Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

With the greatest respect, my noble friend needs to look more carefully at what is being asked here. It is second-guessing the planning.

In terms of the size, it is the size of the Berlin Holocaust underground site. It is the size of the one in Jasenovac. It is the size of the large temporary exhibition in America. It is not particularly small art; it is adequate for its size. It will not have any exhibits. It will all be digital. That does seem reasonable. On the location, more than 50 different sites were looked at.

I apologise for going on for so long; I hope that I will have an opportunity to speak in further debates.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I cannot contribute with the degree of fluency and authority of those noble Lords who have spoken so far, but I have a question for the Minister and an observation.

The question stems from the Explanatory Notes. Years ago, I had the function in another place of looking at Explanatory Notes in draft—not taking responsibility for their contents but ensuring that they were not used by the Government of the day for the purposes of advocacy. I looked at these Explanatory Notes, and they were pretty much typical of the breed: they are certainly notes but they are by no means explanatory. Where I hoped that I would have their assistance was on Clause 1(3) of the Bill, which states:

“For the purposes of subsection (1)(a), ‘construction’ includes erection, extension, alteration and re-erection”.


I would dearly like to see the instructions that counsel was given before it drafted that particular provision. It sounds as though the memorial is going to be mobile, which I am sure is not the intention.

If I can move on to the observation, at the north end of the Victoria Tower Gardens is the education centre; I have a particular reason for remembering this because, as a corporate officer, I was the applicant for the planning permission when it was originally given in 2015. As noble Lords will know, the planning consent ran out on 22 August last year; it was renewed or extended to 2030. When that runs out—or in anticipation of it running out—there will be substantial works, but I have not seen any reference to those in any of the supporting papers that the Committee has before it today. There will be traffic of substantial character, such as heavy lorries moving kit to and fro. If that is going to happen, as is possible, as the memorial and learning centre is in the later stages of construction, whatever difficulties of security, access and safety that that is going to pose will be exacerbated by doing all this to the education centre at the same time.

I am not sure whether my observation should find a home in our discussion of security or in our discussion of planning, but it seems to me that the Clause 1 stand part debate is a pretty good place to put it to begin with. I would be very grateful for the Minister’s reaction to that simultaneity of works and to the additional element of complication and cost that is no doubt to be introduced.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I was not proposing to speak on this group, but I have been moved to do so by the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Finkelstein and Lord Pickles. As I do so, I make clear my gratitude to them and to everybody else who has been determined that there should be a memorial and a memorial learning centre. I absolutely applaud that, for reasons I explained in another debate in the Chamber. However, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, that I was rather shocked by what I hope he will forgive me for describing as his grandiose lecture creating an analogy with Nelson’s column. First, I remind him—I regret having to remind him, because he has an extraordinary family history, of which we are all aware, and we are hugely grateful for the contribution that his family have made to the remembrance of what happened to my and many other people’s families and ancestors—that Nelson’s column was a memorial to a man who had lived and not to 6 million people who had died. It is a very different proposition.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, the Holocaust was a stain upon humanity. It must not be allowed to fade from our memories as the survivors—now a dwindling number—die. As we all agree, there must be a memorial.

Alas, so far as the site is concerned, this Bill is an unnecessarily contentious and spectacularly ill-judged attempt to realise that end. There was no consultation on the site of either the memorial or the learning centre. As the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, reminded us earlier, and as other noble Lords have done, the whole proposal has been opposed from the beginning by Westminster City Council, Historic England, the Royal Parks, a number of amenity organisations and UNESCO—remembering that Parliament Square and its associated buildings form a UNESCO world heritage site.

In the case of this Bill, the hybrid Bill procedure seems to have worked very well, despite an attempt via an instruction in the Commons to limit the scope of the Select Committee’s considerations. But that committee reported that the Government had failed to consult on the selection of a site; that they had failed to establish the true cost of the project, about which the National Audit Office was equally critical; and that they had failed to address issues of security. I did not find the previous Government’s response to those criticisms at all convincing. I hope that the Minister will be able to assuage the concern which I—and, I know, other noble Lords, as it has been mentioned already—have about the percentage of the area of Victoria Tower Gardens that would be taken by a memorial. The Government’s figure is 7.5%, but the best reckoning I have seen produces a figure of 20.7%. I hope that the Minister will be able to take us through this working, in writing afterwards if necessary.

A near neighbour of the proposed memorial site is the Parliament Education Centre. When I had another role down the other end of this building, I had overall responsibility for that project. It was quite contentious for some Members of Your Lordships’ House but I was extremely keen on it, as I am obsessive about getting people, especially young people, to understand and experience Parliament.

The education centre has some resonances for the Bill before us today. We had a real struggle to get planning permission. The key issues were: the impact on Victoria Tower Gardens; people management—coaches stopping to let passengers off in Abingdon Street, and all the safety issues involved; and, of course, security. Parliament was, and remains, a very high-value target.

