5: Clause 1, page 1, line 9, at end insert—
“(1A) The management responsibilities in subsection (1)(a) to (c) must be discharged by a Non-Departmental Public Body.”
My Lords, when I put down this amendment it seemed to me that we had arrived at a time when we needed clarification about who was going to manage this project. It is approaching construction and has been under consideration for a long time. We have known that there was going to be a Parliament-approved executive management, but we have not got one yet, and so that was my purpose.
If I may go back briefly into the history, the chair of the commission, Mr Davis, said this on pages 6 and 7 of the foreword to Britain’s Promise to Remember:
“To take these recommendations forward the Commission proposes the immediate creation of a permanent independent body. This body will implement the recommendations to commemorate the Holocaust and ensure a world-leading educational initiative”.
I emphasise the phrase, “world-leading educational initiative”.
It is true to say that, if you read Britain’s Promise to Remember, you find that the main emphasis is on education. That was confirmed on page 16, which said:
“The Commission’s final recommendation is the immediate creation of a permanent independent body. This organisation would oversee the establishment of the new National Memorial and Learning Centre, run that Centre and administer the endowment fund”.
The point I would like to emphasise is that it says both times, “independent body”. I take that to mean that, when the public body is formed, the people who comprise it would be entitled to make up their own minds, and, at least, to make their own presentation.
In January 2015, this was confirmed in the House of Commons by David Cameron, now my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, when he said:
“The Commission proposes a new independent body to deliver all these recommendations and wants to see … the creation of the National Memorial in 2016-17, and the Learning Centre within the next Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/1/15; col. 20WS.]
My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, for opening this group. I will speak to my Amendment 22, which seeks to limit the amount of time that Victoria Tower Gardens can be closed to the public as a result of events linked to the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre to three days a year.
The protection conferred on Victoria Tower Gardens by the original Act of 1900 was put in place to ensure access to the park as a park in perpetuity. This is particularly important to residents in the locality, many of whom live in flats and would not otherwise have access to green spaces. We cannot discuss this Bill without giving due consideration to them and what protections will be in place for them. I note that, in responding to these concerns, the Select Committee report states that limiting the closure dates of Victoria Tower Gardens is a “reasonable request”, as it particularly affects residents who use it on a weekly basis.
There are a number of reasons why the Select Committee’s recommendation 2 and the promotor’s assurance 10 are inadequate to address this and why I suggest that protections need to be enshrined in the Bill, which is what my amendment is designed to do. First, the recommendation by the Select Committee is that this be taken forward in by-laws by the Royal Parks, as the body responsible for maintaining the parts of Victoria Tower Gardens that fall outside the perimeter of the proposed memorial and learning centre.
Parks owned by local authorities usually rely on by-laws. However, for the Royal Parks there is a succession of Acts of Parliament substituting for these by-laws. Usually, decisions on how to apply these regulations are delegated by the Secretary of State for DCMS to TRP management. However, the Secretary of State has the power to overrule the Royal Parks, as happened in May 2024 when the gardens were closed for three days to the public over a bank holiday weekend for an event. It is worth noting, too, that the Royal Parks remain reliant for 60% of their annual income on DCMS. As a result, it is extremely unlikely that the promoter or the authority subsequently created to run the HMLC would be refused permission to close the parks by DCMS or the Royal Parks if it requested it. That is why there must be protections in the Bill.
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Secondly, assurance 10 given by the promoter, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which is intended to mitigate concerns that the interest of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre may take preference over users of the park and garden, states:
“The Promoter’s intention is for the remit of any permanent independent body that is established to operate and run the proposed Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre … to be limited to the area of Victoria Tower Gardens occupied and used by the HMLC”.
In practice, the whole of Victoria Tower Gardens will be used by the Holocaust memorial and learning centre, whether just on closure days or when considering path interventions, security and all the other concerns. As a result, the assurance effectively gives jurisdiction to the body managed by the Holocaust memorial and learning centre over the management of the whole park.
Not only does this raise a number of concerns, but it is probably unenforceable. The assurances will be under the scrutiny of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government once the Bill reaches Royal Assent, other than those that require reports to be put before Parliament. As the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is the promoter of this project, it will effectively be judge and jury over its own assurances, with no route to challenge or accountability where these assurances are not met.
