Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fleet (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee but this is my first intervention on the Bill. I declare my interest as a former chairman of Arts Council London. I rise to speak to Amendment 29 and the consequential amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra.

I would like to put on record my admiration for the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and all the work that she has put into this extraordinary debate today. I have a few brief observations to add to the comprehensive remarks that my noble friend delivered just now with his customary eloquence and wisdom, with which I entirely agree. I support the analysis by several noble Lords of the problems of this site in Victoria Tower Gardens.

I must begin by saying that I am entirely in favour of a Holocaust memorial in central London. We all want present and future generations to recognise, understand and learn what the Holocaust was, why it happened and why it still matters. It is frightening that anti-Semitism is ever present. As my noble friend highlighted, a poll showed that more than 2 million people —about 5% of our population—believe that there never was a Holocaust at all. That figure is probably much higher now as a result of social media. Anti-Semitism must be a central element of whatever or wherever the learning centre is.

As Prime Minister in 2015, my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton had a noble ambition when, with cross-party support, he announced details of his proposal. The memorial and learning centre would be world-class. My noble friends have already set out clearly what was promised and what will now be delivered. There is no doubt that the original ambition has been radically reduced as, now, the proposed learning centre would be just a few rooms, all digital. My noble friend Lady Bottomley once memorably described the learning centre as a “subterranean shoebox”.

Several eminent historians, including Sir Richard Evans, have pointed out that London’s contribution would be put to shame by what can be seen elsewhere in the world—indeed, in our own Imperial War Museum, which has been referred to already, and its Holocaust galleries. In preparation for today’s debate, I revisited the Holocaust galleries. They are indeed world-class: through more than 2,000 photos, books and letters, they tell individual stories of some of the 6 million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust.

The first room is extraordinary. It introduces us, through home movies, music and photos, to Jewish families across Europe in the early 1930s. They are smiling and posing on graduation from school or university, at family weddings, skiing and playing table tennis. With the dark reality of what was to come, we then see personal possessions—a child’s teddy bear, a darning mushroom and sheet music—displayed in the large cabinets. A dozen or so spacious, themed rooms link events from the rise of Hitler through to the final solution. It is a profound, emotional and educational experience.

The proposed learning centre, squeezed into the very limited space of Victoria Tower Gardens, lacks this essential content and impact. Surely the Imperial War Museum, set in the verdant 14-acre Harmsworth Park just a mile from Westminster, is a potential alternative site for the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. The Victoria Tower Gardens site is totally inappropriate. As my noble friends have said, it has been criticised by UNESCO, Historic England and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which rated it red—in other words, undeliverable. Victims of the Holocaust and survivors, as well as our future generations, deserve a world-class learning centre. That cannot be in Victoria Tower Gardens.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 29 and 31 in this group. My noble friend Lord Blencathra has, as my noble friend Lady Fleet just pointed out, spoken with great eloquence to them, but I have a few sweeping-up remarks to make about Amendment 31 and some tangential matters arising therefrom.

Before I speak to them, I owe the Committee an apology because I did not participate at Second Reading on 4 September last—I am afraid that I was abroad at the time—but I did make a submission to the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House on the Bill and appeared before it to plead my case. If I may, I will return to that in a minute or two.

Since I did not participate in the September debate, I should perhaps say a few words about where I stand on the principles of the Bill as a whole. I am not nihilistic. I reject the suggestion from my noble friend Lord Finkelstein that one is going to find objections to everything. I am very much in favour of a memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens. I am prepared to work and live with the design that people think is satisfactory.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I was half way through explaining my position on the proposals of the Bill. I believe that there should be a memorial to the Holocaust and that it should be in Victoria Tower Gardens. I would work with almost anybody regarding the design. I do not think that the present design is particularly attractive. I also support the proposal for a learning centre but have difficulty with putting that into Victoria Tower Gardens, for the reasons that have been given by my noble friend Lord Blencathra and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. That site is not suitable for the scale and importance of the task that it would be undertaking. That is the background to Amendments 29 and 30—the need for a campus and all the other things that have been mentioned.

Amendment 31 has a slight additional edge to it, because the Jewish Museum in Camden has closed due to a lack of funding. All its exhibits are now in storage. It might be worth while considering that this could be included in an overall context of a British-Jewish experience and a national, or London, Jewish museum. That is simply the background and purpose of Amendment 31: that this is included in any consideration of alternative sites.

