Lord Blunkett
Main Page: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the Senior Deputy Speaker. I put on record my thanks to him and all those on the two commissions, the programme board for its work and the client team. I apologise to the Committee because I will be saying nothing that I have not said before, and therefore nothing original, but there is nothing new about that in our House. I recommend again that people read Mr Barry’s War, because it is instrumental in understanding the nightmare of getting any kind of renovation of this place and what happened in 1834 and beyond. I fear that we are on the same trajectory today, although perhaps not of 160 years or whatever it is.
I would like to say two things this afternoon. First, I appreciate the email that went out two days ago to request comments and engagement from Members of both Houses; reinforcing that has been very helpful. Secondly, the reason we are here now is the way in which we have had stop/start and not just hiccups but complete reversals. I was very interested in what the Senior Deputy Speaker had to say about the bore-hole. “Bore” is a very good word in these circumstances because we appear now to be doing things that have been done previously. We appear to be covering ground that I thought had been covered by the sponsor body in the early days following the 2019 Act. I thought we went over quite a lot of the ground in the original joint scrutiny committee of 2018, on which I had the genuine pleasure of serving. I thought it was going to be the most unhappy period of my life in politics, but it turned out to be fascinating.
Then, of course, we had the debate on the 2019 Act. I just want to reinforce that we have an Act of Parliament. When I have talked to those working on this programme, past and present, it has struck me that the Act of Parliament is the last thing people turn to. If we are to change elements of that Act, we should bring forward legislation to do so rather than presume that we can override it; I will come back to that in a moment. It is not easy. I do not underestimate for a minute the difficulty that people have gone through. The decision was taken back in February 2022 to change the formula and therefore to change the personnel, many of whom had lived with the programme for quite a long time and had become experts in the challenges. Those recruited to the client team and the new programme board were therefore people coming into it new.
Of course, at the moment we are faced with more than half the House of Commons being new Members from July last year and, as a consequence, coming at this issue fresh. That brings a wholly new challenge. One of the benefits of the House of Lords, of which there are many, is some degree of continuity. We in this House are in the position of having voted on more than one occasion on the options—because the options really have not changed over this past eight and a half years, have they? The options that have been spelt out this afternoon are full decant, which is by far the most economic and practical option; partial decant, which means that, whatever happens, the House of Lords decants; or a muddle over something like 48 years in trying to do this piecemeal. We have been doing piecemeal for several decades.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, for indicating the costs and expenditure that are necessary to keep the building and Parliament functioning but lack transparency. He mentioned the word “transparency”, for which I am grateful, but, like others, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has been doing his best to try to get into some of the detail on how decisions are made and who actually makes them in the end. I know that, theoretically, the commissions do, but the Peers’ Entrance fiasco—it has been a fiasco, with the kind of money we have spent on it—is an example of the way in which minds have been changed over the years.
If we can, we must make some progress in 2025 on either reaffirming or changing the decision—but determining it with a manageable timetable, with commitment from both Houses and without interference by single individuals who do not like a particular programme, timetable or outcome and have, over the past three years, grossly interfered with making progress. Let us speak a language that we all understand in saying that that has happened, and try to address the future.
The political consequences of the decisions made are never talked about. Particularly in this House, we need to understand the decisions that will be made by Members about whether they stay on as active Peers and work through the consequences that will have for planning the decant and the office, administrative and support systems that will be required, the political consequences for the balance of groups in our House, and the nature of how we plan for that in a way that we have not done so far. Reducing the numbers in this House, which I am totally in favour of, requires us to take account of personal decisions that will be made once people know what the true timetable will be, even if they believe it is likely to slip.
My final point is, as ever, about access. I welcome very strongly in the introduction this afternoon the commitment to reach 70% access into and within the Palace of Westminster. That is a substantial improvement on previous commitments. It is not what was expected in the 2019 Act, when we envisaged between 80% and 90% access, but it is progress.
