Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I thank and pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the way he has constructively challenged and worked with us on behalf of his constituents. I know this report has great personal significance for his constituents, and I pay tribute to his dedicated work as an advocate in calling for truth, justice and change for the Grenfell community.

I agree that robust oversight of the Government’s implementation of the response is essential for this, and for all public inquiries. The system needs to be improved and we are taking forward the inquiry’s recommendations on oversight. We will create a publicly accessible record on gov.uk of recommendations made by public inquiries since 2024, and we will consider making that a legal requirement as part of a wider review of the inquiry’s framework.

On the Grenfell inquiry recommendations, my Department will publish quarterly progress updates on gov.uk until they have all been delivered. We will report annually to Parliament to enable Members to scrutinise our progress and hold us to account.

On my hon. Friend’s comments about the council, the council failed in some of its most fundamental duties to keep residents safe, to listen to their concerns and to respond effectively when disaster struck. The council was right to apologise, but it is clear that more must be done. I have welcomed the council’s commitment to improvement and culture change, and I have set my challenge to the leader of the council to ensure that those improvements are a reality felt by the council’s residents. I will continue to engage and keep an eye on that progress.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. All our thoughts are with the victims and their families. I know the Secretary of State will keep us up to date about the permanent memorial. However, the big failure that she has not spoken about was the testing regime for the products that were put on Grenfell, and on buildings up and down the country. Firms deliberately cheated the testing regime system, so products were signed off as safe. Will she undertake to overhaul safety mechanisms and the testing regime for products, so that buildings, both the ones we have already and those built in the future, will be safe for the residents who live in them?

[Angela Rayner]

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says. The Government are committed to a system-wide reform of the construction product regime, ensuring that we address the significant gaps that the Grenfell inquiry and the independent review of the construction product testing regime have exposed. The construction products Green Paper that we have published today is a significant step forward towards a construction products regime that has public safety at its heart. I hope we can continue to work across Government and across the House to ensure that we have a system that is fit for purpose for the future.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler). I wish her well in her recovery from cold and flu.

I thank the Government for putting on this debate and for making sure that we continue to honour the victims of the Holocaust, and I thank the Minister for both the tone and content of his opening speech. I declare my interest as co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Holocaust memorial since its formation in 2018, and I am also proud to chair the all-party parliamentary group on UK-Israel.

This Holocaust Memorial Day is particularly prominent and poignant, as it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest concentration camp during the war. Time is going quickly, and many of the courageous and inspirational survivors are sadly passing away, so it is important that we preserve their memories and stories, and teach the next generations, so that we do not make the same mistakes again. I think I have spoken in every Holocaust memorial debate since I was elected in 2010, and today I will focus on the origins of the Holocaust, and on how the United Kingdom could and should have done more to prevent it.

The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events the world has ever seen. The brutal, systematic murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazis in Germany and their collaborators during the second world war must always serve as a stark reminder of the evils that can be perpetrated by humankind. The Jewish genocide did not officially start until January 1939, but Jews have been irrationally targeted throughout the centuries, dating back to as early as 270 BC. I do not intend to go through the history of that.

Let us fast forward to the end of the great war, when the escalation of antisemitism was about to begin. The allied forces sanctioned Germany extremely harshly at the end of the great war. Germany had to accept full blame for the war and pay £6.6 billion—in today’s money, that is a huge amount—because of the damage it caused during the war. Alsace-Lorraine, which had been taken from France by Germany in the 1871 war, was returned to the French, and the Anschluss was banned. Germany was allowed to have only 100,000 soldiers, with no tanks and no air force, and its navy could have a maximum of six battleships. The Rhineland, an area of Germany on the border with France, was demilitarised, and Woodrow Wilson’s idea for a League of Nations was agreed to. The reparations caused immense problems for the German people, who universally believed that they were too harsh, not least because of the damage and instability that they caused to the German economy. Many held a lot of anger and were ready to shift their blame, which fell on the Jews.

Shortly after that was the great depression, sparked by the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. Economies across the globe were affected, leading to a crisis in world trade, prices and employment. Almost overnight, the regular loans from the United States through the Dawes plan, on which the German economy depended, ceased. Hitler, a rising star in the German political scene at the time, promised that the humiliation of Versailles would be avenged and that Germany would be made great again. Many Germans believed that they had been betrayed by the high command of the army in the great war, and they were tired of endless ineffective coalition Governments following the war.

Hitler had no connections to the elite, and he offered a new beginning. Most of all, he promised jobs and bread at a time when unemployment and poverty were at extremely high levels. It is important to ask the question: if we had acted differently after the great war, would Hitler ever have come to power? Of course, we know that he did and that his Nazis embarked on a systematic and deliberate attempt at extinguishing the Jewish race across Europe.

Next Monday marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which was the largest concentration and extermination camp used by the Nazis. The site consisted of Auschwitz I, which was the main camp; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers and incinerators; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of other sub-camps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis’ horrific final solution to the Jewish question.

Between 1942 and late 1944, freight trains delivered Jews from all over Nazi-occupied Europe, and collaborators from across those different countries joined in. A shocking 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, where 1.1 million were sadly murdered. Some 960,000 were Jews, 865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival, having been singled out for immediate extinction. About 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 15,000 others were also killed. Those who were sent to the camp but escaped being gassed were murdered through starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions or beatings. Others were killed during torturous medical experiments—we should remember what that must have been like.

