Holocaust Memorial Bill: Committal

Michael Gove Excerpts

Committal (to a Select Committee)
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for the way in which she has introduced these four topics. We are talking mainly about the instruction motion; I do not think that the others are very exceptionable.

I think I may have served on more hybrid Bill Committees—and certainly for longer—than most people, including that of High Speed 2. I doubt that the situation is quite as my hon. Friend described it. Hybrid Bill procedure exists for a reason: to protect the rights of those who are specifically affected by a Bill and allow them to put their case to a Committee. By making clause 2 the principle of the Bill, as well as clause 1—as I said before, there is no controversy about clause 1—the Government have already spent £17 million or more achieving nothing. They are now proposing to spend an extra £80 million to £100 million achieving not very much. I suggested in a previous debate that the Government should consider how to get a national holocaust memorial up—close to Westminster, if they want—within two years. Of course, the Government would not, as I have explained before, achieve it in four to five years extra, over and above the eight years that have been used up so far.

To go back to the hybridity, it is a matter of record that the Government declared in front of the examiners that this was not a hybrid Bill. They were wrong; it is a hybrid Bill. The reason for a hybrid Bill is so that people have the right to petition. The Government tried to stop that. I think that it is fairly clear to anyone who looks at this that the Government are now seeking to achieve the same result by using this instruction. It is up to the Government to decide whether the instruction, as introduced, is an abuse.

It would be quite easy for the Government to stand up and say what things the petitioners might rightfully put in a petition and be heard on, rather than telling the Committee that they cannot be heard. In addition, because this is a local park for local people, I believe not just that advertisements should be put in newspapers or in the gazette, but that a leaflet should be given to every resident, no matter how small or large their home, from, say, Vauxhall Bridge, Victoria station, along Victoria Street and south of Victoria Street up to the embankment. Those people should be told how the procedure works, how they can petition, what they can petition on and how they can be represented together by a common agent, if they want to be. That is what happened in my experience on HS2.

The instruction, as described by the Minister, would make the whole Bill part of the principle of the Bill. That is not common. In fact, I do not know of it happening before. The whole of the Bill cannot be made the principle, because that then makes it impossible for the petitioners to have their cases heard effectively. So I think we need to accept that the petitioners will be heard on nearly everything that is not an abuse. If someone says, “I do not want any money spent on it,” I can understand not allowing that. That is the principle, but the rest of it, I argue, is not.

Paragraph (3)(a) of motion 6 refers to a petition that relates to

“the question of whether or not there should be a memorial commemorating the victims of the Holocaust or a centre for learning relating to the memorial, whether at Victoria Tower Gardens or elsewhere”.

I ask this explicitly: can either the Secretary of State or the Minister stand up and tell me now that, if someone wants to argue in front of the Committee that it would be better to have the basement box somewhere else and just have the memorial, would that petition potentially be heard by the Committee?

[The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)]

I think it would be a matter for the Committee.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I agree with the Secretary of State that it would be a matter for the Committee, but it is a matter for the Committee under the instructions.

By the way, if it helps those who are concerned about votes and trains, I intend to vote for both amendments, but force a Division only on one of them. I am trying to make sure that these issues will be considered in the House during the Bill’s remaining stages and in the House of Lords as well, where I suspect there will be a degree of scrutiny.

This hybrid procedure gives ordinary people a chance to have their voices heard, and it allows the Committee to insert conditions when the Bill comes back to the House. Those conditions, I believe, could include—I am not going to tell the Committee what it has to do, although I volunteer to be a member if anyone wants to put me on it—saying that the Government should, before this Bill comes back for its further stages on the Floor of the House, show the alternatives to the present plans.

I do not think we should rely on the planning inspector, whose conditions were rather odd before, or on the Secretary of State’s colleague making an independent decision on the Secretary of State’s application. I think that may formally be an acceptable procedure, but it is not one that anyone would justify if we were giving a lecture on democracy in another country.

I believe that the Committee should have the capacity or ability to hear petitions that say, “If the Government say that the memorial only takes up 7.5% of the land in Victoria Tower Gardens, that should be written in as a condition in the Bill.” I believe, notwithstanding the acceptability of paragraph (2)(a) about the money, that the Committee should be able to say that the House can consider the Bill on the condition that the total cost is not more than another £80 million, if we go ahead with the box, or preferably £20 million without the box, whether at the north end of Victoria Tower Gardens, or Parliament Square, or Whitehall, or College Green.

There are a whole series of other things I could say—I have a long, detailed speech and I apologise to those who helped me create the arguments—but I think the House will find it convenient if I leave it with this point. This hybrid Bill must be considered properly by the hybrid Committee, which should allow petitions to be heard. Local people will put their points of view forward. If some duplicate each other, hear them together, but do not exclude any point of practice or of principle if we want to get a holocaust memorial in the next two years. We will not with this process. It needs conditions to change it.

We will not even, in my view, get it within the next four or five years at £120 million, unless the Government wake up to the fact that this is sticking in a big box that does not do what the original plans wanted in a place where it is not appropriate. We can do better than that, and I ask the Secretary of State to recognise that that is the point of moving these amendments. I ask the House not to restrict the petitioners. The Government have now accepted that this is a hybrid Bill, so use the procedures properly and be democratic.