Restoration and Renewal

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nicholas Brown

Thursday 7th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. We have long been colleagues in this place and you might say to me, “Who would have thought we’d both end up here?”, but we have done.

It is an even greater pleasure to take part in a debate secured by the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). I could fairly describe him as a fellow traveller, but that might not help him in the 1922 Committee elections—although he can take comfort that the electorate seems to be changing quite substantially, which might be a good thing. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), I will call the hon. Member for The Cotswolds my hon. Friend. We have been at this for so long, have travelled over much the same ground together, and have come—as anybody who looks at this subject does—to very similar conclusions. There might be differences in nuance, but no more than that. It is also reasonable to place on record that we have served together not just on the Public Accounts Committee, but on the Finance Committee, which I have the honour and privilege of chairing for the second time in my long and exotic political career. The current leader of our party was kind enough to put me back where the previous leader found me, and has temporarily brought me back to other duties for the third time.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am wondering if by calling the first ever Joint Committee with the other House this week, my right hon. Friend—as I might call him—is envisaging an even longer career as Chair of the Finance Committee.

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[Mr Brown]

I agree with my hon. Friend. It is also the stated view of the current Leader of the House, who, I think, makes an entirely reasonable point. He is taking, more generally, from my point of view, a much more reasonable approach to all of this, and a much more consensual approach—or at least is trying to, in the current, troubled times—to bring this together and get us to a point where we are confident in the progress we are making.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way a second time—he is being very generous. Contrary to what I had understood, when the asbestos is removed, it is possible to seal individual areas. One area is sealed, the asbestos is removed, and then we move on to the next area. That is very time-consuming, whereas if we shut all of the Palace, or at least half of it, to do that work, it is much more cost-effective and takes much less time, so it might be better for us to decant for a little while, while that dangerous work is done, rather than try to do it piecemeal.

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[Mr Brown]

That problem goes back to the beginning of the debate about whether we could decant Chamber by Chamber, or whether it would all have to be done as one big decant because of the pooled facilities. Again, survey work is not completed yet. We have agreed the R&R estimate that should bring the survey work to completion, and I eagerly await the conclusions.

Re-routing has been thought of. The interesting thing about the article I referred to is that it had photographs of what the original conduits look like now. They have been colonised by electricity cables, which are not labelled. They have been colonised by gas and water pipes that run through the original utility that was supposed to draw in air, so that it would become hot air heated by the fires underneath, which, given the fate of the previous building, was quite a brave thing to install in Victorian times. Is it appropriate now? Probably not. A bolder solution might be to just concrete over the whole thing and put new services in. A great danger of being on a Members’ scrutiny Committee is that we start finding Members’ solutions to problems, and that is probably worse than calling in the experts.

We have made mistakes; we should admit it. I do not think they are quite as expensive as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds thinks, but there are things that have not been done as well or as elegantly as they could have been. I do not think we will get another chance to make a major change because we are about to embark, in perhaps two years’ time, on really big expenditure, depending on the directions we choose. For certainty, that will require another decision of the House, perhaps in the next Parliament, but soon-ish in our terms, and then there is no going back. If the costs are to escalate dramatically, we need to get there first. If the time that we are decanted from this place is to be longer that we had hoped, given the starting point for this discussion—it could be a lot longer than we hope—we had better get the decision on that right and reconcile ourselves to it. I do not think there is a more rational way forward.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend again, but it was in the early stages of the High Speed 2 project that the money got out of control. Once Parliament started getting quarterly reports based on an end cost, and once there were fixed dates for completion, it was able to see whether the trajectory was right. If we do that from the beginning with R and R, so that Parliament has control of the project, it has a much greater chance of being on time and on budget.

[Mr Brown]

I accept that point, and I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman does, too. We should keep a sharp eye and a controlling grip on the money—not on what we spent last year, which tends to be what we get told, but on what we will spend in two or five years’ time—and on where the programme takes us. There is a chance to—dare I say it?—reduce expenditure in other areas, and perhaps spread the cost over a longer period. Making absolutely certain that we have a grip on the project is key. That has to come out of the reorganisation that we will discuss next week and presumably bring in soon after.

This must be one of those rare occasions when we welcome the direct involvement of the Treasury as an adviser and overseer; that is the new proposal. This is almost an act of desperation, but I think it is the right thing to do. It is forced on us by the circumstances so ably described in the article in The Observer. It is important that we face up to them today.