Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, the plan has been condemned for about six years by UNESCO. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has said that it will have an unacceptable adverse impact on the outstanding universal value of this important site. The International Council on Monuments and Sites has condemned it. Europa Nostra has shortlisted Victoria Tower Gardens as one of Europe’s seven most endangered sites. Historic England has expressed its reservations too.

Will the Minister explain why the advice of those international bodies is ignored, especially bearing in mind the willingness of the Government, as they keep saying, to observe international law. International treaties are important to us, say the Government, but here are some they are apparently prepared to ignore. I am sure others would like to hear why they are being ignored, and what answer the Government propose to give to those international bodies.

[Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)]

I have seen the plans, and I know that those working on this project have gone to great lengths to make sure that they will protect Victoria Tower Gardens. They will improve the gardens—that will be the outcome of this project. From what we are hearing, it is as if nobody has taken any care about what they are doing and this has been put together in some hasty manner. This has been carefully planned and I urge noble Lords to respect the work that has gone into the planning. Nobody who is running this project would want to leave the gardens in a worse state. Everyone is intent on improving them, and adding this memorial.

[Lord Sassoon (Con)]

I am quite prepared to believe that the gardens will be improved, and the paths and the drainage, but this does not go to the heart of what this amendment is all about, which is preserving, among other things, the world heritage site which is Westminster. This is a very strange amendment in some senses. Why is it necessary? It should not be necessary at all, but having listened to the debates, I increasingly think that it is necessary. Why is it necessary? First, because not only have we no assurance about the future planning process, which should sweep up these issues, but we have heard from the Minister about reactivation, redetermination and a new process.

I had thought that by this stage in the passage of the Bill, the Minister might have got a clear line on what is going on. He talks about the possibility of a new inquiry, a round table, and written representations. The bottom line is that there may be a reactivated short inquiry process that takes in merely written representations, if that. So we have no insurance through the planning process. I am very disappointed in my noble friend Baroness Scott of Bybrook’s not in any way challenging the planning process from our Front Bench, but merely parroting the Minister’s words that these matters are all for planning. That is very disappointing.

The second thing we have heard a lot about today is the model, and the improvements to the gardens. But those of your Lordships who looked at the model last week and tried to get the view of those tiny figures in front of the memorial will know that the only way you could do it was by putting your camera down there and taking a photograph. The Minister is now laughing and making faces again, as he has been doing all day. This is a serious point that I would like to make. He talked earlier about photographs of the model and offered to share them with one of my noble friends. I took photographs on my phone last week showing that somebody standing in those gardens, on the other side of the memorial from the Palace, will have the view of the south facade of the Palace entirely blocked out.

That goes to the heart of UNESCO’s concerns. My noble friend Lord Pickles, when I challenged him on this a little earlier, talked about the paths and the landscaping, and I have no doubt that those will be improved. But what is happening to the Victoria Tower Gardens is that there will be a very large memorial, which UNESCO says is putting the world heritage site of Westminster are at risk. Of course I recognise that that is not within the actual area of the heritage site as such; that goes through the northern part of the gardens—but that does not mean that the heritage site is not at risk.

So we have a situation late at night when we are getting to the heart of the issues around the planning for this proposed memorial. I go back to something else that the Minister said—that the memorial would say something important about ourselves as a nation. There are many aspects to that, but if one thing it does is mean that UNESCO decides that Westminster is no longer a world heritage site, that is a very significant matter.

I believe that my noble friend Lady Fookes’s amendment is a proportionate way of dealing with a very serious issue that goes to the heart of this Bill.