Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I know. Some politicians don’t eat their own words—I swallow mine whole.

It is those MSPs who are closer to their communities, and unlike the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), they want the UK Government to work with them.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It has been very good to work closely with Pembrokeshire County Council over the last 12 months on a successful bid to the levelling-up fund to improve Haverfordwest town centre. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when it comes to Wales, local authorities really value the new direct relationship with the UK Government, and that the levelling-up fund creates new opportunities for partnership that do not exclude devolved Government and provide more opportunities for local Members of Parliament to get in and help their communities work on solutions?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I talk on calls to local authorities in Scotland, as well as local authorities in Wales, it is striking how grateful they are that the UK Government are taking a pro-devolution, pro-decentralisation approach. That is in stark contrast to the Welsh Assembly Government and the Scottish Government, who are centralising power in Cardiff and Edinburgh and not listening to the communities so well represented on these Benches.

Community Renewal Fund and Levelling Up Fund in Wales

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your Chairmanship for the first time and to follow my colleague on the Welsh Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). I start by saying clearly that I welcome these funds. I welcome these new pots of money that have been created to achieve, we hope, good and lasting things in Wales and in our constituencies. I welcome the design of the funds, the commitment on the part of the UK Government and the vision that lies behind the funds—what they actually speak to and represent. It is a vision of a fairer, more balanced economy right across the whole United Kingdom.

The theme of an unbalanced, lopsided economy is one that we have talked about a lot over the years as Welsh Members of Parliament, recognising that Wales remains one of the poorest parts of the whole United Kingdom, recognising that other nations and regions of the United Kingdom seem to have been able to power ahead much more effectively with economic growth and prosperity creation. Too often in Wales, it feels that we are stuck and have been left behind. Certainly, the statistics seem to demonstrate that. I welcome the vision that the Government have announced and outlined, and the way that the funds give meaning to that.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Newport West about the devolution settlement, I do not believe it was ever part of the devolution vision originally sold to the Welsh people 20 years ago that a sort of Berlin wall would be created to stop the UK Government spending money for the benefit of its citizens in the devolved nations. I do not believe that was ever part of the original devolution vision.

When I was Secretary of State for Wales, there was never a shortage of Opposition MPs knocking on the door of the Wales Office asking, “Are there any pots of money available from UK Government to help schemes and projects in individual constituencies?” That was even when those projects and schemes touched on devolved areas. For the first time, we have funding streams available that complement, but do not compete with, what the Welsh Government are trying to do. As a Welsh Member of Parliament, I see that as a healthy thing.

I believe leaders of local authorities such as mine, and others from which we heard evidence at the Welsh Affairs Committee two weeks ago, welcome the opportunity for engagement with UK Government and what these funds bring for our communities. More direct contact between Welsh local authorities and UK Government is healthy. Again, it was never part of the devolution settlement sold originally to the Welsh people that local government in Wales should become a no-go area for UK Government. It is surely healthy for UK Government to have direct and meaningful relationships with local government. That is not to compete with the Welsh Government or ride roughshod over the devolution settlement but to create that healthy connection.

The Minister and I have talked before about post-Brexit funding, the successor to EU funds, and the need for better-quality projects and investment in Wales. We have had 20 years of EU funding, and it is not always obvious what that funding has delivered for our communities. I am not saying that very worthwhile projects have not been supported—of course they have been—but it is difficult to point to clear-cut examples of EU funding for projects and investment that has moved the dial, helped create better, more balanced growth and better-quality, higher-paid jobs in Wales, and made that kind of step change. I would emphasise to the Minister that this new generation of funding needs to support those better-quality projects and investments. The greater involvement of local authorities can help foster that, because local authorities on the ground often have the best knowledge of what is going on in their communities.

My final point is about my community in Pembrokeshire. I have been working with the local authority on a bid for this funding, focusing on town centre regeneration in Haverfordwest, which I hope is successful. Town centres need to do different things in future and not rely as heavily on retail as they did in the past. Covid has provided a catalyst for change in our communities. The bid we are working on could represent a new future for Haverfordwest town centre. It could benefit from tourism and our cultural heritage.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the general debate on Holocaust Memorial Day 2021. It may be helpful to inform the House that the debate is likely to run until 3.45.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Holocaust Memorial Day 2021.

