Modernisation Committee Report: Access to the House of Commons

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Before I call the Leader of the House to move the motion, I point out that live British Sign Language interpretation of the debate is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I thank the Leader of the House for his remarks, and fully echo both their detail and their sentiment. As he says, accessibility should never be an afterthought. In the case of the House of Commons, there is not just the common decency that goes with trying to support anyone with a disability or another need. A vital aspect of being an effective parliamentarian is that every single Member of Parliament, whatever their background and personal needs, should be able to discharge their full capabilities on behalf of their constituents. That is why it is so central to what we do as a House.

Let me join the Leader of the House in welcoming the report. I also very much welcome the response from the House Administration, which is a very constructive document, by and large. We on the Committee are grateful for the constructive way in which the House Administration engaged with our concerns all the way through. I pay tribute not just to the current and previous members of the Committee, but to the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), and indeed to the current Leader of the House for steering this ship home to port.

I have a couple of reflections to add on this topic. Of course, when we think about accessibility, it is very easy just to think of physical changes to the structure of the House of Commons, but the Leader of House was absolutely right to think about not just Members but visitors, staff and people who use this building in many different ways, and about accessibility in relation to the public’s understanding of what we are trying to do.

There is a tradition in British political thought that the House of Commons should have not merely an efficient aspect to it, as Bagehot would put it, but a dignified aspect to it and even a certain mystique. I think there is some truth to that—as a Conservative, I would say that, wouldn’t I? There is some benefit to sticking with procedures that have proven their worth, even if it requires a little bit of effort to understand them. As a result, I would be very suspicious and concerned, on behalf of the House as an institution, about anything that I thought was dumbing down, but I do not think that is what is at stake here. What is at stake here are intelligent simplifications of language and presentation that allow Members to understand from the get-go how they can contribute constructively and effectively to what we are doing. Although the changes that were put through by previous House Administration officials in relation to the Order Paper did not come out of this process, I think that they were very constructive and helpful. The Order Paper is now unrecognisably better than what it was when I entered Parliament just a few years ago.

Let me say a couple of other things. The report mentions restoration and renewal, and it is important to keep these two things separate. The House will know that I am an extreme sceptic on the restoration and renewal process. The content of what is being proposed is poorly conceived, and there is a lack of a fixed budget. I am also sceptical about the process that has been followed and the lack of what I consider genuinely effective governance, but it is important to recognise that the report talks about that in order to reflect the importance of accessibility to that process. Whatever decision the House makes on restoration and renewal—I hope it will go for a drastically different version of what we are talking about—it will respect the need for full accessibility to this House and the House of Lords. I do not think that is on the table or up for negotiation at all, but one key point is that when we discuss this, we should not regard restoration and renewal as any substitute—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I gently point out to the shadow Leader of the House, and to anybody else planning on contributing, that this is not a debate on restoration and renewal. Although reference to it is of course acceptable, perhaps the substance of Members comments’ should not focus on that.

[Jesse Norman]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am afraid you may have been slightly misled by your officials. The report mentions restoration and renewal, and specifically refers to it as something that the Committee was invited to look forward to. Therefore, it is not inappropriate to mention it.

The specific point that I am making, if I am allowed to make it, is that we should not defer changes out of an expectation that restoration and renewal, whatever it may be, will be a panacea; we should be getting on with changes as soon as they can be made. One of the things that is so attractive about the work that the House Administration did in responding to the report, and to the Committee, was the energetic way in which it started the process of making changes when they were pointed out. I remember the director general coming forward with several hundred potential changes that could be made, and on which the House Administration had started to make progress.

Whatever the future may bring, let there be no delay in making this House as genuinely open and accessible as it possibly can be. Let me congratulate everyone on all the work that has been done so far, the officials who have made it happen and the Committee.

[Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)]

I declare my interest as a member of the Modernisation Committee, but also as the chair of both the all-party parliamentary group for wheelchair users and the APPG on access to disability equipment. I come at this issue from that perspective. As many Members know, I am the parent of a wheelchair user and have campaigned on both accessibility and Changing Places toilets, and I will refer to those during my contribution.

