Restoration and Renewal: Annual Progress Report

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I have nothing but admiration for those, past and present, who serve on what is now the programme board, and those who are supporting, advising and delivering. This is a nightmare of a project, and everyone who has been involved with it deserves a medal. Mine would be a very small one for serving on the joint scrutiny committee for the 2019 Act. When I was asked by the Whips to go on it, I thought that it would probably be the most boring exercise of my political life. It turned out to be anything but. I became engaged with the wider issues that the noble Lord just referred to, as did the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner. I reinforce the point that decisions have to be made and clarity has to be brought forward. We have an obligation to those who come after us to get this right.

I shall be brief because, as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, said, the options will be put before the two Houses and there will be the opportunity to debate. If I may say so, I feel that we in Committee this afternoon are like a fly on an elephant’s bottom—we are nibbling away at the issues—but I will repeat what I have said on previous occasions, and I will keep at it until we get a solution.

Throughout my political life, I have not personally dealt substantially with disability issues, although for a time I was the Secretary of State who oversaw what was then the operation of the DDA and the DRC, which we introduced under my ministerial team, but over the last four years I have got engaged on a bit of a mission. In 2019, when the scrutiny committee’s report was published and the Act was taken through, I became aware of the lack of engagement with access for people with disabilities. This does not affect me; I am very fortunate—there are very few places in the Palace of Westminster that I could not get into, although I am open for the challenge at some point—but many other people have real challenges. It is not that they might not eventually get to their destination. It is the means of getting there—the indignity and difficulty, things which those who do not experience them would not put up with for a moment.

In the original Bill, there was a commitment to “access to” the Palace of Westminster. I was interested in the wording used by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, in highlighting the priorities that the programme board and the two options will offer us, because step-free access into the Palace of Westminster is not the major issue. The major issue, which was missed by the House of Commons and in drafting the legislation, was access within the Palace of Westminster. After great discussion and enormous help from the then Ministers, we in this House amended the legislation to take account of that rather important element. In other words, we listened to people who had challenges and we were prepared to respond to them.

In the Act of Parliament, which still remains, Section 2 concerns the parliamentary works and in its subsection (5)(e)—I am sorry to do this to noble Lords—the amendment that was carried was to ensure that

“(i) any place in which either House of Parliament is located while the Parliamentary building works are carried out, and (ii) (after completion of those works) all parts of the Palace of Westminster used by people working in it or open to people visiting it, are accessible to people with disabilities”.

When we debated this, it was absolutely clear that we did not mean that people had to get into the towers and turrets at the very top—we discussed it on the Floor of the House—but when, in a recent session, I learned that we were talking about perhaps two-thirds of the Palace of Westminster being accessible, noble Lords can understand that I had a reaction.

An Act of Parliament is an Act of Parliament, and whether the wording was incorrect or not, it stated that

“all parts of the Palace of Westminster”

would be accessible, with an understanding of the trade-offs that the noble Lord has just referred to, where most people would use common sense. Where a particular element of the Palace was not used by those working in it or needed to be accessible to those visiting, we would use a bit of common sense. I say now that unless 95% of the Palace of Westminster is accessible to disabled people, we will have committed a historic mistake. This is the opportunity to put things right, to learn from Mr Barry’s War, which is still worth reading, and to learn how not to do things as well as how to do them.

I hope the two options, even at this late stage, will acknowledge what the Act of Parliament says. I know that the Government, particularly during the Boris Johnson period, thought that Acts of Parliament were “take it or leave it” and not mandatory, but we are not in that position anymore. If Parliament does not respect its own Act, who else will?

I am putting on the table the need to try to have a bit of common sense; we need to get this right. To do so, we need one more thing. When we talk about the total amounts under the two options that will be brought forward—the total sums necessary to do the work properly—we must break it down over the total period of the works to be carried out to the completion and return of both the Commons and the Lords to the Palace. If we do not do that, we will do ourselves and the public a great injustice, because we will frighten ourselves to death. I have heard people ask, again and again over the last three or four years, “On the back of austerity, the difficulty that people are facing and the tightness of public expenditure, how can we possibly spend whatever sum in the billions you want to pick out of the air?”. It does not work like that; we are talking about a very long period over which this money will be spent. I put a plea in that we get that message right.

We obviously have to get the sums right, rather than have the doubling of costs that we have seen in major schemes for many years, but let us try not to frighten ourselves to death with the amounts of money which will be crucial to getting this right for, I hope, centuries. We owe the future an obligation, which we are actually better at in this House, because we choose when we go—or the Lord chooses when we go—whereas, down the road, they are frightened stiff of what might happen and whether they will get the blame for it, and therefore whether to do a meet-and-mend job. Today, can we please take this back to the programme board: I commend the Act of Parliament, but I commend a bit of common sense as well.