Building Safety

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I am very happy to do that. The expert panel is chaired by Sir Ken Knight, the former London fire commissioner and the Government’s former chief fire and rescue adviser. Also on the panel are Dr Peter Bonfield, chief executive of the Building Research Establishment, Mr Roy Wilsher, chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council, and Miss Ann Bentley, global director of a leading construction company and a member of the Construction Leadership Council.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The expert panel’s recommendation that no change in safety advice is necessary will come as a surprise to many people. Will the Government insist that Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of fire regulation assessments makes sure that every high-rise building assessment is published and made available in an accessible form to the public so that they can get the reassurance that I fear they will not have got from this report?

[Sajid Javid]

I hope that the public will be very reassured by the advice of the expert panel, not just because of the years of expertise represented on it, but—it is worth emphasising this—because it is working closely and consulting with the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Metropolitan police and the Government’s chief scientific officers. I hope that that gives more confidence to the public and the hon. Lady.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for securing this debate and congratulate everyone who has taken part on their powerful and moving speeches. It is an honour to take part in this debate in remembrance of an event that, in its own way, challenges the power of words adequately to express the horror and sorrow of the holocaust.

Three years ago, I visited the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel. As I was taken around that remarkable monument, the experience was at times emotional, as well as inspiring and thought-provoking throughout. It is a dark, oppressive space—a tunnel in a hillside—and as we travelled through it, guided as we were by a holocaust survivor, the personal testimonies we heard and the things we saw represented to me one of the bleakest periods in modern history—indeed, human history.

When our tour focused on the concentration camps, my mind was flooded with thoughts of the survivors I have been privileged to meet as we heard the testimonies of the suffering. I also thought about the young people I know who have visited what remains of the concentration camps across Europe, and about their reactions.

My daughter, who was born more than half a century after the war ended, visited because she felt she had to but, unlike other places of historical importance she has visited, it is something she rarely talks about. Like many, we took her as a child to Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, and she was fascinated. When we came home, she fell in love with the words of that youngster who lived her life hidden because it was the only life she was allowed. Hers were informative, moving words.

When my daughter has visited other memorials, she has talked about them, but not when she came home from visiting Theresienstadt, which represented something more. She faced up to the fact that it was all real; that this was where so many stories, like that of the little girl living in a loft whose powerful words she had fallen in love with, had ended; and that if that horror were ever to return, many of the people she loved would meet the same fate. Perhaps it was a similar feeling that moved Andrew Dismore on his visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and we should thank that visit for enabling us to dedicate a day to holocaust remembrance, but how do we adequately remember an event when its sheer horror challenges everything we want to believe about humanity and ourselves? How?

Perhaps Yad Vashem points the way. It is a tunnel in a hillside through which visitors proceed. In near darkness, they hear and see the emotionally numbing truth and heartbreak of the holocaust, but then, like all tunnels, the light at the end begins to grow until they emerge into the sunlight—it is a completely apt and quite deliberate metaphor.

In remembering the holocaust, we should take that metaphor to our hearts and remember that, unlike the many millions who hid in darkness or died in the bleakest of circumstances, and unlike the many victims of war and genocide in the past and in the current day—like those in Srebrenica and the Rohingya—we live in the sunlight. We should cherish that, and we should think of them every day that we enjoy it.