Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for their impressive speeches. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, that we must do more than light candles. I too look forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry.

I want to talk about the need, based on the experience of the Holocaust, for not only constant vigilance against antisemitism but the perception and courage to swim against a tide and stand up to the mob. That vigilance and resolve must, of course, extend to all prejudice and hate based on race, religion, ethnicity or any other characteristic. But there is something unique and specific about the 2,000-year history of demonisation of Jews and the depths of antisemitism which led to the Shoah, which must not be overlooked or forgotten.

How can we forget, in fact, when we are holding this debate not only two and a half years after the massacres of 7 October 2023 but shortly after the terrorist atrocities at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester and in Sydney, the dishonourable conduct of West Midlands Police towards Israeli football fans, and numerous antisemitic incidents?

I attended the event this morning to mark this year’s International Holocaust Memorial Day, hosted by the FCDO and the embassy of Israel, and I will come back to some of the words spoken at that event. I fell to wondering how many of those attending marches and demos supposedly in favour of Palestinians in Gaza and who chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free”, which implies the destruction of the State of Israel, and “Globalise the intifada”, which implies worldwide violence against Jews, actually felt uneasy about one or both of those chants but suppressed their doubts to be in the in-crowd.

I have watched three films about the Holocaust within the last 10 days. I belatedly caught “Nuremberg” at the cinema; “Schindler’s List” and “The Zone of Interest” have both been on the television, and I watched them again. In my speech on this day two years ago, I quoted Dov Forman, great-grandson of the late, great Holocaust survivor, Lily Ebert, and I do so again. He said that

“this dark chapter in history wasn’t only about mass murder. It was the destruction of a rich Jewish culture and civilisation that had thrived for thousands of years. To remember the Holocaust is to acknowledge both the Jewish lives and the Jewish life that was lost”.

I noticed to my surprise that “Schindler’s List” was not only broadcast pretty late, finishing at nearly 2 am as it had to wait for the live snooker to finish, but classified 15, along with “Nuremberg”, by the British Board of Film Classification. The justification for a minimum age of 15 for “Nuremberg” included that it contained

“images of real dead bodies”,

while for “Schindler’s List” it was that

“based on a true story, younger viewers may find the film’s depictions of persecution and the Holocaust emotionally upsetting”.

Well, yes, that is the point of Holocaust education: to teach people what happened in terms of dead bodies and physical and emotional horror. If they are not, in consequence, upset, distressed, outraged, and despairing at what inhuman persecution, murder and destruction people are capable of perpetrating against their fellow human beings, the basis for action to stop indifference is not laid. I think at least all secondary school-age children should watch these films at school, as well as at home, as the basis for a discussion about the horror of the Holocaust and other genocides.

I was six years old when I watched a serial on the TV called “The Silver Sword” from 1958 about child refugees from the Nazis. This is the synopsis I found online:

“On a cold, dark night in Warsaw in 1942, the Balicki children watch in horror as Nazi stormtroopers arrest their mother. Now they are alone. With the war raging around them, food and shelter are hard to come by. They live in constant fear. Finally, they get word that their father is alive. He has made it to Switzerland. Edek and Ruth are determined to find him, though they know how dangerous the long trip from Warsaw will be. But they also know that if they don’t make it, they may never see their parents again”.


I do not remember much of the plot, with only snatches remaining imprinted on my memory; and, unlike so many histories of the period, this fictional story had a happy ending. Notwithstanding that, what has persisted with me is the sense of fear and desperation, or, in the words of one online comment:

“Just an image—an image of devastation and loss—and a knowledge that this was something powerful and important”.


This is, of course, nothing compared to the ghastly memories of those who endured the Holocaust or the real and terrible losses of those whose families perished in it, but it is important that those deep feelings of fear, devastation and desperation continue to strike a chord with people of all kinds, both within and beyond the Jewish community, if the pledge of “never again” is to have any meaning. Hence the essential need for Holocaust education. I am grieved and disappointed to hear that fewer schools are delivering that.

I have always believed that Nazism, fascism and their like, with the combination of obedience to authoritarian rule and callousness towards human suffering, are viruses that can be caught anywhere, in any country. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney last week quoted in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos from Václav Havel’s 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless, which was about how the communist system sustained itself. He said:

“And his answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists. Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false. Havel called this ‘living within a lie’. The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true”.


Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, apparently saw himself as

“a cog in the wheel of the great extermination machine created by the Third Reich”.

American military psychologist Gustave Gilbert wrote of his discussions with Hoess during the Nuremberg trials, at which Hoess testified, that:

“In all of the discussions, Höss is quite matter-of-fact and apathetic, shows some belated interest in the enormity of his crime, but gives the impression that it never would have occurred to him if somebody hadn’t asked him”.


In a remark this morning at the Holocaust Memorial Day event at the Foreign Office, Meg Davis, a Holocaust Educational Trust young ambassador, struck a similar note, when she talked of how “compliance is the enabler”.

To my mind, Holocaust education needs to encompass not only the terrible history of antisemitism and where it led but the importance of an instinct and resolve against compliance and conformity. People who refuse to go with the flow, who have the guts to say, “This is not right”, and who are difficult and even objectionable to some minds are essential grit in our pledge of “never again”.

The warning signs tend to come long before the atrocities. The grandfather of the present noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, was the second Lord Russell of Liverpool. He was a deputy Judge Advocate-General to the British Army of the Rhine and one of the chief legal advisers during the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, and he wrote a book, The Scourge of the Swastika, on his experiences.

With the kind agreement of the current noble Lord, I would like to quote some passages from that book. First, the author noted that, a few months before the outbreak of war, a

“menacing German Foreign Office circular must have clearly pointed out the course of future events to all but those who did not wish to see it”.

That circular read:

“‘It is certainly no coincidence that the fateful year of 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the Jewish question simultaneously with the realization of the idea of Greater Germany … The advance made by Jewish influence and the destructive Jewish spirit in politics, economy and culture; paralysed the power and the will of the German people to rise again. The healing of this sickness among the people was therefore certainly one of the most important requirements for exerting the force which, in the year 1938, resulted in the joining together of Greater Germany in defiance of the world’”.


We were warned. The second Lord Russell of Liverpool thus observed quite rightly that:

“Persecution of the Jews in the countries which the Nazis invaded and occupied”


between 1939 and 1945

“was indeed on a stupendous scale, but it cannot have taken by surprise anyone who had followed the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933 or their Party program. Point Four of that programne declared: ‘Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race’”.

That was six years before the outbreak of the war.

These reflections strike a deep chord in me after the period since 7 October intensified the fears about how an attitude explained as anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel—the blood libel of our times—transforms so easily into raw antisemitism and the dehumanisation of Jews. An interview in today’s Telegraph with Professor Sir Simon Schama notes that his TV programme about the Holocaust, “The Road to Auschwitz”, was rigorous in its examination of how the Nazis found willing accomplices in mass murder while others looked away. The journalist notes how Marian Turski, one of the last survivors of Auschwitz, said:

“Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. Evil comes step by step”.


Professor Sir Simon Schama says:

“There has been a qualitative shift towards the sense that the Jews are kind of enemies among us. I think there’s been a shift from the fury about what Israel’s said to have done in Gaza, to essentially dehumanising Jews generally”.


Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich told us this morning of her experience at Ravensbrück:

“We were stripped of our identifiers and totally dehumanised”.


Let us react this time before we know precisely how bad it can get.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate initiated by the Government during their presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and I congratulate the Minister on his speech. It is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, as it always is to work with him. We are blessed today by three maiden speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Evans of Sealand and Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who are all on the Bench opposite.

Only the noble Lord, Lord Katz, has spoken before me; 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 found an interview he did with Jewish News in which we explained how his family originated in Białystok—then in Russia, now Poland. 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 ennobled?’ I thought to myself that in the past some of my family may well have been on the run from Russian nobility!”


I thought that that encapsulated a bit of his history.

This year, we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, in January 1945. I was grateful to be invited to the ceremony led by the Foreign Secretary David Lammy at the FCDO, where we heard both from a Holocaust survivor and from a young woman, among many others. She, like myself, is not Jewish, but she spends a lot of her spare time on Holocaust education because she can see how vital it is to all of us.

I recognise the special pain for the Jewish community, but as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said:

“The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation … prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all. Holocaust Memorial Day is for everyone”.


