Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 22nd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to take part in this debate—I have an amendment a little later—but it seems to me that we are touching on an extremely important subject. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for tabling these amendments. Following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has just said, we need to make some practical suggestions. I entirely agree with him when he says we must have exhibitions in Westminster Hall—of course we must; people must know what we are doing—but we need to take them out to the country. I would like to see an exhibition on our restoration and renewal programme in every town and city hall in the country. It is not impossible—indeed, it would be very easy to do it—and modern technology makes it easy to simulate, project, let people have virtual reality shows and all the rest of it. We ought to go to every town and city in the country, so that whether it is Lincoln, where I live, or Wolverhampton, the city next to the constituency I represented for 40 years, people should be able to go and see.

There should be a follow-up, of course, and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is right that we should get as many schoolchildren as possible, because it should be part of the citizenship education of every child in this country to come to Parliament. Citizenship is a Cinderella subject; it is badly neglected in many schools. They pay lip service to it, but do not engage in the way they should.

I go further, because I believe we should also endeavour to ensure that people in every university in the country know what we are doing. After all, it is from the universities of this country that most elected parliamentarians —and, indeed, most appointed parliamentarians—in the future will come. If we are to engage in a proper way, we need to do it systematically, practically and with concrete suggestions such as those I am putting forward. Whether it is part of the renewal body’s remit to draw up that programme or whether it wishes to set up some committee of both Houses to discuss the practicalities, that detail is a little further down the line, but that it should be done is very important. Indeed, it must be done.

We are embarking on an enormously expensive exercise. I believe it is totally justified. Democracy is beyond price, and this is the greatest secular building in our country, but it belongs to everyone. This is the people’s Palace—the people’s Parliament. They should know what is being done, why and how. After all, at the end of the day they are paying for it. I would like to see a practical programme drawn up, and nobody would be better able to direct and help in that than the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. If he wanted to get a few like-minded souls around him, I for one would very happily be involved.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I will just correct the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, because he said this place belongs to everyone. With respect, it does not. We were talking about having a coffee bar in the Royal Gallery—which is a wonderful idea—but a few years ago I asked if I could have a concert there in aid of a charity. I asked Black Rod—not the present Black Rod, of course—who was in charge of the room. He said, “No, you can’t”. I asked, “Why?”. He said, “It belongs to Her Majesty and she won’t allow it”. I asked, “Who advises Her Majesty?”. He said, “I do, and I shall advise her not to”. I asked, “Why is that?”. He said, “It’ll wear the floor out”. It was one of the stupidest reasons. In planning, building regulations and everything else, this is technically a royal Palace. We have to sort all these things out before we end up finding we cannot do something because of some idea that has been around here ever since the place was built.

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[Lord Berkeley]

I am a bit confused because the Minister said that accepting my noble friend’s amendment would divert the sponsor body’s activity from the main activity, which is to build a new Palace, but he also said that it is doing it anyway. If it is doing it anyway, the amendment is surely all right.

[Earl Howe]

The point I was seeking to make is that if you set out in the Bill something that looks quite distinct and separate from the main task that the sponsor body has before it, you risk distracting it. What we are saying to the sponsor body is, “Yes, public engagement is vital, you are already doing it, so you should do it in the best way you can because you know best how to deliver R&R”. That is the position I come from. Therefore, there is no need to change the wording of the Bill. We should not be frightened of leaving the Bill as it is because we know that the sponsor body has its heart in the right place in a way that reflects exactly what noble Lords have been talking about this evening.

The restoration and renewal of the Palace should increase the number of visitors and see that visitors have an even better experience. I absolutely agree that R&R also provides the opportunity to re-engage the public in how democracy functions in the UK. The programme will develop better educational facilities, and it has been suggested that the additional chamber in Richmond House can be used to engage schoolchildren in our democratic process. That would be added value from the R&R process.

I just want to say something about building in a statutory duty to consult. I have talked about the need to avoid being over-prescriptive but, over and above that, the Government are concerned that placing a statutory duty on the sponsor body to consult the public, as prescribed in the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Bethell, is a particularly onerous requirement. Public engagement, as I have said, is essential for the works to succeed, but a duty to consult, I would strongly argue, would divert resource and time from the essential job at hand, which is to formulate proposals on the design, cost and timing of the works for parliamentary approval.

