Restoration and Renewal (Report of the Joint Committee)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am also very fond of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), but I do disagree with him on one fundamental. What the whole House is united about is our understanding that we need to get on with this job. That is why I have lived and breathed this issue with my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), who is sitting on the Front Bench, why we took the motion to the Backbench Business Committee with the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), and why we have constantly encouraged the Government to bring these motions forward.

The work needs to be done, but the question I have to pose is, if this work is so important—if the building is so dangerous—why, in these decant options, are we waiting until 2025? That is the question we have to ask. I ask why the work is not proceeding far faster and at a pace. I ask myself why we still have so few fire doors and why the Library corridor, which is 100 yards long, has no fire door in it. Those are the sort of points we should raise. We are united—I say this to the hon. Member for Rhondda—on the need to take action, but I do ask why, if this work is so urgent, we are waiting until 2025. This whole debate about the decant has muddied the waters. Frankly, the Government should have been taking action years ago. If it is inconvenient to us, so be it. That is the most important point.

When my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire and I first saw the report, we were not saying that we were the experts. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) that nobody suggested we were setting ourselves up as experts. I deliberately went out and consulted experts; I did not just consult my own conscience.

Like everybody else, I love this place, but I am not so important, and we are not so important. What about the 1 million people who visit this place every year? What about the fact that this building is the iconic centre of the nation, particularly as we try and resolve the very difficult questions of Brexit? Do we really want to take the enormous political decision, at this very difficult time for our nation, to move lock, stock and barrel from the iconic centre of the nation?

Members should understand that if we vote for the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier)—it is the crucial amendment tonight—we are taking the decision. It is not motion No. 2 tabled by the Leader of the House and it is not asking for further assessment. If we vote for the amendment, we will be taking the decision now, and there will be no going back on it—we will have to move out. Members should not believe that it will be for only five years. They should look at the Canadian Parliament. I predict that we will be out of this building for 10 or even 12 years. The Canadian Parliament, which is building a replica Chamber, is moving out for 12 years. We have to think of our constituents and ask ourselves this question: do we really believe in this at this time of unparalleled austerity? In particular—I have seen Opposition Members make this point many times—do we believe that we should take the decision this evening to spend £5 billion up-front on our own workplace? It is a very difficult decision and a very difficult argument to make to our constituents.

When we started consulting experts, many other issues really got us worried. For instance, not a lot has been said so far about the fact that the decant proposal is to build a replica Chamber. Although we have heard a lot about the Joint Committee, it did not get all its facts right: it wanted to build the replica Chamber in the courtyard of Richmond House, but unfortunately, it was five metres out. That is not a very competent process. Therefore, the Leader of the House was right that we cannot risk voting for the amendment, because there has not been sufficient assessment of the proposals. When it says that this is a unanimous report, it has to listen to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who was on that Committee. He has now changed his mind—

[Mr John Hayes]

rose—

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I cannot give way very often because the Speaker asked me not to speak for long, but I had better give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Mr Hayes]

To be fair to the Leader of the House, as I think we want to, she has been absolutely clear that the proposal is to demolish Richmond House—she has been certain about that—and to build the replica Chamber nearby us. The message we would send to our constituents is simple: not only have MPs voted to leave Parliament, but they have voted to build another building to occupy and another Chamber a stone’s throw away. What a nonsense!

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Could we imagine for a moment the United States Congress doing this, or the French National Assembly? This is actually on the table. [Interruption.] The United States Congress is building a replica Chamber? I think not.

[Dr Johnson]

On the original costings of £3.52 billion for the full decant, I was told today in a meeting with the business director of the project that at the time, they assumed that a building was available of the right size and in the right location. In fact—it has not actually been properly costed yet—the estimate is that the new work on Richmond House would cost an additional £550 million.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We are worried, and we are right to be worried, about the costs of the replica Chamber. It has been said to me that it may be necessary at times, if we carry on with this work—nobody is denying that we should proceed with it as fast as possible—that this Chamber may have to leave. I fear that if the replica Chamber is built, we will be out of the Palace of Westminster for up to 10 years. We will be too comfortable, so we have looked for and have consulted on alternatives. We tracked down Sir Michael Hopkins, the architect of Portcullis House. Nobody had raised this idea with him before then—he built the most bomb-proof, the most secure and the most expensive, by metre, building in the country—but the atrium of Portcullis House is exactly the right width, with this Chamber and the Division Lobbies, for an emergency Chamber for a few months. It would not be too comfortable there, but it is possible. Westminster Hall has been mentioned. The Second Church Estates Commissioner, my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), mentioned Church House, which is built to bomb-proof standards. There are alternatives if we have to move out, so get on with it.

The argument that the Joint Committee has established beyond peradventure that it is cheaper to have a full decant is not accepted by many experts—I say this to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley. It was not accepted in the Deloitte report, which talked about net cost analysis. The Joint Committee report did not take sufficient cognisance of the cost of the replica, the work of the patch-up, which will have to be done in the coming years and months, the security costs and the VAT costs. All these costs have been factored into the Deloitte report. There is no time to go into detail, but do not accept the facile argument about the two proposals. We have the decant proposal, which would stop 1 million people a year visiting this building and have all the other disadvantages that I have talked about—do not accept that the decant proposal is much cheaper. Many accountants and experts take an alternative view.

Before we proceed to a vote, let us listen to the hon. Member for Ealing North and remember the thousands of employees working in this building. Of course, we want them to be safe, but we also want them to have a job, and what would happen with a full decant? This is urgent. We must get on with the work now, build the fire doors and so on, and let us remember this historical point—the hon. Member for Rhondda has made many historical points, and I will end on this one: when this House of Commons Chamber was destroyed by firebombs in 1941, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, representing the best in their two parties, made a conscious and absolute decision that this House of Commons would not be bombed out of its historic home, and that was why we moved to the Chamber of the House of Lords.

I commissioned an architect, pro bono, who proved conclusively that this would be perfectly possible. He looked at all the wiring issues, the sewage issues, all that we have talked about, and found that it would be perfectly possible. Are we really being told that in this day and age we cannot divert sewerage and electrical wiring? They do it all the time in the private sector. They build pop concert arenas for tens of thousands of people in two or three days, but we are told by the experts that it is impossible to resolve this problem. I return to my historical point: when the chips were down in 1941, Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill decided that this Chamber would not move from this building. I therefore urge colleagues to vote down the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch and vote for motion No. 1. We must get on with the work.