It is a privilege to open this important debate to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, which took place yesterday, 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which remains one of the most dark and horrific crime scenes of world history. I would like to thank in particular the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) for co-sponsoring this debate.



Over the past 20 years, Holocaust Memorial Day has become an important part of our national life, with the numbers of events growing every year. That is largely down to the incredible work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and the Holocaust Educational Trust, which both work tirelessly to ensure that the collective memory of the holocaust is renewed and strengthened with every passing year. The pandemic has meant that this memorial day has been marked in different ways, but nevertheless thousands of activities have taken place across the country, using resources that the HMDT developed to support online commemorations.

Normally, Members from across the House would have had the opportunity to sign a book of commitment organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust, in which we remember the victims of the holocaust, and pledge to fight against hatred, racism and antisemitism, wherever we see it. Last night we were all able, wherever we were in the UK, to participate in the first fully digital national holocaust commemorative ceremony.

Holocaust Memorial Day is when we remember the millions of people murdered under Nazi persecution, and in the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. The theme this year is “Be the light in the darkness”, and at the close of the ceremony last night we lit candles. Those candles symbolised the lives of those who were murdered in the death camps and subsequent genocides, as well as the lives of the survivors who still live and walk among us, and those who have passed away.

The candles also represented hope—the hope that comes from a collective determination never to allow such atrocities to take place again; the hope that comes from standing together against antisemitism and all forms of prejudice. As the years pass by, the number of men and women who witnessed and survived the holocaust sadly gets smaller, and it is an incredible privilege to meet those survivors and hear their extraordinary testimonies. They are stories of courage, survival, hope, and forgiveness, in the face of unthinkable horror and suffering.

A few years ago I had the privilege of meeting Lily Ebert, now aged 97, who survived Auschwitz. Lily is a remarkable woman, a true survivor. Just last week she went for her first walk, having recovered from covid-19. Susan Pollack moved many of us to tears at the Conservative conference in 2018, by recounting her experiences as a young girl in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Many have said this before, and it is so true, that meeting these survivors is an unforgettable experience. I am always left stunned and humbled by their capacity for forgiveness, and the choice to love those who showed them only hate and violence. That is light in darkness.

I pay tribute to the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, which enables young people to understand the past, and empowers them to stand up against antisemitism and prejudice in all its forms. In March last year, due to the pandemic it was forced to suspend its overseas projects and in-person educational programmes, but the trust has quickly adapted to ensure that its work is continued at an impressive scale online, with survivors using video calls to share their testimonies. The responses shared on social media afterwards show how strikingly powerful those sessions are, especially for young people.

Holocaust Memorial Day is about remembrance, but it should also be a moment that moves us to consider the darkness still around us today. I am talking about the cancer of antisemitism that even now eats away inside some of our institutions, and that spawns and thrives on social media, and casts dark shadows across our own society and those of some of our closest neighbours.

Take, for example, the Halle synagogue attack in Germany in October 2019. The synagogue was targeted in an antisemitic attack, and the armed attacker unsuccessfully tried to enter the synagogue, before fatally shooting two non-Jewish victims and injuring two others. The perpetrator espoused radical far-right views. He was an antisemite and holocaust denier. He livestreamed his actions so that they could be celebrated in dark places online.

Even closer to home, we could look at what is happening in our universities. I am sure that some colleagues will want to raise that this afternoon. How can it be that Jewish students in this country do not feel protected by our institutions, places of openness and learning turned into dark corners where Jewish young people experience fear? The adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance modern definition of antisemitism should merely be the first step in tackling rising levels of antisemitism, yet even that is seen as too much to ask for from some universities, whose academics spuriously claim that the definition would shut down legitimate debate about Israeli Government policies.

