Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Russell. I was not aware of his grandfather, but I have made a note and I am certainly going to purchase his book, The Scourge of the Swastika. A memorial without a learning centre would fail to meet the objectives of the Prime Minister’s commission of 10 years ago in 2015. The report promised for us to remember and, as was mentioned earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said that it is “the right idea, in the right place and at the right time”.—[Official Report, 4/9/24; col. 1169.] That was the Prime Minister in 2015. The Prime Minister for the 2017 general election, the noble Baroness, Lady May, agreed with that, as did subsequent Prime Ministers in 2019 and 2024. The Conservatives and Labour had this proposal in their manifestos. The other place has voted on this, so now it has come to this House. This House is a revising Chamber. Some of the amendments may be well intentioned but, from listening to them, I think some of them are meant to wreck the Bill, because a memorial without the learning centre, as I say, would not work. Without an integral learning centre, the memorial would lack context. We would miss the opportunity to help millions of visitors learn the facts of the Holocaust and its significance for Britain. The noble Lord, Lord Moore, mentioned how the Cenotaph came about. As we walk past, we see “The Glorious Dead”, and, as he rightly says, those who served in the First and Second World Wars would know about that. But we are talking about the future here. The generations to come—our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren—need to be educated on what happened. That is the whole point of having this centre there. It is fanciful to suggest that a learning centre could be placed elsewhere without losing this opportunity for visitors to learn. Abandoning the proposed design for Victoria Tower Gardens would mean setting the programme back many years. Perhaps that is the intent of the amendment. It is wholly unrealistic to imagine that a new site in any remotely suitable location would gather universal support. We would at best spend many more years facing and listening to objections from a new set of voices. I am sorry to say that, but it is the feeling that I have. The Government are right to bring this to the House as previous Governments have done, so I will not be supporting this amendment.