Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Felicity Buchan and Julian Lewis

Thursday 26th January 2023 Commons Chamber

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

It truly is an honour and I feel humbled to reply to this powerful and moving debate. I truly think that we have seen the Chamber at its best: serious, compassionate, collegiate and learning from the past, but looking to the future. I start by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) for securing this debate and for his powerful speech that set the right tone. I also pay tribute to him as the first Muslim to start this debate.

There have been so many powerful speeches. I feel bad at mentioning just a few, but I start by paying tribute to the maiden speech from the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western). It was an assured performance. I am delighted to hear that he has interests in housing, as I am one of the housing Ministers. I look forward to getting to know him in the future. There have been so many powerful testimonies about family members and constituents. I pay particular tribute to the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), who gave such moving testimony about her own grandmother. She also talked about Frank Foley in the British embassy in Berlin, who bent the rules to get thousands of Jews out.

I pay tribute to the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) who talked about his own extended family. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) who talked about the importance of upcoming Bills such as the boycott, divestment and sanctions Bill and the holocaust memorial Bill. The hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) gave a powerful speech, and I was struck by her words that we need to remember for the future. My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) talked movingly about his staff member Nina Karsov, who works here on the estate. She was thrown from a train as a two-year-old on the way to Treblinka, somehow survived, but later was imprisoned for two years in communist Poland. If anything does, that shows that these tragic and dreadful events are not one-offs, but sadly happen again.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) gave an immensely powerful speech talking about his time as the United Nations commander in Bosnia, where he was witness to the genocide at Ahmići. He rightly said that ordinary people suffer, but they also carry out such atrocities.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) and the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) talked powerfully about Jane Haining, the only Scot to die in Auschwitz. Her devotion to the children under her care was truly remarkable. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti) talked about his constituent Paul Oppenheimer, an ordinary man with an extraordinary experience. I was struck by the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who said how difficult it was to conceive of the numbers—6 million is a number, but it represents real people.

I was struck by the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), who talked about the enforced starvation of Ukrainians under Stalin in the Soviet Union. Many hon. Members talked about the importance of education, including my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards), who talked powerfully about education. I was struck by her words,

“whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness”.

By joining and by contributing to this debate we are all playing our role in keeping the memory of the holocaust alive.

In the United Kingdom tomorrow, on Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the holocaust. We remember hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti; the 250,000 disabled people who were murdered, and many more sterilised; the 10,000 to 15,000 men accused of homosexuality who were sent to concentration camps, and up to 40,000 more who were brutally mistreated in prison. We also remember the 1.5 million to 2 million murdered in Cambodia; the 8,000 Muslim men and boys murdered in Srebrenica; the 1 million Tutsi murdered in Rwanda; and the 100,000 to 400,000 men, women and children murdered in the ongoing conflict in Darfur, which the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) talked powerfully about.

As we have heard, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “ordinary people”. Thankfully for all of us, there have been and are so many ordinary men and women willing to stand against hatred, and those who demonstrated extraordinary bravery in their efforts to protect and save Jews. Their selfless acts represent the best of humanity. Two women who epitomised that selflessness were Ida and Louise Cook. Between 1934 and 1939, these two women were regular visitors to the opera houses of Germany and Austria. But they also went there to save Jewish lives. They said,:

“The funny thing is we weren’t the James Bond type. We were just respectable Civil Service typists.”

When asked why they did it, they replied,

“because it was the right thing to do, nothing more, nothing less.”

There are countless other examples from many more genocides and tragedies. Those people are beacons of inspiration for us all. They should serve as a powerful reminder to everyone that people have choices. Unfortunately, just as there were people who showed the best of us, there were ordinary people who actively participated or were complicit. The choices that people make across the world today, tomorrow, next week and next month are the choices that will help us to live in a world without genocide. We would all like to think that we would have stood up as one of the “extraordinary”, but it is important to realise that we all have the capacity to look the other way.

I want to touch briefly on two topics, one of which is the UK holocaust memorial and learning centre, which the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) mentioned. I am delighted to say that the UK Government are committed to the creation of a new national memorial and that, at Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday, the Prime Minister confirmed that the Government intend to bring forward legislation to remove the statutory obstacle to the memorial being built in Victoria Tower Gardens. We will do that as soon as parliamentary time allows.

It would be remiss of me not to mention antisemitism in this debate. Antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany. We have heard that just last week, the Community Security Trust—the UK’s leading organisation monitoring antisemitism—published a report outlining a 22% increase in antisemitism on university campuses in 2020 to 2022 compared with the two years prior to that. That is truly unacceptable.