We must not shy away from the reality that modern antisemitism invariably morphs into anti-Zionism and the demonisation of Israel itself. The late Rabbi Lord Sacks, a man of extraordinary wisdom and kindness, once said:

“One of the enduring facts of history is that most anti-Semites do not think of themselves as anti-Semites. ‘We don’t hate Jews’, they said in the Middle Ages, ‘just their religion’. ‘We don’t hate Jews’, they said in the 19th century, ‘just their race’. ‘We don’t hate Jews’, they say now, ‘just their nation state’.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 September 2018; Vol. 792, c. 2413.]

I have had the privilege of visiting Yad Vashem, Israel’s holocaust memorial, on numerous occasions, and I find each experience deeply moving. On leaving the museum, visitors walk out on to a balcony overlooking a vista of Jerusalem, and it is impossible not to reflect on the place of sanctuary and refuge that the nation state of Israel continues to provide for Jews still fleeing persecution today.

Holocaust Memorial Day is also about remembering the other genocides the world has witnessed. I think about the people I met in 1998 in the Bosnian town of Foča, a town described by Human Rights Watch as a “closed, dark place”, which saw the systematic removal of its Muslim population by Serb forces in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It saw forced detention, rape, expulsions, murder on a horrific scale, and destruction of historic mosques and other cultural sites.

I think too of the victims and the survivors of the Rwandan genocide, which happened right under the noses of the international community in 1994. I, along with numerous colleagues in my party, used to spend part of my summer recess in Rwanda with Project Umubano, which was founded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). On each of those visits, we would visit the genocide memorial in Kigali, where we would lay a wreath. We had the opportunity to hear the testimonies of survivors—people such as the wonderful Freddy Mutanguha, who was one of the 95,000 children and teenagers in Rwanda orphaned during those terrible three months between April and July ’94. In Rwanda, the dark places of genocide were the beautiful green hillsides, the churches, the sports grounds.

One of the lessons of those visits is that genocides do not happen by accident. They follow a pattern. They require planning. It requires powerful people to deliberate and take calculated decisions to persecute and, ultimately, visit death upon entire communities. Weapons and implements of torture and murder need to be bought, acquired, constructed. Genocides require ideologies to flourish that focus on differences between people and groups—ideologies that glorify strength and superiority, that systematically dehumanise minorities. Those ideologies infect school rooms, universities, bars and individual homes. They are ideologies that create those dark places where the unthinkable somehow becomes justifiable and even normal.

It requires methods of mass communication and propaganda—radio, television and, in our own age, the unregulated channels of social media—to turn communities against each other. Most of all, genocides require people to turn a blind eye—neighbours, work colleagues, friends, even family members. Genocides require people to turn away. They require good people to do nothing.

I believe that darkness threatens every new generation. Old hatreds resurface time and again. Maybe they never fully go away and are just waiting for vehicles to emerge to legitimise and breathe new life into them at opportune moments. Being light in darkness means staying vigilant against that, it means having the clarity to identify it, and it means having the courage to confront it and push back wherever possible—in our national institutions, in our own political parties, on social media, in our own constituencies. None of those is an easy thing to do, but on Holocaust Memorial Day we take renewed strength from being able to stand together, reflect on the events of the past and pledge to honour the memory of those whose lives were taken, by doing more—by doing what we can—to stand up against prejudice, antisemitism and hatred in all its forms.

[Mr Speaker]

We will start with a three-minute limit, in order to accommodate all Members who wish to contribute to this very, very important debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Crabb]

In concluding this marvellous, inspiring debate, I thank all 76 Members of this House, drawn from all parties and from all corners of our United Kingdom, who contributed with moving powerful, intelligent and well-informed speeches. I believe that the best of the House is represented by the debates we have on Holocaust Memorial Day, which has become such an important feature of our national life and our parliamentary calendar. The strong commitment shown by all parts of the House this afternoon underlines and reinforces again the deep commitment that there is in this House to ensure that the holocaust has a permanent place in our nation’s collective memory. I am particularly grateful for the contributions from the three Front-Bench speakers at the end of this debate, all of whom spoke extremely well. I was particularly grateful for the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who spoke also very powerfully last night in the national commemorative ceremony and has a deep personal connection to the issue.

