Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Goodman of Wycombe Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 4, as amended by Amendment 4A, is a limited but important amendment. It clarifies the purpose of the learning centre. At present the Bill says only that there should be

“a centre for learning relating to the memorial”.

The Explanatory Notes add:

“The Learning Centre’s exhibition will explore the part played by Britain’s Parliament and democratic institutions in response to the persecution of the Jewish people and other groups both at the time and subsequently. It will help people understand the way the lessons of the Holocaust apply more widely, including to other genocides”.


At Second Reading, the Minister said:

“The learning centre will also address subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur”.—[Official Report, 4/9/24; col. 1224.]


The website of the Holocaust memorial says that the learning centre is going to provide an honest reflection of Britain’s role surrounding the Holocaust as well as reflecting on subsequent genocides.

We had an interesting and useful briefing with Martin Winstone, the project historian for the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. I am grateful to him for his time and expertise, and I am grateful to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Khan, for organising that briefing and for his patient and dedicated engagement on the Bill. Martin Winstone reassured us that he and other historians involved in the project are very clear that the focus of the learning centre will be the Holocaust and, in particular, Britain’s role. I have no reason to doubt that commitment and, of course, their expertise.

I also appreciate that it is not the role of Parliament to curate the content of a learning centre or a museum, but it is the role of Parliament to tell those who will curate a learning centre created by Parliament what lessons Parliament thinks must be taught. This is particularly the case given that organisations change over time. The people who are in charge and sit on the various boards today will at some point be replaced. Organisational drift—that is, slow deviation from the organisation’s intended goals—will happen. It always does. At the moment, neither what I see in the Bill and the Explanatory Notes nor what I have heard and read from the historians reassures me that there is the clarity required to prevent this. I am particularly concerned that the various references to subsequent persecution and other genocides foretell that before too long, notwithstanding all the good intentions, this learning centre, unless firmly anchored by Parliament, will also drift.

I am not saying that Britain’s response to subsequent persecutions is not an important topic—it is—nor suggesting that it would not be important to educate people about other horrific atrocities. It would be. In fact, one of my concerns is that we should respect the historical complexity of other atrocities. My first job in academia, as a researcher at the Refugee Studies Programme in Oxford, involved interviewing Rwandans in east Africa in the aftermath of that genocide. Not only was that a harrowing experience but it was intellectually a humbling experience because after months of research on the Rwandan genocide and meeting many Rwandans, I still felt that I had barely begun to understand Rwandan society.

The point is that Rwanda, like Darfur or Cambodia, has a very complex history that would have to be told properly, not as an appendix to the Holocaust and not on the false premise that there are parallels between, say, the Weimar Republic and the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana. Yes, in a legal sense, crimes under international law were committed in all these situations, but the centre does not purport to be—nor, in my view, should it be—a learning centre about international criminal law. Our amendment would give a clear and well-defined purpose to the learning centre to educate people about the Holocaust and about antisemitism. The amendment responds to a basic pedagogic rationale for any learning enterprise: knowing in advance what lessons we are seeking to teach.

In that respect, I am grateful to the noble Lords who in Committee pointed out that the first formulation for this amendment was inadequate. We have reflected on those comments, particularly with the amendment to the amendment, and we now have, I think, the right language, which includes killings by collaborators of the Nazi regime as well as the genocidal persecution of other groups, such as the Roma.

There is a profound moral rationale behind this amendment. It would address the risk of the learning centre drifting into other messages, as I have said, and it is a risk that is neither theoretical nor abstract. We have already had instances of Holocaust commemorations forgetting about the Jews or of such events being used as platforms for other messages. With this amendment, Parliament would send a clear signal that whatever the disagreements about the memorial itself might be, there would have to be none of this nonsense in this learning centre willed by Parliament and right next to Parliament.

As Stephen Pollard, who wrote in support of our amendment in the Spectator today, said:

“This is not about some contest of suffering in which the Jews are declared the winner”.


