Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Eccles in his Amendment 5 and will speak to my Amendment 33. When I first saw the department’s plan to manage this, I was tempted to ask the Minister facetiously whether he would put the experts of HS2 in charge of the project since they seemed to have all the matching qualities outlined in the devastating “red for danger” Infrastructure and Projects Authority report. But then I had a panic—perhaps they might not realise that I was being facetious and actually put HS2 in charge.

The National Audit Office said in a devasting report of 2022 that the department had informed it that it hoped to get an NDPB up and running about a year before the centre opened. It would be in charge of running it but have no role in managing its construction. The key findings of that NAO report were that:

“The Department does not have a track record of managing programmes of this nature … The Department has recruited specialists from across the civil service and externally, but the team does not have staff with programme management expertise in senior positions”.


However, the devasting criticism of the project is not a comment by the NAO but is printed on page 11 of the report as an organisation chart showing the nine bodies under the Secretary of State that will have input into its management. The department calls this “the governance structure”. I have given a copy of this to the Minister, to Hansard and to the clerks. Of course, we cannot enter it into Hansard, so I will read out what it says.

At the bottom of the chart are three organisations credited with giving independent assurance. One is the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which has already condemned the management of the project. Another is the Cabinet Office, which must give approval on business cases and procurement. Then there is the Treasury. The NAO report says that the Treasury’s role is to be:

“Responsible for allocating funding for the programme. Treasury approval is required at different stages as per the Integrated Assurance and Approval Plan … As a condition of the funding, the Department must seek further Treasury approval if the programme is forecast to use more than half of the approved contingency”.


We all know what the Treasury is like: no one will be able to buy a nail to build this place without months and months of Treasury approval. That is another government department with management rights over this project.

Then there are three advisory boards: the foundation advisory board, the academic advisory board and the construction advisory board. The members of the foundation advisory board are extremely distinguished and will all have firm views on fulfilling their role of defining the overall vision for the programme, including content of the learning centre. But the academic advisory board,

“Provides a peer-review process and discussion forum for the envisioned exhibition content”.

So now we have two expert bodies advising on content and a paralysed programme board terrified to decide between them or reject their advice. This is a recipe for delay and completely contradictory decisions as the programme board attempts to please everyone.

Above those advisory bodies, we have the programme board itself. I hope that noble Lords are listening carefully, because this is what it will do:

“Meets monthly and is chaired by the senior responsible owner. It is the decision-making authority for the programme and collectively owns the programme’s objectives. It monitors the performance of individual projects and work packages, as well as the risks and issues affecting delivery and the mitigations in place to address them. Members include the programme director, programme manager and project leads. Representatives from other parts of the Department, such as Procurement, and external stakeholders, including specialist contractors, are also invited to meetings”.


What an extraordinarily huge bunch of people with no power except to monitor performance, assess risks and pass things on to the oversight board.

The oversight board is one level higher up. It will meet

“2-3 times a year with representatives from the Foundation Advisory Board and senior government. Sets the strategic direction of the programme and is the escalation point for the Programme Board; any changes to the strategic direction need Oversight Board approval”.

Next, we have the investment sub-committee, whose remit is:

“The ISC must approve new project or programme business cases. The programme must seek further ISC approval if it is forecast to use more than half of the approved cost contingency.”


Finally, at the top of this indecision tree is the Secretary of State as

“the ultimate escalation point and sits on the Oversight Board”.

In summary, we have three advisory committees, one organisation with responsibility for finance, two powerful government departments with the final say on finance and two other boards that monitor things and talk about them. There is one thing missing—a straightforward delivery board whose mission given to it by the Secretary of State should be simply this: “You will deliver this project X at a cost Y by day Z and you will suffer penalty P if you fail to deliver and you are a day late.” Get rid of all the other talking shops except the foundation advisory board, which can advise on content but with no say on design or construction. Once new plans are approved in detail, no changes should be made at all. We have all seen in the buildings around Parliament—from Portcullis House onwards—how architects and designers loved to have a committee of politicians in charge, who changed the design regularly, costing an absolute fortune.

This Heath Robinson so-called management structure devised by the department is a recipe for argument, delay and cost overruns. However, it has one magnificent feature cleverly built in by civil servants: with this structure, not a single person can be held accountable for failure. If the cost goes from £138 million to £200 million, which of these bodies gets the blame, or if it is three years late, or if the Jewish community condemns it at the end as not being appropriate? That is why we need a new non-departmental public body set up now and given a simple set of objectives to deliver a set project at a set date at a set cost. That is the only way this can ever work.

