Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Tom Brake Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

My contribution this afternoon will be short, because many Members want to speak. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), with his personal and moving contribution about how he and his family were affected directly by the holocaust. I, too, thank the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for their assiduous campaigning year after year to ensure that we do not lose sight of what happened during the holocaust. I very much welcome the theme for this year’s campaign, Speak Up, Speak Out, which encourages us to stand up and speak against racism, discrimination and genocide, because regrettably those issues are alive and well, and remain with us, abroad and in the UK.

I draw attention to the work of the all-party group against anti-Semitism. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) would have liked to have been present today to make a contribution. I must declare an interest as the vice-chair of the group, but my role has been relatively minor compared with that of the hon. Gentleman, who has played a central role in building the group, which has challenged past Governments successfully, pushing them much harder and faster. Let me list some of its achievements. There have been three formal Government responses to its inquiries into anti-Semitism, under different Governments. There has been the establishment of a Whitehall working group on anti-Semitism, the first official anti-Semitic hate crime statistics, a funding arrangement for the security needs of Jewish faith schools, a Crown Prosecution Service review into the disparity between anti-Semitic incidents and convictions, ministerial conferences and action on internet hate crime. So the group has made it plain that, when people want to get together and successive Governments have the will to tackle such issues head on, it is possible to achieve great things.

We must maintain our vigilance, and the work of the Community Security Trust in highlighting the number of incidents reminds us regularly of that. Although the number of incidents of anti-Semitic hate crime has gone down, there is still a large number of incidents around the country. The Jewish faith is not the only faith to suffer in such a way, of course, and I very much welcome the funding recently given to MAMA, the Measuring anti-Muslim Attacks project, which is a means of reporting hate crime against the Muslim faith. The Minister is well aware of the initiative, and I hope that it will be possible for that facility to be drawn to the attention of a wide range of Muslim groups so that awareness of it can be promoted heavily within the communities that could use it. There have been interesting discussions, and I hope there will be more, with other organisations that might be able to benefit from such a reporting mechanism, including people with disabilities who clearly still suffer a degree of discrimination and targeting that is completely unacceptable.

One other area on which the Government are due to report is to do with Roma people. During the holocaust, perhaps up to half a million Roma people were killed. While they do not suffer persecution as they did then, certainly in the UK, persecution of Roma people remains in some countries in the European Union, and the UK Government should take a vigorous stand on the issue. The Government also have a responsibility to come forward with a plan on the Roma people, and I look forward to it.

We must maintain our focus on education. As other Members have said, as the survivors of the holocaust die, perhaps it loses its prominence. I suspect that many parents and filmgoers have had the opportunity to see “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”—I have just finished reading the book to my son—which brings to the attention of a completely new generation, in an accessible way, the impact of the holocaust. That can play an important role in raising the awareness of new generations, when neither they nor their parents have had direct knowledge of the holocaust. Also, as the schools landscape is changing, with more free schools and academies, schools have an important role. There might be a conflict with the desire, which I support, to give schools more control over their own curriculum and activities, but it would be regrettable if that desire to free them up meant that the focus that there has been on the holocaust and on educating pupils on such issues were lost as part of the change.

In conclusion, it is entirely right that we should have the debate today, and the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) is right to have brought it to the House’s attention. I welcome the flexibility shown to enable him to speak. The debate is clearly important and we need to have it annually so that we all remain focused on the genocide during the holocaust and can avoid future genocides.