Westminister Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre finally set to go ahead as legal hurdle is removed

Campaigners against the building of a Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre next to Parliament have been dealt a blow after a key legal obstacle around planning permission was on the verge of being removed. 

Peers in the House of Lords have dropped demands for a change to the the Holocaust Memorial Bill just one day after MPs rejected their amendement to the prosposed legislation.

The chosen site in Victoria Tower Gardens, immediately adjacent to the Palace of Westminster, has been controversial, with disquiet over the loss of green space in central London, the design of the scheme and security implications.

A main hurdle to supporters was a 1900 law protecting the small triangular Grade II-listed park, which led to the quashing of planning permission after a legal battle.

To overcome this, the Labour Government reintroduced the Bill, proposed by the previous Tory administration.

It will authorise expenditure on the construction, maintenance and operation of the memorial and learning centre, and also disapply sections of the 1900 Act, removing the legal block that has prevented the project from going ahead.

Deputy Lords leader Lord Collins of Highbury said: “The ambition to create a new national memorial to the Holocaust has been pursued by successive governments, with support across all parties, for a number of years.

“The need for such a memorial and for a learning centre, which will remind people of the terrible facts of the Holocaust, seems only to have increased during this time.”

The Labour peer added: “I recognise that there are many different opinions and strong views about the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre, especially regarding the proposed location.”

Lord Collins went on: “Let me be absolutely clear. The Government’s aim in establishing a national Holocaust memorial and learning centre, in line with the cross-party consensus since 2015, is to increase understanding of the Holocaust and antisemitism. There must be no question of the learning centre deviating from this purpose.”

Independent crossbencher Baroness Deech, whose grandparents died in the Holocaust, has been a leading critic of the proposed development, said:“It is imperative that antisemitism be addressed, not fudged, because it is today that antisemitism is flourishing.

“A learning centre has to be about Jewish lives today, not just deaths. It is so relatively easy to mourn the dead, but so much harder to understand the living.”

She added: “I suspect the Government think that by announcing a Holocaust memorial something will be achieved, but there is not a shred of evidence from the half-dozen existing British memorials and the hundreds around the world that they have any effect on antisemitism.”

Leading lawyer and independent crossbencher Lord Carlile of Berriew added: “I have huge misgivings about why this is being put in Victoria Tower Gardens, what is being put there and whether it will be secure.”

But Tory former cabinet minister Lord Pickles, who is joint chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation, said: “I have always been of the view that this memorial should also celebrate Jewish life and Jewish people, because – and I say this as a non-Jew – Jewish culture is a fundamental part of British identity. Without Jews, this country would be a lesser place.”

He added: “We should put the past behind us and now put our hands out firmly to opponents and those who are in favour, and work together to ensure that we build something we can be proud of.”