Holocaust Memorial Bill

Debate between Lord Pickles and Lord Inglewood

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, intervened on me; I should be able to reply to him.

If I had expressed a view about a planning application, I would not have dealt with it; I would not have called it in. We are very strict. I must say that we know what is going on here, with people asking, “Will the Minister give a guarantee?” That would be predetermination. The noble Lord is a distinguished lawyer; he knows that it would be grounds for a judicial review if we predetermined it. We separate carefully, to ensure that the people taking decisions on planning have not expressed a view on it and are not subject to views expressed by either the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister. I assured that in the past five years.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I want to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Carlile. I am a lawyer; I am also a chartered surveyor in the planning and development division of the RICS. I worked professionally in this area, a long time ago, for a number of years.

The point is that there is a fundamental difference between the covenant and the planning consent. We are not being asked to form any view about the merits of a planning application or anything like that, because were that to be the case, the draft legislation in front of us would make it explicitly clear that we were taking by statute the power to grant planning permission. The two consents run in parallel, and we should view them like that. The criteria that apply in determining each of the two are not the same.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I too wish to support what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, though I may say it less elegantly. The reason we are talking about planning in this Committee is that we simply do not trust the Government—the previous Government or this Government—not to overrule Westminster City Council. If the Government will give a cast-iron commitment that they will abide by whatever Westminster City Council decides—that they will not call it in or get an inspector to reverse it, and that the Minister will not reverse it either—then all my concerns about planning would be removed. If the Government will trust the decision of Westminster City Council, I think no noble Lords in this Committee would be talking about the planning application.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Debate between Lord Pickles and Lord Inglewood

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I did not declare my interests. I also reference that I am a trustee of the fundraising committee. Given the enthusiasm, I shall certainly be coming round with my tin for a collection fairly soon.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise in support of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, not because I have any involvement—I have no Jewish blood in me—but because we are looking at the project through rose-tinted spectacles, as the noble Lord, Lord King, has just said. I have in the last two or three years been personally involved in two significant big construction projects. The rate of inflation in the building industry has been going through the roof. The thing that he touched on will undoubtedly make this even more difficult to budget and then to carry through on budget.

On top of that, whatever it will ultimately cost depends upon the detailed design. It is clearly a difficult site, as the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, said. That is why the contingencies are on the high side, and what are we faced with from the Government? We do not have any realistic figures giving any worthwhile indication of the order of magnitude of the bill that we are likely to be paying at the end of this process. It is not a matter of arguing about the detail of the morality, ethics or desirability of the project. Anyone embarking on a big project of this kind, which will incur very substantial expenditure, particularly public expenditure, ought to have a proper budget in front of them so that they can then take an informed decision on where they want to go. We do not have it. It is as simple as that. It is irresponsible to talk in grandiose terms about all kinds of things when the boring, prosaic aspects of cost and delivery have not properly been considered.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not an accountant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

It is important not to conflate the solemn nature of the memorial with the learning centre; they are two distinct but integrated matters. The Committee will always go to museums and Holocaust sites. What we want are the uncommitted: we want people who go to the learning centre and come away having learned something. They will use it as a doorway to wider knowledge. It will not be in isolation. We are going to work closely with our American friends, our friends at Auschwitz and our friends in Yad Vashem because the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and distortion do not recognise national boundaries. We have a common purpose, and part of that common purpose will be to spread it out in different languages.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as someone who is not Jewish, as I mentioned earlier, I have been very moved by the debate I have just heard about the learning centre. I subscribe to the perspective of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. As I was sitting there, I thought to myself, “Actually, there’s something that has not been mentioned”. It is—speaking as a non-Jew—the fact that Victoria Tower Gardens is a remarkable park as it stands now; that is a relevant consideration in our consideration in this place of what the future should be.

I am reminded of a story that I was told about the time when T Dan Smith redeveloped Eldon Square in Newcastle. He called in, as one of his expert advisers, Arne Jacobsen, the famous Danish architect. After the competition for the redesign of Eldon Square had been completed, he turned to Jacobsen and said, “If you had been putting in for this competition, what would you have done?” Jacobsen replied, “I would have left it just as it was before”.