Arts: Concert Hall for London

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

The noble Lord is quite right: there are concert halls of great standing outside London. He mentioned two; there is also, of course, the Sage in Gateshead. That is why we need somewhere in the capital city that is comparable to those great centres. The feasibility study is, of course, to look at the cost; I am not in a position at this stage to give any indication of what that will be.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that when Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria asked Sir Henry Cole to handle the building of a memorial in a concert hall? He appointed a captain in the Royal Engineers, whose previous design achievement had been the creation of a portable bath for use on active service. When the captain died, Sir Henry asked the Queen whether she would be satisfied if he replaced the captain with another officer. The Queen said she was perfectly happy, but she thought perhaps it might be wiser if the rank was a major.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I was not aware of that, noble Lords will be surprised to hear. I thought my noble friend was going to talk about the Royal Albert Hall, in which case I would have said that we need to recapture that breadth of vision.