I want to reinforce that with new members of the client team and new people brought into the delivery authority, it is really important that they understand that it is about not just restoration but renewal. That was spelled out in the Act after considerable negotiations across groups and with Ministers at the time, who were extremely helpful in understanding that we are thinking of 50, 100 or 200 years ahead, not just the immediate future.
My final final point is: why do we keep on rolling up the total cost in a way that frightens everyone to death? It frightens parliamentarians, it frightens the public and it is a gift to the media. Why do we not talk about the annualised expenditure over the period of time we are talking about? If we had that, people would understand the nature of the investment and the possibilities of managing it within very tight budgets —and whatever the future might hold, they will continue to be very tight—and they might understand that we will then have the kind of ambition that occurred when Notre-Dame, or at least a substantial part of the interior, burned down. The ambition of the French was to make sure that they did a thorough and tremendous job of both restoration and renewal, and they did it in a timescale at which we can only be amazed. We have a history in this country of failing to be able to deliver major projects. This one should be an exemplar. It should be one where we get the costings right to begin with and get the timetable realistic. With artificial intelligence and the use of new technology, we can do things now that we could not even have envisaged back in 2016. It is time to move on from the sterile debates that we have had and to look to the future.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, with whom I have had many encounters over the years. I thank the Senior Deputy Speaker for a characteristically thorough, rigorous, courteous and careful report, but decisions have to be made. It is now just on 10 years, and we cannot faff about any longer. We cannot kick it into the long grass, hope an election will come along, conceal or deceive. It is not going to work. We have to make decisions, and we have to make brave decisions.
I was reflecting on those infrastructure projects that many of us have been involved in. Very few people who come into politics know anything about project management or infrastructure. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, does because he was leader of Sheffield City Council and knew a lot about this. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Morse, knows a great deal about this area, but many of us came as innocents to the subject.
We have all been bruised and burned in the bonfire of public opinion and hostility, and we have all had to make impossible decisions. I suppose my first one was after there had been 29 reports into why London had too many hospitals, all not very good. It needed to have fewer, better hospitals—it needed critical mass—and they needed to integrate with the universities. I just knew that I had to make this decision. Sir Bernard Tomlinson came along and helped on it. He could not believe the hostility and viciousness of people in the public sector. My former boss, the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, used to say that the charm of a board is often in inverse proportion to the virtue of its project. The BAT board was charming, but the Great Ormond Street board was often very difficult indeed. As many in health will know, people can get very emotional. But I made the decisions, and I was not going to back off them.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
I commend the noble Baroness on what she is saying. Perhaps she will recall that on this issue—perhaps not on others—I backed her to the hilt as the shadow Health Secretary, and nearly lost my place on the shadow Cabinet as a consequence but was praised enormously by Tony Blair. I thank her for that.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
That has made my day.
People do notice. Various vice-chancellors kept writing and saying, “We’ve got a new project or development, and we wouldn’t have had that without the decision”. This is not supposed to be a vain speech in any way; I am just trying to gird us up to make the decisions. No more paralysis by analysis—it is time for action, not options. We know the options; we do not want to know them.
I will touch on one or two other examples. There were terrible rows about the British Library—which is now an iconic, world-famous library—with rage that it had overspent, overrun and so on. Gloriously, at the Millennium Commission I was charged with all sorts of projects. For example, there was rage about the Portsmouth millennium tower, which was going to cost £32 million but actually cost nearly £40 million. It opened five years after the millennium; what a disgrace. I was getting a fierce kicking by the media on this one, and I needed to go and look at my sources. So I thought, “Well, the Battle of Trafalgar was in 1805, and Nelson’s Column wasn’t unveiled until 1843—and the price had doubled”. So I felt I was not alone. These matters are almost inevitable.
But what is best practice? We cannot talk just about all these problems. Who has done this spectacularly well? I must declare all my interests from my professional life. The 2012 Olympics were an excellent example of project delivery and management. I say this to the politicians: appreciate that, of all those who campaigned for the Olympics, none of them was on the implementation team. This is one of the dilemmas of government. You campaign in opposition, but in government you have to implement, and they are totally different skills. Most people, when they come into government, think that a press notice is an implementation plan. You have a 10-year programme, as a Minister, to work out that this is not actually the same activity at all.
