Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Pickles

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pickles]

I have no idea whether that is true and—I hope that the honourable Lady will not mind me being blunt—I do not care. It was a winning design. It is an attractive design. I know that she does not like it but, frankly, I prefer the choice of a competition and an international jury to her particular whims.

We are almost following a standard. The honourable Lady mentioned Ottawa. Ottawa and Washington went through—

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I remind the noble Lord that it is “the noble Baroness”, not “the honourable Lady”. We address our fellow Peers as the noble Lord or Baroness, rather than the honourable.

[Lord Pickles]

I thank the noble Baroness. That is very helpful.

Ottawa and Washington went through exactly the same process. They said, “We don’t want it here. We think it’s a marvellous thing but we don’t want it in this particular location. Just put it somewhere else”. They then produced a security assessment saying that it somehow adds to insecurity. We have worked closely with the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, and the Metropolitan Police. This morning, my office checked with them to see whether the security report produced by Mr Adrian Tudway changed their assessment in any way; their answer was no. I must say, Mr Tudway is a remarkably honest person. In his assessment, he says:

“I assess the risk of such an attack as falling within the ‘moderate’ band (using Low, Moderate, or High Risk)”.


That seems extremely sensible to me.