Labour Reintroduces Bill to Build Holocaust Memorial in Westminster

Aerial view of Victoria Tower Gardens next to the Palace of Westminster and River Thames. (UK Holocaust Memorial/PA)

A Holocaust memorial will appear in the heart of Westminster, pending parliamentary approval of legislation that was reintroduced by the Labour government on Thursday.

The construction of the National Holocaust Memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens is restricted by existing Victorian legislation. However, the project can go ahead if the House of Lords greenlights the Holocaust Memorial Bill, which Labour has brought back to Parliament.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said in a statement that the legislation will help future generations to “learn lessons from the past and help to build a more unified, tolerant future.”

“The evil and brutality of the Holocaust is a stark reminder of what can happen when hatred and intolerance go unchallenged. We must make sure those who died are never forgotten,” Ms. Rayner said.

The Bill

First proposed in 2014, the project received planning consent by the then-housing minister Chris Pincher in July 2021.

However, London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust challenged the decision in the High Court. The judge found that the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 required Victoria Tower Gardens to be used as a public park.

The Holocaust Memorial Bill would remove the restrictions applied in the 1900 act, allowing construction works to go ahead.

The bill would also authorise expenditure on the maintenance and operation of the memorial and learning centre.

The memorial’s learning centre below ground will offer a “place of poignant reflection as well as a space to understand the history of the Holocaust and learn lessons for the future,” the government said.

Jewish Community

The Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) welcomed the government’s commitment to the bill and said that the memorial will be “an important focal point for Holocaust education.”

“We now hope the bill will complete its passage swiftly to enable the project to advance,” the JLC said in a statement on social media platform X.

The chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollock, noted that anti-Semitism was on the rise in the UK and around the world.

“With the Holocaust fading further into history and survivors becoming fewer and frailer, the need for progress on building the memorial and learning centre next to Parliament has never been more urgent,” Ms. Pollock said.

Another member of the Jewish community, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, welcomed the reintroduction of the bill in Parliament.

“With the passage of time and the tidal wave of polarisation, scapegoating and hatred that seems to be sweeping the world, the urgent moral duty to preserve the lessons of the Holocaust could not be greater,” said Sir Ephraim.

The Peers

Having been discussed in the last Parliament, the bill will go through the Commons without debate. It will now undergo scrutiny by the Lords.

Ms. Rayner encouraged the House of Lords to pass the legislation and reflect the Commons’s cross-party unity in approving the bill.

The veteran former MP for Brentwood—now Lord Pickles—said he was “delighted” to see the memorial project progress.

“There may be more delays ahead, but they can now be a certainty that it will be built,” he said on X.

Baroness Ruth Deech, who has been critical of the project in the past, is likely to provide opposition to the bill in the House of Lords. She has previously said that a Holocaust memorial is unlikely to stop anti-Semitism.

Speaking about the project in 2021, she said on X that policymakers use “a terrible tragedy to promote a political project: the glorification of ‘British values.’”

“Some £75 million has been allocated for the memorial, currently costed at over £100 million. If there are resources to spend on Holocaust remembrance, then priority ought to go to better teaching, meetings with survivors, the preservation of their memories and understanding the connection of antisemitism and the establishment of Israel,” Baroness Deech said in a 2019 article for The House magazine.

In 2023, the estimated total cost of the project increased to £138.8 million.

In January, a former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile, said that given its location, the memorial was likely to be a “tempting” target for Islamic extremist and far-right terrorists.