My noble friend Lady Scott—I know she is “of Bybrook”—explained that we had to consider some of the tangential impacts. I will do that briefly now—again in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone—because quite a lot of what is talked about on the tangential experience is based on poor evidence and soggy experience. Those of us who have offices in Millbank, as I do, see how very crowded the pavements and the areas outside are all the time—particularly in the summer, obviously, but nearly all the time. Obviously, there is a bus shelter for Transport for London. There are coach points where people come to hop on and hop off tourist buses, and where students are dropped for tours of Parliament, all of which are very worthy things. If you walk along there on an ordinary day, you will find that not only is the pavement crowded but, because of the black crash barrier, you have a choke point that makes it even more crowded before you can get to where you can turn right into the Victoria Tower Gardens or go straight on to Black Rod’s Garden entrance.

I raised this issue with the committee and I was ruled out of order. The committee said, in paragraph 56 of its report:

“These concerns do not confer an entitlement to be heard and … the Standing Orders do not confer on us any discretion to consider his petition”.


Of course, I accept the Standing Orders of your Lordships’ House, but we are now moving from the rather dry area of Standing Orders to the real world. What is going to happen in this area over the many years ahead? If an activity or something inside the periphery of the area—that is, inside the gardens—causes trouble, difficulties, problems or inconvenience in the immediate environment outside, that at least demands to be considered and weighed in the scale. I would therefore like to tackle that briefly now.

In his reply in the Second Reading debate, the Minister said:

“We estimate that there will be 11 coaches per day, using a proposed coach bay on a quieter section of Millbank”.—[Official Report, 4/9/24; col. 1225.]


I have done a bit of research, because I have been popping into coaches for the last few days to ask, “How many passengers do you carry?” The truth is that I have not found one that carries fewer than 55 or more than 70, so we have an average of probably around 60 or 65. Eleven coaches a day is 660 people. Are we going to do all this for 660 people? Surely not. The idea is that this should be much bigger than that. If we then ask what estimates are being given for the number of people, it comes out usually as between 3,000 and 4,000. That number means that you are going to need about 58 coaches a day. If you are open between 9 am and 4 pm with a line for a 45-minute tour of the building—that is, for seven hours—that will be eight coaches per hour: one every seven minutes. Those are the numbers that we are likely to have to face.

I am sure the Minister does not know anything about the 11 coaches per hour; he was given a speaking note by his official. I am not suggesting he made this up at all. However, we need to think more carefully about this, because at present, the footfall and the impact on the area is absolutely clearly underestimated. If I may just quote from his speaking note one more time, he suggested using a proposed coach bay on a “quieter section of Millbank”. I invite him to get his officials to take him to a quieter section of Millbank. There is no quieter section of Millbank—it is a main thoroughfare where traffic passes all the time. I hope we can get more clarity on what the tangential impact is likely to be in the areas around what is proposed.

I share the view that the learning centre is not in a good place. In my view, it is going to be born in the spirit of rancour, whereas it surely should be born in the spirit of remembrance and healing. I hope that the Minister will be able to demonstrate that the Government are listening to all the points being made, and we do not just have a situation of “Put the pedal to the metal and get this thing done as quickly as possible”.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My noble friend mentioned the Jewish Museum in Camden, which has closed down. Is he aware that it says that it has 28,000 items and artefacts—including Jewish art, and examples showing the Jewish way of life going back centuries—in storage? Can he understand why, on the one hand, we have plans for this learning centre in Victoria gardens that will have no artefacts while, on the other, we have a closed-down museum with 28,000 artefacts looking for a home? Can the Government explain why on earth they are unable to marry them up and put the two together in a big, proper museum and learning centre, as the Holocaust Commission recommended?

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Well, my Lords, that just shows that you should never speak after my noble friend Lord Blencathra, because of course he is right. I hope I made it clear that I thought the consideration of alternative sites should include the idea that we should have a national Jewish museum, which would pick up the 28,000 items, the number of which I was not aware.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, had there been time yesterday, we would have disaggregated this group because it covers three enormous topics that are very different, and I will not have time to say everything that I wanted to. I will start with the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, which is perhaps the most obvious and sensible of all of them. I call them over and under. If we stick to over and avoid under, nearly all the problems are solved—in other words, a memorial overground, and a learning centre somewhere else. That would avoid all the complications and costs of excavating Victoria Tower Gardens and the disruption and damage. Moreover, apparently the learning centre will have only digital and audio material in it, so why not just send us round the country, in whatever way can be done technologically these days, rather than bringing people to London?

