Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Lord Haselhurst Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 22nd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haselhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid I do not agree that this is a modest amendment. It is a totally irrelevant amendment that is in no way helpful to making progress on the basic question of the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster.

We go back a long way in examining what we should do about the state of this building. At various stages, reports have been received from consultants saying how much needed to be done; the commission has retreated from that in view of its cost; two more years on, another consultant’s report has been sought; and on and on as things have clearly got worse. Finally, by the narrowest of margins we came to the point where we decided that, no, we were not going to relocate; we were going to decant and get this iconic building restored to meet the needs of Parliament in the 21st century. Now we are starting once again trying to look backwards. What is the point of getting another estimate for relocating somewhere else, unless it is to compare the cost of that with the cost of what is now proposed for the restoration of this building?

Secondly, I believe that the British public has been persuaded—I pay tribute to those involved in putting the case—that this is necessary expenditure. They have been willing to contemplate the likely sum of money involved in achieving the end of restoring this building. In their view it is an iconic building—and now we have the idea of going somewhere else. What would we do with this building except make sure it had to be restored? We would not allow it to crumble, so this is extra expense on top.

There is also the fact that we are a Government in Parliament—so how can we continue in the way we have traditionally done if there is to be a huge geographical separation between the Government and the legislature?

In my view, the whole thing is madness. Having spent far too long worrying and arguing about what we should do, and having so far achieved the assent of the public to this enterprise, I regard it as an absolute farce that we should now start wasting even trivial sums of money looking again at the costings of alternatives. We have delayed far too long. We are now resolved to move forward. It is quite right that we should think of all the considerations involved in that, but to start looking back at this stage is futile, absurd and irrelevant, and should be abandoned immediately.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend in opposing the amendment. This is not an imposition we should place on the sponsor body.

I start with a technical point, because the amendment is deficient in that it says:

“The Sponsor Body must make arrangements for the report to be laid before and debated by both Houses of Parliament”.


We can impose a duty on the sponsor body to lay a report before Parliament; we cannot give power to the sponsor body to make arrangements for debates in either House of Parliament.

I would link the substance of the amendment to our earlier discussions and relate it to a point that has not been raised and which leads me to be somewhat surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is supporting this amendment. If we have a temporary Parliament elsewhere, it is not only the cost of relocating Parliament, the cost of relocating parliamentary staff, the cost of relocating government so that it is near Parliament and the cost imposed on all those bodies that are in London because they want to make representations to government and Parliament and who would have to move, but, in relation to what we were discussing earlier, Parliament needs to be accessible to the people. They need to be able to come here. We need their visits and they have to be able to come and watch what is going on. They can do that because London is at the centre of the transport infrastructure—it is easier to get to London.

Where else in the country will you be able to create a transport infrastructure in the time available for this temporary relocation so that schoolchildren and any member of the public who wants to come and observe Parliament can do so? It will be extraordinarily difficult—indeed, impossible. London has the convenience that enables us to fulfil that particular function. The proposal is not feasible and it is not a burden that we should impose on the sponsor body, because it has far too much to do already.