Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, the Holocaust was a stain upon humanity. It must not be allowed to fade from our memories as the survivors—now a dwindling number—die. As we all agree, there must be a memorial.

Alas, so far as the site is concerned, this Bill is an unnecessarily contentious and spectacularly ill-judged attempt to realise that end. There was no consultation on the site of either the memorial or the learning centre. As the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, reminded us earlier, and as other noble Lords have done, the whole proposal has been opposed from the beginning by Westminster City Council, Historic England, the Royal Parks, a number of amenity organisations and UNESCO—remembering that Parliament Square and its associated buildings form a UNESCO world heritage site.

In the case of this Bill, the hybrid Bill procedure seems to have worked very well, despite an attempt via an instruction in the Commons to limit the scope of the Select Committee’s considerations. But that committee reported that the Government had failed to consult on the selection of a site; that they had failed to establish the true cost of the project, about which the National Audit Office was equally critical; and that they had failed to address issues of security. I did not find the previous Government’s response to those criticisms at all convincing. I hope that the Minister will be able to assuage the concern which I—and, I know, other noble Lords, as it has been mentioned already—have about the percentage of the area of Victoria Tower Gardens that would be taken by a memorial. The Government’s figure is 7.5%, but the best reckoning I have seen produces a figure of 20.7%. I hope that the Minister will be able to take us through this working, in writing afterwards if necessary.

A near neighbour of the proposed memorial site is the Parliament Education Centre. When I had another role down the other end of this building, I had overall responsibility for that project. It was quite contentious for some Members of Your Lordships’ House but I was extremely keen on it, as I am obsessive about getting people, especially young people, to understand and experience Parliament.

The education centre has some resonances for the Bill before us today. We had a real struggle to get planning permission. The key issues were: the impact on Victoria Tower Gardens; people management—coaches stopping to let passengers off in Abingdon Street, and all the safety issues involved; and, of course, security. Parliament was, and remains, a very high-value target.

The planning permission for the education centre—which, incidentally, has proved extraordinarily successful —was due to run out in 2025. But the weary and indefensible, in my view, delays to the restoration and renewal project led the parliamentary authorities to seek an extension of that permission. That has been granted, but only to 2030, when, without any further argument, the centre will have to move.

In reporting on that application, Westminster City Council’s planning officers said that the key issues were:

“The principle of retaining a development of this size and form”—


rather smaller than what we are being asked to agree to today—

“within Victoria Tower Gardens, which is a Grade II registered park and garden and area of public open space and recreation; and … the impact on the significance of heritage assets, including the registered Victoria Tower Gardens and its associated listed memorials, the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square Conservation Area, the World Heritage Site … and adjacent listed buildings including the Grade I listed Palace of Westminster”.

Given the intention of the Bill before us today, this seems to be happening in a parallel universe.

I finish with the question of security. Maintaining the security of our Parliament is a difficult task at the best of times, as I know very well. It is also extraordinarily expensive. The last few months should have convinced us of the foolishness of providing a focus for protest and demonstration, and possibly more sinister intentions, within a few yards of the Palace of Westminster. I trust that wiser counsels will prevail.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

With the greatest respect, my noble friend needs to look more carefully at what is being asked here. It is second-guessing the planning.

In terms of the size, it is the size of the Berlin Holocaust underground site. It is the size of the one in Jasenovac. It is the size of the large temporary exhibition in America. It is not particularly small art; it is adequate for its size. It will not have any exhibits. It will all be digital. That does seem reasonable. On the location, more than 50 different sites were looked at.

I apologise for going on for so long; I hope that I will have an opportunity to speak in further debates.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I cannot contribute with the degree of fluency and authority of those noble Lords who have spoken so far, but I have a question for the Minister and an observation.

The question stems from the Explanatory Notes. Years ago, I had the function in another place of looking at Explanatory Notes in draft—not taking responsibility for their contents but ensuring that they were not used by the Government of the day for the purposes of advocacy. I looked at these Explanatory Notes, and they were pretty much typical of the breed: they are certainly notes but they are by no means explanatory. Where I hoped that I would have their assistance was on Clause 1(3) of the Bill, which states:

“For the purposes of subsection (1)(a), ‘construction’ includes erection, extension, alteration and re-erection”.


I would dearly like to see the instructions that counsel was given before it drafted that particular provision. It sounds as though the memorial is going to be mobile, which I am sure is not the intention.

