Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)

My Lords, I particularly support Amendments 13, 29 and 30. Their effect would be that there was a sculpture but not a learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens. In doing so, I urge the Minister to consider the difference between your Lordships’ House and the other place. Many Members of your Lordships’ House are very modest about their achievements, other than possibly us lawyers. However, we have heard in this debate two Members of your Lordships’ House with great expertise in the matters that we are discussing. One is the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who has a long history in education. She was master of Birkbeck College, the paradigm of education to a large external audience. That is an example of what we are trying to achieve, at least in part, with the learning centre. Also, the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, who made a superb speech, is a person with real experience of cultural arenas and the like—of how cultural issues are delivered to a much larger public right across the cultural spectrum. It would be useful for the Minister to focus particularly on their expertise before any final decisions are made about what should go in Victoria Tower Gardens. I am very much in favour of a memorial and a Holocaust learning centre, but not in Victoria Tower Gardens. A memorial there could be one of the most magnificent sculptures in the world. To give one example, Anish Kapoor, the great British sculptor, has already done a small Holocaust sculpture in London. Someone such as Anish Kapoor might produce one of those sculptures that lives for the centuries, maybe rather like how “The Burghers of Calais” which has lived for well over one century anyway. Putting a sculpture in Victoria Tower Gardens but nothing else would remove many of the security concerns, which I will address later, that will arise if a so-called learning centre is built in the gardens.