Lord Blencathra (Con)

My Lords, in the nicest possible way, I will not challenge my noble friend Lord Finkelstein but merely comment that he must have better eyesight than I do. When I look at the representations of the fins, they do not seem to be entirely modest. They are absolutely massive. He said that they are appropriate. I ask those with strong Jewish heritage whether they have ever heard the figure of 23 or 22—the gaps—mentioned before. All my life, the only figure which mattered for the Holocaust was 6 million Jews slaughtered, massacred, killed. The idea is that these giant fins are somehow appropriate because the gaps between them represent 22 countries. Has any noble Lord in this Committee ever heard of that before, apart from in this planning application? To my knowledge, neither 23 fins nor 22 gaps have anything to do with Jewish history. If we want something appropriate, it must represent 6 million Jews slaughtered. We will come in a later amendment to what would be an appropriate design, but I am also prompted to ask a question on the refreshment kiosk. I use the park regularly, and in summertime or when there is a coach party to the Commons, the kiddies come into the park. They have their sandwich wrappers and a huge amount of Pret A Manger bags, and they all religiously try to put them into the litter bins. At times, those bins have been stuffed absolutely full and litter is spread all around. If there is a refreshment kiosk for thousands of people, that is likely to happen as well, and we will see a huge amount of litter. Some may argue that we should have more litter bins and fill them up. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, with his expertise here, may comment on this. The first thing that the Metropolitan Police would do when there is a terrorist threat is remove all the bins. You cannot get a litter bin at Euston station or anywhere else because they are a terrorist threat. We could have a kiosk selling sandwiches, crisps and so on and all the people having their picnics, but end up with no litter bins to put the rubbish in. If there are litter bins, they ought to be policed and patrolled. This is not a trivial point; I am not trying to diminish the whole argument by talking about litter. It is a legitimate point about other people’s enjoyment of the gardens. They may also want to have their picnic and sandwiches but find that there is no place to put the garbage afterwards.