I look forward to further debate during today’s sitting. The proposed plans for this centre and much-loved public park at the heart of Westminster concern many people and it is right that we preserve as much access as we can.
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Eccles in his Amendment 5 and will speak to my Amendment 33. When I first saw the department’s plan to manage this, I was tempted to ask the Minister facetiously whether he would put the experts of HS2 in charge of the project since they seemed to have all the matching qualities outlined in the devastating “red for danger” Infrastructure and Projects Authority report. But then I had a panic—perhaps they might not realise that I was being facetious and actually put HS2 in charge.
The National Audit Office said in a devasting report of 2022 that the department had informed it that it hoped to get an NDPB up and running about a year before the centre opened. It would be in charge of running it but have no role in managing its construction. The key findings of that NAO report were that:
“The Department does not have a track record of managing programmes of this nature … The Department has recruited specialists from across the civil service and externally, but the team does not have staff with programme management expertise in senior positions”.
However, the devasting criticism of the project is not a comment by the NAO but is printed on page 11 of the report as an organisation chart showing the nine bodies under the Secretary of State that will have input into its management. The department calls this “the governance structure”. I have given a copy of this to the Minister, to Hansard and to the clerks. Of course, we cannot enter it into Hansard, so I will read out what it says.
At the bottom of the chart are three organisations credited with giving independent assurance. One is the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which has already condemned the management of the project. Another is the Cabinet Office, which must give approval on business cases and procurement. Then there is the Treasury. The NAO report says that the Treasury’s role is to be:
My Lords, I want to say a word or two in support of my noble friend Lord Eccles and his amendment and my noble friend Lord Blencathra. Much of what I was going to say has been well forked over already, but I think it underlines the importance of moving towards a clear structure and organisation as quickly as possible.
The spider’s web of committees and advisory boards referred to by my noble friend on page 11 of the National Audit Office’s report must be a recipe for disaster. As he pointed out very forcefully, it is a way to ensure that nobody will ever be blamed for anything. It does not matter whether it is too much money, design faults, cost overruns, failure to meet timescales or failure to meet commitments, as page 13 of the National Audit Office’s report puts it—they can only have been designed and drafted by Sir Humphrey—it is, in effect, an organisational blank cheque. We need to make sure that it is very much better controlled, in the interests of performance delivery, the taxpayer and Parliament as a scrutinising body.
I hope that the Minister, who has so far put his foot to the metal, will take some time to think about these organisational problems, which are very real and have been brought forward by the National Audit Office on other pages of its report. If we do not do that, we are setting ourselves up for a very unhappy period during which this project gets going.
My Lords, I seconded the amendment tabled by the right reverend Prelate and I agree with it. It is important also to look at the report from the excellent Select Committee that dealt with it. It says:
“The limitation of closure dates seems to us to be a reasonable request”.
That is what the right reverend Prelate said. It went on to say:
“It is not appropriate for an amendment to the Bill … but is probably best addressed in byelaws applicable to VTG”.
My experience of government is that, very often, by-laws get ignored to a certain extent, so we want to be clear where the limitations are. That is why I support the amendment.
I want to go on about closure dates, not least after my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Hodgson have raised the issue. The issue is around who is going to run this. In paragraph 104, the Select Committee assumed that:
“The Royal Parks … will be the body responsible for maintenance of those parts of VTG outside the perimeter of the proposed HMLC”.
I think we need to get this absolutely clear. The Royal Parks, as I recall—and somebody will correct me if I am wrong—opposed the whole idea because it thought it was an inappropriate place to put a memorial and learning centre. Therefore, we need to be absolutely clear who is responsible for what.
Those of us who have worked in government, as many in this Room have, and many of them for longer than me, know that if there is no clear line of responsibility then nobody is responsible for anything. We need to have a clear line of responsibility in this, and that is why I support these amendments.
My Lords, I speak in support of all the amendments in this group, which are about closure and governance. Perhaps I will wrap up closure first, because it is a discrete issue.
There has been a tendency, since it was first chosen, for the promoters to treat Victoria Tower Gardens as a private park of their own. It was closed for a day in May 2024 for a Holocaust commemoration event in which the main message was that people had better get used to it. The Royal Parks, which manages the gardens, said that its initial decision to refuse permission for the commemoration event to take place there was based on its “longstanding policy” of not allowing “religious activity” in its parks, apart from annual acts of remembrance where memorials already exist”. But, lo and behold, the gardens have been closed again this year for the same purpose.