The Holocaust Educational Trust, another trust that does such great work, noted:

“As the Holocaust moves from living memory to history, this Holocaust Memorial Day presented a key opportunity to bring the Holocaust to the fore of our national consciousness”.


This was a seam emphasised by His Majesty the King, who said:

“As the number of Holocaust survivors regrettably diminishes with the passage of time, the responsibility of remembrance rests far heavier on our shoulders, and on those of generations yet unborn. 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, Vikki Slade MP, made a similar point in the debate two 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 acts of remembrance and in calling out antisemitism and all acts of discrimination and hate against groups because of their faith, nationality or identity”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/1/25; col. 1163.]

Last October, we sadly lost 100 year-old Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert, to whom the Minister referred. She did so much work to ensure that the Holocaust would not be forgotten. I am delighted that her mantle has been taken up by her impressive great-grandson, Dov Forman.

I was struck by a comment by the Prime Minister about how in Auschwitz he saw,

“photographs of Nazi 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 hatred of difference”.


The Holocaust was not only a crime wider than the SS; it also did not come out of nowhere. Preceding it there were years, centuries and millennia of discrimination and persecution of Jews, both as groups and as individuals. As my colleague, Vikki Slade, said, before the Holocaust there was,

“a decade of dehumanising a whole community”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/1/25; col. 1163.]

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 bleakness and horrors of Auschwitz, I found the arch over the entrance gate emblazoned with, “Arbeit Macht Frei”, — “work makes you free”—the most chilling in its utter cynicism.

When I go to Jewish and Holocaust museums, or indeed to Yad Vashem, which I have visited twice, I not only find the photographs of persecuted Jews subjected to pogroms, and other victims of the Nazis, hugely emotional; I also find desperately poignant the photos of hard-working, bourgeois and successful Jewish families in German and other towns and cities who strove to fit in, to do everything to become respectable citizens of their home country. They sought to belong, and they were still destroyed.

On my bookshelf at home, I have a book that I have had for about 20 years—I think I bought it in New York. It is by Vienna-born Amos Elon and called The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch. It describes how, in the two centuries from the entry of penniless 14 year-old Moses Mendelssohn, later of course a famous philosopher, into Berlin in 1743—entering through the Rosenthaler Tor, the only gate permitted to Jews, and cattle—until 1933, the German Jews increasingly and hugely contributed to Germany's intellectual, political and economic development. The Weimar Republic was the high point of the assimilation and integration of German Jews into German life. The writer notes:

“Alongside the Germany of anti-Semitism there was a Germany of enlightened liberalism, humane concern, civilised rule of law, good government, social security, and thriving social democracy”.


But none of that saved Germany’s or Europe’s Jews, because the continuing discriminatory attitudes of their fellow citizens had never been removed and were there to be exploited.

I was sorry that London’s Jewish Museum closed in 2023. We do, though, have the impressive Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum and the Wiener Holocaust Library. We are privileged to have, as a Member of this House, the Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein—the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein—the grandson of German-Jewish scholar and anti-Nazi campaigner Alfred Wiener, who founded the Wiener library in 1933 in order to warn the world of the Nazi threat. I hope the noble Lord does not mind me referring to him and quoting him in his absence. Within weeks of the appalling attacks by Hamas on 7 October, graffiti was daubed on the Wiener Holocaust Library. The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein—still, like me, tweeting—understandably reacted, tweeting as @Dannythefink:

“I’m so upset by this graffiti attack on my grandfather’s library. Alfred Wiener had a PhD in Islamic studies and cared deeply about Arab people. To see his Holocaust archive vandalised in this way suggests an attack on Jews not a critique of Israel. It’s dismaying”.


I will finish, as I must, by saying that since 7 October we have seen a distressing rise in anti-Semitic speech and attacks, with hostility to the very existence of the State of Israel. When people chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, this is a call not for two states but for the destruction of Israel, based on not only anti-Zionism but anti-Semitism. We have pledged “Never again”, but political developments around the world, not least in Germany, are deeply troubling. Our vigilance must be constant, vocal and vigorous.

