Palace of Westminster: Fire

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask the Senior Deputy Speaker, following the Notre Dame fire, what steps are being taken to ensure that the current plans for detecting and extinguishing fires in the roof space of the Palace of Westminster are adequate.

[The Chairman of the Services Committee (Lord Laming) (CB)]

My Lords, I feel sure that the whole House will recognise the importance of this Question and endorse that we are the current custodians of this remarkable building and have a duty to do all we can to pass it safely on to future generations. That said, there are no automatic smoke detection systems—

[Lord Laming]

Sorry; I should do this more often, should I not? There are automatic smoke detection systems in most of the roof spaces across the Palace and coverage of the remaining spaces will be completed during December 2019. There is no automatic system for extinguishing fires in the roof space of the Palace, but the roof space is compartmentalised to prevent the spread of fire. The fire safety team regularly patrols the Palace.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for that comprehensive reply. We all love this place, and when I saw Notre Dame go up in smoke a week or so ago, my first thoughts were that it could happen to us here. I am really pleased we were told that there are smoke detectors in most areas of the roof space. I think the noble Lord said that that work will be completed by the end of this year. My question is: when smoke is detected, how do you put the fire out? We have seen from initial reports of the Notre Dame fire that, within less than half an hour of smoke being found, there was an inferno in the roof. It seemed to me that the only way it could be put out was with cannons of water landing on the roof, but of course that does not work—the roof is designed to keep the water out until it falls down and causes a fire below. Therefore, can we look at a way of installing more extinguishing medium in the roof space to deal with such fires, if and when they occur, which obviously we hope they will not?

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, this is a very important question. We are of course anxious to learn lessons from Notre Dame, as we are from other heritage buildings. We should be clear that all heritage buildings carry the potential for very serious fires. First, in this building there is an assumption that if a smoke detector is activated, it has to be inspected immediately—there is no assumption that it is a false alarm. Secondly, the procedure is to tackle fire from within the building rather than to wait until it goes up. The noble Lord is quite right: when it goes up, very serious issues are raised, not only of getting water up to the roof—although there are systems to do that—but because it means that the fire has taken serious control.