Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Byford and Lord Bethell

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 22nd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Byford]

My Lords, my name is added to Amendment 12. In the Joint Committee, we said that it was easier to see what restoration was about, but the renewal part exercised quite a bit of our time. In other words: what sort of Parliament did we want and what sort of involvement with democracy did we want? We have talked about the outreach programme and the educational facilities, and I shall not anticipate my noble friend Lord Bethell in moving his amendments. I felt surprised at that stage that not enough thought had been given to renewal and its opportunities. I have no qualms about mentioning that again when the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, is in her place, because I know that she is well aware of the hopes that the shadow body has—but the Bill does not place enough emphasis on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, spoke about technology. In 10 or 20 years’ time, we will be able to communicate in a totally different way from the way we do now. We talked about the outreach programme run by the Lord Speaker, where individual Peers go out to schools and schools come here. With modern communications, that can be done virtually; there is enormous scope for us to relate to the general public in a totally different way. I will say no more on that because we had good discussions earlier—but I will say that it would be a shame to miss the opportunities in the Bill, and I support the amendments in this group.

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, I also support the excellent amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. There are two amendments in my name in this group. They are practical, nitty-gritty measures, but I hope that they will not be brushed off for that reason, because they are important. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, put it very well in his comments: engagement on R&R will not happen until the options are fully understood and one gets the feeling that one is making informed choices.

It is imperative that those options are clear from the outset, and we do not know what the options on educational facilities and participatory democracy are at the moment. I am hopeful for the Wallace/Adonis café—I look forward to drinking my latte there—but that anecdote has become a metaphor for our vision. There is simply no information or a clear, thoughtful prognosis on what could be done with the building. There is talk of glass ceilings over the courtyards and someone tells me that we can clear out the ground floor, but I have no practical knowledge of whether these things are at all possible. My amendments would apply to the Bill after Clause 4, but they address Clause 2(2)(b), which commands the sponsor body to,

“make strategic decisions relating to the carrying out of the Parliamentary building works”.

To do that, it is absolutely imperative that the body has, at least in outline, an idea of what could be done to further the educational facilities and participatory democracy.

We are talking about intellectual leadership here. I know that the Bill is largely about the administrative structures of the bodies involved, but other considerations are also important. We talked about culture and hard-baking public consultation into the way in which this project conducts its business. I have found that, in major infrastructure projects, the intellectual leadership is often—and quite rightly—with the engineers and project managers, whose thoughts are dominated by the practical considerations of budgets, timetables, M&E, air conditioning and the physical practicalities of getting the job done. Here, we are talking about something that is softer but still important. If we leave the intellectual leadership of this project to the people who govern the practicalities, these important considerations will not be baked into the project at an early stage.

Noble Lords will be familiar with me urging for major investment in public consultation. However, to carry out that consultation, you have to understand a little about what kinds of practical options there are for enhancing the educational facilities and access to the House. That is why it is worth while investing in the budget for the right professional services to put together a clear report on the options in these two areas. I strongly recommend that they be written into the Bill.