The amendment is seeking precisely to pre-empt this kind of absurd contest. The risk of losing focus and drifting into other messages is particularly acute given that, at the international level, genocide is being invoked more frequently now than ever before. Before the International Court of Justice there are disputes under the genocide convention between Ukraine and Russia, South Africa and Israel, and Gambia and Myanmar. Also, Sudan recently submitted a dispute against the UAE under the genocide convention. Every international lawyer can explain that the reason for this proliferation of genocide in international litigation and politics is that the genocide convention is often the only legal route available for submitting a dispute to the International Court of Justice. It is certainly the one with the greatest political effect.

Our amendment contemplates a lesson beyond the Holocaust about which the learning centre should seek to educate visitors. It is the most obvious lesson that should accompany Holocaust education: educating about antisemitism. The rise of antisemitism is one of the great moral failures of our times. In our country 33% of religious hate crimes recorded in the year ending March 2024 targeted Jews, who make up barely 0.3% of the British population. According to the latest Global 100 survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, 46% of the world’s adult population—an estimated 2.2 billion people—harbour deeply entrenched antisemitic attitudes. This has more than doubled since the Anti-Defamation League’s first worldwide survey a decade ago, and is the highest level on record since the Anti-Defamation League started tracking these trends globally.

We all know that this memorial could become a focal point for protest and controversy. The least we can do as parliamentarians is to try to nip these controversies in the bud. To do so we need the moral clarity and the moral courage to say that this learning centre, if it is to happen at all, must be about the Holocaust and about antisemitism, and to put this in law.

The fact that both Holocaust denial and antisemitism are rising—especially among the young, as we have seen—shows that our education is failing. The only point of a new learning centre is if it is ready to confront that failure and tackle those two challenges head on. There are of course many other important lessons that we can teach but this should not be the place for them. With so many in our society who still have so much to learn about the Holocaust and antisemitism, it is surely not too much to ask that the learning centre devoted to the victims of the Holocaust should concentrate on these two educational missions and nothing else. I beg to move.

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 4 and 4A, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame.

This has been a passionate debate. It is possible to believe that in the course of time a memorial and a learning centre will be established in Victoria Tower Gardens, they will be a great success and we will all look back and wonder what the fuss was all about, but it is also possible to believe that that will not be the case. If passions continue to run high, I suspect they will be fuelled by a single word: genocide.

I will not repeat the arguments that I made at Second Reading about how the word “genocide” is now contested—a few moments ago the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, put the case more eloquently than I possibly could—but I will leave a single example hanging in the air, having made the observation that it is probably impossible to wage a modern war in which, tragically, there are mass civilian casualties without incurring accusations of genocide, as Israel is currently discovering in Gaza. What I say next, I say with no reference in particular to war in the Middle East or anywhere else, but war crimes are sometimes conflated with genocide, as are crimes against humanity. Appalling and horrendous though both are, genocide is the ultimate crime because it is the attempted extermination of an entire people. In short, I am concerned about mission creep in the learning centre over time.

I pause to pay tribute to the Minister, who I have always found to be extremely helpful. He organised the useful briefing to which the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, has just referred, with Martin Winstone, the project historian. He gave a most impressive presentation—the academics who are advising the project are extremely eminent—and I understood for the first time when the briefing was being given why the Minister specifically referenced Darfur and Rwanda at Second Reading, because it is the Holocaust that set the standard by which horrors since have been weighed, both legally and in other ways, as genocides. I can see all that, and he made a very good case, but Governments change and the Minister will not be here for ever—sadly. What the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, just said about the wording of the Bill and the Explanatory Notes is correct. For all the persuasiveness and attraction of the presentation that we were given, there is as yet no actual content of the learning centre for us to be able to judge. So I would like noble Lords to think of Amendment 4A as a kind of safeguard.

Other amendments this evening, as the debate has gone to and fro, have been characterised as wrecking amendments because they seek to separate the learning centre from the memorial. I make no comment on those debates one way or the other, but the one thing that cannot possibly be said about the amendment is that it is a wrecking amendment. It accepts that there will be a memorial and a learning centre together in Victoria Tower Gardens. It simply seeks to set some guardrails around the content. Were it a wrecking amendment, my noble friend on the Front Bench would not be supporting it, as I understand is the case.

