Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Bishop of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Southwark]

My Lords, like my right reverend friend the Bishop of St Albans, I speak personally in this debate. I have had the privilege of knowing a good number of Holocaust survivors, which has been life-changing and life-enriching for me. Future generations will be denied that privilege, which is why it is so important that we get this right.

I acknowledge the desire of His Majesty’s Government and so many of your Lordships to proceed with a matter that was, in many minds, settled back when the commission reported in 2015 and when the then Government came forward with proposals in 2016, as we have heard. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and the secretariat at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for its recent briefing note, which addresses, so helpfully, many of the objections to the current scheme.

My concerns are around fulfilling the commission’s original recommendations and the contemporary challenge of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, which are growing threats, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said. It has been clear from the outset that the winning design for the underground learning centre is smaller than that which was recommended. It will not be a centre for study, as was detailed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. We are told that this is obviated by digitalisation and the strictly optional nature of physical study and in-person meetings that current technology affords us. My own experience of such joys—alongside that of the continuing world of assembling together as people of faith, or, indeed, in your Lordships’ House—suggests to me that the learning centre will lose something vital in this regard by not having such space to study and to meet in person.

Such space is available in the now-vacant government and private sector buildings in Westminster, if it should be in Westminster; or adjacent to the site of the Imperial War Museum, which has been considered; or in one of the many remnants of Jewish heritage in the East End of London, where I served throughout the 1990s, which have not yet been considered. A suitable building may then have a striking image, sculpture or other artwork affixed; we have already heard about the great merit of such a sculpture in Victoria Tower Gardens. Such options might more readily deal with the traffic problems and related safety issues for coach-loads of children visiting Victoria Tower Gardens, if the current proposals succeed.

It is important that children—and not just children—should be exposed to the reality of the Holocaust, the reasons for it and the part Britain played at various times in receiving, as well as inhibiting, Jews leaving Germany for Britain and Mandatory Palestine. Indeed, whatever happens to this project, there is an urgent need to ring-fence and deploy funds in a vigorous online campaign against Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. Both are all too prevalent and are given the means to proliferate via social media—another growing threat—at the agency of very malign influences. There is a failure to match such foul endeavours on the scale that they now exist. Combating this requires greater resources than we currently deploy.

It would be my hope, then, that a striking and prominent Holocaust memorial and a properly funded and well-sited learning centre might be championed equally, thus provisioning a resource against misinformation. But I am yet to be persuaded that the proposals for Victoria Gardens, as opposed to elsewhere, best achieve that. Indeed, I am persuaded that the concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and others need to be heeded.