Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move the amendment standing in my name and those of several other noble Lords. As noble Lords will see, it calls for a new full planning application to be given to the relevant local authority, in this case Westminster City Council. In the event of the Minister calling in the application, it also calls for a new public inquiry with a different inspector. I am fully aware from the exchanges that have taken place in this Committee that the Minister is very unlikely to welcome the full new planning application and possibly even the more minor arrangement that I have put in as a second best. However, that will not deter me from putting the case as forcefully as I can.

I will deal first with the reasons why a new application is vitally necessary. We all know now about the relevant sections of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900, which specifically set out that the Victoria gardens should be in perpetuity a public garden for the interests of those living there. It seems to me that the inspector at the time gave very little weight to that consideration and assumed that the Victoria gardens were easily there to be taken. I think this was a material consideration, because he felt that other sites might take longer to come to fruition. That was a bad miscalculation, but I will not dwell on it further now.

I also feel that the inspector greatly underestimated the damage to the park that would ensue to both the trees and the interests of the residents who rely on this little park in an area not terribly well served by green spaces. He did not have the benefit, shall we call it, of the later present Government’s consideration that everyone should be able to live within 15 minutes of a green space, as set out fairly recently. I feel, therefore, that the environmental considerations were not taken properly into account, but as I dealt with this in more detail in a previous amendment, I will not dwell on it now.

I will now look at a major source of concern where issues have changed for the worse: the security of the site in terms of possible acts of terrorism and any other source of grief, worry or danger to the public. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has powerfully set out this case. Coming as they do from a former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and a King’s Counsel with many years of experience, his views should be taken far more into consideration. I hope that this afternoon he may wish to elaborate on these matters. I am anxious that he does, because there will be very practical implications if one has to allow for the safety of the public in these circumstances, especially so close to the Palace of Westminster.

Furthermore, we have had powerful speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, setting out the risks of fire hazards. Again, I will not go into all the details, but she made the important point that there was only one escape route from the underground learning centre, which she felt needed to be dealt with. Indeed, since she spoke we have had the ghastly incident in Macedonia, where a number of lives were lost in a nightclub because there was only one exit. These things are to be taken very seriously. That does not mean to say that there will not be some mitigation, but I think it needs a new, thorough look.

Then there is the risk of flood, dealt with most cogently by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. It is in an area that has always been rather prone to flooding, and we have had an example of this at 1 Millbank, where the basement restaurant was flooded and out of action for months. So this is another issue that needs much greater consideration.

Interestingly, the R&R programme now wants experiments to be done on the floor of the River Thames along the east side of the Palace, because it may want to do some works on the Terrace and the neighbouring areas. That may not impinge directly on this, but it is an indication that a great many things will be happening with the restoration programme. The Victoria Tower repair is imminent. Are we to suppose that both of those major impacts will not have a very damaging effect on the park, especially if, at the same time, all the building works for the memorial and the underground learning centre are going on? It seems to me that an impossible practical situation is developing. How can one small park accommodate the overflow from two major restorations and repairs, and cope with the building of the memorial and underground learning centre at the same time?

I now turn to the all-important arrangements for dealing with any planning application once the Bill enters the statute book. Let us look for a moment at the guidance given by the Planning Inspectorate as to the procedure to be followed if an application quashed by a law court is revived or restarted. It says in section 20.8 that written representations will normally not even be considered if there have been material changes since the time the application was first submitted. Let us remember that in this case we are talking about a submission in January 2019, now over six years ago. The Planning Inspectorate guidance adds that a round table or hearing will normally be considered only if

“it can reasonably be expected that the parties will be able to present their own cases (supported by professional witnesses if required) without the need for an advocate to represent them”.

Finally, if the application was previously considered by a public inquiry, there would normally be a fresh inquiry and a new inspector would normally be appointed, because he or she would be reviewing matters previously overturned by a court.

