Representation of the People Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer]

The Government point out that, in Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, children aged 16 can vote in certain elections. However, UK general elections determine who takes responsibility for our national defence and security, and so are quite different from elections in those smaller countries and areas. These are decisions on war and peace.

If the Government are confident that 16 is an appropriate voting age, surely they should welcome a proper assessment and explain why they are prepared to disregard scientific concerns about maturity and independent judgment—or is political advantage the real reason behind this proposal? I ask the Government to look at this amendment and bring forward some evidence. Frankly, some of us might even question whether we have fully acquired the maturity needed to vote at the age of 18.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I share some of the worries summed up by Amendments 18 and 19, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, about ensuring that all sides of the argument are heard by our newly enfranchised 16 year-olds, especially looked-after children.

I have noted Amendment 43, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and Amendment 44, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which both focus on the role that education can play in preparing young people for voting. As a former teacher, I always welcome more knowledge-based education, but I am concerned, for a number of reasons which I raise now.

First, this would put an undue burden on teachers. As we know, every time there is a social problem in this country, somebody says that education will solve it, and teachers are tearing their hair out every time they hear that. Secondly, how on earth might we trust that, if this is the main source of information that young people are going to get before they vote, it is suitably impartial?

In an earlier group, there was a very important discussion in which concern expressed about undue influence on voters, sometimes from families, sometimes women being coerced, sometimes from religious groups, and so on and so forth. We all took that seriously, as it is an important debate. Here we have to ask whether young voters could be unduly influenced, and by what. I am concerned about how we ensure, when talking about education and linking it directly, as these amendments seek to do, to 16 year-olds being prepared to vote, that it is based on impartial information.

As noble Lords will note, my concern in relation to votes for 16 year-olds is about their dependence on state bodies, as people who have not got the majority, because I want to protect the notion of the independence of all voters. It seems to me that we are going to have a group of voters who, by the nature of the way society is organised, are not independent. That most expresses itself, funnily enough, in school or in instances of looked-after children, dependent on the state or local councils, as the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, explained.

I have a general concern that the whole discussion could lead to the politicisation of schools, and that really worries me. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, made the point that education is subversive. It absolutely is, and, to be fair, I am a great fan of being subversive—I try to make a habit of it. However, linking the idea of education as subversive with saying, “You must now go out and be a responsible citizen and vote”, could get us into some difficulties.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

The noble Baroness referred to my amendment and has concerns about it. I remind her that I made the point about training and resources, because it would have to be adequately resourced. Does the noble Baroness not agree with the whole concept of citizenship education, because that seems to be the tenor of her remarks?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley]

I am about to explain my concerns about the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I think citizenship education can be excellent, and a

“catch-up programme of political and media literacy”

sounds like a sensible, impartial and pragmatic intervention. But I have concerns, and I am raising them. I am not opposing the amendment; I am probing.

In recent years, citizenship education has, in my experience of going into schools and working in educational settings, become somewhat muddled in its agenda, and is often a vehicle for social justice campaigning, when you actually look at what is going on. To use one example, there is a call in the amendment for

“experts, charities and civil society organisations”

to give advice to the Government on citizenship education. We are talking about charities—what could go wrong with that?—civil society organisations and NGOs, but we all know that, very often, they are highly politicised, highly partial and there are all sorts of controversies around them.

To take one recent example, during the Black Lives Matter period in relation to George Floyd, many schools invited NGOs, charities and organisations to help them sort out how they should best deal with the response to Black Lives Matter. We ended up with quite extensive and, in some instances, toxic examples of the introduction of critical race theory into classrooms, unconscious bias training, children accusing others of having white privilege, off-the-scale decolonising of the curriculum and so on. We have to be careful that charities and third parties, in relation to educating children for elections, are not just a vehicle for political propaganda.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am doing my best to follow the logic of the noble Baroness’s argument. Is she saying that civic education is fine but that no social justice should be taught?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am suggesting that a particular reading of social justice is one-sided and political. We need to show some caution. Civics education per se is one thing. This is an argument that civics education should be used to prepare young people to vote in elections, which is a different thing. We must show some caution. I am going to come back to this, noble Lords will be delighted to know, in a later group.

I finish with one example that might illustrate my point. I was on a panel for a debate on education after the last election. A head teacher on the panel shared with the audience, with horror, that a citizenship studies mock election in his school had seen some pupils stand as Reform candidates. Even worse, they won—overwhelmingly. He used this as an example of the dangerous radicalisation of youth and the need to tackle extremism and that the school was now working on ensuring that pupils who exhibited such traits would be introduced to ideas that would counter them.

I make no party-political point here, but this raises the kinds of issues that I am concerned about. How dare the head teacher see a political party in this country as the wrong political party. I was shocked and argued back, as noble Lords can imagine. With voting for 16 year-olds on the horizon, we must ensure that such political prejudices do not become undue influences on political decision-making by 16 year-olds who are being told that they are being treated as adults in making up their own minds. If we depend on schools to shape their minds around the political issues that they will have to choose around, then we are in trouble.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

Before I respond to the amendments, I must correct a date I gave in the debate on the previous group. I said that the tabling date for amendments for the next set of Committee groups was 9 November, but it is 17 November. My apologies for that. The amendments in those groups will be tabled then.

I want to say at the start that the Government are committed to ensuring that everyone who is entitled to vote is able do so, and that they should supported and encouraged in that. The provisions we are making are designed to ensure that vulnerable people who are eligible to vote are enabled, but it is quite right that all young people must be prepared for this change to the electoral franchise. The Government are already working with the Electoral Commission, devolved Governments, the electoral sector and civil society organisations to raise awareness of the franchise change among young people to help prepare them to exercise their democratic rights. I will go into a bit more detail on schools provision in a moment.

I thought it might be helpful to say to noble Lords that we have carried out extensive research, both quantitative and qualitative, speaking to those aged 14 to 17. A total of 32 focus groups were conducted over two stages, followed by a nationally representative survey of more than 3,500 respondents, utilising online and offline data collection. The key headlines from that research were really interesting: most young people have a form of valid voter ID; most regard voter ID as necessary; the education system is seen by young people as a good way to learn about these topics; and the majority feel that their voice would matter more if they had the vote at 16. Those were the key headlines, but it was a big piece of research.