The first mass transport to arrive at Auschwitz, on 14 June 1940, contained 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews. By 1942, transport was arriving regularly, containing thousands of Jews who were all earmarked for execution. If inmates were lucky enough not to be sent straight to the gas chamber on arrival, they were sent to the prisoner reception centre, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected and given a striped prison uniform. The horrors escalated dramatically from there. Youth and fitness for work gained prisoners a temporary reprieve from the gas chambers.

From the time they entered Auschwitz-Birkenau, everything was done to debase and dehumanise the Jews. Their immediate gassing was delayed in order to rob them of their individuality. Each was identified solely by the number that he or she was designated.

The day would start at 4.30 am with a roll call. Prisoners would walk to their place of work, wearing striped uniforms and ill-fitting wooden shoes without socks. Kapos, the prisoner supervisors, were responsible for the prisoners’ behaviour and conformity while they worked, as was an SS escort. The working day lasted 12 hours and was marked by torture and fatigue. Much of the work took place at construction sites, quarries and lumber yards. Visits to the latrines were permitted only at designated times, not when nature called. Work was carried out in the shadow and smoke of the crematoria chimneys that burned incessantly day and night, burning the bodies of murdered Jews and others, invariably including the family members of those forced to work. The belching smoke was a constant reminder of their potential fate.

In the evening, after block inspection, there was a second mandatory roll call. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain in place until he or she was found, or the reason for his or her absence discovered. After roll call, individual and collective punishments were meted out before the prisoners were permitted to return to their barracks for the night and receive their bread rations and water. Prisoners received a hot drink in the morning, but no breakfast, and a watery, meatless turnip soup at noon. In the evening, they received a small ration of bread. At no time did their daily intake exceed 700 calories.

Sanitary conditions were poor, with inadequate latrines and a lack of water. The camp was infested with vermin, such as disease-carrying lice. Inmates suffered and died during epidemics of typhus and other contagious diseases.

While we commemorate 80 years since Auschwitz was liberated, it is important to note that there were 23 main camps across Europe, each with a series of internal camps, totalling over 1,000 camps in all—all dedicated to the torture and extermination of the Jewish community.

To implement the final solution during the latter years of the war, the Nazis built extermination camps on Polish soil. We must remember Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and, of course, Auschwitz-Birkenau. I commend the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust for their brilliant work to educate us about the horrors that people endured. I urge the Minister to confirm funding for the Holocaust Educational Trust’s wonderful “Lessons from Auschwitz” programme so that young people can learn what happened.

It is clear that the Nazis deliberately set out to kill the 6 million Jews, but there are many actions that we in the UK and the United States could have taken. Auschwitz was accessed by a vast network of rail routes, bringing trains full of Jews from across Europe. At no point did the allied forces choose to bomb those rail networks to prevent access to the camp.

In 1944, the US Department of War refused multiple requests from Jewish leaders to bomb the railway lines leading to the camps, despite 452 bombers of the 15th Air Force flying along and across the deportation railway lines on their way to bomb the Blechhammer oil refineries just weeks later.

Time and again, military commanders said that a precision strike on the camp had no chance of success. However, no study was ever made. Proposals to drop weapons into the camp to enable a rebellion were considered but abandoned. From 1942 to 1943, British intelligence was regularly able to intercept and decode radio messages sent by the German order police, which included daily prisoner returns and death tolls for the 10 concentration camps, including Auschwitz, yet no action was taken. Another common argument is that the allies did not know the numbers and the horrors of the camps until after the war, despite the fact that hundreds of prisoners escaped and described their ordeals.

The US Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency that had been established in 1941-42 to co-ordinate intelligence and espionage activities in enemy territory, had received reports about Auschwitz in 1942, but no action was taken to target the camp. On 7 April 1944, two young Jewish inmates who had escaped from the camp, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, published detailed information about the camp’s geography, the gas chambers and the numbers being killed. Roswell McClelland, the US War Refugee Board representative in Switzerland, is known to have received a copy by mid-June and sent it to the board’s executive director, but no action was taken.

We are 80 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz. Antisemitism has increased significantly in the UK and globally following the 7 October attacks by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza. Many UK communities feel vulnerable, with hostility and suspicion of others rising. We hope that Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 can be an opportunity for people to come together, learn from and about the past, and take action to make a better future for all.

I finish on two points. First, it is extremely concerning to see the stark rise in open antisemitism on our streets following the 7 October attacks on Israel by the terrorist organisation Hamas. Jewish people are afraid to go about their lives, and have to hide their identity for fear of being attacked in their own country. We have reiterated, time and again, that the Holocaust must serve as a reminder that we must never allow such persecution of any race or religion, so we must make a conscious effort to stand up against such violations on our own streets.

Secondly, the Minister kindly mentioned the Holocaust Memorial Bill, which is going through Parliament. Sadly, as time moves forward, survivors are passing, and there are fewer and fewer to share their stories. It is crucial that we enable the Holocaust memorial to be built alongside this place, together with the education centre, so that future generations can learn the true horror of what happened during the war and pass it on to their children, so that we never allow history to repeat itself. I have had the privilege of visiting the original Yad Vashem and the modern-day Yad Vashem. Those who visit will know the horrors that the Jewish people encountered, and it is hard to express those horrors. We must make the Bill’s passage a matter of urgency, so that the few Holocaust survivors still with us can see the centre for themselves and be proud of the amazing work they have done in sharing their stories.