European Union

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I am glad that the Minister talked about our relationship with the European Union, which was the subject of the Question, not just with Europe vaguely. While the efforts by Ministers and the Prime Minister to improve the mood music by visiting national capitals is of course good background work, it is noteworthy that, after meeting the Prime Minister, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, in effect, “No cherry picking” —as she did to the previous Government. What is the Government’s strategy to improve our trade and our economy by cutting the Brexit red tape stifling our businesses?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

It is important to recognise that the mood music is hugely important and has been very much welcomed by the EU. The meeting that the Prime Minister held will be followed by further summits and meetings. As I am sure the noble Baroness understands, this is a precursor to making sure we get things moving.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Friday 2nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome today’s debate and thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for opening it. I am honoured to take part. I also applaud the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, whom I shall mention later.

The briefings from the Holocaust Education Trust and from an organisation which I admit is new to me, Protection Approaches, have been most valuable. The work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in organising the remembrance events on and around 27 January is also much appreciated, as is that of the Antisemitism Policy Trust—which ran a recent oral briefing that I was grateful to be able to participate in—of the Community Security Trust and of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

I want to start by commenting on the appalling and frightening treatment to which Conservative MP Mike Freer has been subjected, such that he intends to quit politics, remembering, of course, that two MPs have been murdered in the last few years. I send him my support and best wishes. Like me, he is not Jewish, but his support for Israel and the fact that he represents Finchley and Golders Green, with its substantial Jewish population, have led at least some of his attackers to assume that he is—and in one case to call him a “Jewish pig”. This is a clear example not only of where hatred of Israel and of Jews as a people morph into one but of the fact that we are all, truly, in this together.

Not for nothing is this year’s chosen, and inspired, theme of Holocaust remembrance the “Fragility of Freedom”. We can see it right there in the experience of Mike Freer and of others—I very much regret that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is getting abuse as well—and in the fact that the horrendous, brutal mass atrocities of 7 October perpetrated by Hamas largely on Jews, celebrated in some quarters as acts of “resistance”, have been followed by an explosion in incidents of anti-Semitism, as well as of Islamophobia, across the globe, including, sadly, in this country.

We think at this time of the 1,200 people murdered on 7 October and of the 136 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. As my colleague Alistair Carmichael MP told the other place,

“when I read stories about a restaurant opening in Jordan called ‘October 7’, frankly I despair. It is something that has to be called out and dealt with wherever it happens”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/1/24; col. 464.]

I am affected, I am ashamed, by such expressions of hatred, and I, like others. must stand up and be counted. As the poet John Donne wrote:

“No man is an island,

Entire of itself …

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee”.

In opening the Holocaust Memorial Day debate last week in the other place, Dame Margaret Hodge recalled how her grandfather came to England in March 1939, was classified originally as an “enemy alien” and was sent to Liverpool to live in unsanitary conditions, Jews housed with German Nazis. A few days after he arrived, Dame Margaret’s grandfather commented:

“Because of the lack of language skills very lonely, depressed, cannot memorise, miserable pronunciation. Living like a recluse”.


Even six months later, he said that those who stayed in Vienna

“may have saved themselves from all the horrors and all the difficulties of emigrating”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/1/24; col. 459.]

His freedom was indeed fragile, and those remarks cause us to reflect on our treatment of refugees today, our attitudes towards their undoubted courageous struggles and dehumanising language used against them.

The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, whose emotions today are so understandable, has done as much as anyone in this House, or indeed this Parliament, for the cause of refugees, especially child refugees, of which of course he was one. He was reported in the Guardian newspaper to have been very relieved at the demonstrations across Germany against the far-right AfD party, saying that

“it’s a good sign that people are demonstrating and saying this was not their sort of Germany”—

that was reflected in the remarks that he made earlier. I strongly support his suggestion of bringing the Berlin Bundestag exhibition to London, perhaps even to this House.

Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert has inspired much admiration over the years, and her great-grandson Dov Forman has picked up her mantle. As he tweeted recently,

“it has been alarming to see attempts to erase the specific Jewish identity of the Holocaust’s victims. The Holocaust wasn’t just a human tragedy; it was a targeted genocide of 6 million Jews. Families were obliterated solely for being Jewish … It’s crucial to remember the Holocaust for what it was: a systematic, state-sponsored pursuit to annihilate every Jewish man, woman, and child. This was the racist core of Nazi ideology, a belief in a racial struggle that justified the total destruction of the Jewish people. To honour the victims, we must speak the truth of their identity”.

