In December 2010, the UK agreed to provide a bilateral loan of £3.2 billion as part of a €67.5 billion international assistance package for Ireland. The loan was disbursed in 8 tranches. The final tranche was drawn down on 26 September 2013. Ireland has made interest payments on the loan every six months since the first disbursement.

On 15 April, in line with the agreed repayment schedule, HM Treasury received a total payment of £407,843,097.02 from Ireland. This comprises the repayment of £403,370,000 in principal and £4,473,097.02 in accrued interest.

As required under the Loans to Ireland Act 2010, HM Treasury provided a Statutory Report to Parliament on 1 April covering the period from 1 October to 31 March 2019. The Report set out details of future payments up to the final repayment on 26 March 2021. The government continues to expect the loan to be repaid in full and on time.

The next Statutory Report will cover the period from 1 April to 30 September 2019. HM Treasury will report fully on all repayments received during this period in the Report.

The Government will inform Parliament of the repayment through a Written Ministerial Statement following its return from recess.

The Queen has approved the nomination of the Reverend Canon Deborah Sellin, MA, Vicar of St John the Baptist Wonersh with Blackheath and Area Dean for the Deanery of Cranleigh, in the Diocese of Guildford, to the Suffragan See of Southampton, in the Diocese of Winchester in succession to the Right Reverend Jonathan Hugh Frost, BD, MTh, DUni, MSSTh, FRSA, who resigned on the 13th December 2018.

The march by torchlight – attended by upwards of 10,000 people – is an annual event to mark Hungary’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year it commemorated the life and work of Scottish missionary Jane Haining, who protected her Hungarian Jewish pupils during WW2, and who died in Auschwitz. Mr Mundell was asked by the organisers to speak at the event and lead the march.

Mr Mundell said:

It was a huge honour, and a great privilege, to lead the March of the Living to mark Hungary’s Holocaust Memorial Day. I was very proud that the 2019 march remembered Scottish missionary Jane Haining.

An extraordinary, brave and selfless woman, Jane Haining sacrificed herself to protect Jewish schoolgirls in Budapest during the Second World War. Her unwavering devotion saw her lose her life in Auschwitz 75 years ago, aged just 47. She is a hero of which all of Scotland, Hungary and the world can be proud.

The Holocaust was undoubtedly one of the darkest times in human history, but the courage and personal sacrifice of individuals like Jane Haining give us hope for the future.

While in Budapest Mr Mundell also visited the Dohány Street Synagogue, and joined worshippers at the St Columba’s Church of Scotland (next door to the former site of the Scottish Mission school where Jane Haining worked).

The Rev Aaron Stevens, Minister of St Columba’s Church of Scotland in Budapest, said:

Jane Haining’s service and sacrifice shows that caring for people from different backgrounds in no way compromises our faith. In fact, it just might be the fullest expression of it.

Since I’ve had a chance to hear women share their childhood memories of the Scottish Mission, I treasure every opportunity to pass on those stories.

As an English-speaking church in Budapest with an international congregation, it is natural for us to be involved in outreach among refugees. Compassion and hospitality is in our church’s DNA.

Jane Haining (6 June 1897 – 17 July 1944) was a Church of Scotland missionary. She worked in Budapest from June 1932 as matron of the Scottish Mission School, a boarding house for Jewish and Christian girls run by the Scottish Mission to the Jews.

After World War II broke out the Church of Scotland advised Haining to return to the UK, but she decided to stay in Hungary to look after her Jewish pupils who were facing persecution. She wrote at the time “if these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?”.

Ms Haining was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1944 on a number of charges, including that “she had wept” when sewing the yellow stars on the clothes of her Jewish pupils, as required by law. She died in Auschwitz-Birkenau a few months later.

Ms Haining was recognized in 1997 by Yad Vashem (the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Israel) as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, an honour awarded to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Jane Haining was born in the village of Dunscore in Dumfrieshire. A cairn in her memory stands outside Dunscore Parish Church, and a memorial to her life was opened inside the Church in January 2018. It features photographs, letters, documents and other personal effects relating to the missionary. Mr Mundell visited the memorial and heritage centre just ahead of the march [on Friday 12 April].

Worldwide Ummah Aid (WUA), a charity which operated to relieve poverty in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, has been dissolved with two trustees (B and C) removed as trustees from the charity by the Commission and one removed (A) by fellow trustees, following an investigation by the Charity Commission.

The Commission first engaged with the charity after Trustee A was stopped by the police at Heathrow airport in 2014 carrying a significant amount of money in cash, purportedly for the charity. Trustee B, travelling on the same flight, appeared to have no knowledge of this. The Commission subsequently launched a statutory inquiry.

The inquiry found evidence of misconduct and/or mismanagement in the charity’s administration by the trustees. Trustee A was the sole signatory of the charity’s bank account for transactions up to £15,000 and bank statements showed money has been withdrawn in cash amounting to over half of the charity’s total income. Many of these transactions occurred in the days preceding a flight to Turkey by Trustee A.

There was also evidence of poor financial management and governance in the charity, including:

• Money spent between August 2012 and March 2015 was not accounted for
• Some invoices appeared for personal expenditure like a TV, DVD player and dental work
• The charity was making loan repayments on a Mercedes car, owned by Trustee A.

