MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE

taken before the

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL BILL COMMITTEE

PETITIONS AGAINST THE BILL

Wednesday, 17 January 2024 (afternoon)

In Committee Room 15

A video of the proceedings can be found here.

PRESENT:

John Stevenson (Chair)

Keir Mather

Lia Nici

Angela Richardson

Karl Turner

_____________

FOR THE PROMOTER:

Richard Turney, Counsel, DLUHC

Robbie Owen, Parliamentary Agent

_____________

FOR THE PETITIONER:

Lord Blencathra

Exhibits referred to by the petitioner during the hearing can be found here.

Lord Carlile of Berriew

INDEX

Subject Page

Lord Blencathra

Submissions by Lord Blencathra

Lord Carlile of Berriew

Submissions by Lord Carlile of Berriew

(At 2.15 p.m.)

THE CHAIR: This is the fourth meeting of the Holocaust Memorial Bill Select Committee and as I have done previously, I will just read this out. The Committee is bound by the instruction from the House, which is as follows: that the Committee treats the principle of the Bill, as determined by the House on the Bill’s Second Reading, as comprising the matters mentioned in paragraph 2 and those matters shall, accordingly, not be at issue during the proceedings of the Committee. The matters referred to in paragraph 1 are: (a) the Secretary of State may incur expenditure for or in connection with (i) a memorial commemorating the victims of the Holocaust; and (ii) a centre for learning relating to the memorial; and (b) section 8(1) and 8 of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 are not to prevent, restrict or otherwise affect the construction, use, operation, maintenance or improvement of such a memorial and centre for learning at Victoria Tower Gardens in the City of Westminster.
As the Bill does not remove the need for planning permission and all other necessary consents being obtained in the usual way for the construction, use, operation, maintenance and improvement of the memorial and centre for learning, the Committee shall not hear any petition against the Bill to the extent that the petition relates to (a) 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; or (b) whether or not planning permission and all other necessary consents should be given for the memorial and centre for learning or the terms and conditions on which they should be given.
We will now hear from the petitioner, Lord Blencathra.