That leads me back to the Minister. I think I know where our Front Bench stands; I now want to hear, when the Minister responds to the debate, what he has to say. I think he is sympathetic to the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, put and which the amendment stands for. I am hoping that he can satisfy us. If he cannot do that now, it is possible he will be able to do that at Third Reading, but I do not know. If he cannot, and the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, seeks to move the amendment to a vote, I hope that noble Lords will vote in favour.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Goodman of Wycombe Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th March 2025 Grand Committee

In conclusion, I think this deserves to be properly considered. It is no good hiding behind the fiction that this is all a planning matter. We have not heard any defence or argument in favour, any statements from my noble friend Lord Pickles or my own Front Bench, or anything from the noble Lord, Lord Khan, about the real benefits of what is being proposed. It has all been to shut down the debate and deal with the criticisms.

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 32, moved by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I am mindful, if I am correct, that at this stage amendments are not usually put to the vote but are often a means of fishing for information from the Minister, which is what I am seeking now in making three brief points.

First, by way of setting the scene, the horror of the Shoah is unique and must, in my view, be seen in the context of European and other antisemitism historically. I say that without wishing in any way to detract from other genocides.

It is upon that word “genocide” that I make my second point, because I substantially share the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, who referred in his remarks to the “instrumentalisation” of genocide and the proliferation of legal cases about it. This is a reminder that the word “genocide” is contested. There is a legal idea of it, a political idea of it and a popular idea of it. Without repeating what I said at Second Reading, I have been dismayed, as have other Members of the Committee including the noble Lord, Lord Robathan —and I say this as someone who has sometimes been critical of the Israeli Government—to see the Holocaust compared to what is going on now in Israel and Gaza. This seems profoundly wrong and profoundly worrying.

That leads me to my third and final point. I am concerned—the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, made this point very ably—about what may happen in future. In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to the story of how Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur have in some way been added, as it were, to the mission of the learning centre; the Minister referred to that at Second Reading. It might be argued that, in future, the learning centre’s mission should be a matter for historians and the people who will have guardianship of both the memorial and the learning centre. But this is a government Bill and the Minister is here, so I want to hear him explain to the Committee how the uniqueness of the Holocaust will be guarded in the learning centre. I look forward to hearing what he has to say when he responds to this debate.

Integration and Community Cohesion

Lord Goodman of Wycombe Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Raval and Lord Rook, on their two very engaging maiden speeches, and wish them every joy in the House. I also commend my noble friend Lady Verma on securing this important debate. Each of us will have our own idea of what integration looks like. Mine took place two years ago: namely, the King’s Coronation. The Coronation was what has been described, in a very different context, as a demonstration of traditional values in a modern setting. I want to examine both of those themes in turn.

First, the modern setting. As other speakers have pointed out, the Britain of the future will be less white, older and less Christian. Other faiths will grow, especially Islam, which by 2050 is likely to be followed by some 15% of the population. Therefore, when we talk of integration, we must not assume that others, who are neither white nor culturally Christian, must somehow integrate into the rest of the country that is, because the country is changing. As the noble Lord, Lord Rook, said in his maiden speech, integration is a two-way street.

However, though Britain is changing, much of it is unchanged—which brings me to the traditional values. Although many of us are neither white nor culturally Christian, more of us still are. Our country has been shaped not by so-called British values—I have always been perplexed as to what these are—but by British institutions that, in turn, were shaped by enlightenment values which, in turn, were shaped—as Tom Holland argues in his brilliant book, Dominion—by Christianity.

What did all this produce? I answer: constitutional monarchy, democratic government, freedom under the law, an independent judiciary, strong civic institutions and a free press. All of these are explicitly western in origin, although now global in application, as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These are the foundations of our culture and I have no hesitation in asserting that some cultures are better than others. It is these things we must integrate into if we are to be as great in the future as we have sometimes been in the past.

In the very brief time available to me, I will sketch how these foundations can be strengthened. In a nutshell, we have the balance wrong. There must be some policing of private space in relation to, for example, support for terror, child abuse or incitement to violence. Integration is not enhanced, and nor are the police well served, by the thinking behind or the recording of non-crime hate incidents, as too often happens. Similarly, there must be free expression in public space in relation to, for example, events in the Middle East.