Let me turn briefly to Amendment 6, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, requiring the sponsor body to have regard to non-cashable benefits when assessing whether the programme delivers value for money. Clause 2(4) (b) to (h) contains a wide range of non-monetary benefits to which the sponsor body must have regard. They include safety and security, the environment, accessibility, educational facilities and the spread of opportunities to secure economic or other benefits across the UK. These benefits, which are, of course, important, have got to be balanced against the need to ensure that the works represent good value for money, as required under Clause 2(4)(a).

Value for money is core to the programme, and we consider that that has to remain explicit in the Bill. If we go on adding other non-monetary matters to Clause 2(4)(a), we run the distinct risk of watering down the explicit imperative of achieving value for money for the works, which is something that the Bill as drafted ensures the sponsor body must have regard to. Therefore, I think that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would be detrimental to the Bill.

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[Baroness Byford]

My Lords, I want to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, because I have added my name to his second amendment. In the Joint Committee, we had long discussions about the whole question of access, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has said, about access within the building once one gets in. I want to support the noble Lord in his desire to get something written on to the Bill with regard to disability. We had long discussions in Committee about this. It is a matter not just of people getting into this building but, once they are in the building, of how they get around it. The figure quoted in one of the briefings we had is that currently only about 12% of this building is accessible to people with a disability. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has indicated, there will be rooms in this building that will not be accessible after renewal and I am sure that is probably right. I think it falls on the sponsor body itself to decide what is an acceptable percentage: if it is 12% now, are we talking about 25% or 30% eventually?

The other thing that we had a long conversation about was how people come into the building in the first place. The Cromwell Green entrance is totally inadequate for our needs now. It sometimes takes people an hour to get in, and if it is raining it is pretty miserable. Access to the building needs to be looked at as well.

I will not pre-empt the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, but it is not just those with physical disabilities who have difficulty accessing the building—those in wheelchairs or like the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, have difficulty in getting around. There are also people with hearing disabilities, but I will leave that issue to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell.

There are many ways in which this building could be made much more friendly and supportive of people so that we could use everyone’s skills that otherwise would not be included. I am very happy to have put my name to this amendment. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be more supportive of this one than of some of the others. When I broke my ankle last year, as I reflected at Second Reading, that made me realise the true difficulty of getting around this building; I think there are something like 90 different stairs, and many of the lifts are not accessible. If I can go further, some of the ladies’ and gentlemen’s facilities are totally inadequate for those with disabilities. This is an opportunity to put those basic needs right.

My questions for the shadow sponsor body are: where are your priorities going to come in this? In view of where you are going, what way can you see of achieving that while recognising that some of the building will not, I suspect, be suitable for getting the sort of access that most of us would like to see? I am hoping that my noble friend will be more encouraging later. I am very pleased to support these amendments.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I spoke about some of these issues in response to an earlier amendment. All I will say is that the amendment asks for a report for the building to be fully accessible, which I support, but to achieve that and the things that my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, have mentioned—including lifts, toilets and other areas that are currently inaccessible—will involve some massive works in this building and they will be very expensive. They will also reduce the amount of space available for other things, but I am sure that they have to happen.

My Amendment 17A proposes that the same criteria that my noble friend has put in Amendment 17 in respect of this building when we come back are also applied to the temporary accommodation that we might have in the QEII or wherever.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, to some extent my contribution has been prefigured, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for that. I strongly support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has said. I particularly want to pick out his phrase about making this an exemplar project.

In the many discussions that I have had over the years about making this place accessible to people with physical deficiencies, if you want to put it that way, or disabilities—I speak as someone who is not profoundly deaf but is quite deaf and certainly needs his hearing aids—all too often the attitude and the response have been grudging, a sort of reluctant admission that under the Disability Discrimination Act they have a duty to do it, but it is certainly not one undertaken with great joy.

I would have thought that this building—as we are a national Parliament and representatives of a democracy that in other aspects is trying to promote civilised values around the world, and here I am thinking of the work of our international development department, our Foreign Office, God bless them, and others, where we are constantly saying that we set an example—should surely set an example when it comes to access for those of limited mobility or with some other disability.