The other thing that slightly surprises me is that the debates on Monday and today have taken a direction that I was not expecting. It is a shame that significant doubts have been cast on teachers’ impartiality, and we now appear to have doubts being cast on the BBC and on those responsible for looked-after children.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Only two weeks ago, the Government intervened in the problem of the lack of impartiality among teachers on the Israel-Gaza-Palestine conflict. At the time, I congratulated the Government on taking a stance on the difficulties of that issue. The Government were clear that we have to be very careful. I cast no aspersions in general. The Government noted the particular issue of the rise of antisemitism and the politicisation of that war in schools, and they rightly intervened. I congratulated the Government then, and I congratulate them now. I did not think the Government were casting aspersions on all teachers; they were not, and neither were the rest of us.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

These issues have to be tackled when and as they arise. The point I was making is that making general points relating to that is not helpful.

I will now address the amendments. I understand and share the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for young people to receive impartial information, as expressed in Amendments 18 and 19. I assure him that Clauses 15 and 16 are deliberately narrow in scope. They require local authorities in Great Britain, and health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland, where the system is different, to raise awareness of the registration arrangements that apply to relevant young people and to help those young people register. This is about factual and practical electoral registration information and making sure that young people who are or have been in the care system understand how they can register, and, where necessary, helping them to do so. I therefore assure the noble Lord that we fully recognise the importance of political impartiality, but I do not consider that an additional statutory requirement of this kind is needed.

I turn to Amendment 23 from the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Rennard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on bringing such sartorial elegance to the Chamber this afternoon. It brings some panache to our debate at the end of the week.

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[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I am calming down. This group, in which most of the amendments are mine, is related to the third group but there is more detail this time. I am trying to put your Lordships’ House in the shoes of the 16 year-old casting their first vote on their birthday. Statistically, 1,917 16 year-olds are likely to be able to go down to the polling station and vote on their birthday, and I am thinking of them. This cohort will not have voted before. There is a serious need for neutral information about the mechanics of the election for those whom the Government want to vote for the first time.

My Amendment 34, which goes with the rub of the Bill, proposes that the Electoral Commission is given a special statutory duty to design media that appeals to the inexperienced cohort about how elections work, how you prove your identity, how not to invalidate the ballot paper by marking it with your initials—a mistake I once made as a youngster—and so forth. I spoke to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, earlier; times have changed since we were young. We were brought up on “Play School”, “Blue Peter”, “Bagpuss”, “Crackerjack!”, and Kate Adie and Alastair Burnet reading the news. Nowadays, news is consumed in snippets on social media, phones and tablets—at home or on the go—and youngsters are not interested in what the BBC says any more, still less than the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. It is important that the information produced by the Electoral Commission is not just produced in an age-relevant manner but distributed appropriately, and that means online.

That brings me to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and the amended Online Safety Act, which give the Secretary of State powers to restrict access to social media for those under 16. We understand the reasons, but sometimes legislation requires a trade-off to prevent a greater harm. The Act gives powers to segment that ban by age and material, so I am not proposing something revolutionary that would nullify Parliament’s decision. I want to use the powers in the Act to carve out an exception for people under 16 who are, importantly, registered to vote, allowing them access to election-related materials on social media in advance of an election. This would include those who will vote on their 16th birthday, who would otherwise have been excluded up to and including the day before.

How can these children be expected to form a view of whom to support at the ballot box if they cannot see in advance the full gamut of election materials through social channels, including practical information from the Electoral Commission about how the mechanics of the vote work? My probing amendment seeks to bring into focus the obvious dichotomy that, on the one hand, youngsters are mature enough to play their part in choosing the governance of our nation but, on the other, they are so immature that they need to be shielded from the messages on which that election depends. This is the consequence of the muddle that this Government have created in blurring the boundary between childhood and adulthood.

My amendment says that a social media ban that keeps youngsters away from the candidates, and more particularly from the Electoral Commission’s information, would be the greater harm, by undermining the democratic foundations of our nation. Technically, Section 214A of the Online Safety Act 2023, added by Section 70 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, would be amended—if you are registered to vote, you would be able to join the social media revolution. The Government say that they want to improve young people’s engagement in democracy; I cannot think of a stronger recruiting sergeant for democratic involvement than incentivising youngsters who are preparing to vote by giving them access to the socials. That is why I suggested in group 3 on Monday that the age of voter registration should be set at 15, not 14, partly because 15 would be an appropriate age as those who had registered could access social media. I am sure that we will return to this on Report.

However, there is another second-order consequence of my proposal. We currently have no definitive method to authenticate somebody under 16 proving their age for the purposes of the Online Safety Act. Ofcom is getting in a right muddle, trying to think of four different ways by which youngsters can prove their age. If they were registered to vote, they would be on the database and that would be enough, so there are some other areas in which this would enable internet service providers to fulfil an identity and age check. At a stroke, it would lift a weight from parents, who are subject to intolerable peer pressure from their children and their friends to let them have a social account when we know that, if they are too young, it is just not in their best interests. Amendment 39 would strengthen the hand of parents and the current system of age verification.

Amendments 35 to 37 cover the schools angle, which was covered in group 3 earlier today. At Second Reading, I warned that the Bill brings party politics into schools. I am not talking about the pedagogy of politics but of political partisanship. The Bill puts teachers in a difficult position. It drives wedges between pupils and invites parents to complain that their own political prejudices have not been adequately reinforced. It is our job to set the statutory ground rules for how electoral politics is treated in our schools. I heard the Minister earlier, but we need to show teachers, pupils and parents that we will not permit a Wild West that disrupts classrooms and increases tension. We need to strengthen their hand and resist providing a conduit for party activists.

My amendments do not suggest that schools should not discuss the election at all. After all, the young people will not have voted before, and teachers will have a role in explaining the process. However, that does not mean that schools should be a dumping ground for all manner of party leaflets. Otherwise, schools will become a magnet for activists, who will conclude that they can reach hundreds of voters at once—which is a damn sight easier than knocking on hundreds of doors.

