Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, in discussing funding and expenditure, I will consider the present funding and whether there are restrictions on how the money can be properly spent. This will entail consideration of the plans to build the Adjaye/Arad building in Victoria Tower Gardens.

The Holocaust memorial and accompanying learning centre are to be constructed in accordance with the recommendations made in Britain’s Promise to Remember, as accepted by Prime Minister Cameron in Methodist Central Hall on 27 January 2015. The then Prime Minister highlighted two recommendations. First, Britain should have a

“striking and prominent new National Memorial”

in central London. Secondly, there should be a “world-class learning centre” to accompany the national memorial. The Prime Minister also announced the creation of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, in response to the recommendation that there immediately be a permanent independent body to manage the project. He made the promise of £50 million of public money to kick-start fundraising, which was later increased to £75 million.

Page 53 of Britain’s Promise to Remember says:

“The Commission proposes that the permanent body seek to raise money from business and private philanthropy and that the government should match this, pound for pound, up to an agreed limit”.


That proposal has not been accepted; there is no permanent independent body and the Prime Minister’s kick-start has been ignored. Will my noble friend on the Front Bench and the Minister tell the House why the promoter made and maintains the decision not to implement these two recommendations from the commission?

Further, there has been no alternative effort to raise civil society money. Many memorials have been funded by civil society and the commission looked for philanthropy to show the way. Since 2019 there has been the Holocaust Memorial Charitable Trust, but no money has been raised. Funding and expenditure decisions are now necessary and urgent; the only funds available are the £75 million of public money. In the present circumstances, that needs to be accepted as a limit. In contrast, for the trustees of the charity, there is no limit; depending on the public’s response, the sky is the limit. Thus for funding there is £75 million and, prospectively, an unknown sum in charitable grants. The formal position remains that these funds must be spent on the commission’s recommendations. As the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation says, it is

“taking forward the recommendations of the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission”.

Given what we know from previous planning application proceedings, Committee on this Bill and recent explanations of plans in this House, the memorial and the learning centre are planned to be housed in one building. Unfortunately, this combination of both under one roof is not in accordance with the commission’s recommendations. The evidence is unarguably that the memorial and learning centre are to be closely associated as two distinct organisations in two nearby places. In 2016, the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation aimed to have the memorial constructed by the end of 2017 and the learning centre built and working before the next election. There cannot be any interpretation of Britain’s Promise to Remember that means “under one roof”.

In Committee, the Minister referred to “co-located”. Unusual in its use, “co-located” has a wide meaning, and as used by the commission, it clearly does not mean “under one roof”. The formal position remains that there are restrictions on expenditure, and the Adjaye-Arad building fails to meet the test. We need to agree an alternative that enables us to get on with the job.

Fortunately, there is one. There is widespread support for a conventional, stand-alone national memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens. There are many good reasons for simplifying the project in this way, and we will hear about them shortly. The world-class learning centre can be established nearby in Westminster. Because developing the centre will need both time and money, a newly established independent body may need to secure office space before doing anything more ambitious. How it develops the learning centre will depend upon charitable fundraising.

My amendment sets out on the face of the Bill the way in which a conforming compromise could be funded and how we can move ahead. I beg to move.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, bearing in mind the instructions that have come, it is the aim of all of us who oppose this project to be constructive; we want to improve it. It is not about nimbyism, or even the location, but delivering something worthy of the cause: worthy, as I say to myself, of the losses in my own family, which is what has driven me for the last nine years or so. It is in that spirit that we bring forward these amendments.

I support the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, in drawing attention to the financial non-management of this project in an era when every penny counts, and when proper education about the Jewish community of this country is crying out for funding and reform. The costs have escalated beyond the original estimates, without even a spade in the ground. The available figures are about two years old, no allowance for inflation has been made, the contingency is far higher than usual, private funds have not been identified publicly and, as I will come to, there is no management control.

As I have said before, I am struck by the contrast with the planned expenditure on a fitting memorial to the late Queen, reportedly to be erected, together with a space for pause and reflection, in Saint James’s Park at a cost of £46 million. The project will include the replacement of the Blue Bridge and is going to be ready in 2026. If such fiscal restraint is good enough for our late Queen, surely something has gone adrift in the financial plans for the memorial.