I want to put a word in for my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Thomas of Winchester, who, as noble Lords will know, make their way around this building in electric wheelchairs. This brings into focus the fact that our different priorities are in conflict. A whole lot of additional fire doors have been put in, which make it virtually impossible for those two noble Members to proceed around the building other than with an assistant to open and close the doors. Various arrangements have been put in place for the doors to be left open during sitting hours and so on, but for all sorts of reasons—some might say bureaucratic reasons—those commitments do not always work.

Each of my noble friends has personal stories about the problems they have had of being trapped behind those doors waiting for somebody to come and open them. There are challenges, but there are solutions. One can imagine that in 10 or 15 years’ time, it will be entirely feasible for every door and every electric wheelchair in this building to be fitted with a transponder, and for the doors to open when a wheelchair approaches. However, the idea of anybody thinking of or implementing that seems a very long way away.

As for deafness, I am inclined to say: do not get me started. Can we at least make sure that the new provision complies with existing law? This building does not comply with existing law and although people have wriggled and squiggled when they have talked to me about how they believe they have put in place various so-called first aid measures to make it okay, it all comes down to the person with the disability fitting into a system which, frankly, does not work or deliver. We certainly need to make sure we have standards that comply with existing legislation.

We need to consider what standards we as a legislature will impose upon employers and other public buildings when we get to 2035. Will our standards for them have risen? If so, can we make sure that we design our standards to do that as well? In fact, I would go further than that and say we ought to set outstanding standards and aim to be best in class for a public building in the United Kingdom—and why not best in class throughout the world? We need to see what that would mean and how we would make it work, rather than reluctantly dragging this along behind us and seeing what we can get away with.

This debate fits somewhere in between the debate we have already had on public engagement and the one we are going to have on future-proofing. I will just make the point that if you exclude or do not engage with people with disabilities, you are not doing the job that we set out to achieve in the first set of debates. I will not use all my ammunition on future-proofing at this point, but when we get to those amendments, it is worth remembering that not just the standards but the expectations of people in 20 years’ time will not be lower than they are now. If we are not achieving current standards now, simply doing things the same way in the revised, upgraded building will not do it.

I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said. He has much more experience than I do of both being a guerrilla and sitting at the big desk taking the decisions. In so far as I can give him any support from either of those dimensions, I shall certainly do so.

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My hope is that if the sponsor body has a responsibility or duty to report on any delays and why they are taking place, it will help to focus minds and do some good. It will be able to show that this project has the priorities and makes the progress that I think we wish to see. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I fully support the amendment, although I would go one step further. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has rightly identified the planning problems that could occur with Richmond House. I suspect that there will be equal problems with the design of the temporary Chamber for our friends down the other end—the colour of the carpet, the comfort of the Benches and so on. However, the same problems will occur when we start thinking about what this place will look like when we come back. We have been speaking about it all evening but I am referring to the kind of facilities that we want, how much it will cost and what changes there will be. No doubt that will cause delays as well, if only because the Treasury will say that the costs are too high or something like that.

I agree with the noble and learned Lord’s amendment. There should be very regular reports—maybe every six months—on the timescale of the decant and, subsequently, on the refurbishment of this place. But, if he considers bringing it back on Report, he should add something about cost. We are not very good at maintaining costs for things; he knows my views on Crossrail and HS2. Whoever is to blame, we are very good at hiding the real costs or results of programmes for several years then suddenly shocking Parliament and the public. Crossrail was on time and on budget until this time last year; now it is several years late and we do not yet know what the budget is going to be as we have not been told. People must have known about these things, as relating to HS2, several years before the problem occurred.

I hope that we will not have the same problem here. We need to be honest and transparent and set an example with respect to the changes that we have made. I hope the Minister can give us some kind of commitment that such honesty and transparency, and regular updates, will be features of rebuilding this place. It will be very difficult; there will be many changes and probably cost-overruns, which is not surprising when you are working in a building like this, but let us at least know what is going on, in good time.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I will be brief: the situation is worse than that described by my noble friend Lord Berkeley, if I can deepen his gloom. With HS2 and Crossrail, with which I was deeply familiar, by the time we came to publishing legislation we knew what the project was going to be. The project was defined; indeed, at the second stage of the HS2 Bill, which had just been agreed by the House of Commons, we knew within a few metres what the line and specification of works would be and so on. We have a defined project—it has just proved much more expensive and problematic to deliver than was conceived. The problem we face with the parliamentary rebuilding work is that we are setting up the sponsor body before we have a defined project.

