Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body: Annual Report

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, let me begin by saying how impressed I am by the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and his colleagues on the sponsor board as well as how lucky the House is to have them on the job. We thank them for their dedication; we are truly grateful for their skill and expertise.

As we all know, a British Parliament has existed on this site for more than 700 years. We all know the story of how a fire destroyed most of the buildings on this site in 1834—let that be a warning to us—but parliamentarians then did not hang around. Within two years, a new building was commissioned. A year later, new building works began. The last piece in the jigsaw—the Elizabeth Tower—was completed a little over 20 years later. The design was a sublime partnership between Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin.

Pugin’s story is brilliantly captured in Rosemary Hill’s page-turner biography; I heartily recommend it to anybody who has not read it. Pugin was the son of a Huguenot asylum seeker fleeing the French Revolution. He was a passionate and precocious genius who won a competition to design the King’s furniture when he was just 16 years old. With his father, who was an architectural historian, he spent his summers touring European cities. Together, they made drawings of medieval buildings—this was before the age of photography—which were published and widely bought. Pugin was deeply hostile to the plain simplicity of the prevailing Georgian architecture of the period and proselytised for a romantic Gothic revival. He was only 24 when he and Barry won the commission with this neo-Gothic design. The Lords Chamber is his particular masterpiece, in my view.

Unsurprisingly, the enormously ambitious Westminster Palace project went over time and over budget, costing £2.166 million. However, our Victorian forebears invested not just in a forum for their day but in one of the most iconic buildings on the planet, for ever a symbol understood the world over of all that is best in this cradle of democracy. Those parliamentarians invested in the future. Some 160 years later, we are truly beholden to their vision and wisdom.

It goes without saying that the 21st-century restoration is utterly unavoidable. I think we all agree on that, given the parlous and dangerous state of the fabric. The 21st-century restoration should match the quality of the 19th-century building and carry us through the next period of our history. Of course, the works should be carried out as economically as possible, but let us not pretend that it is feasible precisely to budget the restoration of a building of this age and condition. In the 1840s, it was discovered during construction that the site of the Victoria Tower was in fact quicksand and that it would have to be supported on piles. I know from painful personal experience that, however much you assess it in advance, renovating an old building comes with a litany of unexpected and unwelcome surprises.

The noble Lord, Lord Vaux, has been extremely busy with his calculator; I listened keenly to what he said. It had many echoes from the whole of my career. I have not been responsible for a major building project but I have been responsible for innumerable large and complex projects of various kinds. Listening to him, I thought: what is my takeaway about how you run it? The noble Lord, Lord Deighton, gave us the value of his own considerable wisdom on the subject, but what would be my experience of what is needed to run a successful project?

The first condition is that you absolutely must have around you people of real experience and expertise, who have done it before and know what it is like. The second condition is that you have to have a completely open environment because all these projects become mired in small-p politics, wherever they happen and in whatever kind of organisation. It is absolutely vital not to let small-p politics get in the way; you must have an honest and open exchange of information. If something is not right, you must find out about it straightaway. Because you have to problem-solve on the way through, you need expert and speedy problem-solving as you progress.

All these things will be necessary in this project, so yes, let us manage the project with high professionalism. I am absolutely certain that we will and that some of that high professionalism is in this Room. However, let us not pretend that we can hold those responsible to a budget calculated to three decimal places. Let us at all times remember that we are making a capital investment that will pay back over a century or more. I hope that those preparing the investment case look at the two options: what is the net present value of continuing to maintain this building over time as against the net present value of a proper and professional renovation?

Let us also renounce any thought that either the Commons or the Lords Chambers should continue to be utilised while the works are under way. That appears to be common ground today. Such a move would absolutely guarantee huge extra delay and expense, as well as complete misery for parliamentarians and builders alike. Frankly, if I am to use slightly unparliamentary language, it is a completely barmy idea. Let us rather, as parliamentarians, make the sacrifice of leaving this building together until it is fully restored. Let us remember, as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, said, that we are but custodians of this glorious Palace at one moment in time and that, as our forefathers did, we are investing in the very future of our nation.