If I can move on to the observation, at the north end of the Victoria Tower Gardens is the education centre; I have a particular reason for remembering this because, as a corporate officer, I was the applicant for the planning permission when it was originally given in 2015. As noble Lords will know, the planning consent ran out on 22 August last year; it was renewed or extended to 2030. When that runs out—or in anticipation of it running out—there will be substantial works, but I have not seen any reference to those in any of the supporting papers that the Committee has before it today. There will be traffic of substantial character, such as heavy lorries moving kit to and fro. If that is going to happen, as is possible, as the memorial and learning centre is in the later stages of construction, whatever difficulties of security, access and safety that that is going to pose will be exacerbated by doing all this to the education centre at the same time.

I am not sure whether my observation should find a home in our discussion of security or in our discussion of planning, but it seems to me that the Clause 1 stand part debate is a pretty good place to put it to begin with. I would be very grateful for the Minister’s reaction to that simultaneity of works and to the additional element of complication and cost that is no doubt to be introduced.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I was not proposing to speak on this group, but I have been moved to do so by the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Finkelstein and Lord Pickles. As I do so, I make clear my gratitude to them and to everybody else who has been determined that there should be a memorial and a memorial learning centre. I absolutely applaud that, for reasons I explained in another debate in the Chamber. However, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, that I was rather shocked by what I hope he will forgive me for describing as his grandiose lecture creating an analogy with Nelson’s column. First, I remind him—I regret having to remind him, because he has an extraordinary family history, of which we are all aware, and we are hugely grateful for the contribution that his family have made to the remembrance of what happened to my and many other people’s families and ancestors—that Nelson’s column was a memorial to a man who had lived and not to 6 million people who had died. It is a very different proposition.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lisvane]

6: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Planning application and report to Parliament(1) In the event of any planning consent being granted for a Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, the Secretary of State must arrange for the tabling of a motion for resolution in each House of Parliament on that planning consent within 60 days of that consent being granted.(2) Construction of a Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre must not begin until planning consent has been approved by both Houses of Parliament, in the form of a motion for resolution under subsection (1).”Member’s explanatory statement
This Clause seeks to ensure Parliamentary approval of the size and design of any Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in addition to planning consent, and to allow Parliamentary consideration of the implications of planning consent for Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, this amendment is in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Fookes, and the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. Amendment 7, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, is also in this group. Amendments 6 and 7 would do pretty much the same thing, but it is typical of the noble Lord’s gift for crisp expression that his Amendment 7 is about half the length of my Amendment 6.

We are after something which I would have thought would be beyond criticism: the approval of Parliament. It happens that this is first amendment of the evening—indeed, the early morning—that is not directly about the HMLC project. We seek straightforward approval from both Houses for the planning consent, should that be obtained. Ministers would have to table approval Motions in each House within 60 days of any consent being granted, and no work on the centre could begin until both Houses had agreed.

Planning consent is one thing, but the putting of the proposition to Parliament brings in a wider dimension: the achievability of the project and the proper expenditure of public money. Those are issues on which Parliament has a right to be consulted and express a view. There are quite a few former accounting officers in this place and I must admit to being one myself. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority report in January this year is the stuff of which accounting officers’ nightmares are made. The authority said:

“Successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable. There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable”.


The authority has rated the project red and unachievable for each of the last three years.

The National Audit Office has been no kinder. In its 2022 report, it described the promoter’s failure to consider any alternative sites, or to quantify or account for risk, as an emerging risk, causing potential cost increases. The latest capital cost estimate, which was kindly given to us by the Minister in a debate on an earlier amendment, is £146 million. This must make the case for the parliamentary approval that Amendment 6 would provide.

One argument which I hope the Minister will not think of deploying against this amendment is the canard that Royal Assent to the Bill will provide the necessary parliamentary authority for the project; of course it will not. What the Bill does is encapsulated in the long title: it allows expenditure but, crucially, does not approve it.

When and if planning consent is given, we will move into the next phase. That should be of a properly costed and funded project with serious management arrangements, which the Infrastructure and Projects Authority and the National Audit Office feel able endorse. It is that which Amendment 6 seeks to submit to parliamentary judgment. I beg to move.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of Amendment 7 and in support of Amendment 6. I strongly reiterate and endorse the wise words from the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. As he said, we are not a planning authority. We are Parliament, and we are looking at changes in the legislation contained in the Act of 1900. The criteria used to determine whatever decisions may be reached are different in the two separate cases and we must exercise our judgment independently of the rules which relate to the granting or otherwise of planning permission.

The one thing I feel very strongly about here is certainty. In 1900, the legislation incorporated a plan that was deposited with the Clerk of the Parliaments—I understand it is currently somewhere between this building and Kew, so I have not been able to see it—which shows precisely what was going to happen, and it was in law that what was in the plan was to be implemented.

We are now being asked, in repealing that piece of legislation, to rely on a series of the most generalised principles, and we do not know what we are being asked to approve. It is only right and proper, once planning permission has been granted and there is a degree of certainty about the detail of what is going to be proposed, that we then have the last word. That is consistent with the pattern of the way in which this has occurred.

