Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Finkelstein Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the many friends with whom I share so much politically and with whom I do not agree on this matter. I hope they will excuse me if I speak my mind, as they have spoken theirs.

I should say at the beginning that I am a patron of the Wiener Holocaust Library, that I sat on the Holocaust Commission of David Cameron, and that my mother is a Holocaust survivor, all of which gives me a special interest in this debate.

It was interesting that the Buxton memorial was raised. Funnily enough, the siting of the Buxton memorial was one of the main reasons, originally, for my being persuaded that Victoria Tower Gardens would be the ideal place for the Holocaust memorial. I think it will create a garden of conscience that links the Pankhurst statue to the Buxton memorial and the Holocaust memorial, right by the Houses of Parliament. It is also interesting that the Buxton memorial was raised because, when it was placed there, Lord Rea argued that it should not be, because Victoria Tower Gardens was a tranquil place and putting a memorial there would be a bad idea. We are now being told that because that memorial is there, we should not put anything else there.

It is the case that, when we are talking about the Holocaust memorial being not as nice as the Buxton memorial, Viscount Swinton and Earl Jowitt both argued that the Buxton memorial should not be placed in Victoria Tower Gardens because it was a Gothic monstrosity and hideously ugly. This just proves my mother’s point, which she made to me when everyone said that no one would ever go to Brent Cross Shopping Centre, which was near our house: people can find a reason to be against everything.

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[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

Does the noble Lord not feel that some of his comments are just a little flippant? We are talking about the safety of people’s lives here.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

I am literally repeating the noble Baroness’s points. If she feels that they are flippant, maybe she should not have made them. These are all points that were raised.

In addition, it was said that people will be trampled to death in the communal areas and poisoned with Novichok. These are all points that were made seriously, and that could apply, of course, to any structure. We are talking about building a reasonably modest structure near Parliament, with four rooms underneath it. We have managed to build nuclear power stations, railways and shopping centres in this country, almost all of them without all these terrible consequences happening because people are able to organise themselves and plan things so that disasters are coped with.

We absolutely have the capability of doing that with this centre. These are all alarmist ideas that will not come to pass. This is an extremely simple proposal for a very fitting memorial. I can understand why people might not want it, particularly if they live nearby, but it is a fitting response to the Holocaust and it is in the right place.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Finkelstein said that this is a modest memorial. It may be a modest underground centre, which is inadequate for the purpose, but it is 23 giant bronze fins that will dominate the park. There is nothing modest about that at all. I think he diminishes some of the concerns that people have.

On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, my concern is not that terrorists may set off some device underground—the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is the best person to advise on this—but that they may set off a harmless smoke grenade or device underground, so that everyone piles up outside and that is when the terrorists execute their main attack.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

So that it is not seen as though I have raised points that were not raised, it was specifically said that poisonous gas would be set off. I did not make that up.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I would like to correct the record. I did not say that it will be set off. I am concerned that there has not been a fire assessment and an air flow assessment. I hope that, when the Minister comes to respond, he will be able to reassure us that there has been an adequate air flow assessment relating to the proposed architectural brief that we have seen. I made the point that I am not against a memorial. I think it is completely inappropriate to suggest that those of us who have raised concern over this design and the place of it are somehow opposed to having an appropriate memorial. Many of us have relatives who had deeply traumatic experiences. We have not paraded them here. We are dealing with what it is suggested is to be constructed and with how we move forward.

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I think that my noble friend Lord Blencathra is on to something. My noble friend Lord Finkelstein, who speaks with great passion about these matters, is quite right. In a sense, he gives away the lie in all of this. It should be rethought because it could be built much more quickly and cheaply, right next door to Parliament, and be appropriate in the company of the Buxton memorial, the “Burghers of Calais” and the other monuments precisely in the spirit of what my noble friend Lord Blencathra puts forward in Amendment 11.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

Obviously we can all differ on what is reasonable and what is modest, but it was not a misrepresentation of what anyone said. I just read back what people said.

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, rise to support Amendment 11. As my noble friend has just said, if Amendment 11 were adhered to, it is possible that the various sides of this argument could come together with a solution that would be acceptable to everyone. I have never read any newspaper article or heard anybody say that there should not be a memorial.

My noble friend Lord Finkelstein described rather movingly the various other memorials in the gardens. They are memorials to good triumphing over evil in the development of human history. It would be totally right to have another such memorial in that place that could be revered. There would be no question of having a kiosk selling ice cream and burgers beside it. It would be a memorial. If it fitted into the description in Amendment 11 in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, it would be an appropriate size, and we would all hope that it would be designed by an artist who would produce a beautiful memorial. The problem is that unless we adhere to Amendment 11, there will also be a learning centre underground which, as various noble Lords have said, would bring with it so many risks. The greatest risk of all is why, if we want to produce a proper memorial to a terrible period in history when 6 million Jews died and many more suffered, would we put it underground where it could not be seen or admired and simply caused problems?