I decided that the Olympics were a very good example. What was their advantage? They had a deadline: a decision had to be made. Otherwise, we would be humiliated in public. Of course, this was Notre-Dame’s great advantage, in a sense: a crisis mobilises people, so action had to be taken and taken fast. It is difficult for us to create that sort of timescale.
Money is always tight: there is never enough money. What the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said was interesting. You must not be entirely duplicitous, because that just generates the rage and cynicism of the public. You can modify scope. Some of the ideas for the redevelopment or refurbishment of Parliament are thrilling. Somebody who helps me was talking about the US congressional visitor centre—a wonderful, state-of-the-art centre. We should take the opportunity to make this a great centre of education, tourism and so forth.
Personally, I am for the decant and am very in favour of Portcullis House for the Commons, but I am not an expert, I am not on any of the committees, and I hope I will not be serving on any of them. I remember going around with Michael Hopkins when he first finished the design—I was a Heritage Minister—and it is a thrilling location. But I am sure we have to move—we cannot do it in half-measures.
The real issue is to have a good client. A former Permanent Secretary used to do a lot of the funding of the renovation of some of the royal palaces, and it was quite difficult at that stage to get not only the lead members of the Royal Family but some of the junior members to realise that if you have a contract, every time you modify it, tinker with it or change it, that is money down the drain. You have to make your decision, stick with it and get on with it, and that of course is what we have to do.
I so admire the committee. Michael, the chairman, is a really excellent man, as we know, and his team are excellent. But poor them, having to deal with parliamentarians, because parliamentarians cannot help but think in five-year terms, and they are particularly vulnerable to getting a kicking from public opinion and so on. I am very sympathetic, and I greatly admire all those who have taken on this huge responsibility. I have looked at their backgrounds. They are obviously extremely competent, capable people, and let us hope they can stay the course and not be driven to frustration by all of us. In short, I admire all those who have put so much into this already, but it cannot go on; we now have to make decisions at the earliest opportunity.
I have a small point that I know noble Lords will appreciate. As I understand it, the renewal and restoration of Parliament requires quite a large working area, and I think Victoria Tower Gardens is the area they will be looking for. That is surely the final nail in the coffin of the ridiculous Holocaust memorial museum, which is an utter waste of public money. It should shoot off to the Imperial War Museum or somewhere else. This is another excellent argument in that department.
I will leave noble Lords with the comments of that Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke—words that I often used to refer to:
“Those who carry on great public schemes must be proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults, and, worst of all, the presumptuous judgements of the ignorant upon their designs”.
In my humble opinion, courage, tenacity and decision-making are required.
Lord Colgrain (Con)
My Lords, before I address the report, will noble Lords allow me to digress a little? My interest in this building and, subsequently, R&R came about when I was a member of your Lordships’ Finance Committee. There were two incidents while I was a member that made me realise: there are some fundamental issues that we are all going to have to overcome. The first was when we were looking at Big Ben and the very significant overrun on the budget. I forget the exact figures; I think that the original budget was £24 million and that we finished up at about £80 million.
One of the questions we asked was: why are there such overruns on things such as the stonework? We thought that these were relatively straightforward matters to be investigated. Why had they not been using things such as cherry-pickers to look behind the stone to see whether water had ingressed and there was decay? We were told that cherry-pickers could not be used because of the peregrines nesting on the tower. When it was pointed out that peregrines nest for only three months of the year—so, what was wrong with the other nine months?—we did not get an answer. We realised that perhaps a little more work could be done in that regard.
The second incident was to do with Westminster Hall. I was up on the roof talking to the workmen there. Noble Lords may recall that the cupola was damaged by a bomb during the Second World War. They were trying to extract it or work on it, and it became a much more complex issue than they had appreciated. They had to take gas bottles up on to the roof but, in order to comply with health and safety regulations, they had to take the gas bottles down off the roof at the end of every working day. This meant that, for a variety of reasons, the gas bottles were being used for only two hours during the eight-hour day. When we asked whether it was possible to have an exemption so that they could be kept up there, the answer was no. Again, I found myself thinking, “We’re going to need a certain amount of change in our working practice in the whole Palace”.
