Restoration and Renewal: Annual Progress Report

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I have had the privilege of serving on many of your Lordships’ committees in the last 10 years, but I honestly believe that the committee programme board on which I now sit is by far the most important that I have sat on. It is for this reason. While most of our committees make recommendations to the Government—who may or may not choose to follow them; more often than not, they do not—on this occasion we will bring forward the recommendations to the client board. The recommendations will require Parliament to take an executive decision itself; that is very unusual, but it is a huge responsibility for parliamentarians to take a decision about their own building.

As the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, said, this has been going on for a long time—the can has been pushed down the road for a long time—so, when I was asked to go on the programme board, I did so with a great deal of trepidation, because I thought, “This could be Groundhog Day all over again”. I asked myself whether we would achieve anything. The answer is: we have—much to my surprise. How have we done that? Without getting drawn into the boring structural description of governance, it has been the people on, and supporting, the programme board who have done this. We have had a fantastic team of people helping us, including a chairman, my right honourable friend Nigel Evans, who has run the board very efficiently; a vice-chair, the noble Lord, Lord Morse, who has his beady eye, as befits any former Comptroller and Auditor-General; and a tremendous team of experts.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a Division in the House. The Committee will resume at the end of the Division when everybody is back.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

I was talking about the progress that we have made and how well we have been served by the officials. We have had experts supporting the programme board, we have had objective outsiders on it, and we have had independent assessors.

When we began, we were faced with 36 options, as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, said. I was sceptical that we would be able to narrow them down at all, but we have—to two. We looked at the objectives that we could achieve, which ranged from keeping the building safe to making enhanced, extensive and very expensive improvements to the whole aspect of the buildings. We then had to look at what was involved with each objective. There was the cost, the different degrees of disruption that will be caused and the different degrees to which the two Houses and Chambers would have to operate from other locations, either within the Palace precincts or outside.

There was also the question of safety. This is a very tight space, so where will the workmen and women operate from? Where will they put their building resources, and where will they change, eat and do things like that? How do we get the resources and materials into the Palace precincts? There are questions of safety and making sure that the work that is done does not put people at risk—there is asbestos everywhere. There are great issues of heritage—this is a historic heritage building—and the question of security, as thousands of people work in the precincts. We had to look at all of these considerations, and, of course, we know that the unexpected will arise, as with any building development work.

The truth is that there is no clear, obvious or perfect answer. Everything involves trade-offs. It requires an acceptance that we can argue until the cows come home, but there will be no obvious perfect solution.

At some point, the options will be presented to both Houses. What has dominated much of our thinking in the programme board has been the safety of the building. This is an iconic building that is a symbol of British democracy throughout the world. The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, used rather moderate language when he talked about the basement. He used the word “illuminating”. I think that it is absolutely horrifying. When you go round the basement of this place you realise the tremendous risks. People do not know where the cables, wires or pipes go. There is a real danger of something terrible happening to our building.

Every parliamentarian has a responsibility to safeguard this building, so when the decision comes to Parliament, as it will do, the most important thing is not which option Parliament chooses but that it makes a decision. Parliamentarians—Members of the other House in particular, who have to be elected—take great pride in saying to the electors, “We are capable of running the country. We are capable of doing all the things to do with health, education, transport, security and defence”. If you say that you can run the country, the big question is: can you run this building? It will be a real responsibility. There will be a crunch time, and it will test Parliament, but it will have to take that decision.