Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body: Annual Report

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, I joined the sponsor board only in September this year, so I am not yet as familiar with the issues as my sponsor board colleagues around the Room. However, for the past four years I chaired the House of Lords Finance Committee, during which time the focus of our work was overseeing the delivery of 15 very large projects, ranging from Big Ben to the refurbishment of Westminster Hall. The committee scrutinised these projects on multiple occasions and in some detail, so I have a very good understanding of the challenges that carrying out work in this Palace entails.

It seems to me that three key principles weigh heavily on the board as we undertake the planning of this major project. The first is to ensure that the Palace of Westminster is preserved for future generations. This Palace is at the centre of our national and democratic heritage. The second is to achieve value for money for today’s taxpayers as we ask them to stump up the cost of these works. This, for me, is critical. The third is to be transparent about the difficult choices before us, to share as much information as possible and to draw on the experience we already have of undertaking essential renovation of this building. We know, for example, that the cost of repairing and refurbishing Big Ben has rocketed, despite the fact that that was a very well-managed project. This model cannot be repeated.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, outlined the array of problems with this building, which has never been properly maintained and has been held together with an array of sticking plasters. Another challenge is that there are no proper plans of the building, and those plans that do exist are often inaccurate or incomplete. The mechanical and electrical plant is the stuff of nightmares and would be condemned by the authorities if it were in any other building. Added to this is the catastrophic consequences were the Palace to catch fire. So restoration and renewal is essential but, however the project is executed, it will be very complex and take many years.

The sponsor board is currently working on a comprehensive plan for the work that will be required, and we are told that this has so far involved 5,000 hours of surveys. I cannot emphasise enough that this preparatory work is essential because proper, intrusive survey work is critical to the success of any project. In my experience, the key factors that result in cost and time overruns time and again are: surveys and advance investigations being too limited in scope, leading to inaccurate costings; work not being fully defined and quantified from the outset; and budgets that always hope for the best, rather than prepare for the worst. So transparency is key, and it is essential that all relevant information and lessons learned from major parliamentary projects are shared between Parliament, the sponsor board and the delivery authority. If a proper system of information sharing is not set up and strictly adhered to—I emphasise that last part—costly mistakes will be repeated and the public will be right not to forgive us.

On cost and practicalities, there is no doubt that the quickest and most cost-effective way of getting from where we are now to where we need to be is for both Houses to move out of the Palace to temporary accommodation. The sponsor board is very aware of the fact that a lot of Members have real concerns about moving out, but Members’ concerns will be as nothing compared to those of taxpayers if we proceed to make this costly restoration project slower and much more expensive than it needs to be. We must remember that we are merely custodians of this building. It is not ours. We have no divine right to occupy it during our time as legislators. Our responsibility is to protect it for those the public send here next.

As the sponsor board makes difficult decisions and puts forward its proposals to both Houses, we must have a clear eye not on what is convenient or comfortable for us now but on how our decisions will be viewed 100 years from now. I only hope that, in exercising their influence over this process, Members of both Houses will bear that in mind.