I turn now to my Amendment 33 and the future management of Victoria Tower Gardens. In April 1946, the Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, told Conservative MPs in a Commons debate:

“We are the masters at the moment, and … for a very long time to come”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/4/1946; col. 1213.]


I now hear Cabinet Ministers saying that the new Attorney-General is telling them, “I am the master now”. Be that as it may, the relevance of this comment is that I fear that any new NDPB set up to run the completed project will feel that it is the all-powerful master of Victoria Tower Gardens, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out.

The NDPB will be under the overall control of a Secretary of State, partly funded by the Government, and possibly eventually fully funded if the costs grow out of control. It will have, no doubt, a senior civil servant or two from the department, and some others of the great and the good. With the clout it will have from government, it will feel that it can dictate all aspects of the governance of the gardens.

We can guess what will happen: if it finds long queues, it will create roped-off chicanes, like those zigzag lines you get in airports, and do so with no consultation with the garden authorities. What will it do to stop visitors spreading out over the rest of the garden to have picnics, as in Berlin, and taking up the space of other garden users?

We simply have no idea what pressures may arise to infringe on the rest of Victoria Tower Gardens. Therefore, as Amendment 33 makes clear, the NDPB must not have any authority over any other parts of the garden and must consult local residents in advance through the relevant local amenity societies with regard to any matters which may affect the free use of Victoria Tower Gardens as a garden open to the rest of the public. Anything else would be inappropriate.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I want to say a word or two in support of my noble friend Lord Eccles and his amendment and my noble friend Lord Blencathra. Much of what I was going to say has been well forked over already, but I think it underlines the importance of moving towards a clear structure and organisation as quickly as possible.

The spider’s web of committees and advisory boards referred to by my noble friend on page 11 of the National Audit Office’s report must be a recipe for disaster. As he pointed out very forcefully, it is a way to ensure that nobody will ever be blamed for anything. It does not matter whether it is too much money, design faults, cost overruns, failure to meet timescales or failure to meet commitments, as page 13 of the National Audit Office’s report puts it—they can only have been designed and drafted by Sir Humphrey—it is, in effect, an organisational blank cheque. We need to make sure that it is very much better controlled, in the interests of performance delivery, the taxpayer and Parliament as a scrutinising body.

I hope that the Minister, who has so far put his foot to the metal, will take some time to think about these organisational problems, which are very real and have been brought forward by the National Audit Office on other pages of its report. If we do not do that, we are setting ourselves up for a very unhappy period during which this project gets going.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I seconded the amendment tabled by the right reverend Prelate and I agree with it. It is important also to look at the report from the excellent Select Committee that dealt with it. It says:

“The limitation of closure dates seems to us to be a reasonable request”.


That is what the right reverend Prelate said. It went on to say:

“It is not appropriate for an amendment to the Bill … but is probably best addressed in byelaws applicable to VTG”.


My experience of government is that, very often, by-laws get ignored to a certain extent, so we want to be clear where the limitations are. That is why I support the amendment.

I want to go on about closure dates, not least after my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Hodgson have raised the issue. The issue is around who is going to run this. In paragraph 104, the Select Committee assumed that:

“The Royal Parks … will be the body responsible for maintenance of those parts of VTG outside the perimeter of the proposed HMLC”.


I think we need to get this absolutely clear. The Royal Parks, as I recall—and somebody will correct me if I am wrong—opposed the whole idea because it thought it was an inappropriate place to put a memorial and learning centre. Therefore, we need to be absolutely clear who is responsible for what.

Those of us who have worked in government, as many in this Room have, and many of them for longer than me, know that if there is no clear line of responsibility then nobody is responsible for anything. We need to have a clear line of responsibility in this, and that is why I support these amendments.

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[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was one of the few Members of either House—alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who will confirm what I am saying—who attended a meeting organised to discuss the contents of the learning centre. The meeting was addressed by a historian who made it absolutely clear that this is not a learning centre about genocides; it is a learning centre specifically about the Holocaust, and it will not relativise the Holocaust and it will not compare the Holocaust to other genocides. The only extent to which other genocides may be mentioned is on the way out, where it might say something along the lines of, “Since then, there have been other genocides, showing we have not yet learned lessons”. The learning centre will be devoted specifically and solely to the Holocaust. That is what it is.

I was not going to take part in this debate but while I am on my feet, I have some questions for the right reverend Prelate. Why did he fix on three days? What was the basis for it and who did he consult? Is it based on the number of Holocaust commemorations? Did he speak to Holocaust survivors? Why did he decide that just three days in the entire year might be appropriate to remember the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis?

