Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Turnbull Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnbull (CB)]

My Lords, I consider that this Bill is an abuse of power. When the Government take something away from one group of people, who have for 120 years had access to this park, and give it to another group without compensation, we call that confiscation. We could even call it theft. The Bill started with laudable intentions. Given the enormity of the crimes committed by the Third Reich, and its goal to exterminate the Jews in Europe, the Prime Minister was justified in setting up a commission in 2014 to investigate whether a new memorial and learning centre should be established in Britain. It was no surprise that the commission welcomed this idea, notwithstanding the many other Holocaust memorials and research centres around the country. The report made three suggestions about possible locations but, significantly, Victoria Tower Gardens was not one of them.

At that stage, the proposal enjoyed a good deal of support, though not universal support, and there were divisions in the Jewish community. So far, so good, but then it went off the rails. Subsequently, without prior consultation, the Prime Minister offered Victoria Tower Gardens as the location. The detailed examination of the project on this site was not adequate. Issues, which many noble Lords have spoken of, of security, traffic, the marshalling of visitors, the impact on the environment and on the rest of the park were not bottomed out. The engineering challenge of creating a structure, mostly below the water table, was underestimated. Costs ballooned from around £75 million, of which £50 million was to come from the Government, to around £180 million, with no clear funding plan. The Chancellor reminded us recently:

“If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/7/24; col. 1037.]


There were criticisms of the design—that it was too showy. As others have mentioned, I recommend that people go and have a look at what has been done in Berlin, which is more powerful and contemplative. There were also criticisms that the design was not respectful enough to the site and the memorials already there, that there was too much construction and not enough outreach and education, and that it was a reworking of a failed bid in another architectural competition—London deserves better than Ottawa’s cast-offs. The story was put around that the memorial and learning centre would take up only 7.5% of the park area. This is implausible if visitor numbers approach anything like those projected.

Most damaging was the belated discovery—after judicial process—of something that should have been found out right at the start: that it was not in the Prime Minister’s gift to allocate this site. The site did not belong to the Government but was created by Act of Parliament in 1900 for the benefit of the community.

Two Administrations have however decided to press on, hobbling the Select Committee in the other place, and riding roughshod over the views of many watchdogs protecting heritage and environment and the responsible planning authority, Westminster City Council. They are effectively saying, “We don’t have the power to give you this site, but we will simply introduce a Bill to make that possible”.

The Government should progress this Bill no further but should re-examine how the twin objectives of memory and learning can best be achieved. It is not essential that they should be in a single project or location. We have seen in recent weeks how outbreaks of prejudice and scapegoating of categories of people can flare up, even in Britain, so we need to be constantly vigilant, but this project, in this place, is not the best way to do that. Any new project should be affordable and spend less money on civil engineering and flashy design. The learning centre should be located in a place where it can achieve the ambitions of the original commission.

As a final observation, I say that while attention is rightly focused on the Holocaust, we should not allow this to exclude the memory of the Third Reich’s other great goal: the pursuit of Lebensraum. The number of Slavs and Russians murdered in the east of Europe in that cause also ran into millions and should also not be forgotten.