Consultant accused of ‘rigging’ decision on Holocaust memorial site

The government has been accused of rigging its campaign to build a £100 million Holocaust memorial next to the Houses of Parliament.

Thousands of positive comments about the scheme have been submitted to Westminster city council since a company called Big Ideas was hired at a cost of £118,000 to the taxpayer to help with “public engagement”.

The council is expected to grant planning permission for the largely subterranean monument and education centre in Victoria Tower Gardens in the autumn, despite opposition from the Royal Parks, Historic England, the Environment Agency and Unesco.

Since Big Ideas was taken on, there has been a remarkable shift in the number and nature of comments. The Save Victoria Tower Gardens Campaign, representing local residents, said the government was “paying consultants to rig its own planning application”.

From January 8, when public consultation opened, until May 13, the council website received 144 comments supporting the application and 866 comments opposing it: a ratio of six to one against. From May 14, when Big Ideas started its campaign in earnest, to June 18, 2,824 supportive comments were received, with 160 in opposition: a ratio of almost 18 to one in favour.

The average number of supportive comments a day leapt from 1.15 to 122.74 since the public relations firm was engaged. Many were just a few words long.

Paul Diamond, a leading barrister specialising in public law, believes that there are legal concerns over the nature of the consultation process, not least because the comments need to be taken in context. He argues that under the Sedley Requirements, a set of legal tests, the views of a local resident, who might be affected by extra traffic, deserve to be given more weight than those of someone who has no stake.

“It’s not like going down the pub and giving everyone a fiver for their opinion,” he said. “The purpose of consulting is to ascertain public views. It is not an extension of government policy. You cannot have a public body using public funds to engineer a political result. If this comes before the courts they will also consider how, under the European Convention, governments have to act fairly when infringing public rights.”

The Ministry of Housing, which is supervising the project, responded: “We don’t recognise these allegations. Big Ideas is being funded to encourage local and national conversations on the proposed Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre. The final planning decision sits with Westminster council.”

Despite the opposition, the project, instigated by David Cameron in 2016, has been backed by all five living prime ministers. The memorial, which had to be redesigned by its architect, Sir David Adjaye, in April, has also received support from 174 MPs and peers, including the Labour peer Lord Dubs, a Kindertransport refugee, Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, and local rabbis.

“We know there are strong feelings on both sides of this application and it will be considered in the same way we would any other sensitive scheme,” a Westminster council said. “We have processes in place for handling, and giving the appropriate weight to, organised campaigns.”

A spokesperson for Big Ideas said: “Big Ideas is a community engagement agency with expertise in community commemoration. The public are not paid for their views. It is the case that most of the views we have received have been positive. The proposal is for a national memorial and it is appropriate that national consultation takes place.” Previously, when asked about the claim of “rigging” the consultation, a spokeswoman said Big Ideas was trying to “support access to accurate information and opportunity to comment”.