My amendments are not just about party activists; I am also interested in protecting children from the undue influence of a teacher’s personal political predispositions. My Amendment 35, on the duty to be impartial, is intended to strengthen teachers’ ability to insulate themselves from outside influence and ensure that learners aged 14 to 18 can make neutral, informed decisions about their vote. My Amendment 36 prohibits the display of election materials in educational establishments outside the structured classroom environment, which must be scrupulously impartial. Amendment 38 seeks to ensure that hustings held in schools are politically balanced and that all candidates are given reasonable notice and the opportunity to attend, although whether they actually turn up will be up to them.

This is an important group. The other place failed to consider the practicality and second-order consequences of extending the franchise to those who are so young that they are still at school. We must stop turning schools into political battlegrounds, sowing division and reinforcing sectarianism. This happens in some areas with campaigning in Urdu, which places teachers and schools in an invidious position. Just as importantly, this group will allow those who are mature enough to vote to look at the socials, provided that they have exercised the privilege of registering to vote in the first place. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendments 34, 35, 36, 38 and 39 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, do us a favour in that they force us to consider the second-order consequences of a very big constitutional change. Regardless of one’s views on votes for 16 or 17 year-olds, it is a hugely important shift in the franchise and we should take seriously what it means for how society and politics operate. I therefore found just thinking through these issues very important.

I want to raise something I have been wondering about, which is not quite reflected in this but comes from it, which is a nervousness about electoral or party politics coming into the classroom. Will there be a different atmosphere among teachers who are actively engaged in politics—and we want them to be; that is what you want citizens to be like—when instead of just educating pupils, they might want to win their votes and not just win their hearts and minds to ideas?

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 34, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, seeks to require extra steps to be taken to publish impartial, age-appropriate election information on social media suitable for young people who may be subject to restrictions on social media access. The Government agree that extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds must go hand in hand with ensuring that young people have access to reliable information and the knowledge they need to participate confidently in elections.

We are also clear that that the social media ban must not inadvertently cut young people off from valuable information that is essential for their democratic participation. While the Government’s proposed social media restrictions will apply to young people under 16, they will still have access to many websites, including news sites, and to political information from a wide range of trusted sources, including schools, colleges and the Electoral Commission.

We have committed to working with regulators, industry, civil society and subject matter experts to ensure this information is accessible and easy to find for young people affected by the ban. We are also working across government to strengthen democratic education and media literacy, helping young people to develop the knowledge and skills they need to engage confidently with our democracy. For those reasons, I do not believe that an additional statutory duty to publish election information on social media is necessary.

Turning to Amendments 35, 36 and 38, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, on political impartiality in schools and educational settings, I of course recognise the importance of ensuring young people receive politically balanced information and can make informed decisions about their vote. However, we do not consider these amendments to be necessary. As I mentioned in response to amendments in group 3, schools are already subject to clear legal duties on political impartiality. They must prohibit the promotion of partisan political views and take reasonably practicable steps to ensure that, where political issues are brought to pupils’ attention, opposing views are presented in a balanced way.

Existing Department for Education guidance makes it clear that these duties apply not only to classroom teaching but to public displays and school communications. This picks up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. There are also specific safeguards during election periods to prevent schools being used to promote a particular party or candidate. In relation to hustings, on one occasion when I was a parliamentary candidate, I was invited to attend hustings which were then cancelled because other candidates were not available to attend. I can verify that schools take this very seriously.

At the same time, schools have an important role in helping young people understand democracy and the electoral process. Schools can harness the interest generated around election periods to raise political awareness through activities such as mock elections. Of course, it is true to say that teachers have been educating voters since 1969, when votes at 18 were introduced, and before that teachers in colleges and universities. For many years, primary schools have organised mock elections of the kind I just referred to; I have participated in those myself. The Government therefore consider that the existing framework already provides an appropriate, judgment-based approach which protects political impartiality without unnecessarily restricting or proscribing legitimate educational activities.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for tabling Amendment 39 and so raising the important question of how we ensure that young people who have registered to vote have access to information to inform their voting decision and learn how elections operate. We agree that extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds must go hand in hand with ensuring access to reliable information.

Earlier this year, we announced our intention to ban social media companies from offering their services to under-16s, alongside a package of other measures to improve their safety and well-being online. I understand the references made by the noble Lord, Lord Pack, to the Online Safety Act and making sure that these two things are working together. The Government must act where they see real evidence of harm. These changes seek to reset the rules so that children are protected from the platforms and online features that create the most harm. We are also clear that the social media ban must not inadvertently cut young people off from that valuable information which is essential for their democratic participation.

The Electoral Commission already provides a wide range of information, including resources specifically designed for young people. As I set out earlier, we are working across government to strengthen democratic education and media literacy. We also accept the issues around citizenship education and democracy—the very issue that the noble Lord, Lord Pack, referred to. It is important that young people understand, for example, that we value democracy, but they need to know the difference between that and a dictatorship, and some even worse methods of government.

For these reasons, we do not believe that an additional statutory duty is necessary. I hope I have reassured noble Lords that we have put provisions in step for political education.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Before the Minister sits down, I want to query two things. First, the social media ban will apparently not prohibit young people accessing trusted news sources. Trusted by whom? Who makes that call? That was partly my point. I would have thought that you could trust the Home Office to bring out an interactive game without getting it so badly wrong. That might be something to consider.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Pack, is absolutely right: we have to look at this. When discussions came out about drilling for oil in the North Sea, searches on that were age-gated, and anybody under 16 could not get through. You had to prove who you were, prove your age and so on. That was quite a big discussion. Will the Minister at least take back to the Government the possibility of thinking this through a bit more, rather than just saying that it is all going to be all right? I do not agree with the ban on social media for under-16s. I had to listen to practically everybody in this House lecture me about how you cannot let under-16s anywhere near this stuff, how everything will lead to suicide, mayhem, bedlam and all the rest of it, and how we have to stop them getting access to it. Suddenly, it is okay if it is news—and that is news to me. We therefore need a bit more detail.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I want a bit more clarity. I understand that schools are obliged to be politically neutral. In this country we have tens of thousands, if not millions, of teachers—I do not know the number. If we are to have 16 and 17 year-olds voting and want politically neutral education on the political landscape for them, it will be a lot easier, and we will have much more consistency, if there are clear guidelines that can be reviewed and seen by others. Is that the intention?

Representation of the People Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, it is more than 50 years since we legislated to extend the franchise to allow 18 year-olds to vote in general elections. A great deal has changed in society since 1970 when those 18 year-olds cast their first votes, and it is right that we look again properly at the issue of the franchise.

