My right hon. Friend is right, and most people will agree with him, even if their job is to stand up and say something different.
I will not spend much time on the planning permission, because it is not the subject of the Bill. When the inspector’s report was received by the Government and considered, this was the conclusion under the signature of the planning casework unit:
“This decision was made by the Minister of State for Housing in line with the published handling arrangements for this case…and signed on his behalf. In particular, those handling arrangements state that:
‘Christopher Pincher MP (the Housing and Planning Minister) will be responsible for exercising the functions of the Secretary of State under sections 70 and 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act’”
and so on. Who here believes that a Minister of State would, on merit, turn down an application by their own Secretary of State? I will give way to anybody who wants to make that suggestion. It is just incredible. It would not happen.
I will now change tone a bit. During the Select Committee hearings, the Government counsel suddenly switched from saying who the lead designer and architect for the proposal was. The Government’s press notice announcing the winner contained 13 references to Sir David Adjaye, now Order of Merit, four references to Ron Arad, and no references to Asa Bruno. Proper tribute
has been paid to Asa Bruno. It is true that he was the one who put a number of points to the inspector. He is recognised as a leading designer, and his obituary, which I refreshed my mind on just now, showed that he was a startlingly good person. However, when the Government announced the lead designer and architect for the proposal, they named Sir David Adjaye, who could hardly be mentioned by the promoters at the Select Committee for reasons that I will not go into now. They are well known and in the public domain.
Let us turn to the points that the Government made to the Select Committee after I raised that issue:
“On 24 January, in a debate on the Business of the House (col 439), Sir Peter Bottomley MP referred to the proceedings at the seventh public session of the Holocaust Memorial Bill committee and suggested that counsel for the Promoter may have ‘inadvertently told the committee things that are contradicted by the facts…’ in relation to responsibilities for the design of the Memorial.”
I was then told that what was said was right. I think that that leading counsel, over and over again, was trying to write Sir David Adjaye out because of the embarrassment to Government. If it was Asa Bruno who was responsible for the Ottawa proposal, so be it, but that was not what Government said seven years ago in public.
I am going to go on fighting this, but not so long this evening, because my colleagues have more to say. I say to those watching the proceedings, “Look into the details of what has happened.” I commend to them early-day motions 711, tabled on 1 May, and 775, tabled on 21 May. In particular, the latter “regrets that the promoter” —that is, the Government—
“has failed to understand the justified requests for a detailed comparison of the present unsatisfactory scheme with the alternatives studied by the Government’s consultants; further regrets the continuing lack of updated costings for capital and recurrent costs; disagrees with the suggestion that planning permission and all other necessary consents were obtained in the usual way; regrets there is no known plan to spend more available resources on education rather than on construction; further regrets that known and growing security restrictions are not being adequately addressed; and believes the promoter is not meeting its obligation to achieve an appropriate memorial at a justified cost in a suitable location, associated with opportunities to learn and to understand the Holocaust and to reduce the likelihood of a repeat of the atrocities of the Holocaust.”
I end with words from the Holocaust survivors who gave evidence at the Committee, who said, in summary, that the proposal is too big for the gardens and too small for its purpose.