I turn to the issue of endowment—what is in the learning centre and what it is supposed to do. The inadequacy of Holocaust education, which is well known, can be seen on the streets of London every week and on our campuses. Young people who have had some education about the Holocaust at school cannot make the connection between that and the vicious hatred of Israel today, the attacks on the survival of Jewish people, the resurgence of Nazi language and images, and the violence we find against Jewish people as they go about their businesses or go to synagogue. That is because of the failing of Holocaust education in two respects. First, it places the hatred of Jews in a box, something that was the exclusive province of the Nazis 90 years ago and ended at the end of the Second World War. The planned learning centre will compound that.

The other failing is the presentation of many genocides as if they had anything in common. The messages coming from the learning centre, as far as one can tell, will be “Do not be a bystander” and “Hatred is what brought on the Holocaust and other genocides”. That serves as an obfuscation and diversion of blame. It misses the point entirely: it was 2,000 years of anti-Semitism. The civilised world has said “Never again”, but that is overoptimistic. Anti-Semitism remains alive and well, not only among the denizens of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran but of course, since 7 October, in countries hitherto thought immune, such as the Western world.

Holocaust education has failed, but it should include the place of Israel in the world and in Jewish life and history. Scholars say that the Holocaust found Jews defenceless. After 7 October, sadly, a Jewish state was able to hit back and may eliminate its enemies, but certainly Israel provides a haven for Jews elsewhere who find themselves threatened by this new anti-Semitism. That fairly obvious statement shows what is so wrong about the theme and location of the memorial planned for VTG. As the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, has said, his intent is that seeing the Palace of Westminster and being reminded of the power of democracy means that there is protection for Jewish people under British values, but that is historically and contemporaneously wrong. Democracy here, now and in the past, has not protected Jewish minorities. We can see that even today there are plenty of people in our democratic Government who wish Israel ill and who have failed to protect the Jewish community from the pressure that it faces right now.

What saves people from genocide? It is having a state of one’s own and the means of self-defence. Take, for example, the Uighurs, Armenians and Tutsis. What they have in common is that they were minorities in a state that had power over them. As the late Lord Sacks of blessed memory pointed out, today’s anti-Semitism is directed at the world’s only Jewish state, which should be a haven for a persecuted minority. He called for Holocaust education to be in context—the context of Jewish history over the millennia, and Jewish culture. In regard to the Holocaust, it is wrong for people to learn only about that and nothing else. The ill-educated person in the street often associates Jews only with the images of concentration camps and knows nothing other than that—nothing about Jewish history and practices.

That is made worse by the films, some of them ghoulish, that deal with that period. This concentration on the Holocaust, taken out of context and history, turns it into just a word for describing something dreadful, which is casually used, as is the word “genocide”. It even results in those accusations being turned against the Jewish people. Holocaust education needs a complete overhaul, rather than being frozen into the same inadequate frame that we will find in the learning centre. That is why there needs to be an endowment fund and a professor, as suggested in Amendment 32, because those awkward topics of anti-Semitism today and Israel need to be faced up to and explained. We want to know why the Government have abandoned the suggested endowment fund.

I turn briefly to alternatives. No effort was made to find a suitable location when Victoria Tower Gardens was announced, but the supporters have clung stubbornly to that site, though they must know in their hearts that it is no good and that the choice has provoked litigation, disharmony, delay, expense and discord in the Jewish community and elsewhere. Indeed, the choice of site has provoked adverse comment around the world. In 2015, the call was only for a central London site of up to 10,000 square metres, with room for conferences, offices and all the appurtenance of a campus, and only near at hand to the memorial given that proponents also recommended that the site incorporate the Imperial War Museum exhibition. So they could not have had in mind an underground construction somewhere else. The choice of VTG was reached without consultation, given that the consultants came up with the London Museum, Millbank Tower and other sites.