The debates since 1970, including this afternoon, focus largely on the issue of at what age it is appropriate to do whatever people want to do. But the argument from the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, that few people who are 16 or 17 in Scotland and Wales are registered to vote is not an indication that they should not be able to vote; it is an indication simply of how difficult it can be to be on the electoral register when you are a young person. That issue is addressed elsewhere in the Bill, but was sadly neglected over the last four Parliaments.

I accept that there are things we should not let people do as soon as they are 16. For example, smoking is self-harming, alcohol carries great dangers, gambling can be deeply addictive and purchasing fireworks, knives, crossbows and airguns should not be permitted to anyone under 18. But going down to a polling station or filling in a postal vote should not be seen as a harmful activity, any more than it is for older generations.

A 16 year-old in this country can consent to medical treatment, leave school for another form of education or training and consent to sex. With parental consent, that young person can join the Armed Forces, apply for a passport and get married or enter a civil partnership. Yet, under present laws, someone whose 18th birthday falls just before a general election may not get to cast a vote in one until they are 21 or 22. If politics is not for them when they are young, it may never be for them.

In 2003, in a debate on a Bill that would have reduced the franchise from 18, I argued that maturity and political understanding do not suddenly materialise on your 18th birthday. My view remains that it is wrong to suggest that everyone over 18 generally possesses sufficiently political wisdom to make choices, while no one aged 16 or 17 can properly decide whether to vote or who to vote for. My own experience with political research often involved me interviewing the interviewers who sought to discuss political issues with voters. The people they interviewed, who were entitled to vote because they were 18, frequently knew so little about the issues facing a democracy that the interviewers even said to me that they sometimes doubted the wisdom of the universal franchise.

Wisdom, political experience and judgment do not always come with being older. Younger people, in my experience, are sometimes ahead of older generations in considering long-term challenges such as climate change, alongside immediate priorities such as education, transport and housing. Amendments today seek to maintain the voting age at 18, or to reduce the number of young people who will be added to the voting registers. The suggestion is even made—I think it is preposterous—of having a national referendum before extending the franchise. Another referendum, and on this issue? We can only imagine what Brenda from Bristol would have to say about that.

Retaining the vote at 18 or pausing at an arbitrary halfway point of 17 ignores vital lessons from when the franchise has been extended in Scotland and Wales. Studies across both nations demonstrate that 16 and 17 year-olds living at home and attending school are embedded in a supportive social structure that actively fosters democratic engagement: a structure that 18 to 20 year-olds currently entitled to vote who are living independently often lack. In Scotland and Wales, and in other countries such as Austria, which led the way by lowering the voting age to 16 across all electoral levels in 2007, there was no meltdown of democracy. In fact, in local elections in Vienna, turnout among 16 and 17 year-olds reached 64%, compared with only 56% among 18 to 20 year-olds.

We on these Benches accept that the issue of enfranchisement cannot stand alone. We should look to research from Jersey, which lowered the voting age in 2008. It was demonstrated there that extending the franchise in isolation, without structured democratic education, failed to deliver sustained engagement, leaving young voters facing persistent confusion over candidates’ policy platforms and how democracy works. So, in a later group of amendments, we will argue that extending the franchise and strengthening citizenship education must be treated as twin pillars of a single coherent strategy, aimed at improving political engagement and the health of our democracy.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have added my name to a couple of amendments, including Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, because I think it is valid to ask, “Why 16, not 17?” We could as easily ask, “Why 16, not 15?” This is overall an important group of amendments, not necessarily because anyone here is interested in overturning a manifesto pledge or getting stuck in a row about the maturity or otherwise of teenagers, but in order to probe how far the Government have considered the impact of these changes, what they mean for the adult franchise and the problem of inconsistency in relation to age when it comes to the way we view the age of majority.

My fear is that we are in danger of getting in a muddle about what adulthood means. The age of majority, according to law, is 18. Successive Governments have created fairly hard lines about what under-18s cannot do, as we have heard, including buying alcohol, nicotine products or vapes or gambling: all the sins, the harmful things. Under 18 year-olds are also deemed incapable of exerting full contractual capacity when it comes to loans or mortgages or doing jury service. I think that jury service is good and I hope that, by the time they grow up, there will still be juries left for them to be recruited to—but I put that to one side.

Immigration: Earned Settlement

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I can and I will, and the Home Secretary has made it clear in the other place. Settlement for refugees will encourage safe and legal routes and promote integration, while discouraging the use of unsafe and illegal routes. The Home Secretary was right to point out that it is absolutely appalling that people, including women and children, have suffered death as a consequence of trying those illegal routes on boats. We are absolutely looking at policies that discourage that. Refugees on safe and legal routes will qualify after five years. That is the incentive side of this policy. All other refugees will qualify after 20 years, although there will be a 10-year discount for entering work or study. Again, it is about people making a contribution. Those who came by small boat will receive a 10-year additional wait, to discourage those dangerous and illegal crossings. It is not simply about saying that there will be a 30-year wait for refugees; we are adopting a policy that will secure refugees’ future properly.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Can the Minister look at that question slightly differently? Is the message to migrants arriving illegally on small boats that, if they come to the UK then they can stay here for 30 years, and not work or study, and at the end of that 30 years be given leave to remain—and in the meantime they will have been living off the generosity of the British taxpayers and the welfare system, and so on? Can the Minister clarify why that is a disincentive? Further, last year, when the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood launched her reforms—I am one of her fans—she said that migration was “unaffordable” and that it was “immoral” to carry on, and she was very clear and very firm about those reforms. She has backed down on those reforms now. Why? Is that not saying that we are now going to have to be able to afford what we cannot afford, and that somehow she has been forced to accommodate on her morality of last year?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has not compromised one bit. What she announced today is a settled status that includes a range of contributions. She made it clear at the introduction of her policy that there were disqualifications to being able to earn settled status. However, the noble Baroness is conflating issues. There are people who have genuine asylum claims, which are properly assessed, and those people will have their status understood through the conventions that we are signed up to. That is the country we are; we value those things. When I had a debate last week, we were talking about Ukrainian refugees who have come here. Most of them want to return to their own country. There are many other refugees who have come here and who we have given protection to who also want to return to their country. I do not accept the idea that everyone is a freeloader. That is why the system that we are putting in place recognises their contribution, whether it be work or study.