As we recall and commemorate other Nazi victims such as Roma, gay men, disabled people and political opponents, and other genocides and horrors such as in Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and the Rohingya, we must not lose sight of the specific nature and intent of the Shoah.

This is not the time to enter into the controversy about the siting of the Holocaust national memorial and learning centre, but I very much welcome the prospect of such a memorial and centre, wherever located. It must provoke action, as well as reflection on the vow of “never again”.

Dov Forman also commented on how

“this dark chapter in history wasn’t only about mass murder. It was the destruction of a rich Jewish culture and civilisation that had thrived for thousands of years. To remember the Holocaust is to acknowledge both the Jewish lives and the Jewish life that was lost”.

When I visit Holocaust or Jewish museums, as recently I did in Prague, or when last year I revisited Yad Vashem, I linger over photos of people and families going about their business, living increasingly integrated lives in their European countries, as they were in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then I realise with a shock how fragile that apparent normality turned out to be, because of hatred of who Jews are, pure and simple.

Anti-Semitism in Europe has a very long history of routine ingrained intolerance, discrimination and second-class treatment, then growing into persecution, expulsion and pogroms. But the speed and ease of the rise of Adolf Hitler, his thugs and his twisted ideology of hate is of another dimension altogether, and what is deeply frightening and instructive is how all too much of society enabled it, or at least did not resist.

I spoke earlier of the NGO Protection Approaches, which makes a strong case for an atrocity prevention strategy to combine vigilance against incipient hatred with action to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity, and to end the impunity for it. It refers to the 2022 report from the International Development Select Committee entitled From Srebrenica to a Safer Tomorrow: Preventing Future Mass Atrocities Around the World, on how the UK can show global leadership in this regard. I do not know whether the Minister can say anything in her closing remarks about what our Government can and are doing on that score to prevent what I think she called “mass murder in plain sight”.

Finally, it is up to all of us to speak up, raise the alarm, hold perpetrators accountable and seek justice. The fragility of freedom means that it can slip away bit by bit, unless we are all eternally vigilant and resolute.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, who has spoken in almost every International Women’s Day debate in this House, this is the first time that I have done so, and I have been in the House for 25 years. I was pleased to agree with what she said, except perhaps about getting more Conservatives into Parliament. I also warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard, on her maiden speech.

I have never particularly campaigned on the rights of women. I spent my political life campaigning on rights pertaining to all types of characteristics other than sex, but at nearly 72 I find that things are either not improving or going backwards. I became an adult in the late 1960s and 1970s, when things seemed inexorably to be getting better for women almost universally, even in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran. Such illusions have been shattered, however, showing the fragility of women’s rights. Of course things have improved greatly in this country and the rest of the developed world, although patchily, but we should all feel a sense of shame to read in the Ipsos study that almost 40% of Generation Z are fearful of speaking up for women’s rights for fear of reprisals.

Given that our theme today is education, our first thought must be the girls and young women in Afghanistan and Iran, refused education or, in Iran, mysteriously poisoned at school. Although that is acutely discouraging, there are bright notes elsewhere, such as in Africa, where the African Girls Can Code Initiative builds digital skills. I very much agree with the call by the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for the Government to reconsider the cut to BBC Persian.

The first government international women and girls strategy is admirable but, as others have commented, the cuts to international aid bring into question the coherence of that strategy. In rights to sexual and reproductive health, including abortion, there was a huge step backwards in the United States last year as well as around the world. I imagine that US support for such rights through international aid are also at even greater risk now than they were when I was an MEP and the EU was taking up the slack to a considerable extent. Is the UK co-operating with partners, including Nordic countries and the EU, to fill the breach, whatever the US does? While those Nordic countries are top of the international gender quality rankings, the UK is only 33rd in the world in closing the gender gap in education and 44th for closing the gender gap in economic participation. These are sobering facts.

The Minister said that the Government want to support women into, or back into, the STEM workforce in particular. Generally, as we know, the Government lament the employment gap, but as others have said, the availability and affordability of childcare is crucial and we also know that many mothers are struggling. A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers said that women are being priced out of work and in inner London, where I live, a nursery place costs a mother 50% of her take-home pay. It is surely a no-brainer to try to solve that problem. There is also a particular gap between the end of maternity leave and the age of three, so the gender gap is actually widening in pay due to the financial penalty of motherhood. That is a disgrace.

