Restoration and Renewal

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rawlings (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to raise three related points: transparency, cost and risk.

At the outset, a long time ago, we were promised a transparent, open process throughout. Alas, it has been the opposite. A recent Answer to a Parliamentary Question revealed that £212 million has already been spent on R&R, almost all of it on consultants, professionals and salaries, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. Alternative schemes and costings have been prepared for different locations and for substantial pieces of work that we have never seen. They lie largely unpublished and unexhibited. A few groups of Peers have had a peep at folders during a visit or meeting but have never been given anything to study. A pop-up display on screens in the Royal Gallery was diagrammatic but had no plans of the proposals.

We are constantly told, as many speakers have said in today’s debate, that we must push ahead, as with every passing week costs will escalate. Curiously, these postponements have brought us a dividend. We have saved £1.5 billion by abandoning the extravagant rebuilding of Richmond House, a 40 year-old public building built to last as long as its great Georgian and Victorian forbears. I am not sure about the view of the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Fowler, on the QEII conference centre. We have saved close to £1 billion by not knocking it inside out to provide a replica Lords Chamber and rooftop restaurant. As a result, the Government and the taxpayer also regain the considerable revenue from letting the capital’s prime conference centre for events.

I turn now to timing. All are agreed that the really important and urgent task is to shut down and replace the outdated cabling and servicing in the basement, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Best. Yet under the grandiose schemes produced by R&R, this job was left until last. It was not to be done until the two new temporary Chambers had been built. This was under the R&R sponsor team, deemed now too distant and renamed in the report as the client team and programme team. Why? Why not be transparent and call it the Palace of Westminster team, so that people know what it is about?

At present, the planning application to Westminster for the northern estate is stalled and that for the Lords has not even been submitted. This was mentioned in the very good speech of my noble friend Lord Colgrain, and I agree with him. However, during all these delays, a parallel process has been taking place and is now completed on time and on budget. This is the £80 million repair and restoration of the entire roof of the Palace of Westminster, using the architect Sir Charles Barry’s fire-resistant, cast iron trusses and tiles. A sound roof is the most vital element of any building in Parliament, and this Parliament is now good for another century.

The spectre of a Notre Dame-style fire is constantly cited, but Barry was even more conscious of these matters, as he was replacing historic buildings destroyed in the great conflagration of 1834. Many large buildings have had their services wholly replaced, but none of them has ever been told it is an 80-year process. We all know Rome was not built in a day, but 80 years for R&R seems excessive, costing £13 billion or more. This is way above the original £4 billion.

The immediate need is for the costs and timings, not just headline numbers, to be published and brought into the open. I urge the Lord Privy Seal on this. Parliament is otherwise in danger of signing a blank cheque for a job that will continue to run out of control. If the whole roof can be repaired for £80 million, there has to be a better and less ruinous way to do the basement. We should also not forget how much was well-spent in the 1980s on restoration of the Chambers, the Royal Gallery, the Lobbies and the committee rooms.

There are several other more detailed points in the report that give cause for concern, but they will be for another day, as we shall no doubt be debating this further. Meanwhile, I look forward to the Lord Privy Seal’s informed and, I hope, positive reply, as she has been involved with the project for some time.

Sue Gray Report

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rawlings (Con)]

My Lords, this afternoon the Prime Minister answered many questions by saying, “We will wait until the Metropolitan Police report is published”. I wonder whether we have any idea when it might be published.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

The Metropolitan Police put out a statement this afternoon in which it said it was working “at pace”, but it did not give a specific timescale. I am afraid that I cannot say more than that, but it has confirmed what it is investigating. It has had a lot of evidence from the Cabinet Office and is now working at pace to continue the investigation, but I am afraid I do not have a timescale.

Procedure and Privileges

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rawlings (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I fully support the Procedure and Privileges Committee’s report and the decision for the House to return to as normal as possible with your Lordships being present in the House, except, of course, severely disabled Members. It is also important that we return to the practice that your Lordships should be physically in the—[Inaudible.]

Could my noble friend the Minister clarify whether Members of your Lordships’ House are obliged to attend Select Committee meetings physically or whether they will still be able to continue attending online? I am not talking about anyone who is giving evidence. Will it still be illegal to attend any meeting from a car or train if we continue to be able to participate remotely?

Legislation was passed during the Covid lockdown without any debate in your Lordships’ House and without any votes. This diktat is considered legal as it is included now in the Standing Orders. This point does not—[Inaudible.] I wonder whether it could be clarified by the Minister for your Lordships.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness keeps cutting out so it is probably best that we move to the next speaker.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rawlings (Con) [V]]

My Lords, your Lordships who have spoken have paid fine tributes far more eloquently than I can. First, I add my sincere condolences to Her Majesty the Queen.

My contribution is to quote the last two sentences of A Question of Balance, which His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, wrote in 1982. He examines his own belief and concludes that

“in the final analysis only individuals can find satisfaction and contentment”

and that, as the evidence of history shows, these cannot be guaranteed by some patent ideology or political system, or even by material prosperity alone. In the end, satisfaction and contentment

“are created by the relationships between one individual and another at work, in the community and in the home. You do not have to be a practising Christian to see that human rights begin with Christ’s teaching–‘Always treat others as you would like them to treat you’.”

Questions for Written Answers

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, we have debated this matter a number of times in this Chamber. Clearly, the noble Lord is entitled to expect a substantive answer within the space of a few days of the Answer he received. I shall follow up the matter he has raised but, as I said earlier, Ministers take their obligations to Parliament very seriously. My noble friend the Leader of the House regularly speaks to members of the Government Front Bench about the importance of timely responses to Written Questions, and her office actively chases late Answers.

[Baroness Rawlings (Con) [V]]

What has the DHSC done to expand the number of people in its parliamentary branch to deal with the large increase in Questions tabled for Written Answer? I must admit, I put down a Written Question quite recently which was promptly answered, very impressively, by my noble friend Lord Wolfson.

Covid 19: Winter Plan

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

We have a central government unit that will be working on this, but also DCMS is working very closely with social media platforms to help identify false claims, exactly as the noble Lord said, about both the virus and the vaccine and, where necessary, promoting authoritative sources of information in their place. I assure the noble Lord that we are very cognisant of these issues and are working hard to make sure that the rollout of the national vaccination plan is accompanied by a public health strategy and message to make sure that people understand that we will always put the safety of the public first, and that any vaccine that is approved will have gone through an incredibly rigorous process to pass that hurdle, as the noble Lord will well know.

[Baroness Rawlings (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is very encouraging news that vaccines will be available in 2021—a remarkable feat. We should all congratulate Oxford, which is not only supplying 100 million vaccines to our Government but is doing so on a not-for-profit basis. Is Pfizer, the supplier of the first vaccine to be announced, which is supplying us with 40 million doses, doing so on the same basis? More importantly, deal or no deal, as the Pfizer vaccine is, I believe, coming from Belgium, will there be import duties or tariffs?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

Well, we have secured more than 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, as my noble friend rightly said, which is enough for about a third of our population, and in total we have secured early access to more than 355 million doses through a portfolio of promising new vaccines—so we are very well placed to take advantage of both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines, which have now reached the stages they have, and other vaccines that will hopefully follow through on the back of their success.

European Council

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I said, we will bring forward proposals for a future immigration scheme in due course.

[Baroness Rawlings (Con)]

My Lords, the Leader of the House has talked about a fair and serious offer. Having mentioned the medicines agency and the financial agency, have the Government had any discussions about patenting law?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am afraid I will have to get back to my noble friend as I do not know the answer to that question.