Holmes, that many firms also support access to digital services, through all the different initiatives but particularly picking up on his point, around the accessibility of card payment terminals. I'm pleased the UK Finance and the role nationalist for the blind have developed accessibility guidelines and touchscreen chip and pin services, and an approved list of accessible hub terminals.

I accept they certainly do. -- There is more to do. Access to cash something that we have run through. The whole issue of digital inclusion, as expressed so ably, is absolutely pivotal. The government is, through the Department of science innovation and technology, taking the lead and also looking forward to working around digital barriers beyond financial digital barriers beyond financial services which can include customers, the whole issue of the rollout of broadband, Internet services, I think it's something that we are all aware of.

What we need to understand is access to transactional account is a crucial element in supporting people's financial resilience and well-being. And I think that once throughout this. Unconscious there were a number of very specific questions put to me. I guarantee to write in response to those particular questions. But I would like to end by thanking the Right Reverend Prelate, again for her timely debate, and also for a continuing championing of rural banking access. I was struck that she did broaden this out and recognise that inclusion is an issue right across the country, many of our different communities.

I do want to reassure her and the House that the government will reflect very carefully on all of the points that are being raised today, and in this very thoughtful and helpful debate.
18:23
10:47
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