Issues of transparency are being played out now in real time. The park was closed last year on a May bank holiday weekend. We were told that that would be a one-off, but we now discover that it is planned again for April this year, without any consultation or forewarning. This is creating a precedent in breach of existing Royal Parks policies.
One can see what will happen: because the learning centre will be so small, every time there is a need for a meeting, the whole of the park will be closed off. Little gilt chairs and a tent will be put in, and the park will be taken over. That is why it is extremely necessary to have something in the Bill to prevent this total takeover.
This brings me to governance. In a nutshell, those of us who are concerned about governance—Peers sitting in this Room today—have written to the National Audit Office reminding it that, on 5 July 2022, it put out a report that was critical of the management of the project and called for reforms. We do not know whether those reforms have been carried out. The ministry says that it has done so, but many Peers do not think that any of those reforms have been carried out. There is no evidence that the department has addressed the National Audit Office’s concerns about the lack of management and project management, or the number of bodies, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to. There does not seem to be one body that is in charge of delivery. When questioned last time about who is responsible, the Minister said simply, “The Government”. Again, we await a response from the National Audit Office, and hope that it will re-open its report.
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, in particular. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to a document, a copy of which I have in my hand: Programme Governance for the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, issued by DLUHC. It refers to 10 different entities, which have together produced, on the academic content of the learning centre, a box containing 13 words:
“Provides a peer-review process and discussion forum for the envisioned exhibition content”—
whatever that amounts to. If there had been one NDPB in existence, it would have been put to shame in both Houses of this Parliament for producing such an empty vessel as is contained in those 13 words. It contains no reference to the content or structure of the learning centre; to the opportunities that would arise from the learning centre; to the academic components of the centre; or to the staffing of the centre.
I invite the Minister to look at those words as an example of how this multiplicity of components has, in effect, led to no programming whatever of this learning centre. At the moment, all it is—despite those 10 entities—is four small rooms in which there will be computerised images that someone will choose. Are we to take it that the whole purpose of the academic advisory board is to do a show of computerised images and select the ones that will be shown for the time being? That does not sound like any learning centre I have ever seen, and does not accord to the definition that we heard reference to earlier.
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The thing I want to emphasise there is that, right from the start, there was an acceptance that the memorial was one thing and the world-class education initiative was another, and that it would take a very considerable time to achieve. There was no intention that they should be contemporaneous. They would be going along at the same time, but at a very different speed.
Subsequent to that, there was an appointment made by the Prime Minister, again in January, when David Cameron announced that Sir Peter Bazalgette would serve as the chairman of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, with, it goes on—although this is not a quote—the expectation that the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation would be executive. I do not want to get into an argument about “advisory” versus “executive”. I simply say that what happened while Sir Peter was the chairman included what I would regard as some executive actions: he set out to the 50 different sites to see whether he could find the best one; he was there when the Victoria Tower Gardens were agreed on; and he mounted the competition for the most suitable building.
In April 2018, as we know, Sir Peter resigned and the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation became, as I would say, advisory. I just add that I do not think that you would name a body in the way in which that body was named if you intended it to be advisory—it does not sound right to me.
The matter of how this institution was to be managed went on for a long time, with discussions and thoughts, but it rose to the surface again only when the National Audit Office did its investigation in 2022. That report says in terms that the department had studied what sort of a permanent, independent body there should be and had come to the conclusion that its recommendation was that it should be a new non-departmental public body. That recommendation stands, and no doubt we shall be told during these proceedings what has happened to it subsequently, but it seems to me to be high time that some action is taken. After all, Parliament must come into the process, and that always takes time. We are only about a year away from lots of action on the ground. Surely if a chair and a chief executive were to be appointed following the creation of an NDPB, there would be plenty for them to do. They are not going to be bad value for money. When construction starts, there will be many things to do: they will have to study the building and see what they think about how they will run it and how it will deliver the best value for money.
On the subject of the building, I want to make one point. People may ask the question that I would ask, because in my amendment I am talking about the management under Clause 1(1)(a) to (c). Clause 1(1)(a) refers to “a centre for learning”. In the headline, of course, it is called a learning centre. If I understand it correctly, I do not think that what is proposed to go into the building at present can possibly be described as a learning centre.