The petitioners before the Select Committee on the Bill asked that the Government present for the approval of Parliament a report on the capital and operating costs of the project, as well as the financial sustainability of the entity that will execute and operate it, before they present any new or amended proposal for planning permission. I have not seen such a financial report.

The original Government grant was £50 million; that has been raised to £75 million, and we believe the total cost will now be nearly £200 million. The latest estimate was made a couple of years ago.

There is no information about who will do the building, or indeed whether there are any builders willing to do it, given the security risks. The Commons Select Committee commented on this:

“We are particularly concerned about the costs around security of a Memorial and Learning Centre, which would need to be taken into account. Security is likely to be required around the clock, and this is, as yet, an unknown cost. Security is likely to become an expensive additional cost, which we urge the Government not to overlook … On this basis, we urge the Government to consider how ongoing costs are likely to be paid for and whether it offers appropriate use of public money”.

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[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I am asked two questions that I always find really irritating. The first is whether I am Jewish and, if I am not, why I am interested in this. The second is, “What got you interested in the Holocaust?” I can tell the House that when I was 10 years old, in 1962, my grandfather got me as a birthday present a copy of The Scourge of the Swastika, which I read from cover to cover. It put the living daylights into me and I have always been fascinated by it. I am sorry that I had not made the connection with the noble Lord. It is a wonderful contribution not just to this country’s history but to its literature.

The noble Baroness made an important point about the loss of the Jewish Museum, which I mourn; I thought it was a really good museum. I am sure she was a regular visitor and I have to tell her that I was too. Without going into detail, there were some management problems that accelerated the problems there, but I make it clear that you can count me in for any revival of the Jewish Museum, because it is important. It fulfils the role that the noble Lord, Lord Moore, referred to in his excellent column about the importance of the POLIN museum in Warsaw. It is a wonderful museum about Polish life and about an understanding of the importance of Jewry in Poland. The hard truth is that the heart was ripped out of Poland by the Holocaust, and Poland has simply not recovered.

I hope noble Lords will not mind me reminding them that the POLIN museum is subterranean. I hope they will not mind me reminding them that the size of the Holocaust section of the POLIN museum is just fractionally larger than the learning centre proposed for Victoria Tower Gardens. I hope they will not be too upset if I remind them that the Berlin Holocaust museum, which goes along with that interesting memorial, is subterranean, and I hope they will not mind me reminding them that it is considerably smaller than the learning centre. Part of the Washington museum is subterranean and, when that museum decided to look at its country during the Holocaust, as we intend to look at ours, the size of its exhibit was smaller than ours. The proposed museum is not exceptionally small. If you look across the world, you will see that, by and large, it meets the numbers.

We have to make it clear that we have the full support of the Imperial War Museum to build it here. We have on the foundation people from the museum in Washington and from the 9/11 museum in New York. We have people who represent the Imperial War Museum. Forgive me, but I have learned throughout this debate what a distinguished historian is: it is a historian who agrees with you. We have a whole list of distinguished Holocaust historians on our academic board who support the memorial.

If we were now to say, “Let’s just build a memorial and find a learning centre elsewhere”, that would be a big missed opportunity, because we are living in a post-Holocaust world. We have just seen the election of a Polish President who has allegations against him of being a Holocaust denier. We cannot wait to do this. This would be an important global institution, and we should not throw it away.

I shall quote two small paragraphs from a letter that we have received from the Holocaust Education Trust, which each Member has received. It is from our friend Mala Tribich, the sister of the late Sir Ben Helfgott. She says:

“I was liberated in Bergen-Belsen by the exceptional British Army in 1945 and London has been my home for most of my life. It feels entirely fitting that a memorial should stand in the country that so many survivors are grateful to and have called their home. My brother and fellow survivor Sir Ben Helfgott … campaigned passionately for this national Holocaust Memorial and dreamed of seeing its opening—it saddens me that he did not live to see it come to pass. It is my hope I will be able to attend the opening and remember Ben and all the family we lost”.


Karen Pollock says in the same letter that more than 10 years ago the memorial was first proposed, and now is the time to act:

“Many survivors like Mala still dream of being present at its opening. Tragically, others—like Sir Ben Helfgott and Lily Ebert MBE—will never have that chance”.