It was good to hear the shadow Secretary of State reaffirm his own personal commitment and his party’s commitment to honouring the memory of those who fell during the holocaust by challenging wrong sentiments and challenging prejudices that may still linger in the political party and in this place.

To conclude, I thank everyone who has participated. It is has been a very good debate.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau for the first time last year, and I will never forget what I saw there and nor should I. In 2021, we must all remain on our guard and shine that light until the end of time.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Holocaust Memorial Day 2021.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

Again, I could not disagree with a word that the hon. Lady says. Visits are important, but it is not always possible to take every student, as I have said. One of the lessons I enjoyed teaching, which I found to be one of the most powerful about the battlefields—we could not take every child—was to make my students put their own name or a family name into the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. They would very often find somebody, and we would then do a piece of creative writing on what that person’s experience must have been like. Visits to the battlefields and, of course, to Auschwitz are very important.

One of the real challenges of teaching the holocaust is that, because of the scale of the horror and the outrage, it is often very difficult for young people to understand the machinery and the scale of what actually happened. However, a visit reinforces something that it is much more difficult to get across in the classroom. We have to continue holocaust education, and we have to continue to fund the Holocaust Educational Trust properly.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point about young people’s understanding of the totality of the suffering and darkness that they witness when they go on these visits. Does he agree that a lot of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s work is in follow-up activities to help young people to make sense of their visit and really internalise the lessons they have learned?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown), who spoke very well. It has been a privilege to be in the Chamber to hear so many powerful and moving speeches, especially the contribution by the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who spoke about family connections and friendships. All Members on both sides of the House will have found it very enriching to hear that.

It is a privilege to be called to make a short contribution to this important debate. This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day debate is perhaps the most important yet as we not only mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the other death camps, but recognise that, with each passing year, the living memory of those horrific events among those in our society leaves us. Over the past 12 months, since the previous such debate, here in Britain we have said goodbye to holocaust survivors Rudi Oppenheimer, Harry Bibring, Fred Austin, Judith Kerr, Hermann Hirschberger, Leslie Brent, Edward Guest and Rabbi Harry Jacobi—all remarkable men and women who refused to allow the pain and trauma of the events that they lived through as younger people to define their lives as holocaust survivors. Instead, they chose to spread light—they chose to be a shining light in our society, spreading the light of forgiveness, tolerance and love, and spreading that light as educators as well.

As we have heard, many of the survivors, including many still with us today in our society, have devoted enormous amounts of time to teaching young people about the past, and about the challenge of antisemitism and hatred in our own society. Much of that work, as we have heard, has been done through the Holocaust Educational Trust. I, too, wish to place on the record my admiration and support for its work. I, too, have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau with students on a trip organised by the HET, and seen the powerful learning effect of such visits. Discussing with the young people afterwards what that visit meant to them really demonstrated to me how effective those visits are, and how important it is for us, as a Government, to continue to provide financial and practical support to the HET.

In 2019 we also said goodbye to Ron Jones. Ron Jones was not Jewish, but he did survive Auschwitz; he was known as the goalkeeper of Auschwitz. He was a Welshman from south Wales who found himself incarcerated in a section of the camp that was reserved for British and other servicemen, so the conditions that he experienced at Auschwitz were different. He played a lot of football there, and that is where he earned his nickname. We said goodbye to him last year. He was Britain’s oldest poppy-seller—102 years old. But what he lived through he never forgot; what he witnessed in Auschwitz remained with him forever. He, too, carried that with him into society and did what he could to spread knowledge and understanding about those horrific, dark events.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend mentions the very important visits to Auschwitz by young British schoolchildren. Sometimes they are just taken to the camp for the day and flown straight back to the United Kingdom the same day, and I have heard from some pupils that they get—obviously—a very negative perspective of Poland, because all they see is the concentration camp. I very much hope that as this programme is developed, children will be allowed to stay a little bit longer and see cities such as Krakow so that they find out what Poland is really like and their camp visit does not represent their only experience of the country.