I leave the House with the poignant words of Sir Ben Helfgott MBE, a Holocaust survivor and successful Olympic weightlifter. His words should resonate with us all when assessing the urgency of this project:

“I look forward to one day taking my family to the new national memorial and learning centre, telling the story of Britain and the Holocaust. And one day, I hope that my children and grandchildren will take their children and grandchildren, and that they will remember all those who came before them, including my mother, Sara, my sister, Luisa, and my father, Moishe.”

Sadly, Sir Ben died last year. I have no doubt that, through the memorial and learning centre, his memory and story will live on for his children, grandchildren and generations to come, so that we can all learn the lessons of the Holocaust and vow never to repeat them.

Building Homes

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend has real expertise in this area. We are making a distinction between social rented homes—the most affordable type of affordable housing—and others, and we have sought to express that through a change to the glossary in the framework that separates social rented housing from other forms of housing. He is right that brownfield delivery involves additional challenges. We are very cognisant of those, and we are exploring how the variety of Government funds that support the delivery of brownfield sites might be improved as we go forward.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

The Minister has alluded to one of the challenges with planning permissions—namely that, on any one day, there are something like 1 million unbuilt permissions for new housing. Developers ration the supply in order to keep the price high, so will he consider, as I think he did in opposition, the principle of “use it or lose it”? At the moment a developer will get a permission, which is repeatedly sold on until viability means the site cannot be developed. If the planning permissions were either brought forward or lost if they were not used in time, we could get the houses and homes that people want.

[Matthew Pennycook]

The hon. Gentleman, like my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), has great expertise in this area. He will know that local authorities already have powers to issue a completion notice to require a developer to complete a stalled development. To bring greater transparency and accountability to this area, we seek to go further by taking the necessary steps to implement build-out reporting. I assure him that I am giving a lot of attention to what more we might do on build-out, because developers have made commitments to increase the pace of build-out across the country. We need to make sure they follow through with that.

Council Tax

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The damage done to local government over the 14 years in which the Conservatives were in office is profound. We have inherited, as I said, a system on the verge of collapse. We are absolutely committed, as part of rebuilding that system from the ground up, to a fair funding settlement. As I say, the Minister for Local Government will announce more details in the upcoming local government finance settlement in the new year.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Local authorities across the country will welcome multi-year settlements, so they can plan for the future. However, does the Minister have any plans whatever for a revaluation of properties, given that properties were originally valued back in 1992, when council tax began? The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and I produced a Select Committee report on what could be done to ensure that councils need not be strictly neutral in terms of finance, and could revalue properties to bring valuations up to date.

[Matthew Pennycook]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to discuss the local government finance settlement ahead of it being formally presented to the House. I am afraid I cannot do that, but the Government have heard his point, and I will ensure that it is passed on to the Local Government Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

As my hon. Friend says, this Government are committed to delivering 1.5 million quality homes over this Parliament to ensure that people have access to high-quality housing. New build homebuyers must feel confident that their new home is safe, and this Government are committed to improving redress for homebuyers when things go wrong. We are considering the recommendations in the Competition and Markets Authority’s recent market study on house building, and will publish our response in due course.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

The hon. Lady will be well aware of the recent fires in east London and the fact that many high-rise buildings in this country are still not deemed safe because developers are refusing to do what they should. What action will she take to force developers to make buildings safe for residents?

[Rushanara Ali]

I know the hon. Gentleman did a great deal of work on this agenda in the last Parliament. This week, more than seven years after the Grenfell tragedy, the community will receive the public inquiry’s final report, and I hope its findings will help to provide the truth that the bereaved and survivors deserve. The Dagenham fire, to which the hon. Gentleman refers, must have had a traumatic impact on those people, as well as on the affected residents.

Today we have published a written ministerial statement setting out our actions in relation to the outstanding phase 1 recommendations of the Grenfell inquiry, and further work is under way to ensure that we can accelerate the work to make buildings safe. I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman on this agenda.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill in its entirety and against the amendments, which I think will only delay through prevarication getting the Bill on to the statute books. I declare my interest as co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for the Holocaust memorial and learning centre, as well as an ambassador for Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. I think there is universal agreement that there is a need for a Holocaust memorial and that there should be a learning centre as well. It appears to me that the debate today has centred around where this should be located, what conditions should be imposed and the funding for it, which is the subject of the amendments.

We in this country are deeply involved in Holocaust education. It is a requirement on our schools to ensure that young people learn about the horrors of the Holocaust and where the ultimate destiny of antisemitism leads. But the reality is that the survivors of the Holocaust are getting frailer by the day and the Holocaust is fading into distant memory, so it is vital that we capture those survivors’ testimony and ensure they have had the opportunity to speak to as many people as possible before they unfortunately pass on. It is therefore vital that we have a permanent national institution to preserve the collective memory of the Holocaust. We have to understand the history, what went on and why the Holocaust happened. It is very difficult to contextualise the systematic murder of 6 million people because they were Jewish. It is tough to impart that.