If we split the memorial from the learning centre and do not go along with these proposals, it will be decades, or maybe never, before it is built, and that would be unforgivable.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to this amendment and I have not spoken in this debate yet.

Here are a few facts about myself. I am a secular Jew. One of my cousins was lucky to survive the Second World War in Rotterdam. I have experienced a great deal of antisemitism in my time, some of it through ignorance and some of it deliberate.

I have looked at this carefully and listened to the comments that have been made. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, that I was disappointed. I read the book The Scourge of the Swastika when I was 15 years old and it made an indelible impression upon me. The author wrote another book—if noble Lords have not read it, I can recommend it—called The Knights of Bushido, which is about Japanese war crimes and is equally horrific. So I think I know a fair amount about this subject.

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I tell noble Lords what is on the table today: really importantly, it is not just a memorial but a learning centre. We have some of the best civil engineers in the world—do not tell me we cannot build something complex. Of course we can, there is no doubt about it in my mind. We can not only make it historic; we can make it a tribute to the skill and quality of British construction. I hope the House is going to stay with what is a really important decision and make a statement that will echo across the world of our commitment to oppose antisemitism and to educate the next generation.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, can I clarify some points that have arisen? I think many people are speaking as if there were no Holocaust memorials or learning centres in this country. We have at least half a dozen and 21 learning centres and they do not seem to have had much effect—there has never been an impact assessment. As for yet another one with an extremely narrow remit about rather recherché elements of the British reaction to or knowledge of the Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s, if you did not know an awful lot before you went into it, you would not know much when you came out because it is not going to be able to tell you the whole story. It will be only about things such as Churchill and whether the camps should have been bombed and so on. Unless you were pretty knowledgeable at first, it would not teach you anything.

Indeed, the curator at his presentation the other day was unable to say what was going to be learned. He was unable to say whether it was going to combat antisemitism; in fact, I think he said it would not. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the great survivor who played the cello at Auschwitz, which saved her life, appeared before the Commons Select Committee in her wheelchair. She thumped the table and said it was rubbish. She asked what people were going to learn after 80 years—that we should not kill each other? Was that all we had to offer? In fact, the content as proposed is a sort of tribute to British greatness, British democracy, a kind of absolution: “We are not like that”. I will come back to that.

The other thing that should be clarified is about this tsunami of letters that noble Lords have received. Note that nearly all of them come from individuals. Even the president of the Board of Deputies has not been able to bring himself to put it to a vote because it would very likely be split. This comes from individuals who do not seem to know the British scene or how many other memorials we already have.

In fact, the reason the memorial has to be co-located is that this particular design is not exactly a memorial. What are you going to think if you see 23 sticks sticking up in the air? Of course, it has to have a learning centre somewhere; otherwise, people will just say, “What on earth is this?” and pass on by. Also, the model in the Royal Gallery that has been shown to your Lordships is misleading. It has little figures climbing on the mound but does not show the security buildings that will be necessary or the fences and all the other paraphernalia that are going to have to accompany it. It also seems to put the Buxton memorial in the wrong place; we will come to that.

What we are talking about tonight is largely a moral and historical issue. If ever there was an issue that merited a free vote, it is this one. Indeed, noble Lords know full well that if they have to be whipped to support this project, there is something gravely wrong with it. If it was a good project, there would be no problem at all. The other thing noble Lords have been told is that no Holocaust memorial is ever built without controversy. This is quite wrong, as is the other notion that has been put about that the project was in the Labour manifesto; it was not. The Imperial War Museum, the National Holocaust Centre in Newark, memorials in Swanage and Huddersfield and many others were all built without opposition. It is only when it is clearly in the wrong place, offering no education or commemoration, like in Hyde Park and this one, that there is opposition.

I suspect that many noble Lords have not visited the others nor learned from the 21 learning centres already existing because the debate always seems to assume that there was nothing until this project started and if it does not come about there will always be nothing. That is simply not the case. There are more than 300 memorials and museums around the world and as they go up, as they are built, so the antisemitism rises. The amendment to confine building in Victoria Tower Gardens to overground is perhaps the most sensible and achievable one of all. In a nutshell, this amendment says, if you are in a hole, stop digging.

