Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble and learned Lord, and it was a great privilege to be co-chairman of the Joint Committee. Because of that, naturally I am pleased that last week the House of Commons accepted our recommendations. I should like to use my time today to provide for your Lordships a little information on how we arrived at our recommendations, and in doing so to reassure noble Lords that this House played an equal part in reaching our conclusions and recommendations.

As we have heard from my noble friend the Leader of the House and others, we fielded a strong team from your Lordships’ House. I pay tribute to my colleagues on the Joint Committee: the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Laming, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, and my noble friend Lord Deighton. I make specific mention of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and my noble friend Lord Deighton because they added their invaluable experience and expertise in successful major project management to our deliberations. Given that this is the first opportunity I have had to do so, I also pay tribute to our clerks, Sarah Jones and Tom Healey, our specialist adviser, James Bulley, and my own private secretary at the time, Mark Davies, who did an awful lot of work on this report. I thank the whole of the restoration and renewal team who have been working incredibly hard over the past few years, assisting the two Houses in their various deliberations to get us to this point.

The Joint Committee was never divided by the two Houses; we worked together because this is one Palace of Westminster. I also pay tribute to Chris Bryant and the other members of the committee from the other place for securing the support of the Commons for the recommendations. Chairing a committee of a rather eclectic group of different individuals was an experience I ended up enjoying, even if I was not sure I would at the start of the process.

As we have heard, Parliament has been in a state of indecision for some years. When the Joint Committee was formed in July 2015, a series of different parliamentary committees and commissions had already examined the issue. It has led to the commission in the Commons and the commission of the House of Lords commissioning a group of independent consultants led by Deloitte to undertake a comprehensive and, I should add, very costly study of what works were needed. It came up with three basic options for doing so: full decant, as we have now learned to call it; doing these works in two stages; and a continuing or rolling programme of works.

Deloitte found that the cost of full decant was significantly lower than the other options. That was quite clear. It did not make a recommendation, but that was its finding. When we came together as a committee we had one strategic aim, having had all these deliberations and all this work before us, which was to move us forward to a place where some headline decisions could be made. We would not be able to come up with our own detailed, fully costed solution and felt that to try to do so at that stage would be unwise. Instead, we wanted to make a clear set of recommendations based on solid scrutiny of all the evidence and to give people confidence. We wanted to give Parliament confidence that it is now possible to reach a headline decision and we wanted to give taxpayers confidence, before any budgets are signed and big money is spent, that all the right preparatory work will be completed.

We set ourselves three basic questions. What works need to be done—or, if you like, are the horror stories that we had heard really true? How should the works be carried out: in one go, in at least two stages or on an ongoing basis? And who should do that detailed planning, project management and oversight of the works once a headline decision has been made? Starting with the works, the case for them is now clear to all of us. Back in 2015 some of us on the committee were still sceptical, but the case has now been very clearly made. Indeed, in the 18 months since we published our report there have been some very telling examples of how bad things are. I think only the other week 200 toilets were taken out of action throughout the Parliamentary Estate.

As noble Lords have already heard, the main issue we need to address is not structural. It lies in the building’s mechanical and electrical services—those vast networks of pipes, cables and machinery that heat, ventilate and carry power, data and anything else around the building. The fantastic maintenance team has been a victim of its own success in keeping everything going over the last couple of decades. That approach is no longer sustainable. The risks are high and the costs of our continuing along that route will grow. These works are not a facelift or about dealing with an isolated injury to one or both arms. This is major surgery to fundamental organs, veins and arteries—all the stuff that keeps us alive and the bits we cannot see that keep this building habitable and functioning. I might add that this is true whether it remains the home of Parliament or ends up becoming a museum. The key point is that there are no separate systems for each House: there is just one system running right the way across this Palace of Westminster. If we think of it in those terms, it becomes clearer why it makes most sense to do the works in one go.

There were two drivers of our conclusion: cost and risk. The process of costing the options at this stage is complex; it is very hard to put exact prices on works when so much rests on assumptions instead of detail. Indeed, it was because we did not have, and could not conceivably obtain, the level of detail needed to price the options in more exact terms than the consultants had already done that we did not try. We debated whether to do so at some length, but we were clear that, had we tried to do that, we would not have provided people with the kind of confidence that we knew they needed to make a final decision. We wanted to be able to say confidently that the consultants’ methods were robust enough for our purposes of comparing the options, so the committee interrogated exhaustively the methodology used and called in the NAO. The methodologies have since been endorsed by the Commons Public Accounts Committee.

We spent a very long time trying to find ways of retaining some foothold in the Palace and exploring whether we should carry out the project in stages. We understood—indeed, it was a view shared by some of the members—that a lot of Members of both Houses would want to see this explored. However, we were sure from our interrogation of the costings that the staged option would significantly increase the price. Just as compelling was the evidence from a range of professional bodies about increased risk if we were to do this in stages. Doing the work in stages, or keeping one of the Chambers open, would be like saying that we want to keep the left arm and leg working while we remove and replace all the veins, arteries and major organs of the rest of the body. To do that, we would have to build new major organs outside the body for the veins and arteries to connect to without knowing whether it would actually work. Even if it worked, the level of noise and disruption to the workings of Parliament while it was happening would be huge. There would be the potential for a sudden catastrophe and an evacuation once we got the show on the road, and the costs would go up again.

We were clear that a full decant was the most cost-effective and lowest-risk option. There is much more work to be done. As for who should do the detailed work once the headline decisions have been made, it should be a delivery authority of professionals —we do not have that expertise here in Parliament—but it should be accountable to a supervisory board. We felt that there is enough evidence now for Parliament to take this big step forward to get the project right; there is enough evidence now for us to decide that we should go ahead with the works and do so with a full decant. If we take this big step forward, we have time to get the project right, to involve all parts of the UK in the supply chain of parts and contractors, and to create the potential for old crafts to be restored and new trades to be established with proper apprenticeships. We can work out how a restored and renewed Palace of Westminster will be, and feel, more open and accessible to the people in whose interest decisions are made in this historic place. We are the custodians of something precious that belongs to everyone. We owe it to the public, whose building this is, to follow the route that is quickest, with the lowest cost and the lowest risk. I commend the original Motion; it has my support.