Of course, there are memorials and centres around the world, including in Washington, Paris, Cape Town, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, New York, Boston, Berlin and, of course, Jerusalem. Although we were not occupied by the Nazis, we were part and parcel of defeating them. Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees came to this country to make it their home and, of course, our troops liberated Bergen-Belsen and discovered at first hand the horrors of what had happened to the Jewish population, but that saved countless lives.

There are concerns, of course, about Britain’s role. We should remember that children were almost orphaned by the end of the war and their parents were denied entry to the United Kingdom. Our role is not always to say how wonderful we are, and some of the decisions taken at that time need to be explored. Why, for example, were the train tracks into Auschwitz-Birkenau not bombed? We had the ability to bomb them to prevent many people from being transported. In the Channel Islands, British police officers actually carried out German policies. We have to recognise this and face up to it, and the learning centre will give us that opportunity.

There are obviously concerns about the site’s location. I take a strong view that it needs to be alongside the principal democratic institutions of our time, namely, the Houses of Parliament. It is clear that this will be a nationally significant building, and the monument will serve to remember those people who were murdered during the second world war.

The history is that the then Prime Minister, now the Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, had a report from the Holocaust Commission that recommended the construction of a striking and prominent new national memorial to be located in central London. The report recommended that the national memorial should be co-located with a world-class learning centre, so the Bill requires co-location.

There is cross-party support. Lord Pickles and Ed Balls, who chaired the commission, committed the Government to providing a site in Victoria Tower Gardens, next door to the Houses of Parliament. I remind colleagues that the 2019 Conservative manifesto committed us to delivering the construction of the planned UK Holocaust memorial.

Planning permission for the memorial and learning centre was granted in 2021, but the High Court ruled in April 2022 that certain sections of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 were an obstacle to construction and therefore quashed the decision to grant planning consent.

This Bill is specific in dealing with the restrictions to the siting of the memorial and learning centre. Importantly, it does not grant planning permission, which will still have to go through the normal process. We have heard that some colleagues are concerned about the appropriateness of Victoria Tower Gardens. The reality is that there will still be a requirement for the gardens to remain open to the public. The Bill disapplies only the relevant sections of the 1900 Act to ensure that it does not block the building of this memorial and learning centre in the gardens. I would say that no place in Britain is more suitable for a memorial and learning centre than the gardens next door to Parliament, the very institution where decisions on Britain’s response in the lead-up to, during and in the aftermath of the Holocaust were made.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The point my hon. Friend is making now was not one put forward by the commission, and it was not one put forward by the foundation. Would he agree?

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the Father of the House for that intervention. It is clear that the site was chosen by the commission; it recommended this. The reality is that the development of the planning application followed thereafter, and obviously the impact on the gardens has to be considered. It is right that only Parliament can change the law, and it is right that Parliament should consider whether the unique significance of the Holocaust justifies seeking an exception to the protections it put in place more than 100 years ago.

The proposals for the memorial include sensitive landscaping that will improve Victoria Tower Gardens for every user, and more than 90% of the area of the current gardens will remain fully open after the memorial is built. I understand that my colleagues are concerned about this, but local residents and workers will be able to visit and enjoy the gardens just as they do now. The Holocaust Memorial Bill lifts restrictions in relation only to Victoria Tower Gardens—no other piece of land—and in relation only to a Holocaust memorial and learning centre, and no other form of development. The Bill does not seek to override the planning process, so all the arguments about the use of the park can be properly considered against the benefits of the memorial.

Landscape improvements to Victoria Tower Gardens will ensure that this important and well-used green space, as has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), is made more attractive and more accessible than ever before. The new development will take about 7.5% of the site. All the mature London plane trees will be protected, and additional planting and improved drainage of the grassed area will increase the overall attractiveness of the gardens. Alongside the riverside embankment wall, new raised boardwalks will be constructed, helping to make the seating more accessible and making it easier for everyone to enjoy views of the Thames. New pathways will link existing memorials and monuments within the gardens, and additional seating will enhance the visitor experience. The playground will be improved. The objective is to ensure that all current uses can continue after the memorial is constructed. All these matters are fully considered as part of the planning process. During his consideration, the planning inspector produced a detailed report with a careful assessment of the impacts on trees, traffic, gardens, playground and all other relevant matters, and then recommended that planning consent be given.

The construction phase of the UK Holocaust memorial and learning centre is expected to last around three years. The project team aims to make phased closures and reopenings of different sections of the park to ensure that as much of the park as possible is available for all users while the work carries on to produce this important memorial.

The learning centre will include a powerful exhibition that will provide context for the memorial and encourage reflection on the relevance of the Holocaust for Britain today.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

From visiting really serious Holocaust museums, as I have done in Washington and Berlin, I know that they are vast spaces. This is a story that takes a huge amount of time and space to explain. The trouble is that the proposed learning centre is really a tiny space, and it simply will not do justice to the horror of what we are talking about.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that contribution. I am one of those who visited the original Yad Vashem in Jerusalem before it was expanded. Personally, I found the original Yad Vashem even more intimate and poignant than the current Yad Vashem. I understand what my right hon. Friend has to say, but I think this centre will be appropriate for what we are seeking to achieve.

