Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I have a bit of form on the subject before us today. It was I who, with the previous Clerk of the Parliaments, in 2012 commissioned the original condition survey which led to the options appraisal and then to the inquiry by the Joint Committee and its excellent report. We commissioned that condition survey together because I felt passionately that we could not be yet another generation of stewards who abrogated our responsibilities for this extraordinary building. Over the years, the excuses for doing nothing have been lame, but many and various: “too expensive”; “too disruptive”; “too embarrassing”; “too soon after the war”—which gives an idea of how long this perennial problem has gone on and how long the difficult issues have been dodged.

I have never had any doubt that the only solution to this problem was a full decant. Those who in good faith genuinely think that it can all be done while we stay here and try to carry on as normal have either little experience of the sort of works that would be required or little idea of the sheer scale of what would need to be done. A visit to the floor below us—the place that in 2012 I christened the “cathedral of horror”, a name which seems to have stuck—ought to disabuse them as it has enlightened many noble Lords.

The Cox and Box decant—first one House and then the other moving out—may be superficially attractive but the services need to be replaced in their entirety, and as a unity. Once the asbestos is tackled, this option becomes even less practical. The idea of some sort of cordon sanitaire halfway down the Palace, crossing the Central Lobby, is simply not on.

We all know that the cost, even of the third and, I will not say the cheapest but the least expensive option, will be huge. But this is the penalty for more than half a century of dodging the issue. That pusillanimity—there is no other word for it—has backed us into a corner, because further delay becomes ever more hazardous. May I in passing respectfully commend our Lord Speaker for speaking so plainly about the dangers and for making the case for action?

The decision of the House of Commons last week is welcome, but we are a long way from being out of the woods, and the Motion before us today, welcome as it is—I pay tribute to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House—is not completely reassuring. There will of course have to be approval of the business case, and there is no doubt that there has to be a statutory delivery authority, not only to bypass the delays and problems of the planning system, which primary legislation can do, but to take full responsibility for the work, deliver the project and—the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, hit the nail on the head here—so that it is protected from political meddling while it does it. However, there are real risks of further significant delay.

The initiation of this legislation will be in the hands of the Government, and I can already hear the well-worn phrases about the, crowded legislative timetable and competing pressures. Those pressures will have to be resisted. Paragraph 7 of the Motion instructs the shadow board and delivery authority “and their statutory successors” to come back to Parliament with what will be effectively a fresh proposal, no doubt to be voted upon again. So even when the statutory delivery authority has been set up, it seems that it will require further instruction before it is able to begin work.

Paragraph 5 of the Motion says that during this Parliament there will be works,

“essential to ensure the continuing functioning of the Palace”.

Given the scale of what needs to be done, I find it quite difficult to imagine what these might be, and I am afraid that I harbour suspicions that, once those works, whatever they are, have been carried out, the fools’ paradise so created could be a further excuse for doing nothing after all. At best, it seems, as many noble Lords have said, that work will not start before 2025. Seven years is a long time for nothing bad to happen, and I hope that we can proceed very much faster than that.

Nearly 10 years ago, I was gold commander—a wonderful term—for a very well-planned and comprehensive disaster exercise, set up by a specialist team from the Cabinet Office. We had no advance warning of the exercise scenario but we quickly discovered that it was a fracture of the venerable main sewer. As the levels of water—and other things—rose, the electricity went out and mains water could not be used. In the virtual reality of the exercise we managed to keep the Palace functioning for 36 hours before closing everything down and moving out—I am trying to avoid the word “evacuation” here—with no discernible prospect of moving back. I leave your Lordships to consider what the cost and disruption of that scenario would be in real life, and how little notice we would have.

The risk of a catastrophic failure of services will be with us until the decant happens. It is accompanied by the risk of fire, which used to cause me sleepless hours when I was the legally responsible corporate officer at the north end of the Palace, with the penalties prescribed by the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act very much in mind. A highly plausible scene might be on a hot summer’s evening, with both Houses sitting late to finish business before the Recess. One of the too many minor fires, which we are told occur each year, swiftly becomes a major fire and spreads rapidly because of the lack of completed fire compartmentation. The electricity supply goes down completely. A huge demonstration which happens to be taking place in Parliament Square means that the emergency services cannot get to us quickly. There are hundreds of casualties and possibly fatalities. How do we feel about continuing to carry that risk for seven years or more?

To end on a rather less apocalyptic note, when the works are finally carried out, I hope that every opportunity will be taken to increase the utility and flexibility of this building, and above all—here I pick up the point so well made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope—its accessibility, whether real or virtual. We must never forget that the Palace does not belong to parliamentarians; it belongs to the people that Parliament is here to serve. Our challenge is for people to look back in 100 years’ time and say, “They got it right”.

And I hope, as I suggested in my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House and as other noble Lords have also suggested, that we will take the opportunity to establish a Westminster academy as a focus for training and apprenticeships in all the practical heritage skills that will be needed but which at the moment are in very short supply. I speak as chairman of the fabric committee of a cathedral, so I know of what I speak. I hope, too, that such an academy will far outlast the works and that it will be a permanent and really worthwhile legacy.