Glasgow School of Art: Mackintosh Building

Debate between Irene Campbell and Torcuil Crichton

Monday 19th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I begin by welcoming the Minister to the Dispatch Box for what I believe is her first time as Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. Some might argue that 11.20 pm on a Monday night is just the right time for a Minister to make their debut at the Dispatch Box, and perhaps the right time to make the kind of speech I am about to make. I assure her, though, that we on the Labour Benches are very proud of her, and I am sure Members across the House will appreciate her talents and skills as they relate to the Scotland Office, other parts of Government policy and other parts of the world, where her dedication and leadership have been shown before.

That is where the praise stops, because the ask I am about to make may well go beyond the Minister’s briefing and the Scotland Office’s budget. However, I hope she will be no less ambitious than I am, or my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes), for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson), and for all points in between who have stayed on tonight to show their support not just for the Minister, but for an idea that would define not only a building or a city, but a country, and leave a legacy for this reforming Government that she and I serve in.

For many, I hardly need detail the catastrophe that has befallen the Glasgow School of Art’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh building, and the pall it has cast over Scotland’s largest city for more than a decade now. I will quickly summarise the brutally cruel circumstances that led us here.

[Irene Campbell (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important Adjournment debate. Does he agree that it is shameful that the Glasgow School of Art has been left in this state, leaving a cultural void in Glasgow’s architectural heritage, and that innovative solutions should be explored to right this wrong?

[Torcuil Crichton]

I do, and I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I will detail and explore some of those options later in my speech. She is right: it is shameful that we have this shrouded ghost on Garnethill casting a shadow over the city.

To summarise, the fire that brought down the Mackintosh building broke out in 2014, as art students were finalising their end-of-year degree show. That fire was devastating and heartrending—I was in a meeting of another cultural board as the news broke, and people cried in that meeting as the smoke rose above Garnethill. Around 70% of the building was saved, although the library and the famous hen run—that glazed passageway so beloved by generations of art students—were lost. Despite that blow, the Glasgow School of Art and its patrons across the globe rose to the occasion and committed themselves to the faithful restoration of the building. That was painstaking and specialised work, but it was moving on apace when a second and much more devastating fire swept through the building in 2018, engulfing not just the Mackintosh building but the neighbouring ABC music venue on Sauchiehall Street.

The 2018 blaze was so fierce and all-consuming that its cause may never be known, but its consequences certainly are. Glaswegians are reminded of the destruction every single day, as the charred husk of the Mack building stoops withered and crippled on the city’s skyline. I was up there on Friday, between events at the Royal National Mòd in Glasgow—I congratulate the organisers and the city for hosting a brilliant week in the city of the Gaels. The contrast between the vibrant, youthful buzz of the revived and living culture that the Mòd represents and the tragic shadow hanging over the Mack could not have been stronger.