Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, I stand amazed that this Bill should be brought before the House. By its very nature, a memorial to the dead, let alone to the millions of people who were killed in the Holocaust, should not be an object of controversy. As soon as it became clear that this project as it stands can be carried forward only in an atmosphere of discord and acrimony, it should have been withdrawn. To proceed with it in such circumstances is surely to disrespect the dead and to demean the very horror that the memorial and its accompanying learning centre are commemorating. By withdrawing, I do not mean cancelling; I mean that the memorial should be reconsidered in the light of the debate that has taken place, not just here, but elsewhere, about its location, design and context and its place amongst existing Holocaust memorials and museums and the work that they do.

As a number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lord Herbert and Lord Sandhurst, and many others on all sides of the House have said, we should come up with something better and something more appropriate to what is needed because one thing is clear: if this project is brought to fruition in its present form, this controversy surrounding its genesis will contaminate its purpose. The message it is seeking to convey will for ever be competing with the attention and controversy surrounding its birth.

Indeed, it could be much worse than that. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, wrote recently in the Jewish Chronicle. She said that the memorial will become,

“a focus for anti-Israel and antisemitic protest”.

For as long as, and whenever, the Israeli Government pursue controversial policies towards the Palestinians and their neighbours, the memorial will attract those who oppose those policies just as the United States embassy in Grosvenor Square became the focal point of opposition to the United States at the time of the Vietnam War.

If that would not be bad enough, such demonstrations will conflate criticism of the Israeli Government, which is as legitimate as criticism of any other Government—the United States or anywhere else—with anti-Semitism, which absolutely is not. This conflation of hostility to and criticism of the Israeli Government and Mr Netanyahu on one hand with anti-Semitism on the other is already happening and is something that must be combated in the strongest possible manner, but if a memorial to those who were killed in the Holocaust should become the backdrop for expressions of anti-Semitism, that would surely be nothing short of sacrilege. We must not allow that to happen. I am amazed that the Government are pursuing this project in its present form, and I hope very much that we will be able to come up with something better, more suitable and more worthy of the terrible atrocity that it is commemorating.

Grenfell Tower: Demolition

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I know that the vast majority of people have found secure, settled and long-term accommodation. I will have to write to her about the absolute number of people still in temporary, but relatively stable, accommodation and the number of those who are outside the borough.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on coming before the House at such an early stage and subjecting himself to questions on this important matter. That is a token of good faith. I hope that, when the final decision is taken, there will be a suitable memorial for what has happened. The point about lessons to be learned is something of which we all need to take note. There will need to be an appropriate memorial, not only to the lives that were lost but for the reasons those lives were lost.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, as someone who was made a Minister in March of last year and entered this House only the following month, this is certainly a new experience for me. Actually, it is slightly more enjoyable than what we have experienced, as we are able to see more faces on these Benches. I can assure the House that the work of the independent memorial commission is designed to do precisely that: to find a fitting and long-term memorial to mark the greatest loss of life in a fire since the Second World War. We want to make sure that we get that right and the commission needs to do its work in time.