Trustees B and C allowed large sums of money to be withdrawn and taken in cash overseas by Trustee A, with no due diligence or checks on the end use of the charity’s funds. This resulted in Trustee A being removed from the charity by the other trustees, and subsequently automatically disqualified as a result of regulatory action in another statutory inquiry. The Commission used its powers to removed trustees B and C from serving as trustees.

Following an application for dissolution of the charity by the remaining trustees, WUA has been removed from the register, with its charitable funds redistributed to another charity.

Amy Spiller, Head of Investigations Team at the Charity Commission, said:

The public rightly holds trustees to a high standard of conduct. Charities hold a special status in society and trustees should be their careful custodians, ensuring all decisions are taken in the best interest of the charity’s mission and purpose.

The trustees of WUA were reckless with charitable funds and acted against Commission advice by carrying cash overseas. This practice is high risk and put valuable charitable funds in jeopardy.

Through their misconduct and mismanagement the trustees jeopardised the trust that donors placed in those responsible for the charity. It’s therefore right that the Commission acted to disqualify the trustees responsible.

All charity trustees are under legal duties to safeguard their charity’s money and assets and to act prudently.

The full report is available on GOV.UK.

Ends.

It is a genuine pleasure, and privilege and honour to join you all today to mark the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport.

I’m incredibly grateful to the Association of Jewish Refugees for hosting this really significant, really important conference and quite literally bringing us all together – including so many Kinder from across the world.

It was very special to be able to meet some of you just before this session and hear how the work continues on ensuring that we have that record of history of some of the things we have heard about this morning. And just how much that matters. It’s a mark of just how seminal the Kindertransport has been to countless lives.

There’s also another very special mention, these wonderful surroundings that we’re in this afternoon have equally made me reflect on previous events that we did at the Speaker’s house in the House of Commons, where I was among a number of MPs able to read-out some of the debate in the House of Commons that led to the Kindertransport happening.

And just to be able to read some of those words again in Parliament, to be able to remind ourselves of some the issues that were just so relevant, some of that debate, some of the tensions. But equally to underline its relevance to our politics today. Never forgetting. Always underlining that sense of challenging inequality or division or hatred. But all that we have as a country in that regard and equally the responsibilities that we have in terms of our support for refugees and our place in the world in that regard.

So I think it’s actually quite fitting that we should meet here at Lancaster House, a place that has played such an important role in world events. Indeed, many here will recall Lancaster House as the seat of so many meetings that changed the shape of central Europe after the war. 

Legacy

But in turn, the Kindertransport has shaped us as a country. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

It’s something we remain very proud of, yes. But equally, we can be proud of the incredible contributions of the Kinder to the life of this country.

And some of it strikes a personal chord for me. My father-in-law was not one of the Kinder, but he escaped Nazi Germany to Britain as a small child with the help of Frank Foley, the MI6 officer based in the British Embassy in Berlin, who did so much to provide the papers and facilitated so many Jewish people to leave Germany and make a better life elsewhere.

His father – my children’s great-grandfather – was interned in Buchenwald in the aftermath of Kristallnacht. Mercifully, he was reunited with his family.

But I know that so many people, including many people here, were not so lucky.

The Kindertransport is a story of great pride, yes. But it is also marked with deep sadness at every turn. It provokes painful questions. Why only children? What happened to the parents? What became of brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles?

Sadly, we know that the Kinder were often the only surviving members of their family. It is a difficult legacy – but one that we must remember. One that we must never forget.

And the Holocaust has had a monumental impact on our country’s history, our democracy and our values. Even today, it continues to shape us: from people like me, like my family with connections to survivors and refugees, to our society at large as we continue to stand up and challenge the scourge of antisemitism.

Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre

That is why it is right that we remember the Holocaust, that we apply the lessons of the Holocaust – and have a Memorial here in Britain.

Because the murder of the 6 million Jewish men, women and children must never be forgotten. Nor should the murders of the Roma and other victims of Nazi persecution. Nor still, the subsequent genocides across the world that have scarred the decades since.

And today, as we mark the anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen – by British troops so wholly unprepared for the horrors they found – it is important we all reflect on what they confronted there.

It is why our new Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, I think, will be so important for our nation.

It will be a centre for remembrance and education at the very heart of our national life. A place where future generations can learn the lessons of the past, through the powerful stories like the Kindertransport and the liberation of Bergen-Belsen.

Beacon of learning and remembrance

And I want to reassure our country’s Holocaust survivors, Kinder and refugees that this important Memorial will be delivered, because we remain determined that our country stands together against the hatred, against the ignorance and against the bigotry that led to the Holocaust and other genocides.

Victoria Tower Gardens will be an exceptional setting for this place of reflection and education, inspiring us all to stand up whenever the values we share are challenged.

Moreover, it is right that the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre should be next to our Houses of Parliament, at the heart of our democracy, standing as an important reminder of parliament’s power to oppress – and its duty to protect.

Which comes back to why we are here today – underlining that sense of past. Underlining that sense of the important role that we have in helping in international crisis and our response through refugees.

So, as we gather today to remember and rethink the legacy of the Kindertransport, it is my sincere hope that our Memorial will become a powerful beacon of future learning and remembrance.

Learning and remembrance which I know is at the heart of today’s events and why it is so important that we come together, that we remember, and that we apply those lessons for the future.

Thank you very much.