Lord Blencathra

Submissions by Lord Blencathra

LORD BLENCATHRA: Mr Chairman, members of the Committee, I am grateful for the opportunity to give evidence to you today. I am Lord Blencathra. I was a member of the House of Commons from 1983 until 2010 and a member of the House of Lords since 2011. My submission to you today is in a purely personal capacity.
First of all, I declare two interests. I have lived in the area for almost 30 years. Whilst my main home is not in London, I have a flat about 400 yards away from the proposed development. However, it is tucked away in a side street and I would not be affected by the additional traffic. Therefore, I do know this area quite well and I detour through the gardens every day in my wheelchair en route to Parliament, that is every day when the House is sitting, because I find it much more pleasant than using Millbank.
Second, I am a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel and the Transatlantic Friends of Israel. In my capacity as a member of the Council of Europe, I have made speeches in Strasbourg on the evils of antisemitism. Mr Chairman, I have made that second declaration because I do not want anyone to misconstrue my opposition to this particular development as any opposition to education or commemoration of the Holocaust. I totally support the need for some sort of appropriate monument and learning about the Holocaust but I submit that the planned proposals for Victoria Tower Gardens will fail abysmally.
I first of all want to address clause 1 of the Bill. I approve of expenditure on a monument and a learning centre on the Holocaust. Indeed, I shall propose greater expenditure on learning about the evils of the Holocaust and the greatly increased Jewish hate we have seen in recent months. Never before has education about the eradication of six million Jews been more essential, as we see frightening calls for a new Holocaust in our streets now.
So I want to show the Committee, with your indulgence, some key results from an Ofcom report of July 2022. First slide, please. You will see here that, for teenagers, Instagram gives them 29% of their news, TikTok 28% and YouTube 28%, and they are way ahead of the BBC, ITV and the standard terrestrial channels.
Slide 2, please. Ofcom also states that these youngsters get more of their news from these platforms and from other people they follow – that is 44% of their news intake – than legitimate or other news organisations, and teenagers today are increasingly unlikely to look at a newspaper or tune into TV news, and they keep up to date by scrolling through their social media. Now, colleagues, if those social media outlets were accurate then we should have little concern but in July last year, we also had this United Nations report.
Slide 3, please. Now the UN report, Oxford analysis, reveals that up to half of Holocaust-related content on Telegram denies or distorts the facts, and distortion and Holocaust denial are prevalent on all social media platforms but they do say that moderation and education can significantly reduce this.
Slide 4, please. And this is just to show that UNESCO and the UN sought to measure the extent of the phenomena on social media networks and they commissioned the Oxford research facility to do it and they analysed 4,000 posts related to the Holocaust on five major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok and Twitter.
Slide 5, please. Now, this is what they found. On Telegram, there was 50% distortion and denial of the Holocaust in English messages; on Twitter, 19% distortion and denial; TikTok 17%; Facebook 8%; Instagram 3%. And many of them were antisemitic as well.
And here is another frightening finding from the United Nations report. Slide 6, please. The researchers identified that the perpetrators were able to evade content moderation through the use of humorous and parodic memes as a strategy intended to normalise antisemitic ideas and make them appear mainstream. Now, you switched-on parliamentarians in the Commons know what social media memes are. I was not quite sure – in fact I did not know – so I had to go and look at them.
Slide 7, please. And this is just one I found. Now, look at that. They are suggesting that the Jews launched the missile attack that attacked the United States warship and the Jews were the ones who actually knocked down the twin towers, and that is a meme that has circulated widely on social media amongst youngsters and that is where they get their news from. I find that rather frightening. Absolutely scurrilous lies and hate-filled, but millions of young people are lapping that up.
Slide 8, please. Now, the United Nations Secretary General, commenting on the report, Antonio Guterres says, and I will not read it all, but he said, ‘Antisemitism and Holocaust denial and distortion and other forms of religious bigotry are a seismograph. The more they rattle our world, the greater the cracks to the foundations of our common humanity’ And he says, ‘The cracks are now impossible to ignore. It is a wake-up call to jolt us into action to pursue truth, remembrance and education and together build a world of peace, dignity and justice for all’. To borrow a phrase one has heard before in politics, members of the Committee, it is ‘education, education, education’.
Now even up to six months ago, I thought that education on the Holocaust of 80 years ago was all we needed to do, tell them about the historical facts. But now we see hundreds of thousands of people on our streets calling for a new Holocaust and the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews. Now, colleagues, I have not tried to do the sums on those last few slides but, if you recall, we have got millions of teenagers getting their news and views from social media platforms and those platforms have an average of about 20% Holocaust denial and distortion. Therefore, putting that together, we should not be surprised at the current levels of Jewish hate, which young people are getting from these sources.