I imagine that VTG was chosen because it was free, whereas Imperial War Museum co-operation over the use of its green space was ignored. My own ideal compromise would be a suitable figurative memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens and a suitably sized learning centre somewhere nearby, maybe along Millbank. Buildings on Millbank have been offered. They are available to rent or buy. What about College Green, whose underground is not being used, the education centre in Victoria Tower Gardens or Victoria Tower itself, as the archives have been removed? My favourite is Richmond House, which it seems will not now be used for decant during R&R and which has a forecourt suitable for a memorial and is right by the Cenotaph. No position is more visible and important. Others have suggested the former Museum of London, the Barbican and underneath Carlton House Terrace. There has never been any meeting with the department to consider these suggestions. Michael Gove offered a round table but did not pursue it. The only other meeting with him was a formality, with no intent other than to head off my repeated complaints that there was no discussion. My offers to talk to supporters have been ignored or worse.

We know about the drawbacks of VTG—the cramped nature, the deprivation of local residents, the breach of trust, the environmental damage, the flooding risk, the fire risk, the crowding and the security. The cost is bound to rise. Climate protesters and the public will not be sympathetic to a project that flies in the face of all the government pledges to be green and economical. The Jewish community is sharply divided, with establishment figures and donors on one side and those who study the situation—scholars and most ordinary members, whether of the reform, Orthodox or mainstream persuasion—on the other. Once they know what it looks like and what it will contain, which is carefully hidden from most of us, they are against it.

Advances in technology lessen the case for the exhibition hall. There are already six memorials in this country and 21 learning centres. No one has stopped to think what effect they have or what they achieve. Is anything lacking? Why do we need another one? What is it for? Of course, people outside London will find it hard to get to. I have said before that this is not a memorial, it is not about the Holocaust and it is not a learning centre. The choice of VTG is to make a political point which is naive and misleading: that putting a memorial close to Parliament will make the point that democracy protects Jews and protects against genocide. This is the British values narrative, a project led by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and Mr Ed Balls, who also leads the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. The placement of memorials makes no difference if you look around the world—nor are they a reminder to parliamentarians of the dangers. If parliamentarians have to have a memorial next door, at a cost of £200 million, they must be in even bigger trouble than we thought.

There is no evidence that a visit to this will make any difference. There are 300 memorials around the world, from New Zealand to China, and nobody measures the effect. In fact, anti-Semitism is growing. The memorial will provide a nice political backdrop for politicians who want to pose against it and say, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body”, but it will not help prevent anti-Semitism today. I support the movement to create a wonderful new Jewish museum like the fabulous one in Warsaw, which is placed where the Warsaw ghetto used to be and has made that into a sacred site.

I support all these amendments.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Eccles in his Amendment 5 and will speak to my Amendment 33. When I first saw the department’s plan to manage this, I was tempted to ask the Minister facetiously whether he would put the experts of HS2 in charge of the project since they seemed to have all the matching qualities outlined in the devastating “red for danger” Infrastructure and Projects Authority report. But then I had a panic—perhaps they might not realise that I was being facetious and actually put HS2 in charge.

The National Audit Office said in a devasting report of 2022 that the department had informed it that it hoped to get an NDPB up and running about a year before the centre opened. It would be in charge of running it but have no role in managing its construction. The key findings of that NAO report were that:

“The Department does not have a track record of managing programmes of this nature … The Department has recruited specialists from across the civil service and externally, but the team does not have staff with programme management expertise in senior positions”.


However, the devasting criticism of the project is not a comment by the NAO but is printed on page 11 of the report as an organisation chart showing the nine bodies under the Secretary of State that will have input into its management. The department calls this “the governance structure”. I have given a copy of this to the Minister, to Hansard and to the clerks. Of course, we cannot enter it into Hansard, so I will read out what it says.

At the bottom of the chart are three organisations credited with giving independent assurance. One is the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which has already condemned the management of the project. Another is the Cabinet Office, which must give approval on business cases and procurement. Then there is the Treasury. The NAO report says that the Treasury’s role is to be:

“Responsible for allocating funding for the programme. Treasury approval is required at different stages as per the Integrated Assurance and Approval Plan … As a condition of the funding, the Department must seek further Treasury approval if the programme is forecast to use more than half of the approved contingency”.


We all know what the Treasury is like: no one will be able to buy a nail to build this place without months and months of Treasury approval. That is another government department with management rights over this project.

