Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

My Lords, while the tributes are flowing, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, who gave one of the best speeches the first time this amendment was discussed, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. It is truly important to have this discussion and debate, and not just to say that it does not matter. I also do not doubt the sincerity of the noble Lords, Lord Collins of Highbury and Lord Khan of Burnley, who have both been absolutely reassuring. My problem is that I am not reassured by reassurances. I still cannot understand why it is only reassurances, and not firmly fixed. It is not reassuring that this cannot be written down, so that we all know it is not going to be sold out. No disrespect, but a lot of sell-outs happen in politics; however, I do not doubt the integrity of the noble Lords I have mentioned. I just wanted quickly to just note why this matters. The noble Lord, Lord Pickles, made the point when he referred to the fight. I had written down, “The context of this is a fight”. I do a range of education work, although not this issue, but when I go to universities and schools I get into arguments—obviously enough—about all sorts of things. In a debate about whether there is a genocide in Gaza, because I said there is not, and tried to explain it rationally, I was accused of being a Holocaust denier. When I then tried to untangle why that was not the case and why you would use that term, one of the students said, “The problem is that Jews jealously guard the Holocaust. It is part of their colonial entitlement attitude”. That was quite a normal thing to say. I was shocked; nobody else was. This is a learning centre. Look at the revelations that have come forth in relation to the MP from Labour Friends of Israel who was stopped from going into a school to teach, as well as the subsequent revelations—exposed by Nicole Lampert—about the goings-on in the National Education Union, a teaching union that is almost institutionally hostile to Israel and that has very strong and openly antisemitic elements to it. People who are worried about the Shoah being relativised or diffused are not being paranoid; this is happening.