Leaseholder Remediation (Building Safety) Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on this building safety Bill. I admire it for its hard-line radicalism in firmly establishing that, if a residential leasehold building has serious systemic defects, the leaseholder who did not design, build or sign off the works should not be the person who pays for the clean-up.

One proposed change that is quite radical, as we have heard, is the no minimum height or storey threshold. Although I tend to agree with both the Labour Government and the Tories before them that there are fewer fire safety issues in lower-level buildings, I would rather the law was less rigid about risk assessment than using the tape measure approach and fetishising 11 metres. I also appreciate that the Bill is aiming to expand protections for all leaseholders, when it comes to building safety and regardless of which storey their flat is on.

But I have one concern: could this backfire and share the miseries caused by the building safety regime downwards, even to ground-floor flats? This matters because of the unintended consequences of excessive risk-averse regulations. After the tragedy of Grenfell, there was a rush to caution that was understandable, but that then sometimes led to the law resulting in unnecessary work being commissioned under the banner of safety.

I tried to push back against the “remediation at all costs” mentality driving debates on the then Building Safety Bill. That well-intentioned legislation has created layers and layers of costly bureaucracy—think of Part 4— and has contributed to spiralling and exorbitant service charges and maintenance costs for buildings over 18 metres. This in turn has had a devastating impact on individual leaseholders and even the leasehold property market. According to Hamptons, 37% of England’s leasehold flats have service charges exceeding a threshold at which many mortgage lenders will not lend, leaving affected flats effectively unmortgageable, hard to insure and extremely difficult to sell. Do not let us make lower-storey leasehold flats fall into that sort of quagmire.

I appreciate that this Bill intends to move building safety away from service charge recovery towards a more punitive enforcement mechanism to make developers, construction, the supply chain et cetera pay, but all the time I was reading the Bill I kept considering that the real culprit here is leasehold itself. Indeed, leaseholders want to take responsibility for their own homes, but cannot. You have bought your home, and you assume that you will have control over ensuring it is safe, but then you discover that, due to some feudal legacy, you are a mere tenant in bondage to a landlord or freeholder, dependent on them to decide what actions are needed to keep you and your home safe.

What we really need to do is to end leasehold for good, but we have been talking about abolishing leasehold since the 1880s. The inherent draconian unfairness of the system has been accepted by Ministers from all parties and championed, indeed, so eloquently and frequently by our own Chief Whip—well, when he was in opposition. Abolition was then a totemic commitment of the Labour manifesto, and I was excited. But here we are, depending on the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to pick up the rotten pieces of another Government reneged-on promise to end what, to be honest, is bleeding people dry and causing widespread misery for millions of householders.

The personal tragedies that this causes are documented very well by groups such as the Free Leaseholders campaign, and it is just shameful. We are reduced to trying to make ever greater numbers of organisations liable for flat safety to take the pressure off leaseholders. Even if this Bill delivers leaseholders better rights—certainly it does on paper—I am worried that its sweeping powers to make everyone else pay will create other regressive social consequences: for example, building owners swamped with information requests; or developers facing pipeline paralysis; or the floodgates being opened to multiple litigation disputes.

At a time when housebuilding numbers are so low—it is actually a crisis that we are not building enough houses—I would like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to respond on how she believes we can balance the warning from the law firm Devonshire that some of the sanctions in the Bill will

“grind construction to a halt, put a pause on ongoing work … until every deficit is rectified”.

Is not that just the sort of barrier to growth that we do not need when it comes to urgently needed housebuilding? The country needs that kind of growth to happen.

To finish, as the Bill covers conversions and refurbishments as well, it will not be just big construction but small building firms and contractors as well that could be in scope for blame, and that just worries me.

Housing: National Tenant Body

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Baroness. Following the findings of the Grenfell inquiry, it is clear that the social housing system was not fit for purpose and that tenants were ignored. It is quite right that apologies were made, and those failings definitely contributed to the Grenfell tragedy. As the noble Baroness will be aware, we are delivering an extensive programme of reform to drive up standards in social housing through regulation and enforcement. We are about to bring Awaab’s law before the House, strengthening the tenant voice and improving access to redress. Those new standards put the tenant voice at their heart. My understanding is that the tenants themselves were very keen that this be both funded and driven by the sector itself. The Government are very keen to do whatever we can to assist with that.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am not usually very keen on quangos, but at the heart of this is the issue of trust. Tenants feel as though they are getting mixed messages: when the Housing Ombudsman suggests something, the Government say it is a good idea but then dilly-dally, and trust is undermined. The Government should be clearer on this. Also, there are issues involving tenants that need a national voice. Could the national body, for example, deal with the challenges of rental properties being turned into houses in multiple occupancy—an issue that I know worries tenants—and with the rumours that Serco is repurposing HMOs for asylum seekers, to replace hotels? I am not saying that is happening, but there is a lack of clarity. Can the Minister clarify this, and does she see the need for a national body that will help reassure tenants, rather than simply being a dead quango?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I can only repeat what I have said: if tenants want this body, we will work with them and do our best to make it happen. I do not think that anyone is dilly-dallying, but it is very important that the tenant voice be made clear in how this is set up, what it will do and how it will move forward. I am very pleased to work on that and to do what I can to move it forward, as I know my fellow Ministers in the department will be. It is particularly important now, given the massive investment the Government are bringing forward in social housing. The Secretary of State has already said that she wants 60% of the housing from that £39 billion to be social housing. We need to move this forward as quickly as possible, so I will do everything I can to move that on.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Carlile was kind enough to mention that I was a member of the Select Committee that looked into the whole matter of the Holocaust memorial, and security in particular. As the Minister will recall, the Select Committee said:

“We recommend that the Secretary of State gives serious consideration”


to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—or something similar—and the promoter, that is the Secretary of State, agreed. Furthermore, and I would very much like the Minister’s reply to this point when he comes to make his final speech, we followed that part in our report by narrating three important recommendations that the promoter accepted. Are these recommendations still accepted?

Going back to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, we understood that the decision is to be taken under delegation—not by the Secretary of State himself but by a Minister. The recommendations were what the Minister was to do should the planning application come back for decision.

