Holocaust Memorial Bill

Third Reading

15:20:00

My Lords, I thought it would be helpful to the House, before we move on to the Third Reading of the Holocaust Memorial Bill, to remind people of the usual procedures and courtesies. I am aware that some noble Lords may wish to speak, and any speeches should take place after Third Reading on the question that the Bill do now pass. It is customary that contributions at this stage should focus on brief thanks. I ask colleagues to minimise the number of contributions and keep speeches very concise. As set out on page 154 of the Companion: “Any remarks should be brief and should not seek to reopen debates at previous stages of the bill”. I hope all noble Lords will respect this as we complete the passage of this Bill through the House, but I have asked the Government Whips on the Bench to intervene if necessary.

15:22:00

Motion

Moved by

That the Bill do now pass.

My Lords, it has been my great privilege to steer this Bill through the Lords. I thank all noble Lords who have dedicated so much of their time to scrutinising the Bill. I hope I have demonstrated my personal commitment to seeing it passed through my engagement with noble Lords from all sides of the House. Through this Bill, the Government are moving a step closer to delivering on the long-standing commitment to build a national Holocaust memorial and learning centre next to Parliament, where it rightly belongs. As has often been repeated throughout the Bill’s passage, this commitment has cross-party support and the endorsement of every living Prime Minister, as well as the support of leading representatives of the Jewish community, other faith and community leaders, survivors and the wider public. The most important group of supporters is, without doubt, the Holocaust survivors, who have dedicated their lives to sharing their testimony so that the truth of what happened in the darkest, most appalling period of history is understood and remembered. I was delighted to see the Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, whom I met in February and who is a firm supporter of the memorial, receive a well-deserved MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours List. We owe it to survivors to ensure that there is a permanent memorial to honour the 6 million men, women and children who were murdered in the Holocaust, together with a learning centre, so that they can be confident their testimony will live on for decades and centuries to come. The Bill has been amended to include a new clause on the purpose of the learning centre. As I said on Report, I am sympathetic to the intentions of this amendment, but it will now be for the other place to consider the amendment and respond. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for her unstinting support for the Bill, and the many noble Lords—I will not mention them all—who have spoken so passionately throughout its passage. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for his unwavering support. I cannot mention every civil servant, but all my officials have been instrumental behind the scenes. I finish by quoting the words of Dov Forman, the great-grandson of Lily Ebert, a most remarkable Holocaust survivor. His words encapsulate what we want to achieve by creating the new national memorial and learning centre: “With education comes remembrance—this memorial will give people somewhere to remember and reflect. When we no longer have survivors like Lily among us, this memorial will help to ensure that their experiences are never forgotten. We can create the next generation of witnesses”. Lily has since sadly passed, in October 2024 at the age of 100. We now need to get this memorial and learning centre built so that we can indeed create the next generation of witnesses. I beg to move.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his courtesy during the passage of the Bill and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on her leadership of those of us who felt there were problems with it. I thank all those who pointed out the risks and drawbacks of the choice the Government have made about the location of the learning centre and express a hope that, on reflection, the Government may in time make a different choice.

My Lords, one has to congratulate the Minister and the department on their patience and persistence, and indeed perhaps on a record. Rarely can a one-page Bill with three clauses have achieved the potential of doing so much damage to the environment, to local facilities, to restoration and renewal, to security—what a shame that the House did not see fit to follow the wise words of the expert noble Lord, Lord Carlile—as well as damage to the beauty of the locality, to the understanding of antisemitism and Jewish history past and present, to intra-community relations, to the recommendations of the Prime Minister’s 2015 Holocaust Commission, and to the public purse. Once we are free of the fears of this Government that any alternative is somehow giving in to the antisemitism of which the party was accused a few years ago—that is simply not the case—we will go forward with a planning process that might yet rescue this botched plan. It is not too late to tweak it and build not a monument to death and the Nazis but one dedicated to the need to preserve and understand Jewish life. At a time when a new version of the desire to destroy Jewish life in the Middle East and elsewhere is playing out as we speak, we could have a learning centre that extended to the achievement of the survivors of the Holocaust in building what was a safe haven for Jews: a land of their own. Is it not ironic that this Government are so respectful of 6 million dead but so cavalier about the fate of 7 million of their descendants in Israel right now? There is indeed much to be learned, not just close to Parliament but inside our debates. We who understand what is at stake will continue to press our case. The fight is not over.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his enormous courtesy and patience, and for being willing to go that extra mile to ensure that everybody gets a fair chance to get their view across. I am very encouraged by his remarks with regard to the noble Lord’s amendment. It is a sensible one, and we need something to ensure it is absolutely clear that this cannot drift into a museum of general genocide. The Minister spoke about survivors; to me they are represented by just one survivor, Sir Ben Helfgott. He was an enormous inspiration to get this job done. I am sorry that he is no longer with us and will not see it, but I am delighted that his wife, his children and his grandchildren will see this wonderful memorial built. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Scott for the way in which she showed equal patience. I think she and the Minister have been the last two people with responsibility for the memorial and learning centre. It was an inspiration to bring the model into the House, so much so that I recall how one of my noble friends demanded that it be brought back again. I think that showed that it was actually quite an attractive model; in particular, the fins are quite attractive. There has been some misinformation—I am sure unintentional—about who designed the fins, and it was Adjaye, but I express my particular gratitude to Asa Bruno, who was the architect in the architectural practice. As the Minister will know, sadly, that very talented young man died of cancer, leaving behind a young family and a wife. I hope that that family will, in the coming years, come to see that the last project that Asa was involved in was a project of global importance, and will come back and see it with great pride. May his memory be a blessing.