Then there are three advisory boards: the foundation advisory board, the academic advisory board and the construction advisory board. The members of the foundation advisory board are extremely distinguished and will all have firm views on fulfilling their role of defining the overall vision for the programme, including content of the learning centre. But the academic advisory board,

“Provides a peer-review process and discussion forum for the envisioned exhibition content”.

So now we have two expert bodies advising on content and a paralysed programme board terrified to decide between them or reject their advice. This is a recipe for delay and completely contradictory decisions as the programme board attempts to please everyone.

Above those advisory bodies, we have the programme board itself. I hope that noble Lords are listening carefully, because this is what it will do:

“Meets monthly and is chaired by the senior responsible owner. It is the decision-making authority for the programme and collectively owns the programme’s objectives. It monitors the performance of individual projects and work packages, as well as the risks and issues affecting delivery and the mitigations in place to address them. Members include the programme director, programme manager and project leads. Representatives from other parts of the Department, such as Procurement, and external stakeholders, including specialist contractors, are also invited to meetings”.


What an extraordinarily huge bunch of people with no power except to monitor performance, assess risks and pass things on to the oversight board.

The oversight board is one level higher up. It will meet

“2-3 times a year with representatives from the Foundation Advisory Board and senior government. Sets the strategic direction of the programme and is the escalation point for the Programme Board; any changes to the strategic direction need Oversight Board approval”.

Next, we have the investment sub-committee, whose remit is:

“The ISC must approve new project or programme business cases. The programme must seek further ISC approval if it is forecast to use more than half of the approved cost contingency.”


Finally, at the top of this indecision tree is the Secretary of State as

“the ultimate escalation point and sits on the Oversight Board”.

In summary, we have three advisory committees, one organisation with responsibility for finance, two powerful government departments with the final say on finance and two other boards that monitor things and talk about them. There is one thing missing—a straightforward delivery board whose mission given to it by the Secretary of State should be simply this: “You will deliver this project X at a cost Y by day Z and you will suffer penalty P if you fail to deliver and you are a day late.” Get rid of all the other talking shops except the foundation advisory board, which can advise on content but with no say on design or construction. Once new plans are approved in detail, no changes should be made at all. We have all seen in the buildings around Parliament—from Portcullis House onwards—how architects and designers loved to have a committee of politicians in charge, who changed the design regularly, costing an absolute fortune.

This Heath Robinson so-called management structure devised by the department is a recipe for argument, delay and cost overruns. However, it has one magnificent feature cleverly built in by civil servants: with this structure, not a single person can be held accountable for failure. If the cost goes from £138 million to £200 million, which of these bodies gets the blame, or if it is three years late, or if the Jewish community condemns it at the end as not being appropriate? That is why we need a new non-departmental public body set up now and given a simple set of objectives to deliver a set project at a set date at a set cost. That is the only way this can ever work.

I turn now to my Amendment 33 and the future management of Victoria Tower Gardens. In April 1946, the Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, told Conservative MPs in a Commons debate:

“We are the masters at the moment, and … for a very long time to come”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/4/1946; col. 1213.]


I now hear Cabinet Ministers saying that the new Attorney-General is telling them, “I am the master now”. Be that as it may, the relevance of this comment is that I fear that any new NDPB set up to run the completed project will feel that it is the all-powerful master of Victoria Tower Gardens, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out.

The NDPB will be under the overall control of a Secretary of State, partly funded by the Government, and possibly eventually fully funded if the costs grow out of control. It will have, no doubt, a senior civil servant or two from the department, and some others of the great and the good. With the clout it will have from government, it will feel that it can dictate all aspects of the governance of the gardens.

We can guess what will happen: if it finds long queues, it will create roped-off chicanes, like those zigzag lines you get in airports, and do so with no consultation with the garden authorities. What will it do to stop visitors spreading out over the rest of the garden to have picnics, as in Berlin, and taking up the space of other garden users?

We simply have no idea what pressures may arise to infringe on the rest of Victoria Tower Gardens. Therefore, as Amendment 33 makes clear, the NDPB must not have any authority over any other parts of the garden and must consult local residents in advance through the relevant local amenity societies with regard to any matters which may affect the free use of Victoria Tower Gardens as a garden open to the rest of the public. Anything else would be inappropriate.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I want to say a word or two in support of my noble friend Lord Eccles and his amendment and my noble friend Lord Blencathra. Much of what I was going to say has been well forked over already, but I think it underlines the importance of moving towards a clear structure and organisation as quickly as possible.

