Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill (First sitting)

Lord McLoughlin Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th June 2019 Public Bill Committees

Amendment 3 also makes perfect sense, and I am happy to support it as well.

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I very much welcome the move forward that this Committee represents.

I want to address amendment 14. As a country, we are getting better at large infrastructure projects—that may seem an odd thing to say, but I truly believe it. I look at Crossrail. In terms of its tail-end, we await the report that the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch is about to publish, but the early stages were a model of the way in which we see development. The construction was basically done to time, but things were done to time in another way as well—in terms of promoting what the project was across the country and getting many companies involved.

My only fear about amendment 14 is that the hon. Lady talks about a yearly audit being carried out. My worry is that that is too late. This should really be in the roots of the project; it is not something that happens once the project has gone above ground. It must be part of the project right from the very start, not from the time the work starts.

I was involved in the early stages of High Speed 2. We ran a number of conferences around the country showing businesses what would be involved and telling them how to start to apply to be considered for that work. That has got to be the way, and that work needs to be done right now. It should be part of the very early work of the Sponsor Body. I am sorry—I forgot to declare my interest: I am currently serving on the shadow Sponsor Body. I know everyone there will be following the words spoken here in Committee closely.

We should be talking about that aspect now. It is of great pride to me that, whenever I have constituents down and show them Portcullis House, I can show them the stone from Birchover quarry—the Ann Twyford quarry—in my constituency. That sort of work was done on that project, and it has to be part of these projects. It is also a way of selling why we have to do this work. We are not doing it out of some desire to improve the facilities here. Yes, we want to make them better, but it is also a matter of restoring one of the premier buildings in not just the United Kingdom but the world. That is why I am slightly concerned about the yearly audit, because by the time we get to that stage, it will be too late. It has to be part of the work of the Sponsor Body and one of its early jobs.

[The Chair]

We can wait no longer for ceramics. I call Gareth Snell.