[Stephen Crabb]

My hon. Friend makes his important point well—it is now on record.

I only learned about Ron Jones, the goalkeeper of Auschwitz, last week, when I attended the holocaust memorial event run by Chelsea football club at Stamford Bridge. Ron Jones is one of three individuals depicted on a huge new mural that stands outside the ground that has been painted by the Israeli-resident street artist, Solomon Souza. The other two figures depicted in the mural are Jewish footballers from central and eastern Europe who did perish at Auschwitz.

I thought that this would be a good moment to place on record my admiration for what Chelsea has done in the field of combating antisemitism. I confess that I am a little bit of a cynic when it comes to premiership football, given the vast amounts of money sloshing about in the game, and the eyewatering transfer fees and TV revenues, but having followed what Chelsea has done in combating antisemitism over the past two years, the leadership that it has shown on this issue and the way in which the club has approached its work, I am very impressed indeed. I think there is an integrity about that work, which demonstrates real leadership in the field of sport.

Recognising that premiership football is probably one of the main cultural leaders in our society and has enormous influence, I think that what the club is doing is incredibly important. It launched its “Say No To Antisemitism” campaign two years ago with a powerful foreword, written by Roman Abramovich, the owner of the club, in its programme notes for a match against Bournemouth. He wrote:

“On 27 January, the world observed Holocaust Memorial Day. The Holocaust was a crime without parallel in history. We must never forget such atrocities and must do our utmost to prevent them from ever happening again. It is my honour to dedicate this match to the victims of the Holocaust and to the Jewish community.”

Those are remarkable words to read in a match programme on a mid-week evening or a Saturday afternoon. That work, and the work that Chelsea are doing with the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Jewish Museum, the Community Security Trust, Kick It Out, the World Jewish Congress and the Anne Frank house, is worthy of putting on record and deserves a lot of support.

At the event I attended at Stamford Bridge last week, we heard from the club captain, other players, including the English defender Ruben Loftus-Cheek, and the club chairman, Bruce Buck. They all spoke with genuine interest, knowledge and integrity. We also heard from the England women’s player, Anita Asante, who spoke powerfully about this subject, which she linked to her visit to Israel last summer with the Chelsea women’s team.

Israel has not been mentioned a lot in this debate. When we discuss antisemitism, or when it is discussed in our society, people often skirt around the issue of Israel. I recognise that there are distinctions, and I put on record that I am the parliamentary chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, but when we call out antisemitism in our society today it is important to recognise that the mask—the face—worn by antisemitism in 2020 is often a blatant hatred of Israel. People dress up their core antisemitism with a hatred of Israel, thinking it somehow makes their antisemitism more acceptable.

[Andrew Percy]

That was precisely why, when I responded to such a debate a few years ago, I referenced the Israelification of antisemitism. That is why it is so important that we sign up to the IHRA definition. We have a big problem with antisemitism on the campuses of our universities in this country, so will my right hon. Friend condemn universities like Warwick, whose vice-chancellor is refusing to sign up to the IHRA definition that addresses the Israelification of antisemitism?

[Stephen Crabb]

I support my hon. Friend’s suggestion. He has done fantastic work on this, and it is valid for him to call out those universities that still refuse to sign up to the IHRA definition.

Antisemitism in this country often has a face of Israel-hatred. I have a problem when people talk about fighting antisemitism, and being against antisemitism, while indulging in far-right or far-left conspiracy theories and tropes of Jewish stereotypes, even though they try to untangle those remarks.

I follow some of the commentaries and debates online and, as CFI chairman in the Commons, I receive a lot of emails about my position on Israel and my defence of the state of Israel. I challenge those people on some of the language they use. The right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) mentioned how “Nazi” is repeatedly used as an insult. People know exactly what they are doing when they describe Israelis as Nazis, and it stems from the core of antisemitism that underlies a lot of this.