The spider’s web of committees and advisory boards referred to by my noble friend on page 11 of the National Audit Office’s report must be a recipe for disaster. As he pointed out very forcefully, it is a way to ensure that nobody will ever be blamed for anything. It does not matter whether it is too much money, design faults, cost overruns, failure to meet timescales or failure to meet commitments, as page 13 of the National Audit Office’s report puts it—they can only have been designed and drafted by Sir Humphrey—it is, in effect, an organisational blank cheque. We need to make sure that it is very much better controlled, in the interests of performance delivery, the taxpayer and Parliament as a scrutinising body.

I hope that the Minister, who has so far put his foot to the metal, will take some time to think about these organisational problems, which are very real and have been brought forward by the National Audit Office on other pages of its report. If we do not do that, we are setting ourselves up for a very unhappy period during which this project gets going.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I seconded the amendment tabled by the right reverend Prelate and I agree with it. It is important also to look at the report from the excellent Select Committee that dealt with it. It says:

“The limitation of closure dates seems to us to be a reasonable request”.


That is what the right reverend Prelate said. It went on to say:

“It is not appropriate for an amendment to the Bill … but is probably best addressed in byelaws applicable to VTG”.


My experience of government is that, very often, by-laws get ignored to a certain extent, so we want to be clear where the limitations are. That is why I support the amendment.

I want to go on about closure dates, not least after my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Hodgson have raised the issue. The issue is around who is going to run this. In paragraph 104, the Select Committee assumed that:

“The Royal Parks … will be the body responsible for maintenance of those parts of VTG outside the perimeter of the proposed HMLC”.


I think we need to get this absolutely clear. The Royal Parks, as I recall—and somebody will correct me if I am wrong—opposed the whole idea because it thought it was an inappropriate place to put a memorial and learning centre. Therefore, we need to be absolutely clear who is responsible for what.

Those of us who have worked in government, as many in this Room have, and many of them for longer than me, know that if there is no clear line of responsibility then nobody is responsible for anything. We need to have a clear line of responsibility in this, and that is why I support these amendments.

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[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was one of the few Members of either House—alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who will confirm what I am saying—who attended a meeting organised to discuss the contents of the learning centre. The meeting was addressed by a historian who made it absolutely clear that this is not a learning centre about genocides; it is a learning centre specifically about the Holocaust, and it will not relativise the Holocaust and it will not compare the Holocaust to other genocides. The only extent to which other genocides may be mentioned is on the way out, where it might say something along the lines of, “Since then, there have been other genocides, showing we have not yet learned lessons”. The learning centre will be devoted specifically and solely to the Holocaust. That is what it is.

I was not going to take part in this debate but while I am on my feet, I have some questions for the right reverend Prelate. Why did he fix on three days? What was the basis for it and who did he consult? Is it based on the number of Holocaust commemorations? Did he speak to Holocaust survivors? Why did he decide that just three days in the entire year might be appropriate to remember the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis?

I point out gently to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that I do not see what would be objectionable about people visiting the Holocaust memorial and sitting on the grass to eat their sandwiches afterwards. Why should they not have a picnic in the park if they choose to do so? It is what many other visitors to the park do. How would he distinguish between people visiting the memorial and having their lunch and people visiting the park and having their lunch? Many of the people visiting the memorial will be people who would visit the park anyway. Lots of people who visit the memorial will be people who live within the vicinity of the memorial or work in Westminster, so why would he object? I assume that he would not object to any of those people eating their sandwiches in the park. Why would he object to visitors to the memorial doing so?

My final point is that lots of the contributions to this suggest that the memorial and learning centre are going to take over the whole park. We have just heard a speech about land use as though it is going to transform the nature of the park. I gently point out to everybody in these discussions that the memorial and learning centre will in fact take up just 7.5% of the land in the park. I am sure that the Minister will confirm this when he concludes. It is a complete fallacy that it is going to take over the whole park and totally transform this part of Westminster.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, will he just accept that if 3,000 to 4,000 people come every day—those are the numbers we have been given—that will affect the way the park operates from the point of view of the local residents? I am not saying that it is impossible to do, but will he accept that there is a distinct difference when that volume of people comes to visit the memorial and learning centre? It is bound to make a difference. To suggest that it will make no difference at all and it will be business as usual is naive, if I may make so bold.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