Let us remember: Victoria Tower Gardens is not just any old public park. It was established by an Act of Parliament, and at the time it was established, it was agreed between the committee and the LCC—and, I think, the First Commissioner of Works—that it was a “national improvement”. Given that context, what we are seeing is both entirely reasonable and quite proper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly disagree with the characterisation of what I said. What I said was that the planning application was live, as it is, but that there will be a new planning process. The actual planning application has been quashed because of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900. That is why we have brought forward Clause 2, so that we can disapply the powers of the county council Act 1906. I did say, as well, that the designated Minister will decide what process will be used to take the application forward; that could be a round table seeking consensus, a planning inquiry or written representations. That is a decision for the designated Minister; it is not in the remit of what we are discussing. At times, this has sounded very much like a planning committee, but that is not the remit of what the clauses of this Bill set out to do.

I will make progress. The Government have already given an assurance that they will notify the relevant authorities in both Houses as soon as practicable following the reactivation of the planning process for the current application. The restoration and renewal programme of the Palace of Westminster has also been considered. We will continue to work with the team responsible for the restoration and renewal programme to make sure we understand the interactions and potential impacts between the two schemes.

I will briefly clarify comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, on the red rating assigned to the programme in the annual reports by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. That rating, as has been made clear in each report since 2022, reflects the need to obtain Parliament’s approval for this Bill and to recover planning consent. Before losing planning consent in 2022, the programme was rated amber.

It is therefore unnecessary to seek further steps adding a report and a resolution in both Houses when a planning process will have been completed in accordance with the statutory requirements. These amendments would simply add further delays. I therefore ask the noble Lords, Lord Lisvane, Lord Hodgson, Lord Inglewood and Lord Strathcarron, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Fookes and Lady Walmsley, not to press Amendments 6 and 7.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I think that the intent that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and I had has been slightly misinterpreted. When the planning process—I use that general term, because, as we heard in answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, it could have a number of different characteristics—has been completed, it may be that that part of the process imposes new requirements and that there is something that the planning process requires of the Government to acknowledge, to achieve or to allow for as the project goes forward. If that is the case then there will be a powerful argument for a reassessment of the achievability and affordability of the programme.

I had intended to test the opinion of the House on my amendment. However, at this late—or perhaps very early—hour, I can hear the first notes of the “Farewell” symphony being played. I do not think the House would be particularly happy if I inflicted another 12 or 13 minutes of Division upon it, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 6 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

There is a simple solution. R&R is of importance to the nation, the work of government, the dignity of Parliament and the needs of future generations. It must be allowed to go ahead as efficiently as possible. In planning the memorial, the considerations relating to R&R must be sorted out first. They must take priority, and we must be told how this will be achieved. The persistence behind the memorial project is hard to understand. It can now be seen to be adverse to the national interests, in addition to all its other flaws. We must get on with R&R and bring to an end the costly indecision and risks that we face now. I beg to move.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and her Amendment 9. With the then Clerk of the Parliaments, I commissioned the first ever condition and survey of the Palace in October 2011. That reported in March 2012; its principal conclusion was that doing nothing was not an option, and that was 13 years ago. I am deeply frustrated that nothing, or very little, has been done since then. If there is some catastrophic event of fire, structure, electricity or water supply, those years of indecision will be partly to blame.

This amendment is based on the happy assumption that we finally get R&R going. But when we do, the last thing we need is for the construction of the memorial and learning centre to be a new obstacle to R&R.

I will very briefly revisit a point I made in Committee. At the north end of Victoria Tower Gardens is the Parliamentary Education Centre, which the noble Baroness mentioned briefly. It has been hugely successful in introducing young people to Parliament. As the then corporate officer of the House of Commons, I was the applicant for the planning permission for the centre. That permission ran out on 22 August last year. It has been extended to 2030, but when it runs out and the Parliamentary Education Centre is demolished, that will be a major works project in itself, and it will happen at the very time when the Holocaust memorial and learning centre is being constructed. Whatever difficulties of safety, security and access may be presented by that project, they will be substantially increased by the demolition of the Parliamentary Education Centre and the heavy traffic involved. It is all the more important that the authorities of the two Houses—in practice probably the corporate officers—should be satisfied that R&R will not be impeded. This amendment would achieve that aim.

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment and I wholeheartedly support it. We, as parliamentarians, have a duty to cherish and care for this wonderful building. That is what the restoration and renewal project is about. We have a duty to preserve this world heritage site and to hand it on to future generations; whatever else happens anywhere else in the vicinity, we must never lose sight of that duty. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, have put the case very well and there is no need, at this late hour, for me to add anything further to that.