One aspect that has been discussed is security. The learning centre will obviously have entry security arrangements similar to other public buildings in Westminster. I know that the Government—I look to the Minister to comment on this when he contributes to the debate—are working with security experts, agencies and the Metropolitan police to develop the necessary level of security measures. Victoria Tower Gardens will continue to be freely accessible to all. Therefore, the security threats should not be an argument against this memorial; rather, they are an argument for why the memorial is needed in the first place.

As I have said, only 7.5% of the land will be taken up by the memorial at the very southern point of the park. There will still be a clear view of Parliament from all other parts of the park. The Buxton memorial has been mentioned, with concerns about overshadowing.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I do not want to be nit-picking, but the southern part of the park is a children’s playground. Although some people say it will not be reduced in size, others think it will be reduced in size by 30%. The 7.5% figure is challenged by very many people, but it is probably not the time to go into ground plans.

[Bob Blackman]

We can debate whether the figure is 7.5% or 10%, but the key point is that more than 90% of the park will be preserved. The plan for the memorial is that it will be no higher than the Buxton memorial and its bronze fins will step down progressively to the east, in visual deference to the Buxton memorial. The memorial was designed by Ron Arad specifically for Victoria Tower Gardens.

Some suggestions have been made about the Imperial War Museum. To my knowledge, the Imperial War Museum supports the memorial being situated in Victoria Tower Gardens and has no wish for the memorial to be built in its grounds. A detailed flood risk assessment was prepared as part of the planning application. It concluded that Victoria Tower Gardens is heavily protected by the River Thames flood defences, significantly reducing the risk of flooding on site.

On the issue of antisemitism, I do not think anyone would claim this memorial will be the answer to solving more than 2,000 years of antisemitism. However, it will be a reminder to those in the Houses of Parliament of the potential to abuse democratic institutions to murderous consequences, in stark contrast to the true role of democracy in standing up and combating racism, hatred and prejudice wherever it is found.

Some hon. Members have suggested that certain members of the Jewish community do not support the proposed site. As everyone knows, the Jewish community is not a homogeneous group and there will be multiple differences of opinions, as within any community. Supporters of having the memorial on this site include the Chief Rabbi, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the chair of the Jewish Leadership Council and chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, to name but a few, plus many Holocaust survivors. The funds assigned to the project are for a Holocaust memorial. The funds have not been diverted from educational budgets and there is no reason to think that abandoning the memorial would mean funds being reassigned to any other project.

The Jewish Museum was not consulted before the joint letter from different members of the Jewish community was written, but the museum plans to reopen in a central London location in the near future, so its concerns should be noted. The aims of the memorial and the Jewish Museum are complementary, but not the same. The memorial will set the Holocaust within a context that includes the history of antisemitism, including in Britain, and of subsequent genocides.

There have been multiple consultations with members of the Jewish and survivor communities. At every stage of the planning inquiry, individuals and groups have been able to give written and oral evidence. The planning inspector took great care to allow all voices to be heard at the inquiry and he recorded all evidence in his very detailed report. After taking account of all views, he recommended that planning consent should be granted.

Some people say there is no rush. The original proposal was made in 2015; we are now nine years on. Even if the Bill makes rapid progress and the development takes place, the memorial will take longer to develop than the extent of the Holocaust. We owe it to the survivors to get on with the job as quickly as possible. The survivors themselves are asking for that. Harry Bibring spoke to Sky News back in 2017, but sadly passed away a few days after the interview. He said:

“I’m very much looking forward to the completion of the new Holocaust Memorial in the Victoria Tower Park next to the Parliament, which we’re going to have a learning centre as well as just a monument and I don’t know whether I’ll live to see it, but it’s in planning stage in Westminster Council and I hope nothing goes wrong”.

Manfred Goldberg, a Holocaust survivor said in May 2023:

“I was 84 when Prime Minister David Cameron first promised us survivors a national Holocaust Memorial in close proximity to the Houses of Parliament. Last month I celebrated my 93rd birthday and I pray to be able to attend the opening of this important project.”

Sir Ben Helfgott, a Holocaust survivor and an Olympic weightlifter, who sadly passed away last year, wrote in 2021:

“I look forward to one day taking my family to the new national memorial and learning centre, telling the story of Britain and the Holocaust. And one day, I hope that my children and grandchildren will take their children and grandchildren, and that they will remember all those who came before them, including my mother, Sara, my sister, Luisa, and my father, Moishe.”

Susan Pollack, a Holocaust survivor speaking at a parliamentary reception earlier this month:

“I am 93 years old. My dream is to see this memorial and learning centre finally built and to see the first coachload of school children arrive and ready to learn. That is what it is all about. And, hopefully, those students will learn what happened to me and become beacons of hope in the fight against contemporary antisemitism.”

I end by expressing my hope that we can complete the Committee stage of the Bill, get on to Third Reading and usher the Bill rapidly through the House of Lords, so that those brave survivors of the Holocaust will live to see the development of the memorial and the learning centre.

[Andrew Percy]

It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). Given the news that has just broken, this may be the last time that I speak in this Chamber—and the last time that anybody from the Brigg and Goole constituency speaks, given that we are being abolished and split four ways. If it is the last time that I speak, I would like to say that it has been an absolutely huge privilege—the privilege of my life—to serve the people of Brigg and Goole and the Isle of Axholme. It is also a privilege to speak on a subject such as this, which is so close to my heart and something that I feel so passionately about.