What I will say is that millions of people visit Westminster all year round. Tourists from all over the world come to Westminster and some of those will visit the memorial. I do not think that this will add significantly to the numbers that we already see visiting Westminster.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

On that question, given the number of bodies on the sheet of the National Audit Office, will the Minister write to Members of the Committee to say, “These are the people involved in each of those bodies, and this is what they cost”? As my noble friend Lord Eccles said, there is a huge range of people and possibilities for cost. I do not expect the answer now, but it would be helpful for our future deliberations if we knew what the current structure costs and, therefore, the urgency to move to my noble friend’s proposed change.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, makes an excellent point. In response to his request, I am absolutely happy to provide all the details on the structure and the associated issues that he raised. We will write not just to him but to the wider Committee.

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[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, on that last point, that is exactly what the management of a non-departmental public body would discuss with the management of the gardens—how they will cope with litter and what facilities there are. They would need to work together, but we have not got anybody whatever to work with on the garden management at the moment. Until we have a public body, there will not be anybody.

[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.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

They are advisory only.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I just say a few words in support of my noble friend Lord Strathcarron’s Amendments 8 and 17. Projects such as this are always liable to mission creep. This has already had quite a lot of mission creep attached to it, and I can see many reasons why there might be further mission creep in future. My noble friend has undertaken a valuable role in drawing attention to the areas where this might happen and, therefore, bringing in the agreements and undertakings so far given by the Government and the promoters of the Bill. That relates to Amendment 8, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra has also underlined many of the words and excuses that will be used for wishing to go wider than originally anticipated.

Amendment 17 would help guarantee that this does not become a way for creep in the future. We can stop mission creep as far as this project is concerned, but there may be subsequent creep thereafter. The amendment is therefore very valuable, because this is controversial and all sides are entitled to know exactly what is proposed. I honestly cannot see how the Government and promoters—if they are being honest—can refuse to accept an invitation that lays everything out clearly and precisely so that we know where we are from the beginning.

These two amendments therefore have my support.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I will be brief. I am pleased that the Government have allocated additional days to discuss the Bill, but I am slightly concerned that we are becoming repetitious and are in danger of spending more time on it than we are spending in Committee on reform of the House of Lords.

I have a couple of points. If I am honest, I do not entirely understand Amendment 17. My reading of the Bill is that we are not repealing the 1900 Act, we are just disapplying it. Anyone wishing to build outside the area that has planning permission would have to go through this process again and would require a special Act of Parliament to disapply the 1900 Act.

We should also be clear about Mr WH Smith—a name that looks like it is about to disappear from our high streets. His principal concern was to prevent wharfs being built next to the House because of the risks that would have in terms of industrial activity, and the risk of fire it posed to the House. I am sure that his wishes are not in any way being diminished by the various statues that have gone up in the intervening period.

I am sorry to repeat this, but Parliament has long decided how to deal with matters such as this, and it is through the planning Acts. They have a process whereby objectors can object and ideas are tested. That seems the most appropriate way of doing it, not setting up a separate system where the House of Lords is judge and jury in its own case.

I recognise that people have strong views, but I am disappointed that we are hearing repeats of things that are plainly untrue. There is no suggestion that this will be anything other than something that commemorates the Holocaust—the Shoah. Any references to other genocides are peripheral and probably will occur under two circumstances. One of the outcomes of that terrible event was the creation of crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide. They give the lie to “never again”. It is important that this memorial is not celebratory of British involvement but is “warts and all”, to use Mr Cromwell’s phrase.

The question is: who supports this? It is unseemly to play Top Trumps with Holocaust survivors. I could reel off a whole bunch of Holocaust survivors who have been supportive of this from the very beginning.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go with the Minister to Ron Arad’s headquarters up in Chalk Farm, where there is a beautiful model laid out, which I hope the Committee will get an opportunity to look at—certainly, the House should do so—as many of the worries would disappear. Far from this memorial dominating the Buxton memorial, it would lie considerably below the very top of it. Far from it dominating the park, it would enhance it, and it seems very sensible. The Minister and I were fortunate to be joined by the Chief Rabbi, who has taken a great interest in this matter, as did the late Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory. I can remember lots of discussions with Rabbi Sacks on this.

