Gavin Barwell MP: The Holocaust teaches us what educated people are capable of doing in certain circumstances - and just how many people will ‘follow orders’

Gavin Barwell is Member of Parliament for Croydon Central. Follow Gavin on Twitter.

Each year, on the 27th January - the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army – we mark Holocaust Memorial Day (tomorrow).  It is an opportunity to remember the victims of this and subsequent genocides and to learn the appropriate lessons so that we can try to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Like many MPs, I've had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau with students from my constituency as part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s amazing “Lessons from Auschwitz” project.  And I’ve had the honour to meet Croydon resident and Holocaust survivor, Janina Fischler-Martinho, and to listen to her hold an audience of several hundred young people spellbound as she described what happened to her and her family.

There are some who question whether we should teach the next generation about what happened in Europe 70 years ago. Lord Baker of Dorking, who over a long and distinguished career has done so much to improve education in this country, has said:

“I would ban the study of Nazism from the history curriculum totally. I don’t really think that it does anything to learn more about Hitler and Nazism and the Holocaust. It doesn’t really make us favourably disposed to Germany for a start, present-day Germany... I think you study your own history first... I think children should leave a British school with some idea of the timeline in their minds - how it came from Roman Britain to Elizabeth II.”

Gavin Barwell MP: What can Conservatives do to increase our support among black and minority ethnic communities?

On ConHome yesterday Gavin Barwell, the Conservative MP for Croydon Central, set out why the Conservative Party could not afford to ignore its lack of support among Britain's growing minority populations. Today he outlines some thinking on what we can do to deserve more support from BME voters.

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Yesterday I argued that if the Conservative Party doesn’t increase its support among Britain’s black and minority ethnic (BME) communities then in the medium to long term it will cease to be a party capable of winning general elections.

I took a fair amount of abuse in the comments section, but no-one actually challenged either of the building blocks of my case:

• the stark differential revealed by the Ethnic Minority British Election Study between the voting behaviour of people who classify themselves as white and people who classify themselves as being from a BME background; and

• the evidence from the recently released 2011 Census data that people from a BME background make up a growing share of the electorate and that this trend is going to continue.

So what can we do to address this problem?  Unlike my critics in the comments section, I don’t claim to have all the answers but here are some thoughts.

First, we need to understand why we have historically done so badly among BME voters when the polling suggests that on most issues they are no less conservative than the electorate as a whole.

Gavin Barwell MP: Four reasons why the Conservative Party must win more of Britain's growing ethnic vote

In yesterday's Independent it was reported that David Cameron believes that the Tory Party faces an existential threat if it does not increase support among voters from minority communities.

In a two-part series of articles Gavin Barwell MP examines the nature of the challenge facing the Conservatives and, tomorrow, some possible solutions. Gavin is Tory MP for Croydon Central. Follow him on Twitter.

At the last General Election, more than two thirds of voters from Britain’s black and ethnic minority (BME) communities supported Labour; only 16% voted for us (source: Ethnic Minority British Election Study (PDF)).  As Lord Ashcroft has observed, not being white was the single best predictor that somebody wouldn’t vote Conservative.

This wasn’t solely down to ethnicity.  BME voters are more likely to live in safe Labour seats where there may not be an active Conservative Party and statistically they are over-represented in lower socio-economic groups, so you would expect them to be more likely to vote Labour.  But the scale of the disparity should leave us in no doubt that ethnicity is a factor.

And as the recently released Census data shows, Britain’s BME communities make up a growing share of the electorate.  People who classify themselves as ‘White British’ made up of 80% of the population of England and Wales in 2011, compared with 87% in 2001.  And with BME communities having a younger age profile than the population as a whole, that trend is going to continue.

Gavin Barwell MP: Why Conservative MPs should vote for the Lords Reform Bill today

Gavin Barwell is Member of Parliament for Croydon Central. Follow Gavin on Twitter.

Tomorrow night, the House of Commons will vote on the House of Lords Reform Bill.  The Bill represents a strategic dilemma for all three main parties - and at the moment, it looks as though Labour, the Liberal Democrats and some of my Conservative colleagues are going to make the wrong choice.

For the Labour leadership, the choice is simple - take a principled view that they support an elected House of Lords and so ask their MPs to vote with the Government, saving it from possible defeat; or take a more pragmatic view that their job is to break up the Coalition and so ask their MPs to vote against the Bill.

You can make a case for either course of action but, with his party also split on Lords reform, Ed Miliband has ducked the choice.  He’s going to try to do both things at once, voting with the Government on Second Reading but opposing the programme motion that is necessary to stop the Bill’s critics talking it out.  The media and any voters paying attention will take this as further evidence that Mr Miliband is not a leader.

Gavin Barwell MP: Yes, we must control immigration. But it brings benefits as well as problems

Gavin Barwell is the MP for Croydon Central

Croydon, the place I have lived all my life and now represent as a Member of Parliament, is one of the most diverse parts of the country.  In just over 10 years’ time, it is predicted that less than half the population will be white British.  So issues connected with race - immigration, discrimination, multiculturalism – all feature heavily in my postbag and inbox.  And one of the lessons of recent years is that if mainstream parties don’t address these issues, extremists flourish.

One of the first debates I spoke in after my election just over a year ago was about immigration.  Although, like most Conservatives, I certainly believe that immigration was too high under the last Government, I stressed that we mustn’t lose sight of the benefits immigration has brought over the years.  After the debate, I was interviewed about my speech and asked how I believed Croydon has benefited from immigration.  In case the same question occurs to anyone reading this article, two of my closest friends, some of my immediate neighbours, lots of the people who helped to get me elected and many of the members of the volunteer group I founded to help clean our parks and open spaces - to give just a few examples - are either immigrants themselves or children of immigrants.