That seems pretty straightforward guidance. I understand that it is guidance and not the application of the law, but it seems to me that the guidance here is akin to that for traffic arrangements, whereby when we have road accidents and so on, we can look to the body of work that guides people on matters of traffic.

I was not aware of yet a further complication: the National Planning Casework Unit, set up by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, with a remit that includes managing major planning applications referred to it by the Secretary of State and requests from the Secretary of State to call in planning applications. It has become involved in a pre-consultation process to ensure that there are no undue delays once the Bill is enacted. To my knowledge—and probably that of others—it has consulted the London Historic Parks & Gardens Trust and, most importantly, the promoter, which, of course, comes from within that very same department. Through its solicitor, Pinsent Masons, it has set out what it believes to be the issues before it. It has made a written representation, from which I will quote—not the whole lot but the most relevant parts. It wrote:

“The Applicant considers that the Minister should consider representations on any and all matters required for the redetermination of the Application … such that the redetermination can then take place as soon as reasonably possible following any Royal Assent”—


as I have pointed out. It continued:

“Such matters can be fully and appropriately dealt with through written representations. To re-open the public inquiry would clearly be disproportionate to the matters relevant to the redetermination”.


Finally, it added that

“all the principal … and planning matters relevant to the determination of the Application … remain either entirely or largely unchanged from the time they were originally considered”.

As I have said previously, I regard that as totally wrong and not to be considered at all.

We have this curious spectacle, as I see it, of a planning application from an applicant, somebody who has to make the decision, and another organisation, the planning unit, all within the same department of state. Looking at it from the outside, as most people will, I consider that to be an unhealthily close relationship—at best unhealthy, and at worst positively incestuous. I am not at all happy if the way out to be chosen once the Bill becomes law is anything other than a full public inquiry or, at the very least, a new public inquiry. That is the burden of my theme this afternoon. I beg to move.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 34 in my name, which I tabled before your Lordships started to look at the Bill in Committee. Having listened so far, I am more than ever convinced that an impact assessment is needed. It would cover many things we have already debated but, as I suggested previously, with regard to risk, there would be great benefit in pulling together the many points that have been and are still to be discussed. Some suggestions will impact on others, so an overall view of the impact of the proposed memorial and learning centre would be of great benefit, not to say essential.

I find it most peculiar that there should not already have been an impact assessment for this project. I expect that a number of issues are more strictly for planning, whereas this Bill is to overcome the limitations of the 1900 covenant. When considering legislation to dispense with a covenant, there are planning issues that will impact on the decision. For example, if the proposal were for a manufacturing unit of some sort, I imagine that your Lordships might well feel that the covenant should stand. So it is not inappropriate to seek answers that are, strictly speaking, planning matters. As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has said, we are entitled to know in detail what is proposed before we are asked to remove the covenant of which we are custodians.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I politely disagree with the noble Baroness—there is no inconsistency. My job in promoting the Bill is to look at the two main clauses along with the third one, which says that the Bill applies to England and Wales. Planning permission is absolutely for the designated Minister. As a proposal of national significance, it is perfectly proper for a planning decision to be taken by a Minister rather than by a local planning authority. When these arrangements were challenged in a judicial review in 2020, that challenge did not succeed.

Perhaps I can just make some more progress. Like any other neighbour, Parliament can make its views known through the planning system.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

With the greatest respect to the Minister, if the Planning Minister is somebody different, why is he not here answering these questions today?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, that is not the way planning works. I will leave my remarks there, in the sense that it is up to the designated planning Minister how he takes this process forward, but there will be a planning process, which is right. It is not ideal for this House, through this Bill in particular, to be discussing planning applications. That is not the role of this Committee on this Bill in particular.

As I said before, Parliament can make its views known through the planning system and can be confident that those views will be given due weight. We have well-established provisions in place to allow a decision to be challenged if proper weight is not given. The Lords Select Committee considered this matter, and the Government were pleased to give an assurance that they would notify the relevant authorities in both Houses as soon as practicable following the reactivation of the planning process in respect of the current application.