First, let me pay tribute to Lord Pickles and Ed Balls for the work that they have done on this memorial, which is going to happen. I have absolute confidence that this memorial will be built. I was in the tent pavilion just a couple of weeks ago when representatives from the Government and the Opposition attended an event for Yom HaShoah. Both Front-Bench teams attended to confirm yet again, in front of Holocaust survivors and members of the community, that this memorial will be built and that it will be built next to Parliament. I was very grateful for that confirmation, as were the members of the Jewish community groups and the survivors who were there.

I also want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson). I did not necessarily agree with what he had to say, but he did chair the hybrid Bill Committee. As a fellow Chair of a hybrid Bill Committee, I wish him every success, because his Bill actually made it back to this place. On the HS2 Bill, which I chaired, we spent a year or more listening to petitioners, as he had done, but that turned out to be in vain. We should not worry, though, because those three afternoons a week that we lost were not without some value.

I also want to apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) for speaking on a matter that is in her constituency. I suppose that it is the burden of representing this area. I would be very protective and my hackles would be well and truly up if I had people interfering in my patch, so, although I apologise for that, I am going to be a hypocrite and now interfere in her constituency. But I may not be the first person in here to have engaged in hypocrisy.

Last night, I hosted an event here for Terraforming, a civil society group from Serbia. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests because I recently visited that organisation in Serbia. We held that event here in Parliament to showcase the story of Serbian Jewry and what happened to them during second world war and the somewhat unique way in which Serbia was divided up. The process of the Holocaust in Serbia was very different depending on where in Serbia the Jewish community lived, but the result was of course the same. The group was so proud to hold that event here in Parliament, the seat of the British Government. It meant so much to them to tell that story here. That is why having the memorial next to this building—intrinsically linked to it, emotionally and physically—is so important.

As we told the story of what happened to the Jews of Serbia, I was reminded of the visit that I made back in April on the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Jews of Novi Sad, in the part of Serbia that was occupied by the Hungarian fascist regime. Those Jews were herded into a synagogue on, I believe, 26 April, held there for two days without drink and food, and then shipped off, largely to Auschwitz, and murdered. That synagogue still stands, and we stood in it 80 years to the day on which the Jews of Novi Sad were rounded up and forced into it. Again, that reminded me of the value of having a place to memorialise and remember what happened. We are lucky in Britain, with the exception of the Channel Islands, not to have had that experience ourselves, so we do not have venues in which what happened during the Holocaust took place. That is why it is so important to have a memorial close to the seat of Government.

I am probably the only person present who, when I had a proper job, which I now may well have to return to, taught the Holocaust curriculum to our young people as a history teacher. Such education is perhaps more important than ever, as living memory of the Holocaust fades. People of my generation—officially I am 35, but that may or may not be the truth—had grandparents and family who were directly involved in world war two, so the Holocaust and the experience of world war two was living history for us. For anybody who is below my generation, that is not the case. We have increasingly less living testimony, which is why it is more important than ever that we create new resources and facilities where that testimony can live on for those who are not connected in the same way that people of my generation were, because of our grandparents, or that the generation before was, because of their parents.

As a history teacher, I would have very much valued having a place in the nation’s capital to which we could have brought young people to not only tell them the story of the Holocaust and its horrors but then relate it to how this place, and the decisions that were taken here, played such an important role in ultimately demolishing the machinery of murder that led to the herding of human beings on to cattle trucks in the millions, their transportation to concentration camps, and then ultimately their murder in gas chambers. To have had a place to bring my students, next to this place, which is so important in the story of how the Nazi regime and the Holocaust were ended, would have been so valuable.

Despite the brilliant work of organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust, we sadly cannot take all the young people in this country to Europe to see the concentration camps. That is not possible, but the ability to bring young people to somewhere central in this country where we can tell them about not only the experience and the horrors of the Holocaust but the very proud role that our democratic institutions played at that time is so important.

Why is this now more important than ever before? To answer that question, it is important to remember how the Holocaust started. It did not start with Auschwitz. That was the end. It did not start with gas chambers or with cattle trucks; it began with the demonisation of a people purely because of their racial and religious background. Its form, I am afraid to say, is familiar in what we see today. Jewish students were banned from university campuses, and we see Jewish students being questioned and being prevented from gaining access to university campuses across much of the west at the moment.

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[Andrew Percy]

They are indeed—it is a brilliant presentation. I am also very proud that every Holocaust Memorial Day in my local community, particularly in Brigg, the town council ensures that we have a display at Brigg Heritage Centre telling the story of the Holocaust and how we got there. That is really important.

However, the reason I have set out the comparison between what we had in the 1920s and 1930s and what we have today is that those parallels are genuinely frightening for Jews in this country at this moment in time. Of course, that precursor to the Holocaust involved the marching of people through streets in Europe, holding banners and signs singling out Jews for special treatment, demanding boycotts and othering the Jewish community, and that is exactly what we have seen in these past few months.

That leads me on to another argument that has been put in this debate about security. I made some reference to this when I intervened a little earlier, but the idea that we should not build this memorial and learning centre next to Parliament because of security concerns is something I have a real problem with. That is effectively saying to those people who have sought since 7 October, and in many cases well before then, to demonise, frighten and scare Jewish people, that they have won. It is saying that we are so cowed as a people, as a nation and as a democracy by people who shout loudly and aggressively on the street that they get their way and we will put it somewhere else—we will stick it over in Lambeth. I do not think that is an appropriate or credible argument against putting this facility next to Parliament.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow—[Interruption.]