I pay tribute to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and its CEO, Olivia Marks-Woldman, to the Holocaust Educational Trust and its CEO, Karen Pollock, and to their teams. I should add that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which the UK was a founding member, conducts vital work to strengthen, advance and promote holocaust education and remembrance. The Government are proud to have backed the IHRA’s working definition of holocaust denial and distortion in 2013, its working definition of antisemitism in 2016 and, more recently, its working definition of anti-Roma racism in 2020. The UK has the honour of chairing the IHRA next year, and I thank those working hard behind the scenes to ensure its success.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Given that the Minister mentioned antisemitism in universities, may I draw her attention and the attention of the House to the excellent work of the Council for At-Risk Academics, which was founded in 1933 to rescue eminent academics who were being barred from German universities and has functioned ever since? Tomorrow, I hope to meet a young female academic who has been enabled to come to the University of Southampton by CARA, doing the work that it started back then. A lot of good work goes on in universities, including more than 100 of them affiliated to CARA that fund CARA fellowships to enable rescued people to continue with their academic career and one day, hopefully, go back to a free Afghanistan, among other places.

[Felicity Buchan]

I thank my right hon. Friend for updating the House on that important work.

Building Safety

Debate between Felicity Buchan and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Select Committee, who is always thoughtful and well informed.

The building safety Bill will be a landmark piece of legislation. I would like to see it introduced as quickly as possible, post summer recess. It will transform the regulatory system for buildings and put the safety of residents in high-rises at the heart of the regime. It will make it clear who is accountable for the safety of buildings, all the way through their life, from design to construction and occupation. I would also like it to drive a change in the culture of the building industry, because I have been shocked by some of the revelations that have come out of the Grenfell inquiry, particularly about the conduct of the building products industry.

Given that this is an estimates debate, I want to welcome the funding that the Government have made available. Of the £5.1 billion, if we add the £3.5 billion announced in February to the £1.6 billion that had already been announced, and if we also include the subsidised loans scheme, the tax on property developers and the levy on high-rises, it looks to me like a package of £5 billion to £10 billion, and it could well be in the mid to upper end of that range. However, it is clear that there are still an awful lot of outstanding issues that we need to resolve with a sense of urgency.

First, leaseholders in intermediate-height buildings of 11 to 18 metres need clarity on the financing scheme, and they need it as soon as possible, because uncertainty is not good. I understand that the loan will go with the building, as opposed to the leaseholder, but sometimes the freeholds of these buildings are not worth a lot, so if the loan exceeds the value of the freehold, how will that work?

I have tremendous sympathy for the plight of leaseholders who are facing extenuating circumstances and who are in this position—let us never forget—through no fault of their own. Every time I talk to a constituent about a new building, it exposes another complex set of problems, so I beseech the Minister to get dedicated teams at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government drilling down into the detail, building by building, and trying to resolve some of these very difficult and complex issues.

I also ask that there is some discretion. To give a quick example, there is a building in my constituency where the leaseholders paid for the remediation of ACM cladding in the expectation that the building’s owner would then apply to the fund. They have now been told that the building’s owner does not want to do that, but they find that they cannot apply to the fund because they are a third party. I would love to see discretion in that situation.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an outstanding case, and she clearly knows this subject from every angle. Does she agree that no matter how much money the Government allocate to this issue, unless it is combined with a resolution or rule that prevents leaseholders from being charged straight away, there is little chance of leaseholders escaping the unfair financial punishments that she described so eloquently?

[Felicity Buchan]

What I would like to see is a rigorous approach, building by building, so that we can come to solutions, because there is no question but that we need a sense of urgency and that the situation is taking a huge toll on leaseholders.

I am conscious of the time, so I will make a few other points. I am very conscious that we need to hire and train way more professionals—building assessors and fire assessors—who can get on with the work. Insurance is another huge issue. I have talked to constituents who have seen their insurance bills triple or go up fourfold. We have the template of a solution with Flood Re and the solution that we got to flood insurance. Let us be creative and see whether we can do something similar with high-rise buildings and fire risk. It is incumbent on the industry to take a balanced and sensible approach, however; in reality we will not be able to nullify every single risk. I have called previously in the Chamber for the Government to consider a tax on the building products industry in the same way as they have done on the property development sector, and I make that appeal again.

In summary, I welcome what the Government have done, but there is so much still to be done. It needs to be done with a sense of urgency, and we need to resolve these issues for buildings and leaseholders once and for all.