A row over where to site the new £50million national memorial to the Holocaust has pit Conservative MPs, peers and a former Lord Mayor of London against the chairman of ITV, ex-Labour Cabinet minister and a BBC newsreader.

As many as 40 MPs and peers including Lord and Lady Flight, Baroness Deech, Tory MPs Edward Leigh and Philip Lee have written to peers in the House of Lords urging them to fight the plans for the building in Victoria Tower Gardens next to the Houses of Parliament.

The idea for a National Memorial that would “be co-located with a world-class Learning Centre” to mark the Holocaust when six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War Two was first proposed in 2014.