Now, whatever criticism I may have had of the BBC’s refusal to call Hamas a terrorist organisation, it is nevertheless a far more accurate source of news than Instagram, Telegram, TikTok and Facebook. Indeed, in 2019, the BBC published a poll themselves of more than 2,000 people, which was carried out by OpinionMatters for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Slide 9, please. This is what they said. ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’, says the BBC, ‘shocking levels of denial remain’.
Slide 10, please. In fact, 5% of UK adults – the 45 million is the UK adults – do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believe the scale has been exaggerated, the survey found. So 45% of those polled said they did not know how many people were killed in the Holocaust. That is, 20 million people in this country did not know the 6 million. 19% believe that fewer than 2 million Jews were murdered and 5% believe there was no Holocaust at all. That is, 2.2 million of our people did not believe there was a Holocaust at all. Therefore, colleagues, I conclude that a centre for learning is absolutely essential, but what and where should it be?
Now, I can understand way back in 2015, eminent members of the Committee believed that only a physical building could undertake the learning role. However, in my opinion, that is an irrelevant old-fashioned concept, which will fail its objective of teaching young people about the Holocaust. Covid changed how we learn and work. During Covid, almost 90% of school lessons were online. Even after Covid, we still have online learning and that is increasing exponentially. Learning things visually from computers and iPads is a whole new way of education and if we are to make any impact on anti-Jewish hatred then we have got to fight back using the same technology that is spawning this evil.
There are already five excellent museums in the UK of which I am aware. The prime one is the Imperial War Museum, which has greatly expanded its Holocaust showing and I can testify personally to its excellence.
Slide 11, please. Now what I can also testify to is I need to make a correction. The website said it is on two floors but it is not. I have been there. It is all a massive display on the second floor only.
Next slide, please, slide 12. So spanning one floor, the vast new galleries bring about the stories of real people and the complex relationship etc and it won the award of the Heritage and Museum Permanent Exhibition of the Year in ’22 and it has got individual stories from the 6 million Jewish people murdered. There are 2,000 photographs, books, artwork and letters and there are some personal objects. The important thing, colleagues, is that this magnificent physical museum has some, but not many, I counted about 200, different artefacts. There are an awful lot of Nazi uniforms. There are an awful lot of Nazi posters. There are some Jewish artefacts: three or four of the horrible striped uniforms and some other bits and pieces. There is a good mock-up of the railway carriage.
Therefore they have got some physical things and I am making the point that if you have got physical things, you need a museum. If you have not got physical things, there is not any point in taking people to a museum to see the same photographs and the same video as before. I understand that the proposed bunker under Victoria Tower Gardens will just have copies of the same posters and same videos. Indeed, slide 38, which you saw last week from DLUHC, said ‘a powerful audio-visual exhibition that will set out the events of the Holocaust from British perspectives, historically, politically and culturally’. You, Commons colleagues, are 10 times more switched on to the attitudes of children and teenagers than I am, but why would the kids want to visit a building to see the same things they can get better on their mobile phones and iPads? How many busloads of children will come from Carlisle, Selby, Kingston upon Hull, South Ribble? There may be a few more from Guildford, but they are not going to come to see a video with nothing new in it. How many would visit the Natural History Museum, the British Museum, Churchill War Rooms or even in this building if all they could see were posters and videos?
Then, colleagues, we come to the numbers of young people we could possibly influence in a physical learning centre. Slide 13, please. Now, I did the calculations. There are approximately 12 million schoolchildren aged from five to 18 in the UK at any one time. Now, if each child was to make one visit to London or to the learning centre, once in their school life, that is 1 million children per annum.
Now, I cannot get the latest figures from our learning centre. In 2019, only 40,000 schoolchildren visited but they hope to double that. So let us even say now that our learning centre here is getting 100,000 kids per annum. That is only 8% of all children in the UK who would need to visit the learning centre to learn and, of course, statistics suggestion that children closer to London are more likely to make the journey to London. The 50 children I met outside the Imperial War Museum this morning were from reasonably close to London, shall we say, and they were not from Carlisle, I am afraid, Mr Chairman. So a physical centre in London will not reach over 90% of the school kids we need to get at.
Next slide please. When those school trips come to London – I have researched it – these are the top things they want to see, as you could guess: the Eye, Buckingham Palace, Madam Tussauds, the Natural History Museum etc.
Slide 15, please. So I suggest, colleagues, that an old-fashioned physical building will fail and the proposed underground learning centre will not be high on the list of things that children will want to visit. Nor should something as horrendous as a Holocaust be part of the fun visits to tourist sites. It does not quite mix somehow. I think it is quite wrong in concept and some schools in places in the UK – I say this carefully – where the Jewish hatred may be greatest may never visit the museum for various reasons. Therefore I submit that only virtual and online education can get the message across to millions of children, rather than just tens of thousands and I cannot see this underground learning centre do it.