Shortly after my election to this place, I asked a series of questions. I have twin daughters, one of whom can access the building, but the other cannot access it in the way that we all can. What if she were to come here, and what are the most easily defined routes around the building? I was very lucky, because I had an accessibility tour, but I will continue to say that those routes are not easily defined for staff or visitors. For visitors, what are the most accessible routes around the building to get from A to B? We need to continue to look at that. If a Member is arranging an event, what are the main access routes for somebody who is a wheelchair user or who has different access needs?

In the report—I was not a member of the Modernisation Committee when the report was undertaken, but I am now—there are recommendations about external accessibility. In my role as chair of both groups, but particularly as chair of the APPG for wheelchair users, we continue to have problems. A significant number of wheelchair users attend our meetings, but there is only a very small number of rooms in this building that we can book. The Chair of the Administration Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney (Nick Smith), is very aware of this—we have written and spoken to each other about it at length—but under the booking system’s current procedures, the APPG cannot be given priority over others, which proves very difficult when only a very small number of rooms are available. It also proves very difficult when we try to provisionally book a room, and the only room our users can use is booked by somebody else. We do need, through the Administration Committee, to look at our booking system procedures.

My hon. Friend is also aware that the APPG for wheelchair users held an event last month at which the majority of speakers were wheelchair users, yet we managed to set up a podium for the speakers to give their speeches from. Reluctantly, we then had to dismantle the podium in front of all the wheelchair users, because it was clearly a completely inappropriate layout for how the wheelchair users in question needed to address the event. As my hon. Friend is aware, and as I said in the Modernisation Committee when we considered this report recently, there continue to be external accessibility changes we need to make in the House.

I note the recommendations in the report on accessible formats. I was really glad when my hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) had her East Kent Mencap group visit the building recently, and a number of Members with experience of this went to speak to them about their experiences—I was very privileged to do so. We clearly always need to look at those formats, and ask whether our information is available in an easy read format for them in the way it would be for any other visitors, and whether we can have the same discussions with those users.

Although she is not here today, I want to pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) for her valuable work since her election to make this building far more accessible. From her viewpoint, the building certainly was not in such a place.

Lastly, I want to refer to Changing Places toilets. A few months ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney and I wandered down to the National Portrait Gallery to see what a more modern, accessible Changing Places toilet looks like. We have the issue that, when wheelchair users who attend the all-party groups I chair come to Portcullis House, there is no Changing Places toilet there. The Changing Places toilet we have is in the Lower Waiting Hall, and I would say it is to the original Changing Places standard of about 20 years ago. I have used it with my own daughter, and the hoist is a mobile hoist. The ceiling is very low, and an adult trying to get on it will most probably hit their head on the ceiling. It does not have a moveable sink to get a wheelchair underneath. It is not to the current standards we would expect of a Changing Places toilet. It is the one place where the people who attend the all-party groups I chair can use the toilet, yet it still is not to modern standards. As my hon. Friend and colleagues across the House know, I will continue to lobby to have one of a modern standard in Portcullis House and equally for the existing toilet to be of a modern standard.

As I said in my Changing Places debate last year, we have seen great improvements. My daughter, who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy, will be 13 this year, and I remember how few Changing Places toilets there were in this part of London 10 years ago. There has been great progress, including under the previous Government, in making sure that local railway stations and tourist destinations have Changing Places toilets. There are the ones at the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery down the road; there is the one in IKEA in Oxford Street, which I had to work very hard for and lobby to get its standard up to spec; and, just yesterday, the one at St Paul’s cathedral finally opened. Those places, where visitors are welcome to access the history and culture of our amazing city, do have such facilities, yet this place does not. We need those facilities both in Portcullis House and, to a more modern standard, in the Palace itself.

I thank the Committee for its work. I will continue to press on these areas, including in my role as a member of the Modernisation Committee, but while other workplaces have brought themselves into the 21st century, we must acknowledge that there is work that we still need to do.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.