Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Harper Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

I remind my noble friend that, in Committee, I ticked him off by saying that, if planning permissions are taken by political groups, it is illegal. A planning authority has a right and an applicant has a right. Frankly, his objection that the political parties had a vote is entirely bogus and entirely wrong, and would be grounds for overturning the decision of Westminster Council. I say that as someone who was responsible for planning for five years.

There is a strong reason why the two buildings should be co-located. This is likely to be a memorial of not just national significance but global significance. It is the view of Yad Vashem—the Israeli Holocaust museum—of Auschwitz, and of the American holocaust memorial that this will be the most visited Holocaust museum in the world and will play an enormous part in pushing back against Holocaust distortion. That is an important reason.

I take the point that this is not a Second Reading debate. In conclusion, there is a strong reason why we should not place a figure on this. Members will recall that, very sadly, at the first meeting of the Committee, the Committee got itself into all kinds of hot water when a Member—inadvertently, I think—repeated an antisemitic trope, suggesting that the Jewish community should pay more because they were rich people. This amendment seeks to achieve exactly that. If the amount is limited, there will be a shortfall of £46 million, and by implication that has to come from the community and beyond. Given what happened in Committee, it is singularly unfortunate. I do not believe for one moment that that was my noble friend’s intention, but you do not get an opportunity to explain the motivation of noble Lords in this House when it goes out to the public. There is a grave risk, should we put this to the vote, of unfortunate motivations being ascribed to your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to this amendment. As a former Secretary of State for Transport, I have some knowledge of construction projects, the time they take and the reasons why costs may escalate. There is a decision for people to make, and I strongly agree with what my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe said.

Looking at the Explanatory Notes, I reminded myself of just how long ago my noble friend Lord Cameron first proposed this project; it was when I was in government as an Immigration Minister. That seems a very long time ago, because it was. It is not surprising, given the passage of time, that the costs set out then will clearly be much larger now.

I am a great supporter of spending public money wisely, and I have listened carefully to all the comments and concerns that people have made. I will not ascribe motives for this amendment; all I will say is that the Minister needs to reassure the House that, if this Bill proceeds—and if the memorial and the learning centre are approved and constructed, as I very much hope they are—the Government need to put in place strong controls to make sure that public money is spent wisely.

Also relevant to the many construction projects for which I have been responsible in government is that costs escalate partly because it takes a long time before the design and content of those projects are finalised. In part, it is parliamentary processes—which are perfectly good and understandable—that then cause the cost to escalate. The most obvious example of that in the projects for which I was responsible—part-way down the track—was HS2. People complain about how much that cost, but part of the reason it cost so much was that both Houses of Parliament—it, too, was a hybrid Bill—altered the design and put lots of extra requirements into it. Members of the other place and of your Lordships’ House then expressed surprise that the cost had escalated. I very much want to get on and build this memorial and learning centre, and the more delays there are and the more we debate what it looks like and where it goes, the more the cost will increase.

Finally, I strongly agree with what my noble friend Lady Harding said: putting a figure in nominal terms in the legislation is unwise. We have existing processes, including the National Audit Office and the various structures that the Government have for managing major projects. They are not perfect, but we need to make sure that those structures are used. Ministers must be accountable to both this House and the House of Commons in regularly reporting and accounting for themselves, and we must be able to ask them questions. I suggest that this is an unwise amendment, and I hope that it is not accepted and added to the Bill.

[Lord Sassoon (Con)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak to this amendment, but I believe that my noble friends Lady Harding of Winscombe, Lord Pickles and Lord Harper have misunderstood—I would not say misrepresented—what the amendment is all about. I declare my interests in coming from a family in which my mother’s German Jewish family lost members in the Holocaust, and in which my great uncle, who came to this country, founded the Jewish Refugees Committee, which organised the Kindertransport. I also speak as a former Treasury Minister; that is how I look at the numbers and what the amendment seeks to do.

As I understand it and read it, my noble friend Lords Eccles is as concerned as I am and many others are that we have had no up-to-date or credible figures from the Minister, throughout the various stages of the Bill, as to what the current costs are. The latest costs, I think, go back at least two years, and we have heard what has happened to the costs since then. As a House, we need to understand what the more recent estimates are.

As I read it, this amendment puts a cap on the public contribution to this, but does not, as my noble friends have just said, or implied, cap the total cost of the project—if my noble friend tells me I have got it wrong, I will sit down. Speaking as a former Treasury official and Minister, I say that we need a bit of discipline on this project. It is not going to cap the total cost of the project and, unless the Minister is able to give us more credible figures to explain the latest thinking about the split between the private and public sector contributions, I would be fully supportive of my noble friend Lord Eccles’s amendment, because it puts some necessary financial discipline on the project but will in no way—as my noble friends have said, and they can come back at me if they want to—cap the total expenditure that could be incurred on the project.