Tory MP attacks Holocaust Memorial site during HMD debate

Conservative MP Peter Bottomley has used the Holocaust remembrance debate in the House of Commons to mount another attack on what he described as the “inappropriate” Westminster Memorial and Learning Centre.
 
In remarks that left Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick shaking his head with anger, the Worthing West MP criticised the decision to pick the Victoria Tower Gardens location for the costly project and raised the government’s pledge that “the bulk of the money should be spent on education not on construction.”
 
Mr Bottomley, who said he could have died at Bergen-Belsen himself had he been born into the Dutch-Jewish line of his family, then said: “The Secretary of State may shake his head.
He will have his chance to speak. I want him at the moment to listen, if I may. I respect him and I respect what he tries to do, but I ask him to publish the analysis done before 2016 of the sites at the Imperial War Museum and Victoria Tower Gardens.
 
“I will publish what I know. He will need to consider what he is putting forward and his deputy needs to say whether he can seriously make a decision on the Secretary of State’s behalf when the Government are so implicated in an inappropriate scheme in an inappropriate place, with a design not accepted in Ottawa.”
 
Speaking later in Thursday’s three hour long Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 debate, Mr Jenrick responded to what he said was the “inaccurate reporting” of the delay to building the Holocaust Memorial “and I am afraid to say the statement we heard earlier today from the Member for Worthing.”
 
He added that Mr Bottomley “knows full well his argument regarding impartiality was tested at judicial review and was found wanting.”
 
The Communities Secretary said he believed the Holocaust Memorial would allow the “work of tackling antisemitism to continue”. 
 
Mr Jenrick also revealed that  “nearly three quarters of local councils” had now adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, praising the “strong support” he had received on the matter from Labour shadow communities secretary Steve Reed.
 
He urged all of the UK’s universities to follow the example set by Oxford and Cambridge in adopting  the IHRA definition.
 
Speaking earlier Labour’s Mr Reed  said the “great tragedy” was that we had “still not learned the lessons of the Holocaust.”
 
Mr Reed also spoke of his regret his  “friend” Dame Louise Ellman was targeted with “aggressive antisemitism” from members of the Labour Party.
 
The Labour MP said, with the support of Sir Keir Starmer, he had asked all Labour councils to adopt IHRA “with all its examples.”
 
Both Mr Jenrick and Mr Reed praised the speech made by Dame Margaret Hodge in the debate.
 
The Jewish Labour Movement’s parliamentary chair had said: "When I was first an MP, I was a Labour MP who happened to be Jewish, but when antisemitism moved to the mainstream of my party, I became a Jewish Labour MP—my identity interwoven with my work.
 
“The last five years have been difficult, long and lonely. I did enjoy support from the brave activists in the Jewish Labour Movement and from those colleagues who did call out antisemitism, and I will never forget the friendship and support between the four Jewish Labour women: Louise Ellman, Ruth Smeeth, Luciana Berger and myself.
 
“It was the women who stood together, worked together and simply would not give up. The tragedy is that they are no longer MPs. I salute their brave contribution, and I miss them.”
 
Conservative Mr Stephen Crabb praised the quality of much of the Commons debate which he said had shown “the best of this House”.