The Chief Rabbi is entirely happy with the design, the purpose and the like. I am not Jewish; I cannot make a judgment, but I think I am entitled to take the views of the Chief Rabbi in preference to those of others in this Committee. I hope, now that we are close to the possibility of coming to a decision on this, we will not drag our feet and repeat points that we made earlier, interesting though they are. Can we just get on with the job?

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On the size of the thing, given that we have had many assurances—from Ministers of the current Government, and the last Government—and every opportunity to look at it, we have reached the point where we ought to accept that it is just going to take up 7.5% of the park. I have looked at the plans and the data, and it seems to me to be completely accurate.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. As I understand it—and I am prepared to be corrected—neither of these amendments amend the plan. They just say that the plan must be stuck to, so all they are concerned about is what I describe as mission creep. Secondly, vanishingly few of us—certainly not me, and, I think, nobody else here—object to the idea of a memorial. Thirdly, he will understand that no Minister, of any party, can bind their successors. Assurances are fine, but circumstances change and so can the arrangements and the background to which assurances were given. All these amendments are seeking to do, I think, is to make sure that the assurances given by my party’s Front Bench—and, no doubt, by the noble Lord, Lord Khan, in due course—can be put into legislation, into statutory form, so we have assurances that it will not go any further than that.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

People have argued against this proposal from day one. They have argued against not just the location but the idea of having a memorial and it being in Victoria Tower Gardens. I accept and understand that the tactics now are to say, “Well, look, we are not against the memorial being in Victoria Tower Gardens, but we do not like the design or the size”, or some other spurious reason, and to drag this whole process out for as long as possible and make it as controversial as possible in the hope that, in the end, the Government will change their plans or drop the whole thing in its entirety.

I say this to noble Lords: people can table all the amendments they like, and we can have all the lengthy debates they want. I think there is cross-party support for this project. There is majority support in both Houses and, as I have said, widespread support in the Jewish community, too. It is about time we stopped tabling amendments and having lengthy, repetitive debates on the same points week after week. I can see that the noble Lord is about to get up and make all the same points once again, but we will respond to them, and we can drag this out for as long as he wants.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 15, particularly the use of the words “surrounding area”. The Minister and my noble friend Lady Scott placed great emphasis on the reassurance given by the Lords Select Committee about security and other matters, which they have seen as reason for us not to be worried about the various points raised in debates during the past couple of days. There is a gap here. I have an office in Millbank, and I gave evidence to the Select Committee because I have seen what my noble friend Lord Blencathra described, which is very large queues and very great difficulty accessing the Palace at present. I said that I thought that that was an issue that needed to be considered by the Select Committee.

The Select Committee ruled that out of order because it could consider only matters that were within the curtilage of Victoria Tower Gardens. Anything that happened in the street outside was irrelevant. I respect the committee’s judgment; I am sure that it has followed the Standing Orders to the letter, but the reality is that, when we are talking about “and the surrounding area”, we are taking the security issues to something that has not so far been considered at all. All the undertakings given to the Select Committee concerned only the curtilage of Victoria Tower Gardens because that is all that it was allowed to consider by the House of Lords Standing Orders. That is why I particularly emphasise and support that part of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of this group of amendments, particularly those from the noble Lords, Lord Howard of Rising and Lord Carlile of Berriew. I remind the Committee, if I may, that last time, when I spoke about the risk of fire to the building, it was somehow deemed as if I am against having a memorial. That is not the case. We want a memorial that is respectful and allows people to learn but that does not become a focus for mass terrorist attacks. The noble Baroness, Lady Laing of Elderslie, highlighted that these are very real risks in today’s world. The world has changed.

I also remind noble Lords that if we look at anything underground—coal mines, for example—it must now have two exits. This building will have a single point of entry and exit. The reason for two exits is so that people can get out if one exit is blocked. I therefore ask the Minister whether he can tell us about that. He is smiling and shaking his head, but I do not think that this is fanciful. This does not go against having a memorial; it is about whether we have done a real risk assessment and whether the design of the building and the memorial mitigate the risks that have been assessed. It would therefore be very helpful to know when a comprehensive risk assessment of the building and the memorial was undertaken as well as whether we can have sight of that. We are being offered sight of a building, but to have sight of the in-depth risk assessment would be helpful.