Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure once again to follow the noble Lord, Lord Newby. We are all grateful to the Leader of the House for bringing this Motion before us today. As she said, we have waited a long time for it. But the Motion that was passed in the House of Commons last week, albeit by quite a narrow majority, has moved the situation forward quite a bit from where it was only a short time ago. As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, we owe a debt to Meg Hillier, Sir Paul Beresford, Chris Bryant and all the others who moved the amendment to the Government’s Motion, which the Leader of the House has placed before us today. I can speak only for myself from these Benches, but I think it is a positive step that I personally greatly welcome.

There can be no dispute whatever about what is said in the first three paragraphs of the Motion. The amendment in the other place sought to resolve the issue that is the subject of the fourth paragraph, which is a key point. The Government’s Motion would have left three options—full decant, partial decant and retaining a parliamentary foothold—open for consideration after a further report, which would have led to much further delay. And with all due respect I must say that that, I fear, is what would result if the House were to vote in favour of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.

I welcome the fact that, if the original Motion is approved by the House today, we can at last get on with it. The unanimous recommendation of the Joint Committee deserves to be supported. We must assume that, having the full facts before them, the members of the committee chose their language carefully. They said that there was a “clear and pressing need” to repair the services in the Palace to prevent their “catastrophic failure”. Those are very strong words and I assume that they meant what they said in the light of what they knew. A failure of that kind would put public safety at risk and would make it quite impossible for the business of Parliament to be carried on here for who knows how long. So I agree that, to minimise the disruption caused by carrying out the work, a full decant offers the best and most cost-effective option.

I suspect that one’s reaction to the idea of a full decant and then a gap of several years before we can move back in again may depend on who we are and where we work when we are not in the Chamber. As for where we work, my route home when I leave the Palace in the evenings takes me through the narrow passage into Star Chamber Court and then along the Colonnade to the Underground. In front of me as I walk in that direction is Portcullis House. Most Members of the other place have their offices there and there will be no need for them to be decanted. For them, one imagines, the idea of a full decant is not as life-changing as it will be for the many Members of this House who have offices in the Palace.

As for who we are, that really depends on how old we are. The Leader of the House is fortunate. Happily, she has many years ahead of her. She can be decamped and then come back again. But I am in my very late 70s. I may well have retired before the decamp—and that has nothing whatever to do with the QE2 Centre. Life being what it is, I cannot reasonably expect to be around when the move back eventually takes place. So in a sense there is nothing in this for me—but surely this is a situation where one’s personal inconvenience and expectations must fade into the background. There are so many other people to think about, and this is indeed a world heritage site.

I recall being astonished, when we were subjected to the terrorist incident last March, by the huge number of people of all ages and physical conditions who emerged from all over the Palace to be taken to places of safety. I do not like to think what might have happened to them, or at least some of them, if a serious fire had broken out due, for example, to an electrical fault in the basement from where it might have spread very rapidly through the ventilation shafts, as the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, has reminded us, and right through the building to the point of destruction. A catastrophic failure of our electrical supply after dark could have a serious effect on our staff and members of the public, too. So we need to think about the public interest and that, as I see it, points only one way—in favour of the recommendation.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Newby, one tends to look forward and think about what is to happen next, and there are certainly some important matters to bear in mind as we move forward. The sixth and seventh paragraphs of the Motion refer to the costing of the project. As the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said, in effect, we have been here before. Initial costings of other projects have proved to be wholly unreliable and, to say the least, it is very bad for the reputation of Parliament. We must remember that with costings, as with anything else, you get what you pay for. Care must be taken to select the most reliable method even if it costs more, because that will save time and money in the long run.

Then there is the system of employing a sponsor board and a delivery authority to carry the project forward, referred to in paragraph 7. That has been shown to work with other major projects, and I would welcome its adoption, but the arrangements for co-ordinating work across a wide variety of disciplines in a unique building will require very careful planning. They should not be rushed and great care must be taken to ensure that the contractual arrangements which will underpin the system are suitable for the task and that mechanisms are in place so that the timetables for carrying out the work by each of the interacting disciplines can be strictly enforced.

The Motion envisages a long timeline before the decant takes place. That time, too, must be carefully used to think things through so that delays caused by the unexpected can be cut to a minimum. There is a lot of work to do and many questions need to be answered, one of which is where we decamp to. Names and places have been mentioned, but it needs to be carefully thought about and planned for. Moving to another public building may not be as simple as it sounds. The consequences for that building and its occupiers will have to be taken into account before any decisions are taken. It is a long timeline and my hope is that the time will be put to good use and will not be wasted. But all of that lies in the future. I am conscious that it is not really for me to tell our expert advisers how to do their job. For the present, all that really matters is that we pass the original Motion, and I hope very much that we will.