The planning permission for the education centre—which, incidentally, has proved extraordinarily successful —was due to run out in 2025. But the weary and indefensible, in my view, delays to the restoration and renewal project led the parliamentary authorities to seek an extension of that permission. That has been granted, but only to 2030, when, without any further argument, the centre will have to move.

In reporting on that application, Westminster City Council’s planning officers said that the key issues were:

“The principle of retaining a development of this size and form”—


rather smaller than what we are being asked to agree to today—

“within Victoria Tower Gardens, which is a Grade II registered park and garden and area of public open space and recreation; and … the impact on the significance of heritage assets, including the registered Victoria Tower Gardens and its associated listed memorials, the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square Conservation Area, the World Heritage Site … and adjacent listed buildings including the Grade I listed Palace of Westminster”.

Given the intention of the Bill before us today, this seems to be happening in a parallel universe.

I finish with the question of security. Maintaining the security of our Parliament is a difficult task at the best of times, as I know very well. It is also extraordinarily expensive. The last few months should have convinced us of the foolishness of providing a focus for protest and demonstration, and possibly more sinister intentions, within a few yards of the Palace of Westminster. I trust that wiser counsels will prevail.

Residential Leasehold for Flats

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I can reassure noble Lords that it is the Government’s intention to bring forward clauses to ban the sale of new leasehold houses within this Bill. We intend to bring forward those clauses during the Commons stages. When it comes to flats, on the other hand, reform is more complicated. They have shared fabric and infrastructure and therefore require some form of arrangement to facilitate management. This has traditionally been facilitated by a lease. Therefore, banning leasehold flats is inherently more complicated. We will be taking forward, at a later date, reforms to the commonhold system to allow that to replace the leasehold system.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

Does the absence of these clauses lead the Minister to draw a conclusion which has general application—that Parliament is asked to consider far too much legislation, to be proceeded with at far too great a pace?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I do not draw that conclusion. Leasehold reform is complex. We have consulted widely and are taking time to get things right. I understand the desirability of bringing forward these clauses as soon as possible for Parliament’s scrutiny and that is what the Government intend to do.

United Kingdom: The Union

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lisvane]

To move that this House takes note of the stresses upon the Union of the United Kingdom.

Relevant document: 10th Report, Session 2021-22, from the Constitution Committee

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to raise once again the issue of the integrity of the union of the United Kingdom and its resilience against increasing stresses. I am afraid I cannot emulate the wonderful brevity of my noble friend Lord Morse in introducing the first debate this morning, but I do not intend to take up the whole of the very generous allocation of time I have been given. I am very sorry that this is to be the valedictory speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn, and I look forward very much to hearing what he has to say during the debate.

I was fortunate to secure a debate on the same subject in January 2019. The union was then faced with a number of uncertainties—principally, perhaps, the effects of Brexit. As your Lordships’ European Union Committee said at the time,

“the European Union has been, in effect, part of the glue holding the United Kingdom together”.

More than three years later, those uncertainties remain, and in some respects they have become more threatening. Brexit is done, we are told. I have no wish at all to return to those damaging and divisive times in our history. We have to make the best of things but the present situation is, to say the least, untidy.

A brief survey will suffice. There is the extraordinary behaviour of the Government over the Northern Ireland protocol, which they negotiated and which the Prime Minister trumpeted with such enthusiasm. Now the Government wish to take powers to renounce significant parts of the protocol. This is against the background of Sinn Féin becoming for the first time the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the movement towards a border poll that might, in due course, thereby come closer. In the meantime, there is no functioning Executive, and the clock is ticking on the 24-week deadline for the Secretary of State to appoint a date for new Assembly elections.

In Scotland, the devolved Administration’s Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution has said that a second independence referendum is planned for October 2023. Whether that is possible in any form which would be legally binding without a Section 30 order is yet to be determined. That seems unlikely, but the prospect of an advisory referendum is one which Mrs Sturgeon will want to keep constantly in the public eye, if only as a distraction from her Administration’s less than perfect delivery of public services. The UK Government have set their face against a second referendum, which is a conflict that Holyrood will try to use to its advantage. The opinion polls seem to be a little less favourable to independence than they were, but the hazard remains.

In Wales, the Welsh Government have established the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales to consider and develop durable options for fundamental reform of the constitutional structures of the UK and to strengthen Welsh democracy. The co-chair of the commission, Laura McAllister, has said that the commission

“has a licence to be radical”

and that it will

“explore options for governing Wales as a distinct nation within the UK”,

and also, significantly,

“the options for a future for Wales outside the Union.”

The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who is unable to be in his place this afternoon, asked a Question for Short Debate in Grand Committee on 9 June on the possibility of a new constitutional relationship for the four parts of the United Kingdom. He listed reasons why Wales was becoming less in sympathy with the current constitutional settlement, including the ignoring of recommendations such as those of the Silk commission for devolved police powers and those of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, for changes in the legal framework; he also alluded to a perceived unfairness in the deployment of structural and social funds. Of course, the noble Lord spoke from his Plaid Cymru point of view, but as a Welshman by birth and title, I can appreciate the force of those points and their unhelpful bearing on the cohesion of the United Kingdom.

