Restoration and Renewal

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I begin by echoing the general thrust of the vast majority of comments made in this debate, and the critiques behind them. I must also at the start of my remarks refer to the register, which contains a significant number of entries related to buildings, listed buildings, heritage and such like.

Let us go back to the start. In April 2020 the National Audit Office published its report, Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Programme. It states:

“For more than 20 years, Parliament has been thinking about undertaking significant works to restore the Palace.”


We can all agree it is worth taking time to think things through. Two years before that, in January 2018, Parliament approved the restoration and renewal programme and in the following year the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019 became law. Currently, it seems to me that progress comprises the document around which this debate is being conducted, Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster— A New Mandate, which I hold in my hand; such is the speed and extent of taking this proposal forward.

Almost simultaneously with Parliament approving the restoration and renewal programme in January 2018—to be precise, on 19 April that year—Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which is a real symbol of France just as Parliament is for our country, burnt down. Mention has been made of it already. Allow me for a moment, even if the circumstances are not exactly equivalent, to compare and contrast. Notre Dame is most impressively being put back together again, and President Macron’s stated aim is for the project to be completed in April 2024, the fifth anniversary of the inferno. Even if that deadline is not met precisely, the work proceeds with pace, conviction and commitment. In this country, I stand here in your Lordships’ House clutching the restoration and renewal document that we are discussing, rather like Neville Chamberlain on his return from Munich brandishing a piece of paper that merely delays the inevitable.

I am afraid I believe that we as Parliament have collectively made ourselves national laughing stocks. As your Lordships will know, there has been quite a bit recently about government and Parliament leading by example. If we cannot put our own house in order, we are not in a very strong position to get others to do so.

As I see it, the Government are the guardian of our national heritage, which is the collective national memory of our nation and an important pillar of our national identity. They set a general framework within which the owners of our listed buildings, whoever they may be and who are the custodians for the time being, then actually have to look after them. In my view, the frame- work is wobbly and inadequate, but that is for another day. In this instance, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, that in these circumstances, de facto, government and Parliament are the same, which makes what has happened—or perhaps what has not happened—all the more lamentable.

Anyone who knows about these things knows that, in circumstances such as those of today, inflation is hitting construction costs more aggressively than prices in general, and that delay in addressing structural problems in buildings aggressively and progressively worsens the state of the problem. Having said that, if there is anyone who has the resources to remedy this kind of thing, it is the Government, because Governments of all political views always find plenty of money for fripperies of what they like. Let us be clear, as has been made absolutely apparent in this debate, we are not talking about fripperies.

I will briefly echo the noble Earl, Lord Devon. Speaking as an owner of a listed building—there are more than half a million listed buildings in this country, some of which are owned by private individuals, some by third sector organisations and some by the public sector—we are not encouraged to spend our money on our statutory obligations to the buildings for which we are responsible when we look at what the Government have done in respect of the sad story of the Palace. The Government and Parliament should lead from the front, not rather unconvincingly cheerlead from the back.

We all know that everybody has a view about the Palace and what we should do. I have given my views and, I suspect like many others, I have subsequently modified them, but I will not go into that now. Not everyone will be satisfied. Indeed, everyone may to some extent be dissatisfied, but I expect that everyone can agree that progress has been slow, indecisive and inadequate. Reams of paper have been consumed, hours of meetings have taken place and nothing much has actually happened, and heigh-ho, the Palace of Westminster is slowly and quietly deteriorating.

A strong, imaginative and proper grip needs to be taken of the whole proceedings. Action is needed now, and it needs to be firm. It is plain as a pikestaff that, unless something is done soon and decisively, it looks as though the way this country commemorates Brexit will be by allowing the greatest worldwide symbol of Britishness to deteriorate and disintegrate in front of our eyes.

House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and the work of the Constitution Committee that lies behind it. I am speaking from my office in rural Cumbria, which is just further away from London than Paris. In my remarks I will focus on remote participation and voting.

First, however, I think that it is a mistake to assume that the hybrid proceedings, which, as so many of your Lordships have said, have been so skilfully arranged by the House’s staff—I pay tribute to them—are a consequence of Covid. Covid has of course played a part, but so has the development of the technology, which until recently did not exist. If the pandemic had happened a few years ago, things would have been very different. I hope, pray and believe that the pandemic will come to an end, but the technology will endure and will get better.

