Golders Green Ambulance Attack

Lord Roe of West Wickham Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

First of all, I share the noble Lord’s concern about the attack and about the damage that was done. In response to that damage, the Government have replaced those four ambulances that were burned and will help support that organisation in future to rebuild the types of services that the noble Lord referred to so that we can have a continuum of support in that way. I hope the House will recognise that I cannot comment on the motivation of the attack. Two individuals have been arrested and they are on bail. We do not know what their motivation was, but I say to the noble Lord that antisemitism, whether in Israel or in the United Kingdom, is a vile action. It needs to be attacked and shown up for what it is, and the Government, both at home and abroad, as my noble friend Lady Chapman mentioned earlier, will take action to ensure that we drive it out. We can of course attack the State of Israel and its policies but antisemitism is an entirely different thing, and I share the noble Lord’s concern on that matter.

[Lord Roe of West Wickham (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister a practical question, but first I must commend the actions of my former colleagues in tackling this terrible incident—this vile attack on the Jewish community in London—because they faced great danger and difficulty in doing so; having spoken to them, I am sure of that. My question is focused on, and builds on, the question from the right reverend Prelate: what is the Home Office doing in combination with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in interfaith work? My experience in these matters is that after events escalated in the Middle East, in the London Fire Brigade and in the Metropolitan Police we saw an extraordinary rise in physical attacks on both the Jewish and Muslim communities, almost in parallel. Our view as professionals in the security and safety space was that more work needed to be done to generate co-operation and mutual understanding and to counter some of the vile politics, antisemitism and Islamophobia that we were seeing played out in the most awful way in physical attacks on the streets. What are we doing in the interfaith space to support local community groups, which very often do great work but not always with the resources they need?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend is right to praise the emergency services that responded to the event, because they do not know what they are walking into at the time of an attack. The Government are very keen to support, and are doing a lot of good work through the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, with the Home Office and others, to encourage, that genuine interfaith co-operation, so that faiths understand and support each other and the division between Jew, Christian and Muslim is not one that is reflected by the community at large, and so that they put resilience in place to help give support after incidents such as this across community bases.