This goes back to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, about Notre-Dame. I went there about 18 months ago, and was there at 10 pm. Behind the hoardings I could hear the noise of all the workmen, who were working 24 hours a day. When R&R came about, the suggestion was made by the Finance Committee that it might be possible to see whether we could have workmen on site here 24 hours a day, but that was pooh-poohed. It was out of the question; it was not going to happen. I wonder why. There is something generally wrong with our approach.
Let me come back to Notre-Dame for a second. A senior military man was given that role because it was seen as a major logistical exercise. Again, there is probably a lesson there for us—I will come back to that in a second on the actual report. It is also heartening to know that the senior carpenter, who was using medieval tools to do the axe work on the central part of the spire, was an Englishman. That is rather gratifying. I am sorry for digressing too much.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
I am really enjoying this. Forgive me but I have to conclude, after only 10 years—well, nine and a half years—in your Lordships’ House and 28 years down the Corridor, that the default position in the Palace of Westminster is always to say no.
Lord Colgrain (Con)
I extend my thanks to the Senior Deputy Speaker and his office for the time they spent with me following my Question for Written Answer on this subject; I worded my Question loosely but they were most helpful in ensuring that I was provided with all the information I sought.
I congratulate all concerned on the annual progress report before us today. It is clearly presented and provides most of the details likely to be asked about by Members of both Houses, including a layman such as me. There are three particular questions that I would like to ask. The first relates to funds expended, which have been mentioned many times already this afternoon. I hugely appreciate and applaud the work undertaken over many years by the four Peers sitting in front of me.
The subject of R&R has been discussed in one guise or another since 2016, when substantial costs started being incurred. When I submitted a Written Question in July 2022, I was told that the costs paid for by the Lords since 2014 were then £58 million, made up of staff costs of £7 million and contractors’ costs of £51 million. I was also told that the then Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body and the then restoration and renewal delivery authority had run up costs of £212 million for the two years between 2020 and 2022, which included £33 million in salary costs and £151 million in contractors’ costs. I have now been told, in a Written Answer dated 8 January, that the investment to date in the R&R programme totals £377 million, with a further £91 million authorised for the current financial year. To date, therefore, Parliament—or, rather, the taxpayer—has incurred actual forecast costs of approximately £450 million, a sum of money that is almost impossible to comprehend.
What do we have to show for this? Under “Key Milestones” on page 28 of the report, we are told that R&R surveys are ongoing, as are early and enabling works design and decant plans. All these were in train when your Lordships previously voted for and agreed to a full decant. We are also told that the strategic plan is published again, and the budget is approved again. Since the Palace design options are ongoing and neither costed proposals nor an invitation to tender for the works has been initiated, does it not seem that the budget is optimistic, it being so located in the report without a very heavy qualification?
Unless the Executive in the Commons commit to initiating the plan, we are going around in circles, albeit ever-deceasing ones. Given the current Government’s self-imposed budget restraints, is there a realistic possibility of this initiation happening? I and many others had hoped that the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris would have prompted the then Government into action, since we know that this building is a fire hazard and that if it was any other building in the country, it would be closed as being unsafe. If authority for R&R is agreed, does the current composition of the management team and its structure lend itself to a senior industrialist at its head? That is what would be needed for there to be any chance of R&R being executed on time or on budget, unless we follow the French example.
Would, for example, Sir Alastair Morton, favoured by Margaret Thatcher on Eurotunnel and later John Prescott on Railtrack, consider that he could work with the delivery board’s expenditure, scrutinised by R&R client teams, House finance teams, the delivery authority board, the R&R programme board, the R&R client board and the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission? Can the Senior Deputy Speaker indicate how this structure can be made sufficiently commercial such that the plan can be enacted when a positive vote for full R&R comes about?