Palace of Westminster: Fire

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, this is a very important question. We are of course anxious to learn lessons from Notre Dame, as we are from other heritage buildings. We should be clear that all heritage buildings carry the potential for very serious fires. First, in this building there is an assumption that if a smoke detector is activated, it has to be inspected immediately—there is no assumption that it is a false alarm. Secondly, the procedure is to tackle fire from within the building rather than to wait until it goes up. The noble Lord is quite right: when it goes up, very serious issues are raised, not only of getting water up to the roof—although there are systems to do that—but because it means that the fire has taken serious control.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, does the Lord Chairman accept that the earlier we can bring forward the decanting, the better it will be for the safety of the building? Will he therefore ensure that we look very carefully at Sir Michael Hopkins’s realistic proposal for putting the Chamber of the other place in Portcullis House, which Sir Michael himself was the architect of? If, in addition, we had a temporary structure on the embankment gardens, the two Chambers could be moved far more quickly than under the current proposals.

[Lord Laming]

Noble Lords will know about the arrangements for taking forward the R&R programme. All I can add at this stage is that the fire at Notre Dame ought to be a spur to all of us to get on and implement the R&R programme. It includes well-developed systems, and I feel sure that we will hear more about it in due course.