Slide 16, please. I therefore submit it is vital to extend education on the evils of the Holocaust, and the calls for a new Holocaust, far beyond the thousands of schoolchildren who may come here. That is why, colleagues, I would like to propose an amendment to the Bill: to increase funding to £20 million per annum, index-linked, for online education about the Holocaust. And as the UN Secretary General said – 17 please – ‘An urgent wake-up call is needed to tackle antisemitism, Holocaust denial and distortion and to pursue truth, remembrance and education if we want to build that world of peace, dignity and security’.
Slide 18, please. So the question is, is an online centre within the scope of the Bill? Now, the Bill does not state that the centre for learning has to be physically attached to the monument or adjacent to it. Nor does it actually stipulate that it has to be a physical building. Now, your lawyers will no doubt check that out. The only requirement is that it has to be related to the monument, which could be that the monument could be in London and this learning centre related to it could be built anywhere in England and Wales, according to the law.
The Bill would permit a building to be constructed anywhere in England and Wales to house an online team of experts who would be able to issue Holocaust learning to everyone in the UK, 24 hours a day, and update it daily as new lies emerge, which needed to be rebutted. As we have seen over the last few years, physical buildings are no longer necessary to get the message across. Clause 1(c) of the Bill permits the Secretary of State to incur expenditure for the use, operation, maintenance or improvement of the centre for learning. I am totally in favour of that.
Turning now, colleagues, to the physical monument, everyone knows that these 23 giant fins are a grotesque, ugly monstrosity. The architect justifies them on the grounds that they symbolise the 22 countries affected by the Holocaust and other specious architectural gobbledegook. They cannot claim that they enhance the visual beauty of this Grade II listed park.
Slide 19, please. Indeed, quoted on the BBC on 12 February 2019, Mr Adjaye said, ‘Disrupting the pleasure of being in the park is key to the thinking of the memorial’. What an appallingly feeble excuse for a bad design in the wrong place. Key to the thinking should be educating people about the evils of National Socialism as practised by Hitler and the Nazi regime. The architectural justification for these 23 fins is that the 22 gaps between them represented the 22 countries from whence the Jews were plucked to be exterminated.
Slide 20, please. I suggest it is totally irrelevant and confusing: 23 fins for 22 gaps. Why not one fin representing the country which did it, Nazi Germany? Why not 20, the number of concentration camps, or why not six, the number of large extermination camps? Colleagues, you could pick infinite numbers and they would all be irrelevant except one: 6 million.
Slide 21, please. 6 million Jews exterminated. We have got over 2 million people in this country believing it never happened. 8 million believe that only 2 million were murdered. So any physical memorial needs to represent that 6 million figure, time and time again, and not some obscure number no one else has heard of. So 6 million Jews exterminated must be the message.
I do worry that people and children who have not read about the Holocaust, or those who have learned lies from social media, will come away from this proposed exhibition with the wrong impression. No doubt, downstairs will mention the 6 million in the underground exhibition, but the one thing that will hit them in the eyes when they get there are the giant fins. You know better than I what children are like. That’s where they will take their selfies. The Berlin Holocaust Memorial black slabs are being used by tourists for sunbathing and picnicking. Some tourists are even posing for selfies under the Auschwitz gates. Slide 22, please. There we go: people taking fun selfies at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. Slide 23, please. There we go: fun selfies at Auschwitz. Slide 24, please, and more fun selfies at Auschwitz. We can envisage similar scenes amongst the fins if they were to be built.
Slide 25, please. How do you depict a monument to 6 million murdered Jews? I do not know how to visually do that but we saw that incredibly moving display for the end of the Second World War of the 800,000 ceramic poppies and that was just incredibly moving. I am not sure that is the way to do it; it is possibly not, but some other memorial is necessary to get across the number of 6 million and that is a concept which needs to be represented.
I also state, why should a learning centre be underground? The Imperial War Museum have got them on the first floor, showing the light of day into this evil and I think having an underground one does not make sense, apart from justifying the selection of an inappropriate site.
Slide 26, please. What I am suggesting is that the monument is in the wrong place for political impact. I pop through these gardens every single day – twice a day actually, going home as well – and I very rarely see an MP being interviewed there, very rarely, because it is all done on the green and no Ministers ever go through there. A memorial should be in the right place in Westminster, right in the faces of senior Government Ministers. I want the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, even the Chancellor, to look out their window, the back windows of Number 10 and the Foreign Office, and see it, as well as being in a place where tens of thousands of young people will see it.
Slide 27, please. So where would it be seen by top Ministers or hundreds of thousands of tourists? I would put it opposite the Churchill War Rooms in the corner of St James’ Park because I think that is symbolically important. Now, the war did not start the Holocaust – Hitler started long before the Second World War – but it ended it. Now, colleagues, when you enter the House of Commons from the Members’ Lobby, you will see the broken stones, which Churchill insisted by rebuilt as a reminder of the horrors of war. A physical monument to the Holocaust must be where political leaders will see it almost every day of the week and will never forget. We do not have the Cenotaph stuck in a back garden. The Holocaust memorial should be in the same category.