Learning centres came from America. They are institutions that are normally attached to other institutions, in particular to schools and universities, and—this is a definition—they provide
“a dedicated facility where people can come to learn at a time that suits them in a comfortable and supportive environment”.
If noble Lords want an example, the British Library—the ex-chair of which, the noble Baroness, is not here —does entirely what that definition says. It seems to me that the parliamentary draftsmen must have had some reason for putting “Learning Centre” in the heading but “a centre for learning” in the text. I will be very interested to know why that difference is there, as will, I guess, anybody appointed to manage the institution.
There are many other things. The Treasury will, I think, be quite difficult on occasions during the progress of this project. It will be influenced by how much money is coming from private sources, in particular the charitable trust. The relationship between the chair and chief executive of the new institution and the charitable trust will be of great importance, as will the relationship with the management of the gardens and the Royal Parks. Of course, we have a different ministry above the Royal Parks: DCMS. Anyone who has experience of public bodies—I have been chief executive of one, CDC, and chairman of another, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew—knows that all these things take a lot of time and careful negotiation, so there is plenty of work to do. If there was a worry about the cost of having them on the books, the ministry would probably be ready to disband part of its special team that it has put together so far. It is urgent that we move to form this management. I beg to move.
“Responsible for allocating funding for the programme. Treasury approval is required at different stages as per the Integrated Assurance and Approval Plan … As a condition of the funding, the Department must seek further Treasury approval if the programme is forecast to use more than half of the approved contingency”.
We all know what the Treasury is like: no one will be able to buy a nail to build this place without months and months of Treasury approval. That is another government department with management rights over this project.
Then there are three advisory boards: the foundation advisory board, the academic advisory board and the construction advisory board. The members of the foundation advisory board are extremely distinguished and will all have firm views on fulfilling their role of defining the overall vision for the programme, including content of the learning centre. But the academic advisory board,
“Provides a peer-review process and discussion forum for the envisioned exhibition content”.
So now we have two expert bodies advising on content and a paralysed programme board terrified to decide between them or reject their advice. This is a recipe for delay and completely contradictory decisions as the programme board attempts to please everyone.
Above those advisory bodies, we have the programme board itself. I hope that noble Lords are listening carefully, because this is what it will do:
“Meets monthly and is chaired by the senior responsible owner. It is the decision-making authority for the programme and collectively owns the programme’s objectives. It monitors the performance of individual projects and work packages, as well as the risks and issues affecting delivery and the mitigations in place to address them. Members include the programme director, programme manager and project leads. Representatives from other parts of the Department, such as Procurement, and external stakeholders, including specialist contractors, are also invited to meetings”.
What an extraordinarily huge bunch of people with no power except to monitor performance, assess risks and pass things on to the oversight board.
The oversight board is one level higher up. It will meet
“2-3 times a year with representatives from the Foundation Advisory Board and senior government. Sets the strategic direction of the programme and is the escalation point for the Programme Board; any changes to the strategic direction need Oversight Board approval”.
Next, we have the investment sub-committee, whose remit is:
“The ISC must approve new project or programme business cases. The programme must seek further ISC approval if it is forecast to use more than half of the approved cost contingency.”
Finally, at the top of this indecision tree is the Secretary of State as
“the ultimate escalation point and sits on the Oversight Board”.
In summary, we have three advisory committees, one organisation with responsibility for finance, two powerful government departments with the final say on finance and two other boards that monitor things and talk about them. There is one thing missing—a straightforward delivery board whose mission given to it by the Secretary of State should be simply this: “You will deliver this project X at a cost Y by day Z and you will suffer penalty P if you fail to deliver and you are a day late.” Get rid of all the other talking shops except the foundation advisory board, which can advise on content but with no say on design or construction. Once new plans are approved in detail, no changes should be made at all. We have all seen in the buildings around Parliament—from Portcullis House onwards—how architects and designers loved to have a committee of politicians in charge, who changed the design regularly, costing an absolute fortune.
This Heath Robinson so-called management structure devised by the department is a recipe for argument, delay and cost overruns. However, it has one magnificent feature cleverly built in by civil servants: with this structure, not a single person can be held accountable for failure. If the cost goes from £138 million to £200 million, which of these bodies gets the blame, or if it is three years late, or if the Jewish community condemns it at the end as not being appropriate? That is why we need a new non-departmental public body set up now and given a simple set of objectives to deliver a set project at a set date at a set cost. That is the only way this can ever work.