These are important recommendations, because they require a good deal of consultation with people who really know what they are talking about, including the National Protective Security Authority, the Metropolitan Police, the Community Security Trust and others. The next recommendation says:

“The Promoter will make available to MPs and to members of the House of Lords the Promoter’s representations to the Secretary of State”,


and deposit them in the Library of both Houses. Of course, the recommendations fall far short of what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, recommends, but it is very important that the Minister assures us that those recommendations, which the Secretary of State accepted before us in our inquiry, are still to be respected. I hope that he will do so.

I come back to the Buxton memorial. Of course, it was moved; it used to be in Trafalgar Square, I think. The noble Lord, Lord Reid, is perfectly right that it was moved and taken into the gardens. Under the plan before us, the Buxton memorial is to remain where it was placed. It is not to be moved, but its appearance would be greatly affected, because it would be very close to all the uprights that mark the entrance to the underground memorial. The whole appearance of the Buxton memorial will be completely framed by this new development. It is not a question of moving it; it is concealing it. That is a very important point when we consider the importance of that memorial and what is has to tell us about slavery.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want very briefly to take on a couple of inferences in what was said by the noble Lords, Lord Evans and Lord Harper. The sentiment was that we must show courage and face down terrorist supporters. Some of us have been arguing that for some time and, to be honest, there has been an almighty silence from many people in Parliament. I just did not like the inference that, somehow, the movers of this amendment were cowering when, in fact, they are the very people who have argued in many instances for fighting back against the antisemitism that has been on our streets. That was my first point.

I also thought that the suggestion that we in Parliament are so brave and can protect the learning centre next door in the park was slightly ill judged, given that Parliament seems increasingly like Fort Knox. We are, in fact, not in a situation where we are all wandering around freely and bravely, yet we are suggesting that we open up the park to the public for a learning centre and that they can just wander in, whereas we need armed guards, big barriers everywhere and so on. It is an unfair and ludicrous comparison.

There will be, and there should be, a memorial in the gardens—everybody agrees with that. It will be a hugely important symbol. The idea that anyone who does not want the learning centre to be there therefore does not want a learning centre misses all of the hours and hours of debates in which we explained where we did want a learning centre—a fitting learning centre—to be. To be honest, the plan for an underground learning centre is rather insulting, in my opinion. We should recognise that the people putting forward this amendment are doing so in good faith, not because they are frightened of terrorist supporters but because they are being sensible about the real consequences of what we are deciding here today.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not doubt that those people are acting in good faith; they just happen to be wrong. I can give noble Lords an assurance that my noble friend will not go home to a divorce tonight if this amendment is not agreed. I respect that he has been a Minister in more senior positions than I can ever aspire to.

Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2025 Lords Chamber

My heart would like to support the fatal Motion and, had it been more prompt, there would have been strong reasons and precedent from 2000 to do so, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, but I am conscious of the conventions of the House and, importantly and practically, that elections must be called tomorrow. It is too late to cancel them now, not just for the parties to get their candidates in place but for the officials who need to book the village halls and staff the count. So I will support the regret Motion, but my biggest regret is that it was, for the most part, my Conservative councillor colleagues who turned into the biggest losers, by conniving with Labour on their own destruction while allowing the Labour Party to pick and choose the elections it does not want to fight.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the spirit of all three of these Motions and I especially commend the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Pinnock, for making their Motions fatal. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, reassure us and tell us, in effect, not to worry our pretty little heads and to stop panicking—he did not use that language, I am. It was then interesting that there was quite a lot of laughter on the Benches opposite; there is this sense of, “What is all the fuss about?” I suggest that this is not a game and it really matters for voters. There is a lot at stake here, not least the reputation of the democratic process.

For the last week or so, Government Ministers have talked about a fictional drama as though it is factual evidence, concluding that a Netflix series should inform policy on countering the radicalisation of young boys, so maybe the Government will accept my factual, if anecdotal, evidence of how the cancellation of council elections is fuelling the radicalising of young people to become cynical about democracy. I was recently giving a talk to a student group about the importance of democratic engagement to a free society, and I was taken aback by just how cynical they were. The majority said, “Democracy is a sham”—that was the popular sentiment. I was even more surprised when their evidence centred on councils, not something that the young generally chat about. One of them summed it up when he said, “They cancelled the Romanian presidential elections and banned the popular candidate from standing. Now our Government have cancelled the council elections because they are scared that austerity Labour will get a drubbing”. Whether we like it or not—and I argued against that slightly conspiratorial tone, by the way—we can see why they might draw that conclusion.

Beyond those young cynics, there is a lot of anger about this issue. Five and a half million people feel that they have had their votes cancelled and they feel cheated. It is being discussed in workplaces, in the pub, on phone-ins and on social media. People will say things like, “There are challenger parties doing well in the polls. They don’t want to see how they get on”. There is a certain volatility around politics at the moment and people want to make their views heard. People are frustrated that, for example, just when voters are facing council tax rises and horrible cuts in local council services, they do not get a chance to comment locally. In rural areas, where those on family farms are so worried about recent policies, so worried that their livelihoods are going to be destroyed, they do not get a chance to vote. We have been told that these are being postponed for only a year, but a lot can happen in a year: in less than a year, some devastating policies have been brought in by the Government that people might have a view on. That will be true as well, so I would rather that people were given a vote, even if then they had to have the election again, than just be told, “Don’t you worry, you’ll get a vote eventually”.

Local issues matter to people. If noble Lords were listening this morning to the discussions on the media about rats as large as cats and the bin strike in Birmingham, they will have heard people passionately talking about what is happening in their local area. We have to understand that people want their voices and their views to count, and many feel robbed by this decision. They do not want to be fobbed off by technical excuses about the importance of devolution and somebody at the top making a decision that will give them more democracy at some time. They are basically being told that voters’ access to the ballot box should be trumped by a policy reorganisation. Also, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, suggests, it seems to make a mockery of the notion that these devolution changes will bring more accountability.

