Earl of Devon
Main Page: Earl of Devon (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, it is a privilege to end this debate and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Indeed, it does feel like Groundhog Day. We have all, I think, been here before. In September 2016 when the Joint Committee on the Palace of Westminster published a report setting out the options for R&R and in January 2018, a full decant, I think, was agreed. In 2019, we passed the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill, and a somewhat less grey-bearded Earl of Devon gave his second speech on the Floor of the House in the Second Reading debate, enthusiastically embracing the full decant. I suggested that your Lordships might choose to go on a progress around the nations during our forced absence from Westminster.
A full decant was recommended again in 2021, then it seems that politics got involved. Confidence in the strategic governance evaporated, the House of Commons Commission insisted on replacing the sponsor body, and progress has stalled, as we all know, leaving the long-term status of this precious and much-beloved Palace perilously unresolved. Some important essential stabilisation works have progressed, and further studies have been commissioned, but it is now January 2025 and we have noticeably regressed from the bold and positive tones of those early years. As a hereditary Member of your Lordships’ House, I am shortly to leave Parliament for good, and a project that I warmly embraced on arrival here has got absolutely nowhere. This is disappointing.
The annual progress report we are now debating lauds the publication of the R&R strategic case and the fact that further work will now be undertaken to develop the three options outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner—the full decant, continuous presence or enhanced maintenance—to that ensure that Members of both Houses are provided with the detail they need to support informed decisions. Those informed decisions were taken years ago and the full decant was agreed, but Parliament has been twiddling its governance thumbs as this world heritage site crumbles around our ears.
I was prompted to speak today by a question that I posed on the Floor of the House earlier this week, regarding Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register. I did not get a clear answer from the DCMS Minister about whether there was any danger that the Palace of Westminster will be added to that register in the near future—and I wonder whether anyone knows. When we were debating R&R back in 2019, there was a very clear message that time was of the essence, that the Palace was in imminent danger of catastrophic failure and collapse, and that we were being asked to work in conditions that posed a very real threat to the health and safety of ourselves, our guests and our staff. Is that still the case, or were we crying wolf back then? By overstating that imminent danger, has the force of the argument been lost, or are we simply to be grateful for the heroic efforts of our maintenance and fire protection staff that a disaster has not yet struck? It is important that we know.
I do not mean to criticise those tireless individuals who have dedicated themselves to R&R over the years. I admire the fortitude of the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Vaux, whom I know personally, in taking on the challenges inherent in this leviathan of a project, as I admire all those involved. However, the final implications of our dithering are eye-watering: £280.1 million in the last three years alone is a stratospheric and vulgar amount of money to spend on making no progress. Can anyone identify the total cost of Parliament’s lack of decision-making? The noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, put it at £450 million, so I thank him for that. That is the actual expenditure on R&R, but what about the increased cost of completing the works, given the passage of time and inflation? Are we really getting value for money and setting a good example as a decision-making body? Are we really appropriate stewards of our nation’s most important heritage? At a time when every Treasury Minister at the Dispatch Box bemoans the £22 billion black hole, are we right to be pouring yet more resources into this disastrous project?
By way of comparison, Historic Houses, of which I am a member, represents 1,450 privately held historic properties. Many of those, including my own home, face similar problems to the Palace of Westminster, with creaking Victorian infrastructure in well-loved and oft-used listed heritage structures at the heart of their communities. No private owner would be permitted to dither as we have. Indeed, these debates make me feel much better about the state of my home. Those 1,450 properties collectively have a repairs backlog of some £2 billion, which has often seemed like a vast sum, until you realise that Parliament has spent a quarter of that sum in considering R&R and making no progress. That is a quarter of the sum of 1,400 historic properties around our country that we have spent on this one building, making no decision.
One of the repeated refrains in the annual progress report is the effort being made to inform, educate and engage. Of course, the irony is that, given the passage of time, many of the Members of Parliament engaged over recent years are no longer here, given the huge turnover at the last election. A lot of that education money is therefore wasted. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, identifies that nearly half of those in the other place are new to Westminster. Given that it was the House of Commons Commission that derailed our previously settled intention to resolve by decant, what particular efforts are being made to inform Parliament’s new Members of the R&R programme, and are they really engaged? It may be that so many new Members will give us some fresh insights.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, for highlighting the importance of archaeology. I very much identified in the Second Reading debate the essential opportunity that we have, in conducting R&R, to understand a little better the history of this Palace and our Parliament. I was upset to learn, in my early investigations, that the archaeological part of R&R was to be minimised; I hope that that can be turned around.
Finally, given my pending departure from this Palace as a hereditary, I offer once again a plea to those considering the accessibility of the restored and renewed Palace. As I stated back in 2019, accessibility is not just physical accessibility, although the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, made clear the importance of physical accessibility. Can we please also consider the accessibility of the stories that we tell in the imagery that we display? We are removing hereditaries from the House because the hereditary principle is not thought to reflect the values of modern Britain. Accordingly, row on row of Christian white men’s heraldic devices, as we see all around us in this House, are surely not accessible to the diverse population that we aspire to serve. I remember being told back in 2019 that one of the triumphs of R&R will be that, when your Lordships return to the House, be it in 10, 15, 20 or 25 years, Members will not notice any difference. That is a horrifying thought. The Palace not only needs an upgrade in its utilities and infrastructure—it desperately needs an upgrade in its aesthetic and iconography. I hope that your Lordships will be brave enough to embrace that when us hereditaries are ultimately gone and this programme finally gets under way. I wish you all luck.