Holocaust Memorial Bill

Debate between Lord Pickles and Viscount Eccles

Committee stage
Thursday 20th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I support what my noble friend has just said. I very much admire the commission’s report and I think that the way that it is being treated now shows a degree of disrespect that is little short of appalling. The debate that we have just heard from my noble friend Lord Pickles and the noble Lord, Lord Austin, is completely irrelevant to the actuality of what is being proposed and the difference between it and what the commission recommended.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

I am sorry that my noble friend sees this in such personal terms. I do not see people objecting to this at all in a personal way; they are expressing a perfectly reasonable right. I apologise if my intervention earlier rather excited one or two colleagues to some rather verbose interjections.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Debate between Lord Pickles and Viscount Eccles

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

I wonder if I could just make a very small point of clarification. As a personal view, I entirely agree that the memorial should be in Victoria Tower Gardens. What I worry about is the attempt to shoehorn in the learning centre as well. If we were able to have a standalone, well-designed, come-and-see memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens, it would get my vote immediately, because I also have in mind a world-class educational initiative, and I cannot see that the building proposed, or any of the preparations that have been made, go anywhere near creating a world educational initiative. In the world educational initiative, it is not only the understanding of what happened but what we think about it now and where we are going in these very difficult days where we have similar problems to face.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I am worried that Members are getting a little agitated. I do not think that they should be concerned, because there has not been a single Holocaust memorial built anywhere in the world where this kind of controversy did not occur. People, by and large, do not like them. They do not want them, but once they are built, they are very proud of them.