Slide 28, please. Now, the proposal for a physical museum for learning was even out of date in 2015, and I believe it is utterly irrelevant now and the future of Holocaust education is digital, virtual and online. And this is what the Times had to say in December 2023. Slide 29, please. ‘Antisemitic hate crimes soar since the start of the Israel-Hamas war’. And the crime editors said, ‘There has been a 1,000% increase in antisemitic offences, which the British Transport Police recorded’. That is a 1,000% increase, and the same in Greater Manchester: 74 antisemitic offences compared with 15 before. So there is a new challenge to be addressed there, not just talking about the Holocaust of 80 years ago.
Slide 30, please. So, colleagues, you will be relieved to know I am coming to the end. The summary of my proposals is this: a physical monument in a location seen by most politicians, for example opposite the Churchill War Rooms; a related online learning centre, which would require a building or space in a building to house the learning centre staff; an annual index-linked budget starting at £50 million for a continuous and updated teaching of the 1940s Holocaust and countering current antisemitism sweeping the UK, and only the annual budget would require amendment to the Bill as it currently stands.
Slide 31, please. And the benefits of online learning, to summarise: most young people get their news and views from social media. Only a fraction of schoolchildren would visit a physical building, which will have nothing new to see which cannot be better seen online. Online can reach every person in the UK 24/7; online can be updated daily, counteracting new views about the Holocaust and Jews; and thousands of schools in the UK would not be able to make the journey to London.
Slide 32, please. All of us in this Parliament, you particularly in the Commons and those of us in the other House, have a pressing duty to get this right. It was British soldiers who found and liberated Belsen and here is the sign they erected and it is quite horrifying. ‘10,000 unburied dead. Another 15,000 have since died’.
Slide 33, please. A prophetic message from a military observer. ‘Why did I visit Belsen? Given the opportunity, I went, because I know that in a few years’ times only, clever people will say, “Nonsense. Don’t you realise that was just wartime propaganda?” I shall know how to reply and the more who do, the better for the peace of the world’.
Slide 34, please. This is the result of hatred of Jews in 1945. Now you think that photo is bad, you ought to see the video and listen to Richard Dimbleby at the same time.
Slide 33, please. This is the hatred of Jews we saw in December ’23. What will we do to stop it now? A photo of the Jews being pushed into the sea. Colleagues, slide 34, please. My proposal would tackle both the original Holocaust and the calls for a new one. I commend them to the Committee. Thank you.
THE CHAIR: Thank you, Lord Blencathra for a helpful presentation. Before I ask members of the Committee if they have any questions, does Richard Turney have any?
MR TURNEY: Thank you, sir. Can I just ask, Lord Blencathra, just one point of clarification? Your slide 30, which it might be worth having to hand, says only the annual budget would require an amendment to the Bill as it currently stands. So can we take from that that you are not asking the Committee to make a recommendation to amend other provisions of this Bill?
LORD BLENCATHRA: No, I am not. I am not asking that because I believe, in the reading of the Bill, what I have suggested would be in scope. I do not think I need to amend the Bill to say ‘make it online only’, ‘move the monument to the Churchill War Rooms’ or whatever, because I believe – I may be wrong in this; it is many, many, many years since I did Scots law about 50 years ago – my reading of the Bill thought this would be permissible. The only amendment I thought necessary was on the funding to set up a baseline and index increase it. However, if it is the legal advice that what I suggest, an online learning centre, would not be within the current scope of the Bill, then I would wish to amend it to say it should be.
And if my suggestion for a smaller monument – I understand the one in Warsaw, which I have not seen, is magnificent, is superb and does the job – if an amendment was necessary to create a monument where I suggest somewhere else in Westminster, then I would amend it, but I believe it is not necessary in the scope of the Bill as currently drafted. I may be wrong.
MR TURNEY: I am grateful. Well, I think the promoter’s position is that the provisions in clause 1 are points of principle and policy, which are not the subject of consideration by this Committee, but obviously Lord Blencathra will say that there should be an amendment and that you should recommend accordingly on the specific budgetary matters. But in respect of clause 2, which has been the focus of most of the debate, if there is no suggested amendment there then I do not propose to say anything more about that.
THE CHAIR: Thank you.
LORD BLENCATHRA: Could I respond please, Chair? When you read the Bill, there is an assumption in the beginning and it has been the Government’s assumption and DLUHC’s assumption all along that there will be a physical learning centre attached to the monument in the gardens. But I believe on a reading of the Bill, it permits what I have suggested to this Committee.
THE CHAIR: Thank you. Any members of the Committee have any questions?
MR TURNER: No, thank you, Chair.
MS RICHARDSON: No, thank you.
THE CHAIR: Does Mr Turney have any further comments to make?
MR TURNEY: No, thank you very much, sir.
THE CHAIR: Thank you very much.
LORD BLENCATHRA: Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Committee.
THE CHAIR: Thank you, Lord Blencathra. We will now seamlessly move across to Lord Carlile for the second part of this afternoon’s session. Thank you, Lord Carlile, it is over to you.