If the Government want to get a memorial up quickly, without dissent, without limitless costs and all the other obstacles, the answer is to build a proper memorial—one that speaks to you, that says something to you—and put a learning centre close by. It is the building underground that is causing all the trouble. The POLIN Museum in Warsaw, which I have been to, has basements but basically it is a building that is overground, next to an evocative Warsaw Ghetto memorial. But building here means excavation to the depth of two storeys, with a consequent mound to dispose of the soil, which, incidentally, is not depicted in the model. There are flood and fire risks that we will come to.

The underground nature is not a virtue in itself, it came about only because the site was selected without proper research and is too small for what is needed. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, knows, because he was Prime Minister at the time, that the space and nature recommendations that he accepted in his Holocaust Commission report of 2015 have been abandoned. Those who were involved in that, I suppose, cannot be happy with the way it has been cut down now. All they can do is put a brave face on it and try to justify it retrospectively.

The present underground plan is claustrophobic and dark. It is entered by a slope and no consideration seems to have been given to rain. We all know that when architects put up memorials they show you sun and trees and people strolling around. They never factor in rain and this one will have rain going down the slope. The idea was that there should be a place for contemplation, commemoration and prayer but it is too cramped. If you put a decent learning centre somewhere else, you would not need planning permission, you would not need this Bill. It would enable people who want to go to go without a ticket. It would not do the harm it is going to do.

As I have said, the designer’s track record is not a good one, and his current plan has not been able to proceed. You can see it online; it is just an empty site. Somebody mentioned HS2, and quite right too, because this plan has been rated by the National Infrastructure Commission thrice as undeliverable. It has been put in the same category as HS2, and not for planning reasons.

There is a compromise that we have been offering for years: a memorial quickly and a learning centre, with more spacious accommodation, in Westminster. That will achieve the basic 2015 recommendation for a campus, with offices for all of the Holocaust organisations and a lecture hall. What we have been presented with is a failure on every score. It will not be a worldwide attraction—why should it be?—and, in fact, it might not be an attraction at all.

It must be a matter of regret for the entire nation that those responsible for advancing this project have continued with a manifestly impossible plan on such a controversial and inappropriate site. It has given rise to intense opposition from local residents, and from all those who have ambitions in relation to education about Jewish history. As the late and much-lamented former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks said, the Holocaust must be studied in context. That is why the POLIN Museum is so good. The actual size of the Holocaust element in it is irrelevant; it is in the context of more than 1,000 years of history of Jews in Poland. People know why they were there, what happened and what happened afterwards, which is important.

Instead of accepting the compromise that we have offered, the proposers insist on delivering a memorial that is essentially a tourist attraction, for selfies, with a visitor centre attached—a convenient stop for anyone in Westminster who wants a café and a toilet. It shows disregard for the very distinguished Jewish opponents of it. I would hardly include myself among those, but historians, professionals, writers, lawyers, some journalists and people in the creative community have come out and said that this is not good enough for our family, not good enough to teach people and not good enough for this country.

Most damaging of all is the interference with R&R and the repair of Victoria Tower, but I will come to that later. The plan to build underground will come back to haunt the parliamentary authorities if it is not abandoned.

There are many supporters who seem to be content with any memorial rather than a good memorial. It is understandable that the Government are anxious to shake off the allegations of antisemitism that were investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It is not antisemitic to oppose this project and to want to improve it. I did not want to have to raise that, but I have.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has spoken for 10 minutes. I hope she can now bring her remarks to an end, considering this is Report and not Committee stage of the Bill, and a lot of these arguments were rehearsed then.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I will conclude by saying that this needs a complete rethink, and now is the chance for your Lordships to rescue the proposal.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, I have not previously spoken in the debates on this Bill and I had not expected to speak today, but I wish to say a few words in support of the observations made by my noble friend Lord Pickles.

My grandmother was killed in Auschwitz. I was partly brought up by an aunt who survived Auschwitz, but who had actually been in a gas chamber on two occasions. Like others who have spoken, I have some vested interest in this subject.