Digital skills are key to employability and coping with modern life, including for older people and especially for women who have not acquired those skills in their lives. I was bereaved a few years ago but I was able to cope with the extraordinary amount of bureaucracy—the unnecessary burden of which is another story, one I mean to pursue with Ministers again—and with the online stuff. A lot of older widows, in particular, cannot because their husbands used to do all the bills and finances. I hope that the noble Baroness can tell us something about what the Government are doing to support digital skills for adults.

In fact, developments for girls and women at home are not so great overall. There seems to be a tsunami of misogyny, offline and online, which is partly what has prompted me to speak today. Some of that misogyny has been around for ever and is only now being uncovered, exposed to some extent and partially addressed, such as in the police. The comment from the former acting boss of the Metropolitan Police that many rape complaints stem from “regretful sex” is both astonishing and deeply depressing.

We need a cultural revolution in this country to change attitudes among men and boys, as well as among women and girls. You still find females being patronised and called stroppy, bossy or aggressive when males would be praised for their assertiveness, boldness and leadership skills. Many of us, however, have had huge and essential support from the men in our lives, as I did from my late father and my late husband. Confident men do not fear confident women.

I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, said on biology. I believe that we need a change in the law. I support the petition organised by the organisation Sex Matters, which has been signed by 100,000 people and will therefore be debated in the other place, calling for reform of the Equality Act so that the protected characteristic of sex is clarified as meaning biological sex. It can apparently be done via the Gender Recognition Act, and it is not transphobic or bigoted to call for this legal clarification. Gender and sex have become conflated in popular parlance, probably because we were a bit coy about the term “sex”. The Gender Recognition Act uses gender and legal sex in the same section, but legally this has become very problematic, especially following a Scottish legal judgment which said that legal sex and biological sex are the same. This needs sorting out, and I hope the Minister can assure us that the Government are attentive to this issue.

Mortgages: EWS1 Form

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we have been working very hard to ensure that there is clear guidance about when such a form is necessary. In certain instances, there is deemed to be sufficient life-safety risk that an EWS1 form is required. The issue at hand is to ensure that lenders take a proportionate approach, and that is best achieved through dialogue.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, this whole issue is an appalling scandal affecting several million innocent victims, for which developers, building owners and government are responsible, not them. More than 600,000 people in England are currently living in high-rise buildings with dangerous cladding, and there are more than 2 million mortgage prisoners, unable to move because of cladding issues. Why are the Government continuing to inflict massive distress and anxiety through the financially crippling costs of remediation works, which these leaseholders should not have to pay? Why are the Government refusing to offer up-front funding for those leaseholders, off-setting it by future recovery from those who are actually at fault?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I think we are straying a little away from the original Question, which was about external wall systems and the need for a certificate to ensure that lenders have the information they need to lend. As I said in answer to the previous question, for 50% of those who make mortgage applications, an EWS1 form is in place, and we continue to take a number of measures and steps to make the provision of an EWS1 form easier.

Anti-Semitic Attacks

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

I completely agree that we must stand in solidarity with British Jews. The events we saw in the past week were abhorrent and I am pleased the police acted swiftly to arrest four individuals for that offence of driving up and down Finchley Road. Equally, there was the violent attack on Rabbi Rafi Goodwin in Chigwell, and I am pleased to say that the latest news is that the police have arrested two individuals concerning that incident.

[Baroness Ludford (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is poignant that today’s exchange on anti-Semitism coincides with the important Jewish festival of Shavuot, which has kept some of our colleagues away from this debate. One of the examples that accompanies the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, is

“Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

Can the Minister tell the House what steps the Government are taking to ensure that all public and private bodies adopt not only the definition but also the examples? Can the Government stress at every opportunity that the supposedly pro-Palestinian demonstrations of recent days have actually been pro-Hamas, and not in support of the Palestinian people?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, this Government are very proud of the fact that they were the first adopters of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, and we are working very hard to ensure that that is fully embedded across our universities and local councils and, of course, every single Member of Parliament, bar one, has also signed up to that definition. It is important that we take that forward and we will continue to work very hard to ensure that we tackle anti-Semitism wherever we see it.