Lord Carlile of Berriew

Submissions by Lord Carlile of Berriew

LORD CARLILE OF BERRIEW: Good afternoon, Chairman, and thank you for allowing me to give my evidence. I shall, of course, be happy to answer any questions both at this meeting or if anything occurs afterwards. I have sent you a copy of what I call my speaking note, which I hope you have received. Even in its amended form, it contains some typographical errors for which I apologise. My hands and my brain do not operate in co-ordination to the same standard which I hope was once the case.
By way of introduction, I would like to cite three credentials for being here as petitioner. First, I have an intense personal interest in this subject. My own parents were Holocaust survivors, as was my sister. My mother, Frederika Katzner, was in Poland throughout World War II as a young Jewess and she witnessed first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust. Her first husband, Alfred Susswein, a young neurologist, died in 1944 at the end of a Nazi gun in front of her very eyes. Her brother, Karol Katzner, another young doctor, was shot dead in the centre of Warsaw, after being stopped by a German patrol in the city centre and after he was told to lower his trousers so that they could check that he was a Jew. My father, another doctor, was in the UK by 1940 but his first wife, his parents, his sister, his cousins and all the rest of my paternal relatives, perished, his wife in Auschwitz Birkenau after spending four years there. Their child, Renata, survived and she is my beloved sister, really my half-sister, whose graphic and riveting book about her horrific wartime experiences as a hidden Jewish child was published by the Bloomsbury publishing house in 2014.
As an individual therefore, I strongly support the creation of a Holocaust memorial – and I emphasise a physical memorial – and educational centre, which would be both physical and online. Its objectives should be to remember, to educate and to warn of the dangers and horrors of genocide, a subject which is very topical today. The message such a place should leave is one of educated, analytical and calm revulsion.
I do believe that the site in Victoria Tower Gardens is too small to achieve the objectives I have set out. I believe it has poor access and is likely to have poor facilities. I do not accept what has been suggested about the symbolism of placing it near to the Palace of Westminster in Victoria Tower Gardens as being sufficient justification for the use of so restricted a site and I will come back to that in due course.
My second credential is as a lawyer. In my half century of legal practice, I have conducted many planning cases in the public and private sectors. Of course, this Committee is not part of any planning jurisdiction. I absolutely understand that but I do consider and submit that there are public policy issues, which are not planning issues, which make the site unsuitable for what I suggest are overarching non-planning law reasons. So I hope that my objections do not trespass on the planning system and I absolutely understand that this is not some kind of creature of a planning appeal through a Select Committee.
My third credential, and it is probably the most important for this purpose, is as a person reasonably expert in national security matters. I was the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation from 9/11, 11 September 2001, for approximately 10 years. I was fully vetted for many years. I have spent a lot of time talking to people who know much more about these issues than I ever could but I have learned a lot and, since then, in the context of my role as a parliamentarian and as a director of my consultancy, SC Strategy Ltd, I have maintained a close interest in national security matters. I have advised clients, including governments, on such matters and I have continued to maintain a co-operative relationship with those parts of our Government concerned with such matters, right up to the present time.
My consultancy – I cite this merely as an ad majorem argument – is run with fellow director Sir John Scarlett, a former chief of MI6, and Will Jessett, a former director of strategy at the Ministry of Defence. So I believe that I and we are up to date on these matters and we support the Government’s refreshed CONTEST strategy in relation to terrorism, published in July of last year. And it is this third credential that really gives rise to my presence here.
I believe – I have thought about this a great deal and have decided I can say I believe – that the site proposed presents a very real terrorism risk. If I am right about that then that will affect the way in which my extensively murdered family is given accountability and respect, and other families like mine, of which there are a great many. I suggest that recent events in Israel-Palestine cannot be ignored. They have heightened the danger of action against perceived Jewish interests in London and sadly may have diluted public support – I do not believe it has been measured – for having such a memorial and centre so close to the Palace of Westminster.
Two illustrations, one big, one tiny, seem to me to illustrate this. The recent terrorism arrests associated with the stock exchange, provide an example of the changing landscape of London terrorism and I should say that, in my experience, that is a landscape that has been changing constantly and unpredictably throughout the last 23 years in which I have been involved in counter-terrorism matters. And a very small thing, this morning, as I was walking to a meeting, I crossed Bridge Street from the palace side to the Whitehall side and I noticed that the parliamentary gift shop, which you will have seen on the corner of Bridge Street, has now had all its windows shuttered, apart from the doorway, and I am absolutely certain that that will have been on the basis of advice that they should protect themselves from demonstrators and from others who might be malignly concerned about Parliament and about all things connected with the Holocaust as well.
The promoter, in his recent evidence, has referred to the security guidance provided before the planning inquiry, and this is not pretty historic, given what has happened since 2020, to Westminster City Council and to Westminster’s lack of objection to what they were told. Well, this is a Bill currently before Parliament and that advice, in my view, is out of date. So I would therefore request this Committee to take evidence from various relevant security authorities and also from the parliamentary security authorities.
