Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords I rise to support this Bill as it stands and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, on bringing it through. A cursory glance at my interests in the register will reveal that I have many interests in the Jewish community. I am president, chairman or vice-president of a number of Jewish community organisations, including a synagogue, a think tank and a leadership group. Not listed is my involvement in and support of a number of other Jewish-related charities, such as the Holocaust Education Trust. I was at the dinner where my noble friend Lord Cameron made his eloquent speech with this idea. However, I cannot possibly claim, and would not wish to, that I represent any of them or that any of them agree on anything, particularly this issue. They all have different views of different strength.

I have to be honest that, initially, I struggled to come to terms with any objection. As Sir Mick Davis said in his commission’s report,

“The Holocaust was also a catastrophe for human civilisation. The very scientific and industrial innovation which had propelled society forward was used on an extreme scale to take humanity into the deepest abyss of moral depravity”.


It was so depraved and evil that it has taken some many decades to be able to address it and consider how to mark it.

As my noble friend Lord Cameron and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, those of us who have been to a camp, read about the Holocaust or seen documentaries can never forget the images and the stories, often told first-hand, but not for much longer. Those who do not have a personal connection will from time to time be reminded by popular culture. Who will ever forget the sight of Dr Jacob Bronowski in “The Ascent of Man” standing in a pond where the ashes of 4 million people reside or how popular culture reminds us of the bravery of Oskar Schindler and Nicholas Winton or The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, the story of Rudolf Vrba told by Jonathan Freedland, or even our own noble friend Lord Finkelstein’s telling of his family’s ordeals at the hands of Hitler? However, these will pass. The world will move on and perhaps fail to believe that a country that was at the very peak of the civilised world, the most sophisticated, mannered, wealthy, cultured country in existence at the time—Austria, as Stefan Zweig described it—could have produced Adolf Hitler? Your Lordships do not need me to tell you all this. We are all of a mind to ensure that the creation of an evil capable of perpetrating the humiliation, depravation and, ultimately, attempted extermination of the Jewish people and others needs to be prevented from ever happening again.

I want to address some of the concerns raised. In all honesty, I find it very painful to have to have a public argument on this debate. I am more than happy to have a ding-dong and set-to with noble Lords about Brexit, the economy or taxation, but this is difficult. It upsets me to know that some Peers are against this proposal, particularly those whom I rate so very highly and respect more than I can say in public without embarrassing them and me, none more so than the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, whose description of her interest in her petition is so moving, starting with the words:

“I am a direct descendent of Holocaust victims”.


Who am I to disagree with someone with that pedigree?

I want to say that I understand the noble Baroness’s concerns. I agree with her that this must not be just a memorial to British values. It must retain its focus on the 6 million exterminated and the attempt to eradicate one single group of people. We need to ensure that this memorial and learning centre explains that this really was an attempt at a genocide in the true sense of the word, not as currently bandied around in some parts of the Middle East at the moment—to do so is gut-wrenching.

Her concerns that the learning centre is too small when compared to the commission’s recommendations are well made, but there can be other learning centres for greater study. This venue will make people, in particular children who come to visit us in Parliament, stop and stare, not just now, not just for decades, but in hundreds of years, and say “Wow! Why did they build that here? Why is it so prominent with its 22 fins?”. That reaction will come only from a structure and venue as currently proposed and with an opportunity for visitors to learn enough about what happened to understand its importance.

We in the Jewish community, and others, have spent too long arguing over this proposal and, as we have done so, survivors such as Zigi Shipper, Sir Ben Helfgott and many others, so keen to see it built, sadly are no longer with us. We can ensure that the memorial and learning centre achieves the spirit of the objectives of the commission, we can address many of the concerns raised by the petitioners against it, but we should not allow the many nimby and other objectors to overturn a project whose time has come.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I agree on one point. The Jewish community can be said to be divided. It has been divided for as long there has been a Jewish community, both in this country and elsewhere. If you read the Bible, you will know that there were some people who did not want to leave Egypt, so the fact that you have a divided Jewish community is not a new point. I caution, with the greatest respect, against invoking the name of Rabbi Gluck in this context. He was about the only person in the Jewish community who sought to maintain cordial relations with Mr Corbyn when the rest of us thought he was basically leading an antisemitic cult which, at one point, threatened to take over the Labour Party. I am not going to take lessons from Rabbi Gluck as to how the Jewish community should operate. The overwhelming majority of the Jewish community is strongly in favour of this memorial and learning centre. The huge advantage of this amendment is that it will put the purpose of the memorial and the learning centre right there in the Bill.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to say, as someone who is Jewish, how incredibly heartwarming each and every one of the speeches tonight has been. Every speaker has spoken with compassion, affection and sensitivity to the plight of the Jewish people and other victims of the Holocaust. This proposed new clause reflects great credit on this House.

My main point was prompted by the noble Lord, Lord Evans. He went to see Lord Ashcroft’s exhibition of Victoria Crosses at the Imperial War Museum. Lord Ashcroft very generously gave his incredible collection of VCs and £5 million to the museum, which was very grateful. However, the trustees of the museum decided, of their own volition, to close the exhibition and return the medals—but not the Victoria Crosses—to Lord Ashcroft. This is a lesson to us all about what can happen years after something is determined in good faith: trustees can change their minds or the trustees themselves change, or the mood, fashion or style can change. That is why I welcome the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame. The purpose has to be included in the Bill.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, for bringing his Amendment 4 and his manuscript Amendment 4A which I have signed. As I said during our debate on this issue in Grand Committee, it was our understanding that this amendment is in line with the Government’s intentions. When we debated the amendment to closely define the sole purpose of the memorial and learning centre, the Government then resisted it.

On the one hand, the Minister argued that the amendment is unnecessary because:

“This Bill is about a memorial to the Holocaust, not to all genocides or crimes against humanity”—[Official Report, 27/3/25; col. GC 551.]


But he then went on to say later that:

“The centre is also intended to address subsequent genocides within the context of the Holocaust”.—[Official Report, 27/3/25; col. GC 552.]


That is an inconsistent and confusing position. I therefore understand why the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, has brought his amendments forward on Report today.

We share the noble Lord’s concern that the Holocaust memorial and learning centre could in future come to inappropriately shift its focus from the unique crime perpetrated against the Jewish people and the other victims of the Holocaust by the Nazis to other acts of genocide. The memorial and learning centre should be purely focused on the unique horror of the Holocaust and we must resist any attempt to draw a moral equivalence between the Holocaust, which stands out in world history, and other events.

In the words of one German historian, the Holocaust was

“a unique crime in the history of mankind”,

and, as the then Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission stated in 2015,

“It is clear that Britain has a unique relationship with this terrible period of history”.


That is why we set out to deliver this memorial and learning centre, and we must not forget that impetus.

I am also pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, has included antisemitism in his amendment. As my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton put it so well at Second Reading,

“We have a problem with antisemitism in this country, and it is growing. What better way to deal with this than to have a bold, unapologetic national statement? This is not a Jewish statement or a community statement; it is a national statement about how much we care about this and how we are prepared to put that beyond doubt”.—[Official Report, 4/9/24; col. 1170.]


This amendment is clearly consonant with the intentions of the Bill, and importantly, it need not delay its progress. Given these amendments meet those two tests, we will support the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, in his amendments should he seek the opinion of the House. However, I hope that we will not have to do that. I hope the Minister will stand up and agree with this House that the Government will look at this and bring back their own amendments at Third Reading.