At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems to me that during my period of membership of your Lordships’ House there have been basically two types of Member participation. First, there is full-time, which is Front-Benchers, Officers of the House et cetera; then there is a group of other Members, who are also engaged in outside activities that inform membership and contributions and are set within the framework of the rules relating to declarations and conflicts of interest.

In my own case, I live 300 miles away in northern England, where I work on my own account and play a part in public life that is really quite relevant to what we are doing here in the Chamber. Travelling to London and spending time there involves an enormous amount of wasted time that is dead time away from home. I believe that it is no incentive for those from the further-flung parts of Britain to come to play a full role in the House’s activities if the banks of the Thames are a ball and chain around their ankles. It is a form of London capture. It can, of course, be argued that those like me should, quite simply, retire or take a leave of absence and go away. It might seem a fair point, but it is very “southist”, especially in the days when voices outside London are particularly important.

Obviously, Parliaments cannot work exclusively remotely. Human interaction is extremely important, as numerous noble Lords, following the lead of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, have repeatedly pointed out. It is important and central to political discourse and parliamentary activity that people interact with each other. Whatever is done in the future, there has to be at least some real human contact and involvement between Members—all of them—as part of the whole.

However, what I believe is needed—I am the first to concede that I do not have the answers—is some way to marry two apparently conflicting aspects. For what it is worth, as well as thinking about the use of technology, we ought to think about procedures, timetables and the whole way we work. It is legitimate to think about how changes in technology might affect the way we do our business, which, after all, has been continuously evolving since the Middle Ages. We are now in the 21st century; technology has transformed everything else in life today and it would be rather odd if it did not have the same potential in this context.

I suspect that the implications of some of the points I have touched on may be thought quite radical—possibly far too radical for some—but when we are trying to reduce a London-centric bias in the way this country is organised, I do not think that an excessive metropolitan bias in the character of its Parliament is necessary or, nowadays, desirable, not least when novel approaches for dealing with it are becoming ever more possible day by day. While the purpose of and rationale for Parliament is unchanging, the way we do it can and should change if appropriate.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Non-Afl)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Hannan of Kingsclere.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it was at the beginning of March, in my capacity as chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, that I spoke to your Lordships about our actions and responses to the Covid-19 plague as it was then affecting the county. I would like to touch on this again now. On that occasion, I said that the problem was simple: cash was running out and it was more cash that was needed—not next year, not next week, but now. It is as true today as it was three months ago. There is nothing remarkable about this view, but it is true, and it is to the Government’s credit, despite some mixed messaging on the way, that they have grasped that point, and hence we have this Bill. It is equally to all the opposition parties’ credit that they have also done so.

I believe it is a good metaphor for our national predicament to say that we are in a national shipwreck. The boat is badly damaged, but it is still afloat. We now have to get it to port, get it repaired and set sail again. This, of course, requires a different set of measures from those that, at the start of the year, were normal. We now have to crank up the economy and do it quickly, not least—as the Minister said in his opening remarks—in respect of hospitality, business and the visitor economy and associated activities, which are so important in Cumbria. If we can find a way of keeping the weather good, that would equally be a help. However, we are going to have to accept that in the next few months, it is not going to be business as usual, and we have to do our best to help those most affected survive the storm they are experiencing.

I have had an involvement with planning for much of my working life, and I believe we have to have a planning system, not because I believe in a command economy, but because, on a densely populated small island in a very complicated world, the rest of us are entitled to be protected from the excesses of selfishness, greed, thoughtlessness and philistinism. It is not the principle but the way the system has worked that has on occasions been problematic.

One aspect of the economy that this crisis has highlighted is the role of debt. Everything works well when things go well, but when things go wrong and start unravelling, as they sometimes do, it often happens very quickly. Those who lend money like to get it back. We must not, I believe, be too clever by half in our approach to bringing our economy back from this mess. Those businesses that survived the crisis must not be killed by the cure. Business—which, after all, is the source of jobs and prosperity—does all kinds of things, some of them a bit eccentric, many of them in a rather idiosyncratic way. However, commercial resilience and sustainability depend upon adequate levels of working capital and reserves. They need to be cherished.

Having said all that, there can be little doubt that this Bill, with its temporary measures, is something we should generally support at this point in our history. The immediate economic imperative must be to get our economy back working again.