The further evidence that the Committee should be seeking relates to the security of visitors to the centre and also the security of ordinary park users and playground users who are playing feet away from the entrance to the centre. There is one great monument already in Victoria Gardens. It is one of the 12 bronzes of Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais. People come to London and have that often as one of the first things they go to visit, if they are interested in such artefacts.
In my view, the placing of this centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, would affect their experience too. For I believe that all those entering and leaving Victoria Tower Gardens from the opening of the centre, or very soon thereafter, maybe even during its building, would have to be subjected to electronic and intrusive personal searches. Indeed, security reasons include vulnerability to attack from the River Thames. That may require the whole of Victoria Gardens to be treated as a high-level security risk, if this centre is built, and this is inimical, in my view, to the purposes and the ambience of such a memorial and also to the other uses of Victoria Tower Gardens as a public park.
I also support the evidence to be submitted by other petitioners of the need of changes to the design to prevent gratuitously easy terrorist interventions into the proposed centre’s courtyard, due to its open and exposed design and to highlight the need to do everything possible to give more significant protection to the general public, to playground users and, indeed, to my noble friend Lord Blencathra, as he makes his way through and to and from work through Victoria Tower Gardens. I doubt if he will be able to do that – well, he may because he is Lord Blencathra – if this is built.
In sum therefore, sir, in my judgment, there is a real and present and serious prospect that that the site would be regarded as iconic and as tempting by both Islamist and right-wing extremists, given its proximity to this palace and to the lack of any secure or meaningful perimeter and its close proximity both to busy public highways and the river. I am actually astonished that this has not been seen to be a real problem and I believe that the time has come for this warning to be taken seriously.
There is a view within these Houses, within this palace, that the perimeter of Parliament is too small to protect parliamentarians coming and going to this place from the threat of terrorism anyway and if one were to re-examine the perimeter of Parliament, truly it could possibly start at Lambeth Bridge. So we have to look at the future as well and, if I can summarise the way I feel – I have put it in paragraph 18 of my speaking note – I do not wish to be the person saying, ‘I told you so’, in the foreseeable event, which I believe to be foreseeable, of a terrorism outrage or attempt.
Sir, I also support the concerns about the proposed learning centre, expressed by petitioners representing the Thorney Island Society, the London Parks and Gardens Trust and the Buxton Society, concerning the site size, impact on park users, the environment, the cost, the contents, the risk of flooding and the damage to trees. The siting of the proposed centre in Victoria Terrace Gardens sends, in my view, a naïve message, namely that British democracy and values in some way are the antidote to genocide. Real historians of the Second World War will learn if they study this subject – and I believe one or two of you may have done so earlier in life – that the actions of the United Kingdom and the United States in war were splendid but were not focused on genocide to any meaningful extent.
The remembrance provided by such a centre should be spacious enough to contain and embrace personal histories, an extensive and accessible online library and physical library of those who survived and settled in the UK and our families and to examine the history of the Holocaust in a robust and determined way. The warning aspect should provide sufficient physical capacity to depict and analyse the contemporary sources that describe what was happening in the Holocaust. This would require an exhibition area of some scale and also a cinema-type space and for reasons, which I hope are obvious, preferably overground, with light shining into it, as Lord Blencathra mentioned. And the education aspect should be big enough to include the opportunity for on-site study from school to doctorate level, hopefully to be supported by on-site academic staff with adequate teaching and seminar facilities.
To achieve all this, in my view, what is required is a spacious site, accessible from central London but not in an already security sensitive position. As examples, plainly one would cite Yad Vashem. Anyone who has been to Yad Vashem knows what a Holocaust memorial can be and one thing Yad Vashem is not is small.
I would cite another excellent example, which I have visited, which is the POLIN museum in Warsaw, the museum of the history of Polish Jews. It is a site that conveys regret, importance and all the objectives I set out earlier.
I now want to make a short reference, which I will not read, to a letter dated 5 January 2024, which I received from Mr Owen of Pinsent Masons, writing on behalf of the Secretary of State for DLUHC, and I am very grateful to Mr Owen for exchanging some letters with me and giving such clarity. ‘The promoter’s view is that the instruction to the Committee clearly provides that the House has instructed the Committee that it cannot hear petitions on matters pertaining to the location of the Holocaust memorial and/or learning centre, whether within Victoria Tower Gardens or elsewhere. In other words, the House has determined that it is not for the Committee to consider or opine on whether a Holocaust memorial and/or learning centre should be built on the location wished for’.