[Bob Blackman]

East!

[Andrew Percy]

East, of course—as someone from East Yorkshire, I say east is always best. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) dealt well with the security concerns. We bring young people here to learn about our democracy in the learning centre, and they have to go through a similar process, so I do not believe that should be an impediment.

We have heard about the loss of green space. I am not a resident of the area, so I have no selfish interest in whether I can walk my dog in the park. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East made clear, the land take will be 7.5%. I find it a bit of a strange argument to say, “Don’t build this here because it takes some green space away. Build it over there, where it takes somebody else’s green space away.” I am not sure that I buy that argument either.

We have heard arguments about the Jewish community. Some people have prayed the Jewish community in aid as being against the proposal, but the Jewish community is not homogenous, so there will be very different views. It is worth reiterating again that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East very eloquently made clear, Jewish leadership in this country, including the Chief Rabbi and those at the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Jewish Leadership Council, whom we in government and Parliament rely on and trust to be representatives of their communities, have been clear that they support the memorial at that site. Again, my hon. Friend stole some of my thunder by quoting so eloquently—better than I could have done—some of the Holocaust survivors who so dearly wanted to see the memorial built. Fortunately some are still with us, and I hope they will see it built, but others have passed. It is clear that although there is not one homogenous view, Jewish leadership groups and community leaders absolutely support the memorial being built next to this place.

The Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), whom I respect very much, described the proposal as a “box”, which I did not think was an appropriate way of describing it, and there have been other comments about the size of the venue. I do not believe that size should be an impediment to coming away from the memorial having had a truly moving and educational experience. As highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, who I am mentioning often—I have to be nice to him at last, after 14 years of us being here together—Yad Vashem is an incredibly powerful place. The parts of it that I find most moving are the small memorial to the children and the room with the photographs, which are so powerful and moving. I do not believe that size should be an argument. It seems strange to argue about costs and say at the same time, “But it’s not big enough; maybe it needs to be bigger but somewhere else,” which may result in it being much more expensive.

I am conscious that the debate is time limited, but I wanted to make this contribution. I believe and hope that the memorial will be built. At the moment, we are seeing a record rise in Jew hate, in antisemitism, so it is more important than ever that the memorial and learning centre stands next to this place, which is the thin blue line—or red line, or whichever colour we want to call it—[Hon. Members: “Green line!] It is the thin green line—and red line—between mob rule and democracy. Over the past few months, that line has been tested in a way it has not been tested for quite some time. That is why it is my deepest belief that the location next to this place—which is all that stands between us and despotism—should be pursued. As we saw in Europe in the 1930s, and as we see even today in parts of the world, democratic institutions are very fragile. On that basis, I will be opposing the amendments this evening, and I look forward to the Bill passing.

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[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is right, and I will thank him properly on Third Reading, but may I just put on record at Committee stage my thanks to him for the work that he did chairing the Select Committee that looked into all of this? It did a thorough piece of work and I am hugely grateful to him and to colleagues who gave up so much of their time.

Yes, costs have gone up. I say this as somebody who has spent some considerable time looking at development costs in the private sector. Sometimes we can look at things in the public sector and say, “How on earth have they arrived at this particular figure?” But the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and others will keep a very clear view on that, and they are right to do so.

I say this to my hon. Friend: we want to commemorate and memorialise a horrible period in our world history, and ensure that education can be provided so that the mistakes of the past are hopefully not repeated in the future. I do not make this point to be flippant, but what cost can be put on that, given the scale and the seriousness of the task that we have in front of us?

[Bob Blackman]

My hon. Friend will clearly be aware that when the original proposals were put forward back in 2015-16, the design of the memorial and the education and learning centre had not been considered. Therefore the budget that was set then, before the design work was done, was clearly going to be inadequate for the type of facility that we are talking about. Given that we are in those circumstances, he is right that we will need to take a clear position on keeping to costs and keeping to the contract prices. Equally, there is the provision of private sector investment, to which my hon. Friend will no doubt refer. Does he agree with me that, in all these developments, until such time as spades go in the ground, investors are very unlikely to make contributions until they see something really happening.

[Simon Hoare]

In broad terms, my hon. Friend is absolutely right in the way that he sets out how these things will work. I am grateful to him for making his point in the way that he did.

Reference was made to some astronomical sum of money that has already been spent. I think I heard the figure £40 million. A total of £18 million has already been spent. I did not recognise the £40 million figure when it was uttered by, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West, so I checked with my officials. Nobody in the Department recognises that figure. He may want to write to me with the details, but it is not a figure that we recognise.

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[Bob Blackman]

In the short time available, we should remember that the Holocaust represents the darkest hour in human history, when 6 million Jewish people were systematically murdered by the Nazis. Above all else, the thing that impresses me about the survivors is their lack of bitterness. It would be very easy for them to be very bitter and very angry about what happened, but they give their thoughts and their education freely and without bitterness. That is the key point. As the survivors pass away, we must ensure that we capture their testimony so that it is always available.

