Restoration and Renewal

Lord Best Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, alongside the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Deighton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, I am a board member of the restoration and renewal sponsor body charged with implementing the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019. I act as the spokesperson responsible for reporting to your Lordships’ House on behalf of the board. I am grateful to the Chief Whip and the usual channels for allowing me to speak for a couple of extra minutes. However, the opinions I express today are my own.

I have to say that the whole exercise, since the creation of the sponsor body and the attached delivery authority in 2020, has been deeply frustrating. There is a straightforward reason for this: our client, for whom we were required to deliver a full scale R&R programme, including the decanting of both Houses while major works were undertaken, has not been committed to the project. The client role has been represented by a House of Commons Commission that has not accepted the brief.

The approach of the House of Lords Commission, with leadership from the two Lord Speakers over this period, has been entirely positive. The Lords side agreed the mandate set out in the 2018 resolutions and the Act, and accepted, albeit reluctantly, that a move, probably to the QEII conference centre, would be necessary. But from the Commons, it has seemed that there has been a constant effort to kick the can down the road, specifically to resist all proposals for temporarily decanting the Commons from the Palace. This tension came to a head in March with the decision from the House of Commons Commission that the comprehensive programme should be halted, and the sponsor body dismissed. In essence, the new position—now incorporated into the Motion before us—comprises two significant changes.

First, instead of a full-scale R&R programme, as originally envisaged by the Act, the delivery authority is being asked to bring forward a selection of more modest propositions for works that could be undertaken end to end. This avoids committing to a very large sum, which is hard to face up to when public funds are tight. It is also implied that this will make possible the continued presence of the Commons in the Palace throughout the restoration, even if the Lords must move out. The details of this changed approach need clarity urgently, otherwise the delivery authority—which is continuing its extensive preparatory investigations with intrusive surveys during the forthcoming recess—will face a prolonged hiatus, with all the dangers of losing more staff and of substantial nugatory expenditure.

An extended sequence of major repair projects will probably cost far more in total and take far longer—and, of course, risk a major disaster in the meantime. All that aside, the approach will simply not work when it comes to the extraordinary challenge of the basement beneath our feet. Last week, I paid another visit to the basement’s frightening scene: the tangle of intertwined sewerage pipes; miles of electric cables internet wiring, gas pipes, steam pipes and chilled water pipes; the newly installed fan to suck out smoke from the frequent small fires which stands idle because it stirred up the asbestos; and the inaccessibility of key infrastructure now behind layers of more recent installations. This part of R&R represents well over half the total cost and does not lend itself to being one of a series of smaller projects. Sooner rather than later, the complete upgrade of all the services in the basement must be faced. It is very hard to believe this can possibly be done sensibly, safely and economically with the Commons staying in situ.

The second change from the position prior to March 2022 concerns the governance structures for our R&R. This is the real focus of the Motion before us. Despite its governance performance being deemed exemplary by the relevant external bodies, the sponsor body is to be disbanded as soon as possible, with new in-house board arrangements as outlined by the Lord Privy Seal.

Should we accept or reject this Motion? I see three reasons why we should not oppose the proposed changes. First, the abolition of the sponsor body is a fait accompli. The process of dismantling the current structure has already gone ahead. Our excellent chief executive, Sarah Johnson, is leaving imminently and senior staff have already gone. Progress towards bringing the planned business case for Parliament to consider in 2023 has been discontinued and work on the QEII decant ceased months ago. It would not make sense to try to return to the position before the abrupt stop to our work back in March.

Secondly, I recognise the case for stopping the programme’s progress now because, if matters were to proceed as planned for a parliamentary decision this time next year, the House of Commons might well simply reject the sponsor body’s propositions and the whole of R&R would be set back indefinitely. It may therefore be best to stop now rather than continuing to spend money for another year before crashing into the buffers in 2023.

Thirdly, even though proposals for new arrangements for R&R sound very much like the can being kicked further down the road, I think they are worth a try. What they could do is remove the ongoing hazard of a client that does not really want the project to progress. If the new arrangements engage Parliament’s representatives more closely, with genuinely joint working between the two Houses, creating a greater sense of ownership of the brief and putting the deliverer and the client on the same side, it might at last resolve this inherent problem.

I feel sure that those of us who have served on the sponsor body will happily move on, and I am delighted that the majority of our highly capable and committed staff will form the team for the new in-house body, but a serious change of approach is required from the leadership of the Commons commission. The aversion to a decant has to go and I am encouraged by the view widely expressed in the Commons yesterday that a decant of several years should be accepted.

The client role must now be exercised with absolute clarity and there must be a proper recognition that the restoration and renewal of the Palace as a safe, sustainable and accessible building, fully in accord with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, will be enormously costly but incredibly worth while. The total cost may be around £10 billion, spread over 15 years or so, although the rising annual spend of £150 million on maintenance will be saved.

Those in the Commons who are apprehensive about their electorate’s disapproval of such spending may draw comfort from the sponsor body’s consumer research, published last week, which shows that the wider public are hugely proud of this internationally recognised and iconic Palace and desperately want it fully restored. We should remember that all this spending supports businesses throughout the UK with contracts, jobs, apprenticeships and skills.

Because the new arrangements are a fait accompli, because they spare us a doomed outcome next year and because there is a chance that the new governance will at last achieve the commitment to the project that has been lacking, I accept the Motion before us. Let us get on with it.