The lack of consultation mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Byford, is especially egregious. Although I have a lot to say on devolution, on these devolutionary forms and their shortcomings, now is not the time and I will not say it now, but I think it would be wrong for the Government not to at least note that people feel that this is a contemptuous disregard for voters’ aspirations to exert their rightful right to vote for or vote out politicians as they choose, as they expected to. They are disappointed and many people are actually looking at parliamentary TV, for once, to see which way we go today. Who would have thought that that would happen? But there you go.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire who is not participating in this process. I speak in support of the regret Motion tabled by my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook. As chairman of the Local Government Association, I campaigned vigorously for greater devolution, and I am still very supportive of devolution. I also led a unitary council for 10 years and can testify to the benefits of unitary councils. However, if we are genuinely to have devolution and well-run services, it needs to be locally led, with real powers and local accountability. We cannot treat local government as little more than a delivery arm of central government, tied up in regulation, with budget controls and with central targets and funding pots.

When this country saw the biggest improvement in health, education, social support, infrastructure and so forth, it was all locally led. If you go back to the turn of the 20th century, local government was truly empowered, delivering education, health, social care, social support, infrastructure and even gas and water supplies. It was genuinely financially independent of central government. Over the last century, central government has steadily eroded the role of local government, placed more controls and reduced its financial freedoms while increasing burdens on local councils.

I am a believer that form should follow function. We should see real devolution which would enable genuine financial independence from central government, with a much greater role in economic development, community health, education and skills for getting people back to work; this would enable every area to flourish with real levelling up. This is what the Government should have started with, because locally we could have then answered the question of what would be appropriate structures to deliver this. It would also significantly reduce local argument as the prize and objective would have been clear to all.

Instead, we have top-down reorganisation. The Government have been clear that they intend to use their large majority in the other place to force through unitarisation and have mayors across the country. There is a clear message that funding will be tight, so councils will have to make significant savings, which the Government expect to be delivered by unitarisation. It is understandable that, in these circumstances, many councils have concluded that it is better to participate in order to have some control over their destiny and potentially some meagre rewards, rather than be done to by government diktat.

So I have sympathy with those councils that, due to the need to meet a government-imposed timetable, asked for a delay in their elections. But it did not need to be this way. The Government could and should have worked with local government. They should have brought forward real proposals for real devolution with a clear timetable that respected the democratic process. They should have brought forward proposals to address some of the biggest issues in local government, such as social care and SEND. They should have looked at how, by addressing the perverse incentives, the blockages in the system and creating genuine local place-based working, these could have been addressed.

You cannot look at local government reorganisation without looking at, for instance, the healthcare system and how that works. But, no, this Government are favouring imposition over co-operation, avoiding the difficult decisions and not delivering real devolution. That is why I will be supporting by noble friend Lady Scott’s Motion to Regret.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, what special maiden speeches we have heard today—I welcome them all. I make special mention of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Sealand, which is up the road from Buckley, so we are almost neighbours.

Some of my Academy of Ideas colleagues are organising a summer school in July entitled, “Upheaval: Why Politics Needs a New Language”, so I have been thinking a lot about disputes over meanings of words. In this House of late, we have had tortuous debates about the meaning of everything including extremism, hate speech and terrorism. God knows what far right means these days, and some cannot even define what a woman is.

One word that is increasingly becoming unmoored from its meaning is “Holocaust”. The Holocaust is now used as a free-floating catch-all to describe every violent geopolitical event or even general human evil. But my plea is that words matter. Very much in the theme of the spot-on speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, we must insist that the “Holocaust” word refers to a particular unique event in history. The Nazi death camps were not generic; they were part of what camp survivor Elie Wiesel explains:

“The Holocaust was conceived to annihilate the last Jew on the planet”.


Despite this, even Auschwitz—a death camp designed for the genocide of the Jews—has been turned into an all-purpose symbol of human cruelty. UNESCO describes the world heritage site as a universal

“symbol of humanity’s cruelty to its fellow human beings in the 20th century”.

In this way, the Holocaust is being ripped out of its historical context.

Meanwhile, celebrity social justice activist Naomi Klein said the quiet bit out loud in an essay in the Guardian last year. She wrote that we are entering a new intellectual era, one in which people are openly asking if the Holocaust should

“be seen exclusively as a Jewish catastrophe, or something more universal”.

Klein goes on to argue that perhaps the Holocaust was not

“a unique rupture in European history”

but rather

“a homecoming of earlier colonial genocides”.

This anti-western decolonising lexicon should be a red flag. Remember, in the decolonisation narrative, Israel has been identified as the epitome of the colonial settler state and Jews branded as the embodiment of white supremacy who deserve our ire and Hamas’s actions.

Klein also notes that increasingly, people are demanding greater recognition for other groups targeted for extermination by the Nazis, as though this was in any way on a par with the targeting of the whole Jewish race for extermination.

Beyond the Guardian’s comment pages, it seems that, because we live in an era which treats victimhood as a virtue and confers moral authority on it, a queue of identity groups is laying some claim to the Holocaust experience. There even seems to be resentment in that, when Jewish voices demand that we recognise that it was they who were central to the Holocaust, it is treated as though they have been driven by narcissism.

Gradually, this has expanded into demands that any reference to the Holocaust must also mention victims of other international atrocities, whether it is Rwanda, colonial era massacres or, inevitably, contemporary events in the Middle East. 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 is “morally unacceptable” that Gaza is not considered a genocide alongside the Holocaust.

The problem is that wrenching the Holocaust from its historically specific context, in which all are victims, relativises 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-Semitic barbarism, and to even remember at all that the Jews were the targets. The consequences of this trend, what Brendan O’Neill’s new book, After the Pogrom, calls the “dejudification of the Holocaust”, were more than evident on Holocaust Memorial Day this year. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, reminded us that a whole swathe of commentators and politicians forgot even to mention the Jews, listing almost everyone else who was killed, apart from the victims: the Jews.

I am not suggesting such errors of omission are conscious acts of erasure. It somehow feels even more chilling that they are more likely examples of unconscious bias and careless forgetting. The problem with relativising the specific Holocaust is that it makes a mockery of “lest we forget”—and we can expect a lot more forgetting if we are not careful.

In my mind, the consequences of this dejudification of the Holocaust is that increasing numbers, especially of young people, do not even recognise when the iconography and language of historic Nazi period 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 foodstuffs as they wrench them off supermarket shelves, or their demands to blacklist and censor entire countries’ academics, artists, scientists and sportspeople. When, looking at scenes of blood-like red paint daubed on shop fronts, I mention that it echoes 1930s Germany, they look at me blankly.

