6. To ask the Scottish Government what support it is giving to the Holocaust Educational Trust. (S5O-01699)

We must never forget the Holocaust and the people who continue to suffer because of genocide and intolerance, racism and bigotry.

Since 2009, the Scottish Government has provided the Holocaust Education Trust with funding for the lessons from Auschwitz project. The funding began in 2009 with £214,000 per year and has since risen to £296,000 per year in 2017-18. That is a total of £2.25 million over the period. That illustrates the Government’s commitment to providing opportunities for Scotland’s young people to develop as responsible citizens, which is a key element of our curriculum. To date, the project has reached more than 68 per cent of Scotland’s schools, with 3,200 Scottish students having participated in it along with more than 500 teachers.

The Holocaust Educational Trust plays a leading role in promoting Holocaust memorial day, which is on Saturday and on which Bill Kidd has a question in First Minister’s questions in a few moments. Holocaust memorial day falls on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which the Deputy First Minister visited with Scottish schoolchildren recently.

It was my honour to open our Parliament’s annual Holocaust memorial day debate earlier this month, which this year focused on the theme of the power of words. Will the Scottish Government stand with me and with every member of this Parliament who spoke in that debate in pledging to remember the unique horror of the Holocaust and thanking the Holocaust Educational Trust for its invaluable work in ensuring that we will never forget? [

Applause

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I agree unreservedly with the remarks that Mr Tomkins made in his question. The events of the Holocaust must be forgotten by nobody, and as we look at the troubled and uncertain world in which we live today, there is even more requirement for people to be reminded of the horror of the Holocaust.

As Mr Tomkins said, I accompanied Scottish school pupils to Auschwitz-Birkenau in November. Despite my having extensively studied that period of modern history, nothing prepared me for what I witnessed. The experience for our young people, of whom I was enormously proud—they were much younger than me but were able to handle with great dignity, care and understanding the events of that trip—indicated to me that the investment that we make in the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust is vital to ensuring that we sustain among our young people that understanding and their appreciation of those terrible events.

The First Minister represented the Government at a Holocaust memorial day event last night in the city of Glasgow, which was run by our schools and was another fine tribute to the excellence that exists within Scottish education, and to the deep understanding of the significance and horror of the events that Mr Tomkins raises in Parliament today.

Before we turn to First Minister’s questions, I welcome to the gallery Dr Meher Taj Roghani, the deputy speaker of the Pakistan Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

[Applause.]