In that debate Lord Wigley proposed a confederal approach in which the three nations and the Province agree to pool their sovereignty for certain purposes. This has something in common with the approach of the Constitution Reform Group, convened and chaired by the Marquess of Salisbury, a former distinguished Member and Leader of your Lordships’ House. The group produced the Act of Union Bill, an earlier version of which I introduced in the previous Parliament, and an updated version of which was published last year. This seeks to replace the present top-down method of devolution with an approach in which the constituent parts of the United Kingdom would decide which powers they wished to pool for greater solidarity and effectiveness. This is to suggest not a new written constitution but a way of dealing with what I describe as the imperial condescension of Whitehall towards the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.

For as long as the concept has existed, doing devolution has been difficult, requiring as it does the accommodation of ancient national pride and aspiration within structures of robust and effective co-operation. Some of the problems were set out with great clarity by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee in its excellent report Respect and Co-operation: Building a Stronger Union for the 21st Century, which is tagged on the Order Paper for this debate.

Incidentally, if I may digress just for a moment, I noted that the committee depended for its definition of parliamentary sovereignty—strictly, legislative sovereignty—upon the words of AV Dicey, even though his definition was almost the same as that of my learned predecessor Thomas Erskine May in the first edition of his Parliamentary Practice in 1844, when Professor Dicey, although no doubt precocious, was only nine years old.

The inherent difficulties of devolution have been exacerbated by the way in which devolution has been done, and this reflects our approach to constitutional change. Administrations of both colours have adopted a short-term, patchwork approach, in which changes are made with inadequate forethought and preparation, and, more especially, without consideration of wider effects and often, later, with buyer’s remorse. So it is with relationships between the different parts of the United Kingdom. A theme of the Constitution Committee’s report might be summarised as “mutual respect”; in other words, an end to the imperial condescension in which Whitehall knows best and decides how any cake is to be cut.

As to the future, there are a few—a very few—reasons for restrained optimism. It is possible that improved intergovernmental relations, drawing on the excellent work of the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, might be a factor, but that depends crucially on political will, and, as the Constitution Committee says,

“achieving shared objectives, rather than simply managing—or taking opportunities to accentuate … differences.”

Interparliamentary co-operation, in which our own Lord Speaker has taken a leading role, has a part to play. It may not have executive power, but it can bring powerful influences to bear on those who do, and if it can improve mutual understanding and make differing approaches compatible, it will be very well worthwhile.

However, what is needed above all from the Government is steadfast, clear direction and genuinely co-operative working in a constitutionally stable environment. That is exactly what we do not have, and it seems that we have precious little hope of it. The last two and a half years have been desperately difficult in so many ways, and the economic and cost of living crisis seems likely to be with us for some time. But it is precisely in such circumstances that we look to government for calm proportionality and fixity of purpose.

Instead, we have government by announcement; frequent policy U-turns, sometimes within the span of a single day; constant shoot-from-the-hip legislation, with sweeping powers given to Ministers for often unspecified purposes; shredded standards of conduct, as was clear from the earlier debate; an unlawful Prorogation; the taking of powers to override international law and solemnly concluded international agreements; and wild and ignorant suggestions, such as your Lordships deploying to York, which was roundly and rightly condemned by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and others who spoke in his debate last week.

At the same time, our fears are meant to be assuaged by news such as the return of imperial measures—perhaps to go with the imperial condescension I mentioned a moment ago. Incidentally, I should tell noble Lords that I have been drinking excellent Herefordshire cider in imperial pints for very many years, EU or no EU.

If any theme can be made out in this maelstrom, it is one of greater centralisation and indeed presidentialism—although the fact that the Prime Minister is also Minister for the Union may strike your Lordships as one of those things which are beyond parody.

Thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, we may have had a sneak preview of the Minister’s reply to this debate, as he spoke on this subject on 9 June. I hope that it will not be exactly the same, tempting as that may be, because in its centenary year and in its present form, much more has to be done to preserve the union and all that it can deliver for the citizens of this United Kingdom. That is a task of which the Government have to show themselves not only worthy but capable. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I shall not attempt a retrospective of this afternoon’s debate—given the scope of opinion and experience involved, that would be an entirely impractical idea—but I am very happy to thank the Minister for his detailed reply. Like other noble Lords, perhaps I may single out the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn. I entirely endorse the eloquent words earlier of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. When the right reverend Prelate leaves us, perhaps to embark on a new career as stellar as his present one, he will know that he takes with him the warmest good wishes of every Member of this House.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and to my Cross-Bench colleagues who voted for this as one of the topics to be debated. I hope that your Lordships will see fit to approve the Motion.

Motion agreed.