There is a very good reason for that: we are literally starting from scratch and trying to decide the best way forward, and this probably is the best way forward. I have views on whether we should consider other options —we will come to that in a while—but we are currently at such an early stage of the work that we do not have the faintest clue what the costs will be. We do not have a project description; all we have is a few back-of-the-envelope, broad objectives, a very old costing on the basis of them and a few timelines plucked out of a hat. We also have the potential for massive controversy, which we can already see, about the nature of the decant, where we will go, what we will come back to and so on.

What the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is proposing—that there should be best estimates for the timeline at the point at which the strategy is published—is perfectly sensible. There is also another reason why it should be done: it is my view that we are at such an early stage of planning, and the issues involved in the restoration and renewal of the Houses of Parliament are so great—because of the wider context referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, of big questions about the future of our parliamentary democracy—that I do not believe it is sensible to be closing down significant options at this stage; we are at such a preliminary stage in devising what the project will be. I am sorry to keep making this point but, since we will be returning to it in September, I am very anxious to keep it open: we should include the question of where the decant should be—there is very good reason to propose that it should not be somewhere immediately adjacent to the Houses of Parliament but could be in another part of the United Kingdom—and where the ultimate Parliament will be.

I agree with what the noble and learned Lord said. On the basis of my knowledge of big infrastructure projects and the stage we are at currently, it is very plausible that there could be three or four years’ delay before the decant starts. If the decant does not start until 2028, we will not move back here until between 2038 and 2040. To put some context on this, phase 2 of HS2 is currently scheduled to open in 2032. So, relatively speaking, it is going to take much longer to complete the restoration and renewal of Parliament than to build a 330-mile high-speed line, which is the biggest single infrastructure project in the world outside the Republic of China. Keeping a few options open at this stage is sensible in terms of planning. We should take advantage of the situation at the moment to think a bit more broadly about where we intend our parliamentary democracy to go over the 100 to 150 years ahead, and in doing so demonstrate the same vision that our Victorian forebears showed when they designed these Houses of Parliament to be the centre of an imperial legislature in the 1840s.

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[Lord Adonis]

In many ways, it is actually much easier to do it if you are building on a greenfield site next to a major transport interchange such as Birmingham International, where the National Exhibition Centre is. That would be much simpler than the hugely complex, difficult and historic estate here. I wrestled with exactly the same argument on the question of whether we should upgrade a 200-year-old railway line to provide additional rail capacity between our major cities or build a completely new line. Often, building completely new is a good thing.

This is a debate that will run for the next few years, and we have done a good job of planting the idea. I strongly encourage my friends and colleagues who are mayors of the major cities and city regions in the Midlands and the north to advance this idea further. I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, but I suspect that he has not heard the last of this, by any means. Whatever decision is taken in this Bill, we will return to this, because it is a fundamental issue about the governance of the United Kingdom, alongside what will be a £5 billion, £10 billion or £15 billion investment—who knows what the final figure will be?—in the future of Parliament. I do not think that we will be able to keep these big strategic issues off the agenda.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on this amendment because it has started a debate which I have supported for a long time. Maybe she should have gone one step further. We are talking about a report on the temporary relocation of Parliament outside London, but if you are going to build a new temporary Parliament, be it in Richmond House or outside London, there is a cost attached, and I suspect that the cost would be not very different either way. The work in Richmond House will not be prefab but extremely glossy, expensive and difficult, as it so often is with building in a capital city. And we can forget for the moment what will be done in the QEII—although I suspect it will be lovely. There is actually an argument for building something somewhere outside London, as my noble friend Lord Adonis said, and staying there.

This place has to be refurbished because, as many noble Lords have said, it is in a bad state, but it could be used for educational purposes and conferences. That is what they do in Hungary: they built a parliament in Budapest—almost mirrored on this place—and the architect got a second prize for doing it. Hungary now has a parliament with a single chamber and the other half, which I have been to, is used as a conference and education centre. It is a lovely building and it works really well. If we really wanted to maintain a link with this place, we could still use it for the State Opening of Parliament and then go and do our work somewhere else. There are a lot of options.