I point out gently to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that I do not see what would be objectionable about people visiting the Holocaust memorial and sitting on the grass to eat their sandwiches afterwards. Why should they not have a picnic in the park if they choose to do so? It is what many other visitors to the park do. How would he distinguish between people visiting the memorial and having their lunch and people visiting the park and having their lunch? Many of the people visiting the memorial will be people who would visit the park anyway. Lots of people who visit the memorial will be people who live within the vicinity of the memorial or work in Westminster, so why would he object? I assume that he would not object to any of those people eating their sandwiches in the park. Why would he object to visitors to the memorial doing so?

My final point is that lots of the contributions to this suggest that the memorial and learning centre are going to take over the whole park. We have just heard a speech about land use as though it is going to transform the nature of the park. I gently point out to everybody in these discussions that the memorial and learning centre will in fact take up just 7.5% of the land in the park. I am sure that the Minister will confirm this when he concludes. It is a complete fallacy that it is going to take over the whole park and totally transform this part of Westminster.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, will he just accept that if 3,000 to 4,000 people come every day—those are the numbers we have been given—that will affect the way the park operates from the point of view of the local residents? I am not saying that it is impossible to do, but will he accept that there is a distinct difference when that volume of people comes to visit the memorial and learning centre? It is bound to make a difference. To suggest that it will make no difference at all and it will be business as usual is naive, if I may make so bold.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

What I will say is that millions of people visit Westminster all year round. Tourists from all over the world come to Westminster and some of those will visit the memorial. I do not think that this will add significantly to the numbers that we already see visiting Westminster.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

On that question, given the number of bodies on the sheet of the National Audit Office, will the Minister write to Members of the Committee to say, “These are the people involved in each of those bodies, and this is what they cost”? As my noble friend Lord Eccles said, there is a huge range of people and possibilities for cost. I do not expect the answer now, but it would be helpful for our future deliberations if we knew what the current structure costs and, therefore, the urgency to move to my noble friend’s proposed change.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, makes an excellent point. In response to his request, I am absolutely happy to provide all the details on the structure and the associated issues that he raised. We will write not just to him but to the wider Committee.

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[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, on that last point, that is exactly what the management of a non-departmental public body would discuss with the management of the gardens—how they will cope with litter and what facilities there are. They would need to work together, but we have not got anybody whatever to work with on the garden management at the moment. Until we have a public body, there will not be anybody.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall just say a few words in support of my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s Amendment 11. If, along the way, I gently chide my noble friend Lord Finkelstein, who I greatly admire, I hope he will forgive me. He made a speech last week in Committee, which he used in his article in the Times on Wednesday, and very important and powerful it is. He concluded by saying, “Let’s get building”, and that is where I part company with him because we are not arguing about a memorial. I think we are all saying, universally, that we want to have a memorial. The question is: what are we going to build? To say at the end of his article “Let’s get building” sort of implies that the Committee was somehow opposing the idea that there should be a memorial at all.

From my point of view, the design we presently have is outsized, out of sync and out of style. For my noble friend to say that this is like objecting to the Brent Cross shopping centre is really not fair to those of us who have a serious concern about what it will look like and how it will work. I think that the words, “reasonably modest”, which have been used a lot this afternoon, are really shown up when along with my noble friend’s article was a picture of what is proposed. How that can be described as “reasonably modest”, when you see a picture of it is quite hard to understand. Also—this was probably not my noble friend but his picture editor—the fact that it says underneath this extraordinarily ugly memorial

“The memorial embodies what Britain fought for and her Parliament stands for”


seems doubly disappointing. I hope that we can find a way, following my noble friend Lord Sassoon’s suggestion, to stick to the principle that we want a memorial and find a way that is more in sync with its surroundings, as my noble friend suggests in his Amendment 11.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

Just to clarify the point on “reasonably modest”, it has been a reasonable subject for discussion and obviously opinions will differ about how big this ought to be. In the Holocaust Commission, we had a debate about the different designs. Some people liked this design and others did not, but my point about “reasonably modest” concerned itself with the difficulty of building this memorial or, indeed, anything, nearby. I was just observing that we manage, as humanity, to cope with quite a lot of building and this is, on the scale of many of the things that we build, “reasonably modest”. Thus, the problems that were raised seem have been overcome on some quite big projects in comparison with this one. That is the point of my argument about reasonable modesty.