Restoration and Renewal: Annual Progress Report

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the Convenor of the Cross Benches—the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull—who does such a great job for all of us Cross-Benchers. As he mentioned, I was a member of the board of the R&R sponsor body for its full existence, and, three years ago, I acted as the Lords spokesperson in presenting a similar report to the one introduced by the Senior Deputy Speaker today. Back then, I reported substantial progress toward bringing forward costed alternatives for restoring and renewing the Palace and noted that a decision by both Houses would be needed in the not-too-distant future. That all sounds rather familiar today.

At that time, the choices before us were between only the first two of the three options now being scrutinised by the delivery authority on behalf of all of us. In essence, our choices were between a “full decant” option for both Houses and a “continued presence” option for the House of Commons. Now, the Strategic Estates team is adding the third option of “enhanced maintenance and improvement”—I must get used to using “EMI” for this. The view back then, in November 2021, was that the second option—the continued presence of the Commons in the Palace throughout the works, first in one Chamber and then in the other—would be a very unwise proposition. It would greatly extend the period of building works, during which the public would not be able to visit the Palace—Parliament sees 1.25 million visitors a year—and would mean the Commons having to operate in the midst of probably the largest restoration project in the world, facing all the hazards of extra security risks, fire risks, asbestos, noise, dust and vibration. Further, since the underground plumbing and power would be out of action, temporary systems and generators would need to run in the courtyards, occupying space also needed by the contractors.

I suspect that these concerns about the Commons occupying the Palace throughout the restoration programme remain valid, but I look forward to hearing how this “continued presence” option has been developed. I will try to keep an open mind on this one, as requested by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, but I want to raise one fundamental issue surrounding the third option: “enhanced maintenance and improvement”. Our sponsor body board was informed that a

“rolling, sequenced programme of works”,

requiring only minimal relocation, was not viable because a “make do and mend” programme could not tackle the half-mile of continuous jumbled pipes, cables, sewage systems and other horrors that lie beneath us. Many of your Lordships will have visited this scary scene and will understand that replacing all this outdated and hazardous chaos will be a huge undertaking; that echoes the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy. My question, therefore, is: what has changed to overcome this fundamental blockage to any continuous, ongoing repairs and improvement programme? How can this absolute prohibition on both Houses continuing to operate within the Palace, while the basement has been transformed, now be resolved?

In conclusion, I express complete sympathy with those grappling with the same issues that haunted us back in the early 2020s. The noble Lord, Lord Morse, estimated that such maintenance and improvements, which take decades, mean that extra costs will arise. He expressed concerns from a financial perspective. We were convinced by the much more straightforward argument that it was simply impossible to undertake that extensive improvement of the basement without decanting all, or at least half, of us for a time. I would be delighted by any words of reassurance—I am encouraged by the words of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux—that the seemingly insuperable problems in choosing a programme of ongoing maintenance works only can be overcome. I look forward to any response that the Senior Deputy Speaker can bring us.