Lord Harper (Con)

My Lords, I greatly respect the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in reviewing terrorism legislation, but I think that on this particular issue he is wrong. I come to that judgment from having had some responsibility in the past, both as a Home Office Minister and most recently as Secretary of State for Transport, where I had responsibility for the security of aviation, maritime and our transport systems, including here in London. I listened carefully to the noble Lord’s speech. First, on the planning process, clearly the design of the learning centre is, appropriately, taken account of in the planning process. As my noble friend has just said, advice was taken from the appropriate authorities in the design of the learning centre, and that was appropriate. Protecting it on a day-to-day basis would rightly be the responsibility both of the Metropolitan Police and of our other agencies. Having worked closely with them, I have enormous confidence in their ability to do that. As to the noble Lord’s point about any change in the threat to the Palace of Westminster, first, he drew attention to the large number of visitors that would be expected to go to the learning centre. I draw to his attention the fact that around 1 million people a year visit the Palace of Westminster, whether as visitors or to meet their Members of Parliament. So a very significant number of members of the public already visit this part of London. One of the challenges that all our security authorities have in a democratic country is balancing the necessary protection of your Lordships, Members of the House of Commons and all those who work in this building, with maintaining the appropriate access to a democratic institution for members of the public. A number of public servants work in this building, on the estate, in our security services and in the Metropolitan Police. They work every day—sometimes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referenced, at great personal risk to themselves—to keep us safe, but also to enable members of the public to have access to their democratic institutions. I have every confidence that they will continue to do that job. I do not think that that is an appropriate subject for a report for us to consider. Those threats are monitored and dealt with on an ongoing basis. My final point is a slightly more worrying one. The logical conclusion of what both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, is that we would not have a learning centre anywhere. Even if there is such a threat in having a learning centre that it would be, as I think the noble Baroness said, a “lure” to those who wish people ill, in a democratic country we have to say at some point, “We have values and we want to build such a centre”. The correct thing to do is to make sure that it is properly protected, not to say that, because people might threaten it, we are not going to build it. That would be the wrong conclusion to draw. The subsequent point is this. The fact that the noble Baroness said that having such an education centre would provoke this sort of reaction demonstrates to me the absolute necessity of building one, and of building it next to this democratic institution. If building a centre that reminds us of the Holocaust, and of our wish for nothing like that ever to happen again, truly provokes the worst in other people, that demonstrates to me the necessity to do it and to get on with it—and there is no better place to locate it than next to the democratic institution that represents this country. I urge noble Lords, if the noble Lord chooses to divide the House, to reject his amendment.