Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Pickles Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans on closure dates. I was a member of the Select Committee, which, as he told us, took the view that it should not table an amendment to the Bill. Select Committees are very reluctant to amend a Bill; if we did so, we would have the Bill amended before it reached discussion in this House. The place for consideration of amendments is in Committee or on Report. Whatever you see in paragraph 104 should not inhibit in any way the freedom of this Committee or the House to discuss whether an amendment is appropriate. We set out in appendix 7 to our report the various inhibitions and restrictions on a Select Committee in making amendments. It is well to bear in mind that, while we said that there should be no amendment, that in no way need operate against the right reverend Prelate’s amendment.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I think there is general agreement that there should be an independent, stand-alone body. I have no doubt that, once this Bill becomes an Act, that is one of the first things the Government will do. I say this very gently and with no criticism intended, because part of the process of planning is that you can object to things and use all force and every possibility to slow things down. However, one reason it has cost so much is the delays, which are caused by people exercising their democratic rights. I do not complain about that whatever.

However, the question is whether these things should be in the Bill. Frankly, I doubt that they should. With due respect to the right reverend Prelate, I am a little queasy about limiting in the Holocaust Bill the number of days in which we commemorate 6 million dead. Why are we not limiting the number of dog shows, open-air cinemas and organised picnics and exercise in the parks? It looks peculiar that we should pick on the Holocaust and Jews in this Bill. I urge the right reverend Prelate to think again about this and whether we can use common sense to find ways to ensure that people can enjoy the park. It looks appallingly bad for the Holocaust to be picked out.

I say in the gentlest way that I do not recognise any of noble Lords’ descriptions of the academic board. It is only right that we ensure that this is a balanced memorial and learning centre, which does not glorify the British Empire but shows what happened during the Holocaust and our reaction to it, warts and all. That seems a reasonable thing. Frankly, all the various plugs have to be pulled, because we cannot spend public money on what goes inside and start to employ a major director until we have authority to build this. That is not just subject to this Bill; it will also be subject to a further planning consideration. We are some way from being able to appoint people to commit public expenditure to do that, so I am very dubious that any of this should be in the Bill. The Government have made a number of commitments on all three of these things, and they should be made to deliver on them.

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke on the first day in Committee to make clear my support for the memorial but my great concern about the learning centre. It seems increasingly clear that there is an extraordinary vagueness about what it will be made of, how it will be run and how long it will take to produce. I pressed the Minister for an indication of any quotations we might have, any companies that might be willing to build it and any idea of what their costs might be. He very kindly replied to say,

“the simple answer is that we will seek tenders for the main construction”.—[Official Report, 4/3/25; col. GC 68.]

That means that the Government have no idea, either, what this might actually cost.

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[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, before the Minister responds, I will briefly come in on something my noble friend Lord Pickles said about 6 million Jews. I am sure many people here have been to Yad Vashem, which is one of the most moving places I have been to. I have been there three times, and it is absolutely heartbreaking every time—as any memorial and learning centre to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust of the mid-20th century under the Nazis should be.

However, my noble friend said that for 6 million Jews we should have about three days of closure a year, but this memorial is about the Holocaust, not about the 6 million Jews—as I think it should be. It is about the Holocaust in general. Are we going to have one for the Armenian holocaust, where a huge number of Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks in the 1920s? Are we going to have one for the Rwandan holocaust? I have been to Rwanda and know that it was equally as awful. It was just as much of a holocaust as the Jewish one, with one million out of eight million people in Rwandan murdered. Are we going to have one for Holodomor, which saw the slaughter of Ukrainians under Stalin in the 1930s? All of these are examples of holocausts. That is why we are talking about three days, to stop there being endless holocaust events.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

I think I was with my noble friend on his last visit to Yad Vashem. Like him, I have been there many times, and I am always moved by the process. However, we need to make it absolutely clear that there is only one Holocaust. A number of genocides have occurred before and after, but there is only one Holocaust: that was the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My noble friend Lord Robathan has made a very good point, and my noble friend Lord Pickles is right that there is only one Holocaust. But the briefing for this centre says that other genocides will also be commemorated there. So there will be things about Holodomor, and possibly Rwanda, and Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao or whoever they may be. Though there is only one really evil Holocaust, the Shoah, other genocides will also be commemorated. In my opinion, that dilutes the purpose of a Holocaust memorial.

