Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I have been living at Tufton Court since 1982; it is just around the corner from this park. I was not intending to speak to this amendment until I got rather provoked by a number of my noble friends.

My noble friend Lord Finkelstein said, “If it doesn’t go here, where else does it go?” I think my noble friend Lord Sterling has answered that point. There is a very satisfactory Holocaust memorial at the Imperial War Museum, which is not a place where nobody ever goes. It is a place where lots of people go, and it is very regularly visited. Could there be a better location for it than that?

My noble friend Lord Pickles said that this is going to improve the park. It is one of the smallest parks in London. I do not claim to go to it very often, but it is a very, very small park and, with all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, I am not sure it has been much improved by the Parliament Education Centre, which is a disgracefully low-budget architectural piece of building. I am very glad that it is going to be rebuilt —perhaps it will be rebuilt better than it is now—but it occupies quite a lot of this very small park, and the idea that we should shove yet another building into the park seems unbelievable. I cannot quite understand where we are going on this.

I do not understand why the Government have volunteered taxpayers’ money, when there is so little of it, to finance this. The Jewish community in Britain has an awful lot of money. It has a lot of education charities that would contribute towards this. I do not understand why they should not pay for their own memorial. Unlike my noble friend, I have plenty of Jewish blood, and I am a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this is not a memorial for the Jewish community—

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

The noble Lord was not here at the start of the debate.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

I was under the impression that you could speak even though you were not.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

No.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

Well, perhaps somebody else might like to make the point that it is not a memorial for the Jewish community.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

No. Thank you.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

It is a memorial for everybody.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I take that point, but the driving forces behind putting up this memorial are the Jewish people in this country. They are people who have property everywhere. I do not see why they should not fund it. I just do not understand why the British taxpayer should be asked to pay for this when there is quite clearly a tremendous shortage of taxpayers’ money to go around. The whole thing is very strapped. I would have thought that this could be financed by individuals, Jewish charities and so forth that would be happy to contribute to it. I am just amazed.

I do not pretend that I go into this park on a regular basis, but I do occasionally go into it. It is very small, and it will be made even smaller if this memorial is put into it. There will be no room for anybody to do anything in it at all. London is not blessed with a number of parks anyway, and the particular park that we are talking about is one of the smallest there is in London. It is not like Hyde Park, where you could tuck this away in a corner; this is going to be completely dominant in a very small park, and it will reduce the amenities available for local people who live in Westminster.