I regret that, when I was at school, we had no education on the Holocaust. Our generation was largely ignorant. The Jewish population of this country largely did not want to talk about what had happened for fear of not being believed. Education is vital. I thank the Minister and the successive Ministers who have taken this Bill through the House to enable us to have a learning centre and memorial. I also thank the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the Holocaust Educational Trust and all those wonderful bodies that have agitated for this to happen, and who deliver education and learning every single day. On a cross-party basis, the House can bless this Bill as we enable it to get on the statute books; I am sure the House of Lords will bless it as well. We want to ensure that it becomes a lasting memorial and an education for young people, so that we never forget what happened during the second world war.

Building Safety

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for highlighting this issue, and I am also grateful for the meeting that he arranged with the representative of the leaseholders and the time that he gave for us to go through it. It is very useful to work through individual cases: although they are often the trickiest, the knottiest and the most challenging, it is important for us to understand the policy implications.

Let me say to the right hon. Gentleman—without going into the details of the individual property, which I should be happy to discuss with him separately—that in general we seek to be as transparent as we possibly can, hence the publication of some of the additional data today. We remain committed to making progress on both individual buildings and properties as a whole, and I hope that both the property and the developer that the right hon. Gentleman has highlighted will make progress as soon as possible.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his update, but it appears from his statement that there are still two tall buildings with ACM cladding on which no work is going on and on which the Government have taken no action; I should be grateful if he could clarify that. Another issue that arises directly from his statement is that there are now 4,000 homes between 11 and 18 metres high whose residents will probably not be able to get a mortgage, insure their properties or sell them. Will he speed up the process of assessing those blocks so that the residents can feel safe, and if work is required on them will he ensure that it is carried out speedily, so that homes are made safe for the residents and for whoever they sell them to?

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful for the question. On my hon. Friend’s first point, there are 11 buildings that have not started or finished their ACM remediation. One is not occupied. Of the remaining 10, work will commence on two in the next few weeks. Eight buildings will be remediated at a further date, and the remaining two have enforcement action being taken by the relevant authorities. Although I would like the number to go down to zero at the earliest possible opportunity, the situation is better than it was when we provided the update in October, and I expect the number to continue to move on a positive trajectory in the months and weeks ahead.

On my hon. Friend’s point about the 4,000 buildings that are being reviewed, we provided a further 1,000 potential leads to Homes England, which is leading on the cladding safety scheme, a number of months ago. A significant number were found to not require any remediation. Although I cannot comment on where the 4,000 will land, it is likely that a large number of them will not require remediation in the end, so I encourage residents not to worry about the number, but to see what comes out of the process.

Since December 2022, we have also taken action to make sure that we are starting to separate the need for remediation on properties from people’s ability to get on with their lives. The mortgage sector has been freed up to allow people to take mortgages, to remortgage and to move properties when big life events happen, and we hope that that will continue. I am monitoring, on a month-by-month basis, the large banks and building societies that are providing mortgages, and I can see that progress is being made.

Extremism Definition and Community Engagement

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Because we will publish the evidence behind them.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I warmly welcome today’s statement, but we have to consider the fact that organisations are populated by individuals. Individuals who have hateful views may be expelled by those organisations, or may go off and form other organisations that will not be on the banned list. As the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) said, it is individuals who seek to radicalise young people, either from abroad or in the UK. What action will the Secretary of State take to ensure that foreign nationals who seek to radicalise our young people are prevented from doing so?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, related to that made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). The Home Office is vigilant about who it allows to come here, and it conducts appropriate work to ensure that visas are not granted to people who are here to sow division and hate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to support rough sleepers and homeless people to move into accommodation.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

17. What steps he is taking to help reduce the number of families in temporary accommodation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)]

We are investing almost £2.4 billion over three years to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, which is an unprecedented amount. That includes over £1.2 billion through the homelessness prevention grant, which councils can use flexibly to prevent homelessness and help families to move out of temporary accommodation. Last week, an additional £107 million was allocated to councils through the single homelessness accommodation programme, providing 808 homes for people sleeping rough.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, but the number of people in temporary accommodation has risen by 10% over the past year, and the number of rough sleepers has risen by 27% across the country. Clearly, the money is very much needed—all London councils report that they are spending more than the temporary accommodation money that has been allocated. Equally, the pilots for Housing First have been outstandingly successful, so can we ensure that Housing First is introduced across the country and more investment is made, in order to take people off the streets and provide them with a permanent home, as they deserve?

[Felicity Buchan]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for everything he has done in the homelessness space. The other day, I was looking at the figures from the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—we have supported 708,000 families courtesy of that Act, in order to prevent homelessness. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have seen an uptick in rough sleeping and homelessness, which is disappointing. However, with rough sleeping we are still 9% below pre-pandemic levels, and 18% below the highs in 2017. I agree with him about the success of Housing First. We have invested £42 million in those pilots, and we are investing a further £30 million through the rough sleeping initiative.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

Commonhold has clearly created a significant amount of interest.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and for what he is saying. There are certain building companies in this country—Bellway Homes, for example—whose policy is to sell the leasehold to leaseholders and sell the freehold to a company that then exploits every aspect of the freehold, without even informing the leaseholder that they have done this. Surely we can close this loophole—we could close it this afternoon—by ensuring that the freeholder must give the leaseholder the first right of refusal to purchase the freehold.

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I know that it is covered in an amendment put down by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and I will come to it later in the debate.