Lord Pickles (Con)

My Lords, I will be brief. I am pleased that the Government have allocated additional days to discuss the Bill, but I am slightly concerned that we are becoming repetitious and are in danger of spending more time on it than we are spending in Committee on reform of the House of Lords. I have a couple of points. If I am honest, I do not entirely understand Amendment 17. My reading of the Bill is that we are not repealing the 1900 Act, we are just disapplying it. Anyone wishing to build outside the area that has planning permission would have to go through this process again and would require a special Act of Parliament to disapply the 1900 Act. We should also be clear about Mr WH Smith—a name that looks like it is about to disappear from our high streets. His principal concern was to prevent wharfs being built next to the House because of the risks that would have in terms of industrial activity, and the risk of fire it posed to the House. I am sure that his wishes are not in any way being diminished by the various statues that have gone up in the intervening period. I am sorry to repeat this, but Parliament has long decided how to deal with matters such as this, and it is through the planning Acts. They have a process whereby objectors can object and ideas are tested. That seems the most appropriate way of doing it, not setting up a separate system where the House of Lords is judge and jury in its own case. I recognise that people have strong views, but I am disappointed that we are hearing repeats of things that are plainly untrue. There is no suggestion that this will be anything other than something that commemorates the Holocaust—the Shoah. Any references to other genocides are peripheral and probably will occur under two circumstances. One of the outcomes of that terrible event was the creation of crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide. They give the lie to “never again”. It is important that this memorial is not celebratory of British involvement but is “warts and all”, to use Mr Cromwell’s phrase. The question is: who supports this? It is unseemly to play Top Trumps with Holocaust survivors. I could reel off a whole bunch of Holocaust survivors who have been supportive of this from the very beginning. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go with the Minister to Ron Arad’s headquarters up in Chalk Farm, where there is a beautiful model laid out, which I hope the Committee will get an opportunity to look at—certainly, the House should do so—as many of the worries would disappear. Far from this memorial dominating the Buxton memorial, it would lie considerably below the very top of it. Far from it dominating the park, it would enhance it, and it seems very sensible. The Minister and I were fortunate to be joined by the Chief Rabbi, who has taken a great interest in this matter, as did the late Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory. I can remember lots of discussions with Rabbi Sacks on this. The Chief Rabbi is entirely happy with the design, the purpose and the like. I am not Jewish; I cannot make a judgment, but I think I am entitled to take the views of the Chief Rabbi in preference to those of others in this Committee. I hope, now that we are close to the possibility of coming to a decision on this, we will not drag our feet and repeat points that we made earlier, interesting though they are. Can we just get on with the job?