15:30:00

My Lords, bearing in mind the words of the Chief Whip, I congratulate and thank the Minister, who, throughout a rather long and torrid Committee and Report, showed tremendous courtesy. I thank him for that. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for her contribution to this, which I thought was very great. As somebody who cares hugely about the Jewish Holocaust and the ghastly thing it is, the site for the learning centre is wrong. It will be cramped and is not worthy of what we wish to commemorate. I say to the Minister and others that back this that I do not believe they will be built, because they are going to be so many problems once we start destroying Victoria Gardens to do so. But, on that note, I again congratulate the Minister and the Chief Whip on his words, and I will let him carry on.

My Lords, while agreeing with the noble Lord who has just spoken, I would also like to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in her tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for all her work on this Bill—right up to 1.15 last Thursday morning, and all the work that she put in at Second Reading and in Committee in the Moses Room. I do not want to be disrespectful to the two Front Benches but, following the noble Lord who spoke just now, I have to say that I could argue that both Front Benches are like ostriches who have got their heads stuck in the sand. But I am getting a long frown from my Chief Whip and will not progress that argument further, but I ask all Members of the House to have a thought about that, because the consequences of this Bill are so adverse and destructive that I can only hope that the noble Lord on the Conservative Benches is right and this Bill will be lost.

My Lords, I should declare my interest as president of Historic Buildings & Places. I congratulate the Government and all those who took part in the Bill. It was a learning process. I have over the last 50 years earned my professional qualifications, worked as a professional and worked in other things, and the theme of my life has been land, land use, law and planning. I have to say to the House that, the more the Bill progressed, the more I became convinced that this proposal was overdevelopment and in the wrong place. I do not wish to say any more, other than, with sadness, that this Bill, the Holocaust Memorial Bill, will no doubt shortly be going on the statute. In my view. it is not properly named: it is the Victoria Tower Gardens Destruction Bill.

My Lords, I am a simple sailor, but my thoughts are that, when they start work deep in the basement, would they please not use Navy or Army divers to do the work there but ensure that the money is paid by someone else?

My Lords, it is a pleasure to rise at Third Reading of this important Bill. I will not restate our position at length, but the Official Opposition support the Bill, which will take us another step closer to delivering on my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton’s historic commitment to build a lasting national memorial to the Holocaust. We have made a solemn commitment never to forget the horrors of the Holocaust and to work to ensure that it will never happen again. Holocaust education is an essential part of our efforts to make good on those promises. It has been the policy of successive Conservative Governments that we need a national Holocaust memorial and learning centre. This has the support of the Holocaust education organisations, including the Holocaust Centre North, the National Holocaust Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust. We were very pleased that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, was successful on Report. We feel strongly that the noble Lord’s amendment not only improves the Bill but is actually helpful to the Government. It is designed to ensure that the intentions of successive Governments are honoured once the memorial and learning centre have been established. We hope the Minister will be able to reassure us today, although we have heard no reassurance, that the Government will carefully consider the amendment. Can the Minister perhaps go further and tell the House whether he will make the case to his colleagues in government that the amendment should be accepted? Finally, I would like to thank the Minister for his continued engagement throughout the progress of the Bill. It is a controversial piece of legislation and I am grateful to him for his approach when working with the Official Opposition Front Bench. I would also like to thank his officials, the House authorities who have supported an extremely long Report stage and all noble Lords who have contributed to the scrutiny process of the legislation. On something very personal, I would like to thank Henry in the Opposition office, who has so ably supported me through the passage of the Bill.

My Lords, I rise very briefly to say that I am not going to respond to all the contributions from the noble Lords. I think there are still some outstanding concerns, but let me reassure noble Lords who have them that, subject to the passage of the Bill in the other House and on to the statute book, there will be a process for people to put their representations, views and ideas forward about prospective future planning. I look forward to meeting in particular with the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, to look at the nature, technicality and wording of his amendment. Finally, I will make one last point to my noble friend Lord Hacking. I thought I would take it as a compliment when he described me as an ostrich. The noble Lord may not know that it is the fastest bird on land, with speeds of up to 70 kph; I wish we had used that speed in the passage of the Bill.

15:38:00

Bill passed and returned to the Commons with amendment.