Antisemitism in Modern Society

Jonathan Djanogly Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and I am glad he has been able to talk about the progress that the NEC is making. I believe that more progress will be coming in terms of education, but it has not been formalised at this stage.

It is important to recognise that the antisemitic views harboured by those people, a small minority within Labour, do not exist in a vacuum. No political party should fool itself that it is immune from this poison, and it would be wrong and dangerous to underestimate the scale of the problem across society at large. A few weeks ago, on Holocaust Memorial Day, a survey revealed that 5% of British adults do not believe the holocaust took place and one in 12 believe that its scale has been exaggerated. Clearly, something has gone deeply wrong with our education and our collective memory. The holocaust was the worst crime of the 20th century, in which 6 million Jewish people were murdered. Every single person in Britain should know that. I thank the Holocaust Educational Trust and Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for the work they do to ensure that this atrocity is never forgotten and never repeated.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

rose—

[Barry Gardiner]

I am not taking any more interventions, as I said.

It is only through education that we will protect future generations from falling into these insidious falsehoods—[Interruption.]