I rather nervously disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—I know that is nerve-wracking—about his Elon Musk arm gesture point. Whole swathes of young activists I know have been queuing up to denounce that as a Nazi salute, seeing far-right fascists around every corner. But when the same people see starving, emaciated Jewish hostages paraded, jeered at and humiliated by Jihadi baying mobs, or when they see political activists standing outside UK synagogues screaming “baby killers” at Jews—and those activists are my tribe—suddenly, they get a blind spot and they cannot see any Nazi salutes, symbolism or anything. They do not recognise the dejudification trends of the Holocaust past and their re-emergence today, and that is worrying.

So, how do we counter this fake news of a Jew-light Holocaust? We all reach for more education, but it bodes badly for the educational boasts that the new Holocaust memorial museum next door to Parliament is going to solve it all when, shamefully, our very own Parliament banned a Holocaust memorial exhibition from Westminster Hall because it was too political. I am not Jewish, and it is exactly more politics—political solidarity—that I think we need. It is why I was so pleased that grass-roots campaigners Our Fight UK took the Auschwitz Album, Yad Vashem’s street exhibition, to Parliament Square the weekend before Holocaust Memorial Day. Young people like Miles explained that their aim was to urgently

“inform the public what a”

real

“genocide looks like”,

and centre that on the murder of 6 million Jews.

Our urgent educational and political task must include exposing the rise of the newly powerful forces which are acting to exterminate the Jews now—“Never again” is now. Yes, I mean Hamas, Iran and the Houthis, but closer to home there are the radical Islamists and their numerous apologists, who, if we are honest, are influential in many political, cultural and media institutions. Too many of us look the other way, bite our lips, and will not name and shame. It is about time we spoke up, loudly.

Religious Hate Crime

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

Yes.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, can the Minister reassure us that concern about religious hate should not lead to backdoor blasphemy laws or assaults on free speech and legitimate criticism, or even ridicule, of religion? Does the Minister agree that, three years to the day after the brutal murder of Sir David Amess by an Islamist fanatic, it is not helpful when some conflate concerns about Islamism with religious hatred of Muslims? That stirs up tensions too.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, as I said before, a new definition must be given careful consideration so that it considers multiple perspectives and the potential implications for different communities. We are actively considering our approach to Islamophobia, and that includes a definition. I pay tribute to the work of Sir David Amess. Religious hatred should not be allowed to cause violence or damage, and the Government will work to eradicate all forms of it. On the point raised by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, I will speak to my colleagues in the Department for Education to get more clarification.

Recent Home Office statistics show that 71% of hate crimes were Islamophobic or anti-Semitic: 38% of them constituted Islamophobia, while 33% were anti-Semitism. We will look at tackling all religious hatred, and we have to make sure we work on our manifesto to improve monitoring and, I hope, help to alleviate this scourge on our society.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, no one doubts the good intentions of a desire to memorialise and pass on more learning about the Holocaust to new generations. However, I have a lot of sympathy with the concerns articulated so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and her numerous supporters here today. I worry that the project is likely to be counterproductive and divisive, as the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, has just explained.

Of course we can all support learning, but just repeating the word “learning” does not guarantee learning. Education depends on the content of what is being taught. If this learning centre relativises the Holocaust, you can count me out. But it is difficult to have a serious discussion when we do not know what it is that we are going to be learning. We can all agree on the importance, especially now, of putting the fight against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial at the heart of our democracy, but to see this as a geographical question rather than a moral one—to think that by placing the learning centre and memorial literally next door to Parliament will solve a problem—seems superficial to say the least, and lacks imagination.

I want us to use our imagination to consider what is being envisaged and to ask whether it matches up. As a visitor arriving at this new learning centre, you might assume that it must be at least as impressive as the superb Holocaust collections at the Imperial War Museum, already praised here today. Surely this new venture will or should be a world-class facility, including perhaps a comprehensive new museum to help people understand Jewish culture and history, with a detailed historic account of the changing forms that Jew-hatred has taken—or maybe not, because then we read those dread words, “high-tech immersive experience”. Those words should send a chill down all our spines. This is little more than a grandiose visitor centre, with limited intellectual depth. How do I know that? Because each visit is expected to last only 45 minutes. What an insult. This is a TikTok version of the Holocaust learning experience.

We then emerge from this underground, fully digital exhibit and face the magnificent site of the non-digital Palace of Westminster. I suppose this is where I worry about the motivations around the location. I worry that we are using the Parliamentary Estate as a prop for a narrative; the creation of an optical link between British democracy and “never again”. I find it somewhat unsettling that we would force visitors’ gaze away from the victims of Nazi extermination and shift it to our own Parliament, as though it was a bulwark against anti-Semitism and genocide. This, uncomfortably, is close to self-congratulatory in tone.

I am usually the kind of person who warns about the fashionable war on the past, with, for example, the decolonisation movement insisting on an entirely negative account of British history and accomplishments. However, the antidote to that trend is not to construct a simplistically positive rendition of history. If this project wants the public to gaze up at the Palace and celebrate the British Parliament as a saviour of the Jews in the Second World War, I find that problematic. I am sure that we do not want to be accused of spreading historic misinformation by forgetting to mention the many obstacles that Parliament put in the way of Jews fleeing fascist Germany, or the well-documented virulent and widespread anti-Semitism in the most senior ranks of the Civil Service at the time, and so on and so forth.

Let us imagine today visitors emerging from the learning centre and looking up from Victoria Tower Gardens to Parliament. What would they see, if we were being honest? This week, they would see a betrayal—British politicians attempting to disarm the Jewish nation after it suffered the worst act of anti-Semitic barbarism since the Holocaust. Turn the gaze the other way: I worry that politicians will look out to Victoria Park Gardens at this new memorial and conclude, complacently, “We built that. It proves that we’re fighting anti-Semitism and, what’s more, we’re now stamping down on far-right bigotry”. So dazzled by its own creation, Parliament will turn a blind eye to the tens of thousands of progressives carrying placards featuring swastikas defiling symbols of Israel, or turn a deaf ear to the ugly pro-Jihadist, anti-Semitic chants in the Westminster vicinity. There is a lot more to fighting anti-Semitism than props. Finding a fitting memorial and a proper way of teaching and learning is not contained within this proposal.