Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body: Annual Report

Lord Carter of Coles Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Carter of Coles (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, on securing this debate. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, who covered many of the points so eloquently.

This is a good moment to review where we are and, more importantly, where we might go in the coming months. As the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, said, we—the noble Lord, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and me—have been involved in trying to make sense of what we do in this for some 20 years of our time. When we started, we thought that it would be difficult. That has absolutely been confirmed. It is a very difficult and complex project. As we look at it, the key thing we need to do is get decisions made at the right moment in time.

Despite Covid-19 and many impediments, there has been quite a lot of progress since the 2019 Act was passed. If you think about it, we are spending £100 million a year trying to find out what we should be doing. If you look at that, it is a complex task. Other noble Lords have referred to this being probably the largest restoration project in the world. As we go through this, we have to stick to the three questions we should always ask ourselves. First, why are we doing it? Secondly, what are we going to do? Thirdly, how are we going to do it?

The “why” is straightforward. The Palace is falling down, is dangerous and is costing a lot of money. We are spending £120 million a year more than we would normally spend to keep an ordinary building running. We are spending money looking into it. What we need is to move forward and make some decisions.

The question of what is to be done is a great deal more controversial. As the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, said, scope is always one of the most difficult issues in a major building project because if you do not get that clear and freeze it, what you get is creep; you then lose confidence because it is not nailed down. We are trying to take a 160 year-old building and turn it into a modern, publicly accessible workspace, so we have a rather irreconcilable dilemma between the needs of a heritage site and the need for a modern office block.

Above all, we want to preserve the valued traditions of both Houses. However, that means that there will be trade-offs and compromises. When these projects start, everybody gets a wish list. In the initial stages, people go around listing things then, gradually, one works one’s way through it. They might include decent working conditions, access, sustainability—the idea of this being a zero-carbon building is somewhat optimistic, I would suggest—better security, better visitor access, et cetera. All those things pose a challenge. We cannot have them all, nor to the maximum degree.

How we arrive at those choices, which we will have to make, needs to be informed by accurate costs and a clear spelling out of the interrelationship between these things. For example, if you have more of that and less of this, how will it fit together? On a simple matter, if you think about the QEII, what will the working conditions be going forward? One matter of particular concern is whether we use cellular offices or go to open plan. What are our compromises prepared to be to move this forward?

What we need is correct, accurate and, above all, validated information. As the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, noted, it is better to get it right at the beginning and fight for it there and then rather than constantly undermining the project by going back with revisions. As they say, three profit warnings do not do you any good, so we must learn how to do that.

Both those things are difficult, particularly the scope, but they can be done. The most pressing issue is how we are going to get on with it. This is the crux. If we think back, the 2019 legislation was based on the work that the Joint Committee did. It recommended a full decant and, critically, it envisaged that both Houses would be out for seven, eight, perhaps 10 years. During that time, it was the aspiration that Members in the other place would serve at least part of their time in the old Chamber or the new Chamber, so there was to be a sense of continuity. I suppose that would have been easier if the commitment to fixed-term Parliaments were more fashionable, but there we are.

Since the 2019 election, clearly there has been a change of sentiment, and the other place has been very clear that it wishes to maintain a continuing presence. To paraphrase Keynes, I suppose that, when faced with changing facts, the sponsor body has had to change its approach and get to work to determine what the cost would be. At this moment, possibly unlike others, I think that the sponsor body needs to adopt a neutral position until it sees the facts; the facts will be produced. The key is the money. At this point, we should probably draw comfort from Luke, chapter 14, verses 28 to 29:

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you”.


I do not think we—the Government, the House authorities, the Speaker, the Lord Speaker, et cetera—are in the business of being ridiculed.

So how do we get these things right? That is how we are spending £100 million a year. People are trying to go through and not make mistakes. We have out there a glaring example of a mistake. It was estimated that it would cost £18 million to restore the Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben. It now looks like it is going to be £80 million. That is a microcosm of the challenges. What have we found? We found gas mains in the wrong place, stone that crumbles, cables in the wrong place and rotten lead. If we look at that, to start on this without drilling down and finding out what we are starting out with, not just what the scope should be based on, would be foolish. Looking at it, early in 2022, the first of the questions we need to address should be answered—that is, is it a total decant, is the other place going to remain or are the Government going to kick the can down the road? I will return to that in a moment.

As others have reminded us, this is the largest refurbishment programme in the world, and the critical thing is that it is the work of professionals. This is a job for professionals, not amateurs. We all have building experience; I think that some of the more entertaining moments in our time on this have been the eccentric suggestions that we, as a committee, have received, helpful or unhelpful. Sometimes I felt it was a bit like the suggestion that we should reduce the whole of the power system in England to steam again. We have to look forward and find a way of doing this.

Critically, what we have to do—the question is: who is the “we” in this?—is be confident in our argument and settle what we are going to do, then move on to get the OBC to understand absolutely safely what the money is, stick to it and trust our professionals. That does not mean that we should be weak on governance. We should be absolutely clear that we want to see value for money and we want to scrutinise it. Those responsible do that, as does the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. These questions are welcome because this is a unique project and we need all the insight we can get to take it forward.

Coming to where we are now, in the new year, we will see the proposals either for total decant or for continued presence—or we might see the proposal not to do anything. However, what is critical is that we reach a decision on what we are going to do, we go on and cost it, and we build a case through Parliament to take to the people. According to a recent survey—I think it was in the Daily Mail—71% of the public support the Prime Minister’s £1-trillion climate change programme, but only 16% of them would spend a fiver a week for it. Our polling suggests that there is a great public support for the rebuilding of Parliament, but we have to convince more than 16% of the population that it is worth while.

Where does responsibility for this sit? First, it sits with the sponsor body. Then it sits with the parliamentary authorities in both Houses; it sits with the Speaker and the Lord Speaker. Above all, it sits with the Government, because a Government with an 80-seat majority will determine what is going to happen. Therefore, they need to decide. Without a decision, or if the decision is to kick the can down the road, we will be faced with a catastrophe at some point. Whether it is this Government or the next Government, it will be hard to explain to the British public why this issue was not faced up to. We have the means in place to make those recommendations; I just hope that we can move on. I sometimes think that we, but particularly the Government, are all a bit like the famous dog watching television—he can see it but he does not get it. What we have to do now is get everybody to get the importance of this and move on rapidly in the new year.