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Holocaust Memorial Day

The hon. Lady misses the point: it was not a partisan remark. I simply say that she should look at the history. I repeat my point: if Holocaust memorial day is supposed to be about "never again" as well as remembering, we cannot equivocate. It is a disgrace that at any stage since the inception of national Holocaust memorial day the Muslim Council of Britain has boycotted it. I have said that to its members' faces, so I am not saying anything here that I would not say to them. It is very disappointing that Dr. Abdul Bari decided that Davos was more important than attending the commemorations. That is a matter of profound regret, given the nature and sensitivity of the day. Someone else from MCB attended in a personal capacity, whatever that means, and a rather junior person attended in Dr. Bari's stead. That is a matter for regret for MCB, as well as for the unity that we all seek. We cannot say "never again" and then indulge Ahmadinejad, the holocaust denier, or others. During the demonstration in London last summer—I was not on it, but I passed it—I saw genuinely sincere people holding banners saying, "We are all Hezbollah now". That made me weep when I saw it. But the leader of that movement thinks that all Jews are the grandsons and granddaughters of pigs and monkeys, he is a holocaust denier and he wants to push Israel into the sea. That is not to say that Israel is above criticism, but that is a different matter. We cannot as a Government or a country equivocate on those points. You cannot be a little in favour of terrorism and fully support national Holocaust memorial day. You cannot, as al-Qaradawi has done, condemn 7/7 here but then say that our little children bombers in the west bank and Gaza will take on Israel because it is a war state and there is no such thing as an Israeli civilian. You cannot equivocate on such matters: you have to condemn, and you have to condemn harshly. When I talked to the British Board of Deputies early in the consideration of my hon. Friend's Bill to introduce a national Holocaust memorial day, I said that part of the purpose was to remind people that "never again" meant exactly that. As other hon. Members have said far more eloquently than I could, we have not held to that. If we slip and indulge other people and their ideologies simply because that makes things easier for us, we will fail in ensuring that it never happens again. We should, of course, engage with all communities, including the Muslim Council of Britain, but we should do it in terms that leave people in no doubt about our collective values. That includes condemning anti-Semitism and all forms of racism. If we slip on that just a little or if we tell people what they want to hear rather than what they should hear, we fail. We fail not only as a Government, but as a nation and as parliamentarians. The substantive point behind national Holocaust memorial day was, of course, never to forget, but—and this is where we have our failings—it is also about ensuring that it is never, ever repeated in any form, but certainly in that mechanised, racist and ethnocentric form. We are in better shape now than we were, but we are being a tad complacent if we think that somehow, 10 years on from the first national Holocaust memorial day, we have done the business and there will never be another holocaust of any description. I hope that that is right, but that legacy of hope is what we build on and hope that it is not formed of eggshells.