Holocaust Memorial Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Lord Robathan

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend 100% about preserving the truth, but I do not think the truth is necessarily preserved by this particular proposed learning centre. We need something a lot better, frankly. It was said in 2015, as I understand it, that the Imperial War Museum wanted the learning centre there. I went round the galleries of the Imperial War Museum on the Holocaust—I think they are permanent—and they too are very impressive. We can enhance them. I am not a planner, but I would not object to that. The Imperial War Museum has space and can enhance the view and have an impressive learning centre. We need an impressive learning centre for this appalling crime against humanity—and, to back up what the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, I am afraid that this proposal is not for an impressive centre.

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment is specifically about the underground nature of this project. I have three brief questions which I would like to put to the Minister in the hope that he can answer them when he addresses the House. The first relates to what my noble friend Lord Pickles said—notwithstanding the passion with which spoke this evening and the dedication, which I am sure we all admire, he has shown to this project for many years. He told us about other memorials that are either wholly or partially subterranean, but no one has explained, no one has given a positive reason, why it is a good idea to put a memorial underground. If we are proud to erect this memorial, to invest money in it and to care about it, why would we hide it away underground instead of putting it somewhere where it can be properly admired and seen?

When I say “it”, I have to divide that into two parts, because on the one hand we have a learning centre and on the other hand we have a memorial. I am sure that most people who are paying attention to this debate today do not know what we are talking about. They think we are debating whether there should be a memorial or not. We are not. We are debating whether there should be a learning centre or not. No one is against a memorial. So my first question is: what is good about putting a learning centre underground rather than overground, which would be so much easier and more accessible for children, old people and others?

Having looked at the plans for this project, my second question is: where do people go briefly to pay their respects to those who died in the Holocaust? We are told that people coming to visit this memorial will come by bus, go through security and then go underground. That is a large project. It would be a big undertaking for anyone who was visiting London and wanted to pay their respects to the whole issue of the Holocaust. Where would you go to lay flowers? Where would you go to take a picture to send to your family back home to say, “I’ve been to the Holocaust Memorial”?

When I first knew about this project, what I imagined was a beautiful statue—a statue between the Burghers of Calais and the Buxton Memorial, which would provide, as my noble friend Lord Finkelstein movingly said in one of the sessions of the Committee on this Bill, a place to celebrate many occasions in world history when good has overcome evil. So why not have a beautiful memorial of that kind, which can be easily visited, seen and admired, and that will not cause any problems, and put the learning centre somewhere else? No one has explained why that cannot be done.