I have other experience which may be relevant. For many years, I practised as a planning KC. I am very familiar with the range of objections that are likely to be—and very often are—put forward, to any proposal. People would say, “I absolutely support the principle of this development, but it is in the wrong place”; they would say, “I absolutely support the principle of this development, but it is the wrong design”; and they would say, “I would absolutely support the principle of this development, but it is going to cost too much”. I can predict one thing for your Lordships: whatever alternative proposal is advanced to the proposal that is in this Bill, there will be those who come forward with that kind of objection.

This proposal has been before Parliament for too long. My noble friend who spoke from the Front Bench at the conclusion of our debate on the previous amendment recited a long list of those organisations dedicated to the commemoration of the Holocaust which support this proposal. Is your Lordships’ House going to go against them? I very much hope not.

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[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

It was here last week, and I emailed every Member of the Lords to say where it would be. I do not think anyone could accuse me of lack of engagement. I have spent weeks and weeks speaking to people—I am happy to speak to anybody at any time. I took a very accurate picture, so I am sure I can talk the noble Baroness through it after this debate finishes.

I have to make progress. I say to my noble friend who asked in particular about the cost of an underground learning centre versus an overground one that the costs do not work like that. To talk about overground is a hypothetical question. We have given the cost for the whole project. Of course, we recognise that there are uncertainties, which is why our approach includes an appropriate level of contingency when it comes to costs, but it would be wrong to suggest that the cost estimates have somehow failed to take account of the underground construction.

The Holocaust Commission recognised more than 10 years ago that a learning centre should be collocated with the Holocaust memorial. By placing the memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, we have an opportunity to deepen the understanding of many millions of people, from Britain and overseas, about the facts of the Holocaust and its significance for the modern world.

I want to touch on one final point before I conclude. The noble Lord mentioned Washington, as did many others. I was on the phone in the early hours of this morning to the international affairs director at the Washington museum and memorial, Dr Paul Shapiro. It was a special call because he was the person who took me when I visited the Washington memorial. It was a very moving and touching experience. I just want to share something that we can relate to today. The proposal to create a Holocaust memorial museum in Washington was announced in 1979, yet the memorial did not open until 1993. The site chosen, next to the National Mall in Washington, DC, generated considerable opposition, including points such as: it would lead to antisemitism because Jews would be seen as being given privileged status; injustices in US history were more deserving of memorials; or it would be used to whitewash the US response to the Holocaust or not do enough to celebrate US responses. Another reason was that the Holocaust was not relevant to American history, and another was that it was the right idea but the wrong place—something that we have heard today. By 1987 the final architectural design was agreed, but criticism and demands for changes to the design continued. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was opened by President Clinton in 1993. As my friend Dr Paul Shapiro mentioned to me this morning, this month it will welcome its 50 millionth visitor.

Let us not throw this opportunity away. I respectfully ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I have one more question. The Minister has spoken eloquently about learning lessons. My question applies both to America and to this country, where every child at a state school gets Holocaust education and has the benefit of six existing memorials. Why, then, is antisemitism rampant in our universities, among young people who have had Holocaust education, and rampant in the States? What have they learned?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a strong point. Let me be clear: unfortunately, building Holocaust memorials does not get rid of antisemitism. That is a reminder for us all, not just the Government but society, that we should all do more. That means education, which is why the Prime Minister has promised to make sure that the Holocaust is taught right across every school, whether a state school or not. There is more work to be done.

I take this personally in the respect that I am the Minister responsible for dealing with religious hate crime. The noble Lord, Lord Mann—he is not in his place—and I have regular conversations with stakeholders in this area, but we have to do much more as this is unfortunately on the rise. I speak to colleagues from the Community Security Trust, Mark Gardner in particular, and this is something on which we need to work more collaboratively together. It is unfortunately a challenge. As colleagues have said, there is a lot of distortion, misinformation, disinformation, online religious hatred and all kinds of discrimination. We are doing more, and we will continue to do more.

On the Holocaust memorial, I will share my personal experience. In my school education I was taught a bit about it, but it was not until I visited that memorial in Washington that I was personally moved and touched and realised the grave challenges and difficulties—the horrific situation that the 6 million men, women and children faced, as well as those in other communities. That is why I say that the Holocaust memorial is an important opportunity for young people—including schoolchildren when they visit Parliament—to visit and learn from what I see as a huge, life-changing, moving experience. This is in the national conscience and this is a national memorial. That is why we are supporting it and taking this Bill through the House of Lords.