I turn now to my Amendment 33 and the future management of Victoria Tower Gardens. In April 1946, the Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, told Conservative MPs in a Commons debate:
“We are the masters at the moment, and … for a very long time to come”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/4/1946; col. 1213.]
I now hear Cabinet Ministers saying that the new Attorney-General is telling them, “I am the master now”. Be that as it may, the relevance of this comment is that I fear that any new NDPB set up to run the completed project will feel that it is the all-powerful master of Victoria Tower Gardens, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out.
The NDPB will be under the overall control of a Secretary of State, partly funded by the Government, and possibly eventually fully funded if the costs grow out of control. It will have, no doubt, a senior civil servant or two from the department, and some others of the great and the good. With the clout it will have from government, it will feel that it can dictate all aspects of the governance of the gardens.
We can guess what will happen: if it finds long queues, it will create roped-off chicanes, like those zigzag lines you get in airports, and do so with no consultation with the garden authorities. What will it do to stop visitors spreading out over the rest of the garden to have picnics, as in Berlin, and taking up the space of other garden users?
We simply have no idea what pressures may arise to infringe on the rest of Victoria Tower Gardens. Therefore, as Amendment 33 makes clear, the NDPB must not have any authority over any other parts of the garden and must consult local residents in advance through the relevant local amenity societies with regard to any matters which may affect the free use of Victoria Tower Gardens as a garden open to the rest of the public. Anything else would be inappropriate.
The governance of this project has always been a mystery. The original foundation was composed of more donors to the Tory party than scholars, and no executives. Can the Minister tell us, in straightforward language, who is in charge of executing this project and its future governance? A new NDPB will have to be created to manage it, its relationship with the park managers has yet to be defined, and there is no information about how it will deal with local residents. It will have to be limited in its power. We need enlightenment on how it will work—including the clash with the various bodies running the gardens—and how it will relate to the bodies responsible for the restoration and renewal of this Palace, with all the building equipment that will be required. How will these things all work together?
We were told at the outset of this project that the Government would kick-start a society-wide fundraising effort to deliver the project and an endowment fund. There has been no sign of that. Incidentally, some Holocaust survivors live very modestly; they are all elderly, and they need the extra comforts demanded by age and their past suffering. Perhaps that would be a better way to direct fundraising, if there is any.
The insubstantial nature of management may explain why countless attempts by me to get any information about the project from the department, by way of freedom of information requests, have been fiercely resisted. It is almost as if the department is ashamed of what might be revealed. We hope that, today, the Minister will tell us what plans there are for management.
The problems revealed by the National Audit Office report were that the department was an unsuitable sponsor, was not perceived as independent and has never sponsored a comparable institution or any major cultural sector initiative. Its near-exclusive focus on the search for a site has not turned out well, as we know, and there has been a failure so far to create an independent body. There has been no transparency around site selection or finance, and value for money has never been mentioned or addressed.
There has also been no parliamentary scrutiny of the project until now. There has been a lack of qualified external appraisal of the project brief, the design and the environmental effects of the proposals. There has been a lack of sufficient consultation with the public on the site; such consultation as there was was very much rigged and curtailed. There has been a lack of attention to public feedback on the design. There has been a lack of consultation with the academic community; there is a British association of Holocaust scholars, who feel that they have not been involved.
There is no business plan in evidence, let alone consulted on, or management clarity. Even operational management is unclear. The management of the project has been invisible, shifting and problematic throughout; for example, there have been issues with the Royal Parks throughout the process, that organisation having been in opposition. No charitable foundation of substance has been created. We believe that there is a small one, organised by Sir Gerald Ronson, but where is the major endowment fund that is required? That is the subject of another amendment.
Of course, the department is conflicted in every way. It has made no effort to carry out an independent planning process but has made itself the planning applicant—and, at the last minute, it has had to delegate the calling in and determination of the application to a junior Minister; this was 12 months after the application was submitted. Now, we call on the Minister to be clear about the management. This project has been known about for nine years. I cannot imagine any other project that has been left to drift in the way this one has; I therefore support all the amendments in this group.