I am a proud defender of the state of Israel—that makes me a Zionist—and I believe in a Jewish homeland. We recognise that the state of Israel was founded in the ruins and the aftermath of the dark events we are remembering today—there is a direct link. A Jewish homeland, the state of Israel, is the last defence against antisemitism. It is the right of Jews to live in a country where they can walk around without fear of being who they are, and where they can fully own their identity and live in a Jewish state.

I hope that this has been a helpful contribution. Friendship and support for the state of Israel are part of our fight against antisemitism in the United Kingdom in 2020. We can be critical friends—we are not asked to be cheerleaders for any particular Israeli Government—but we stand in defence of a Jewish homeland, the state of Israel.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It is a real privilege and pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan).

In November, I had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau to participate in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s “Lessons from Auschwitz” programme. I had heard previously from students and teachers in my constituency that it was a personal and educational experience like no other, so I am grateful to the trust for giving me the opportunity to see how that important educational programme is delivered.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is a place of fascination. The architecture, the gateway, the railway line have become immediately recognisable symbols of the holocaust. It draws visitors by the thousands every week. It features in the Lonely Planet guide under “attractions”. It also remains one of the world’s largest crime scenes—a place of proof and evidence—even as some continue to promote theories, whether through vile cartoons or pseudo-academic papers, that these events never took place.

Auschwitz is also, for many, a deeply spiritual place. For some, it is a place where God did not intervene—where He turned His back. For others, it is the place where faith found new depths and new heights, even in the midst of a visitation of pure evil on an entire people group.

I have had the privilege to meet several survivors of Auschwitz and of other death camps. One cannot fail to be moved by the grace and depth of these remarkable individuals. Last October, Susan Pollock MBE, who survived both Auschwitz and Belsen as a young girl, gave probably the most meaningful talk I have ever heard at a Conservative Party conference. She left the whole room stunned; there were tears running down our faces as she shared her memories and experiences and spoke of forgiveness and of breaking down barriers. I thought, what an incredible, humbling privilege it is for us, as a society, to have these people still living among us. The precious twilight years of so many such survivors are now devoted to educating and informing younger generations about the past—what they saw and what they lived through.

Holocaust Memorial Day this Sunday is about honouring the survivors, as well as reflecting on the devastating losses and the destruction of a whole culture in central Europe. It is also a day about the present and the future. That is what makes it so vital that the Government should continue to support the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

What is the message? What lessons cry out to us today from these darkest of events? For me, the lesson is that the roots and origins of the holocaust run very deep. It was not a quirk of history. It did not just happen by accident in the chaos of warfare. Visitors learn something similar when they go to the Genocide memorial and museum in Kigali, Rwanda, which I have visited several times. Genocides require planning, organisation, equipment, supplies. That needs effective management and leadership. However, to undertake something so horrific on such a vast scale, something else is required. Yes, genocide requires a large number of people to carry out tasks, but it requires an even larger number of people to turn a blind eye—not to question, not to resist. It requires a population to stay silent, out of fear or assent.

In all examples of genocide we see the same pattern, where the violence and killing has been supported by years of conditioning the population to really hate the group that is being targeted for elimination. It starts with what we now call stereotyping—generalisations, mockery, blame, lies, bullying, verbal abuse, victimising, conspiracy theories. That is what provides the deep soil from which grow the hideous and vile acts of genocide. That is the very essence of antisemitism. Who can say that we are not living with that in our very midst in 2019? That is the lived experience of some of our colleagues, and some of our constituents, right now.

So this week—a week when many of us have signed the Book of Commitment downstairs, and when we shall be remembering Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday—is about pledging to act; to label and call out the acts that we come across daily for what they are. As a new MP in my first term, I was in the Tea Room talking to a colleague about a forthcoming Conservative Friends of Israel trip to Israel. A rather grand colleague, who is no longer in this place, said to me, “Be careful, young man. You wouldn’t be the first gentile to be taken in.” I am ashamed to say that I let that remark go. The remark reflected the dark stereotypes of the Jewish people, drawing on ideas of conspiracy, manipulation and deception. I am ashamed that I did not stand up to it on that occasion. We have an opportunity, on this memorial day, to reflect on what we can do and to renew our commitment to act.