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[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

I wonder if I could just make a very small point of clarification. As a personal view, I entirely agree that the memorial should be in Victoria Tower Gardens. What I worry about is the attempt to shoehorn in the learning centre as well. If we were able to have a standalone, well-designed, come-and-see memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens, it would get my vote immediately, because I also have in mind a world-class educational initiative, and I cannot see that the building proposed, or any of the preparations that have been made, go anywhere near creating a world educational initiative. In the world educational initiative, it is not only the understanding of what happened but what we think about it now and where we are going in these very difficult days where we have similar problems to face.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I am worried that Members are getting a little agitated. I do not think that they should be concerned, because there has not been a single Holocaust memorial built anywhere in the world where this kind of controversy did not occur. People, by and large, do not like them. They do not want them, but once they are built, they are very proud of them.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I have visited the Berlin memorial more than once. It is widely regarded as inappropriate and ineffective. People picnic on it, they bicycle around it, they dance on top of it. They do not know what it is and, of course, what good has it done in Germany? Where is Germany heading now? Look at the rise of anti-Semitism across Europe. There is no relationship at all between the position of a memorial and the effect that it has.

As for the contents of the learning centre, there will be an amendment later. However, Answers to the many parliamentary Questions I have asked have always said that the memorial will contain references to other genocides. This genocide or that genocide—the Government do not seem to know which ones but have always referred to others. It is only very recently that someone has said, “Oh, but the genocide of the Jews is more important than the others and shouldn’t be compared”.

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[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.

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[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, intervened on me; I should be able to reply to him.

If I had expressed a view about a planning application, I would not have dealt with it; I would not have called it in. We are very strict. I must say that we know what is going on here, with people asking, “Will the Minister give a guarantee?” That would be predetermination. The noble Lord is a distinguished lawyer; he knows that it would be grounds for a judicial review if we predetermined it. We separate carefully, to ensure that the people taking decisions on planning have not expressed a view on it and are not subject to views expressed by either the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister. I assured that in the past five years.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I want to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Carlile. I am a lawyer; I am also a chartered surveyor in the planning and development division of the RICS. I worked professionally in this area, a long time ago, for a number of years.

The point is that there is a fundamental difference between the covenant and the planning consent. We are not being asked to form any view about the merits of a planning application or anything like that, because were that to be the case, the draft legislation in front of us would make it explicitly clear that we were taking by statute the power to grant planning permission. The two consents run in parallel, and we should view them like that. The criteria that apply in determining each of the two are not the same.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I too wish to support what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, though I may say it less elegantly. The reason we are talking about planning in this Committee is that we simply do not trust the Government—the previous Government or this Government—not to overrule Westminster City Council. If the Government will give a cast-iron commitment that they will abide by whatever Westminster City Council decides—that they will not call it in or get an inspector to reverse it, and that the Minister will not reverse it either—then all my concerns about planning would be removed. If the Government will trust the decision of Westminster City Council, I think no noble Lords in this Committee would be talking about the planning application.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, that would be a predetermination.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for explaining so well the reasoning behind why we should wait for the planning system. I was going to say something very similar, but now I do not need to because of the timing. However, it would be helpful if the Minister could take the opportunity to give this Committee more detail about the process and the legalities, and about the reasons why we are doing what we are in this Bill, and where it should not then have anything to do with the planning system. That is an important thing to do and I ask that we have it in writing, to clarify this well in time for Report.

I was going to say something about all the other amendments in this group, but I feel that they would be much better discussed within the planning system and not within this Bill.

I will mention something about tea rooms. Interestingly, when I came in today, I was very much in support of not having them, but, having listened to the evidence and thought about it, it is actually not a bad thing to have that in a park that is used by all sorts of people for all sorts of different reasons. I certainly will not be supporting that proposal any longer. As far as I am concerned, all the other amendments should be dealt with in the planning system, so it is not worth my taking up any more of the Committee’s time.