It is, of course, for you sir, the Committee, to determine whether that interpretation is correct or not. After getting on for 40 years in one or other House of Parliament, I have learned a lot about scope and, in my view, scope, including scope on this Bill, is much wider than has been submitted to me for agreement. I am not suggesting for a single moment that there should not be a memorial, ‘whether at Victoria Tower Gardens or elsewhere’. I do agree with that aspiration. What I do not accept is that it is a reasonable understanding of the English language to suggest that the quoted instruction to the Committee excludes consideration of the location and, indeed, I believe that such an interpretation would, if I may so with great respect, evaporate the credibility of this otherwise distinguished Committee.
If I were asked whether I would wish to amend the Bill and, if so, what amendment I would seek, then subject to the usual niceties of these Houses, when we have excellent officials who advise us on the textual accuracy of what we put down on amendments, I would look for an amendment to the effect that there should, before the Bill is passed, if it is to be passed, be a full security review and report by the Intelligence and Security Committee, which should be debated by both Houses of Parliament so that I, as a member, and others, could be satisfied, if so satisfied, that there had been a full use of research, up to date, on the security issues, which I have raised before you.
THE CHAIR: Thank you, Lord Carlile, for your presentation. Mr Turney, do you have any questions at this point?
MR TURNEY: Thank you, sir. Lord Carlile, can I just check please that my understanding is correct of what you said? You say that, ‘There are matters of public policy, which go beyond the planning system’. Obviously, the question of whether planning permission should be granted is not a matter that this Committee is considering. Are those matters of public policy, the security questions which you have raised?
LORD CARLILE OF BERRIEW: They are mainly the security matters that I have raised, yes.
MR TURNEY: It is right to note, is it not, that your own representations to the planning inquiry were on the same questions of security that you now put to the Committee?
LORD CARLILE OF BERRIEW: They were and I was extremely dissatisfied by the absence of any response that enabled me to comment on the basis of their view, because I had received none.
MR TURNEY: It is also relevant to note, is it not, that that is a matter that the inspector reported on and that the Minister will have to consider in deciding whether or not to grant planning permission?
LORD CARLILE OF BERRIEW: It was certainly commented on in relation to planning permission but I do not accept for a single moment that considerations, in relation to this Bill, of public policy, including matters that have arisen since planning permission was considered, are not a proper consideration for this Committee, or putting it directly, this Committee should consider the public policy considerations of national security. Otherwise, it will be seen not to have done its legitimate job.
MR TURNEY: Sir, I think I can briefly say to the Committee that the promoter’s position is that that falls within the scope of planning matters, which should be dealt with elsewhere. So that is why we do not propose to address it in detail before this Committee but you have heard Lord Carlile’s contra-view. But our position is, that is a planning matter, dealt with by the inspector, which will be a matter that is considered by the decision maker in due course, on planning.
LORD CARLILE OF BERRIEW: If I can just riposte to counsel’s question, I do not agree and, above all, I believe it is a matter for you, sir, your Committee.
THE CHAIR: Thank you for your contribution. Does any member of the Committee have any questions for Lord Carlile?
MR MATHER: No, thank you.
THE CHAIR: Okay. Thank you, Lord Carlile.
LORD CARLILE OF BERRIEW: Thank you very much.
THE CHAIR: This is an opportunity, Mr Turney, do you want to say anything from the promoter’s perspective at this stage?
MR TURNEY: No, thank you, sir.
THE CHAIR: Can I just ask one question about Lord Blencathra mentioning about finance? In part 1 or section 1, there is reference to financing of the project. Would that not cover it or would it be dealt with at a later date by Treasury, through the department?
MR TURNEY: Well, sir, clause 1 approves expenditure on the construction of a memorial and learning centre.
THE CHAIR: It is to what extent that goes, is what I am really –
MR TURNEY: Precisely. It does not set a number. The reason why that is included is because, effectively, the consequential provisions of the Bill that we are really concerned with mean that it is proper practice to also authorise the expenditure in question on the face of the Bill. And, yes, the expenditure on the construction is dealt with there. I do not understand that those provisions expressly authorise the expenditure on future learning activities or learning activities that may be outwith the proposals for the memorial and learning centre itself. So I think Lord Blencathra is speaking to a slightly different point about wider Government funding.
THE CHAIR: That would be a legitimate consideration for a future Government, because quite clearly there is likely to be ongoing expenditure of running such a learning centre.
MR TURNEY: Absolutely, absolutely.
THE CHAIR: It depends what you want to do with that ongoing expenditure. So you could incorporate the suggestion that has been made by Lord Blencathra.
MR TURNEY: Well, I will take instructions on that and we can report back to the Committee on what might be envisaged by way of wider online learning, certainly by the promoter of the Bill. But I think it is probably right to note that the effect of clause 1, as we see it, is to authorise the expenditure on this project of construction, or a project of construction, for the memorial and learning centre. But clearly, Government money is and has been spent, I think as Lord Blencathra noted, on Holocaust education and that would be a matter which obviously would be for a judgment of a future Government, perhaps not the Secretary of State, perhaps the Secretary of State. But I can certainly take instructions and perhaps provide to the Committee, a note on what is spent outside of the scope of this particular project.

THE CHAIR: Okay, thank you very much. That is everything from our end. Thank you all, to Lord Carlile, Lord Blencathra, Mr Turney.