Lord Speaker’s Statement

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Adonis

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches I concur with the comments of the Lord Speaker and the noble Lord the Chief Whip about the work the staff have undertaken to get this place ready for us: anybody who saw it last week may have doubted that it could be done quite as quickly and efficiently as it has. We are very grateful to them and to the other staff of the House, who have been mucked around a fair bit and had their plans disrupted. We are grateful that they are here. I also thank the noble Lord the Chief Whip for his advance notice, as far as he is able to give it at the moment. We welcome his announcement of business next week. We hope this House will be sitting until there is time for a very short Prorogation prior to the Queen’s Speech. All I would add is that while we are here, we want to do our constitutional duty, as he mentioned and as outlined in the Supreme Court judgment, and get best value for the time we are here. A number of Bills were stalled and were to be carry-over Bills had the Prorogation not been ruled unlawful. We would like work to continue on that legislation so that we get the best value for the time we are here and make best use of that time now that we are indeed sitting.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, may I ask where the Leader of the House is? Should she not be in her place, given her responsibility for these events?

Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Adonis

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

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I will be brief: the situation is worse than that described by my noble friend Lord Berkeley, if I can deepen his gloom. With HS2 and Crossrail, with which I was deeply familiar, by the time we came to publishing legislation we knew what the project was going to be. The project was defined; indeed, at the second stage of the HS2 Bill, which had just been agreed by the House of Commons, we knew within a few metres what the line and specification of works would be and so on. We have a defined project—it has just proved much more expensive and problematic to deliver than was conceived. The problem we face with the parliamentary rebuilding work is that we are setting up the sponsor body before we have a defined project.

There is a very good reason for that: we are literally starting from scratch and trying to decide the best way forward, and this probably is the best way forward. I have views on whether we should consider other options —we will come to that in a while—but we are currently at such an early stage of the work that we do not have the faintest clue what the costs will be. We do not have a project description; all we have is a few back-of-the-envelope, broad objectives, a very old costing on the basis of them and a few timelines plucked out of a hat. We also have the potential for massive controversy, which we can already see, about the nature of the decant, where we will go, what we will come back to and so on.

What the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is proposing—that there should be best estimates for the timeline at the point at which the strategy is published—is perfectly sensible. There is also another reason why it should be done: it is my view that we are at such an early stage of planning, and the issues involved in the restoration and renewal of the Houses of Parliament are so great—because of the wider context referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, of big questions about the future of our parliamentary democracy—that I do not believe it is sensible to be closing down significant options at this stage; we are at such a preliminary stage in devising what the project will be. I am sorry to keep making this point but, since we will be returning to it in September, I am very anxious to keep it open: we should include the question of where the decant should be—there is very good reason to propose that it should not be somewhere immediately adjacent to the Houses of Parliament but could be in another part of the United Kingdom—and where the ultimate Parliament will be.

I agree with what the noble and learned Lord said. On the basis of my knowledge of big infrastructure projects and the stage we are at currently, it is very plausible that there could be three or four years’ delay before the decant starts. If the decant does not start until 2028, we will not move back here until between 2038 and 2040. To put some context on this, phase 2 of HS2 is currently scheduled to open in 2032. So, relatively speaking, it is going to take much longer to complete the restoration and renewal of Parliament than to build a 330-mile high-speed line, which is the biggest single infrastructure project in the world outside the Republic of China. Keeping a few options open at this stage is sensible in terms of planning. We should take advantage of the situation at the moment to think a bit more broadly about where we intend our parliamentary democracy to go over the 100 to 150 years ahead, and in doing so demonstrate the same vision that our Victorian forebears showed when they designed these Houses of Parliament to be the centre of an imperial legislature in the 1840s.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I feel that we have already segued into later debates. With due respect to my noble friend, I have to challenge his “back of an envelope” assessment. If he comes to my office, I will show him a huge amount of paperwork—documents that some of us have worked on over the last couple of years. If it was all on the back of an envelope, the envelope would be enormous.

We have gone a little wider than the amendment by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, but I do think he is on to something. I understand that the question of the Ministry of Defence and the car park has now been resolved—but, I suspect, given the extra cost that would have been involved had it not been resolved, that public attention might well have encouraged them to move a little more quickly than they did. Again, we come back to what we are really talking about here: engagement, information and openness. The more that we can say what is intended to be done, the greater will be our ability to monitor the project.

In most large projects that I know, there is some slippage. Noble Lords are right that this project is at a relatively early stage, but quite a lot of planning has gone into it already. We do not need to say, “This will happen on 3 January 2022”, but it should be possible to have an idea of a timeframe for when certain things are likely to happen. That would help with public engagement and the engagement of colleagues around the House.

Arrangement of Business

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Adonis

Monday 10th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I think the House would agree that we want to hear repeated in your Lordships’ House the Statement that the Prime Minister will make later, so I would not adjourn the House at this point. However, I urge the Government to reconsider their position. It is quite farcical for us to debate an issue that the House of Commons does not want to debate when its Members are the ones who have the meaningful vote.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, then could we propose to adjourn until 5.30 pm?