Let us have a memorial, a beautiful memorial that everyone can admire, but let us have a learning centre somewhere else where it would be safe, accessible and non-controversial, a place where children could be taken and, yes, possibly have their ice-cream and burgers if they are on a school trip, a different place where it would not get in the way of a beautiful memorial. It is difficult to understand how this Government, who profess to care about green spaces, about children not being on their phones but being outside and about the preservation of the environment should want to support a plan to take away the utility of one of the very few green spaces in this part of London.

This is not about just Victoria Tower Gardens, Parliament and history. It is about the way in which families in this area live their everyday lives. Children play in that park. I had a child who played in that park every day because his mother—me—did not have time to take him any further afield, as I was constantly in the House of Commons. That park is important to families and to the welfare of children. Why on earth would we hide under that park a learning centre when we could put up a beautiful memorial which everyone unanimously supports?

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall just say a few words in support of my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s Amendment 11. If, along the way, I gently chide my noble friend Lord Finkelstein, who I greatly admire, I hope he will forgive me. He made a speech last week in Committee, which he used in his article in the Times on Wednesday, and very important and powerful it is. He concluded by saying, “Let’s get building”, and that is where I part company with him because we are not arguing about a memorial. I think we are all saying, universally, that we want to have a memorial. The question is: what are we going to build? To say at the end of his article “Let’s get building” sort of implies that the Committee was somehow opposing the idea that there should be a memorial at all.

From my point of view, the design we presently have is outsized, out of sync and out of style. For my noble friend to say that this is like objecting to the Brent Cross shopping centre is really not fair to those of us who have a serious concern about what it will look like and how it will work. I think that the words, “reasonably modest”, which have been used a lot this afternoon, are really shown up when along with my noble friend’s article was a picture of what is proposed. How that can be described as “reasonably modest”, when you see a picture of it is quite hard to understand. Also—this was probably not my noble friend but his picture editor—the fact that it says underneath this extraordinarily ugly memorial

“The memorial embodies what Britain fought for and her Parliament stands for”


seems doubly disappointing. I hope that we can find a way, following my noble friend Lord Sassoon’s suggestion, to stick to the principle that we want a memorial and find a way that is more in sync with its surroundings, as my noble friend suggests in his Amendment 11.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

Just to clarify the point on “reasonably modest”, it has been a reasonable subject for discussion and obviously opinions will differ about how big this ought to be. In the Holocaust Commission, we had a debate about the different designs. Some people liked this design and others did not, but my point about “reasonably modest” concerned itself with the difficulty of building this memorial or, indeed, anything, nearby. I was just observing that we manage, as humanity, to cope with quite a lot of building and this is, on the scale of many of the things that we build, “reasonably modest”. Thus, the problems that were raised seem have been overcome on some quite big projects in comparison with this one. That is the point of my argument about reasonable modesty.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure whether we are supposed to declare our interests at each sitting, but I draw attention to my interests in the register relating to this project. I do not want to bring any discord but I feel I am about to enter into the war of the Buxtons, because my noble friend Lord Leigh, who is not in his place, asked me to pass on a message to the Committee from Jonathan Buxton, who is very happy for me to quote it:

“I would like to think that if Sir Thomas and his fellow abolitionists were around today, they would be 100% in favour of the Holocaust memorial”.


I understand of course that other Buxtons disagree with this, but I felt that the Committee might like to hear it.

I want to say two other things, but first I turn to this question of the kiosk, which I think is very badly formed. My noble friend is right: you can go to Yad Vashem and you do not need to go to the museum to use its facilities. You can get a hot dog outside the memorial in Washington and I do not think that in any way affects the spirituality of the thing.

One of my great delights, for the past 50 years of my association with Lady Pickles, is that we often spend our weekends looking at various cathedrals around the country. It is a passion of mine. I can tell noble Lords that you can get a very nice cappuccino in Lincoln Cathedral and a very nice date and walnut cake in York. In listening to the right reverend Prelate, I thought that perhaps I should go to St Albans Cathedral, and wondered what I might expect there. I am delighted to say that, if I go there, I can go to the Abbot’s Kitchen café, which is open from 10 am until 4 pm, and treat Lady Pickles to a coffee and walnut cake for £4.05. I do not think that that will in any way affect my enjoyment of the spirituality of the cathedral; it certainly has not spoilt it in the many cathedrals that I have had the pleasure to go round, both in this country and in France.