However, liberty is not licence, and there can be no room in the public square for support for terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, or for anti-Semitism or anti-Muslim hatred. On that score, I agree very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Katz, said earlier in the debate. In that context, organisations that use criminal action to force change should face a fundraising and communication ban—as recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, who I see is in his place—and the criteria under which protests are permitted should be tightened, as recommended by Policy Exchange.

Finally, we need to radically reform the practice of equality, diversity and inclusion which, at their best, are all about fairness. In the words of Dr Raghib Ali, who advised the last Government on ethnicity and Covid,

“the primary factor in health and educational inequalities is deprivation, not race”

and

“there is now no overall ‘White privilege’ in health or education (and especially not for deprived Whites)—or overall ‘BAME disadvantage’—and these categories are now outdated and unhelpful”.

Just as we need to rethink equality, so we need to think very carefully about diversity and inclusion. It is said that diversity is a strength: this is usually true, but it is not always true that inclusion is a strength. For example, no one in this Chamber would think it would be a strength to integrate the grooming and rape gangs into the Britain of the future. Andrew Norfolk, the journalist who led the reporting for the Times, has said the root causes of the abuse have not been properly examined, which is why many of us on this side of the House have argued that a full national inquiry is essential.

Some believe in equality of outcome, some in equality of opportunity, but the equality that all of us can and do sign up to is equality before the law, the primacy of which should once again be established in public policy if the practice of integration is to be realised, and the promise of the Coronation is to be fulfilled.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Goodman of Wycombe Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall ask three questions, if I may. First, does Britain need a new Holocaust memorial? Secondly, if it does, is this the right scheme? Thirdly, if it is the right scheme, is it in the right place? We must all answer these questions for ourselves, and my answers are as follows.

Does Britain need a new Holocaust memorial? As the Minister correctly said at the start, the present generation of survivors is passing away and I believe we need a new something. It might be a new memorial; it might be a new Jewish Museum; we might prefer to put resources into Holocaust education, which does not seem to be in a particularly good way; we might prefer to build on what we have already got in, say, the Imperial War Museum. However, all these considerations are somewhat theoretical, because the only proposal we actually have before us is the one pointed to in the Bill, so we must weigh that carefully.

Secondly, do we need this particular scheme? Here I pick up a concern originally aired in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Mann, about the content. My concern is as follows. A learning centre can focus either on the Holocaust in the context of 2,000 years of European anti-Semitism and the story of the Jewish people, with its joys and sorrows, not forgetting the others who also died in the Holocaust, or it can range more widely through racism to, as the last speaker suggested, other genocides, such as the Rwandan one. I would have no objection, myself, to the Rwandan genocide being referenced in the learning centre, but here we run into a problem, which is that the idea of genocide is somewhat contested. There is a legal definition, a sociological idea, a political and policy idea and then finally there is a popular idea in which genocide tends to merge into crimes against humanity, which in turn tend to merge into war crimes. It is perhaps a feature of modern warfare that any war that involves a mass loss of civilian life risks incurring the charge of genocide, whether that charge is justified or not. In short, I am concerned, given that we appear to know so little about the content of the learning centre, that the unique horror of the Holocaust may be lost, though against this I have to weigh the expertise of the historians who will advise and the reliability of the committee that appointed them—although I have to add that it is not yet clear to me what the successor body to that committee will be and how subsequent appointments will be made.

Finally, is it in the right place? I can add nothing to what noble Lords have already said on that score. I feel, myself, that a learning centre does not necessarily have to be in the shadow of the Palace of Westminster, though I understand that other noble Lords feel differently, and their feelings about this may well be more important than mine.

In conclusion, it seems to me that where the Bill is going is that at Third Reading, the choice may well be between the proposal the Bill points to or making do simply with what we have. If that is the choice, I will cross that bridge when I come to it, but I hope and believe that the questions I have raised are good questions and I look forward to pursuing them in Committee and on Report.