Restoration and Renewal

Lord McLoughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McLoughlin (Con)]

My Lords, I very much regret the situation that we find ourselves in today. I served on the sponsor body until the last general election, with the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and others, and it is worth remembering that one of the reasons the sponsor body was put in place was that it was based on the backdrop of the successful delivery of the Olympic Games in 2012. It was very much based on the way the Olympic sponsor body was set up, to get on and do the job.

There is no doubt that this project will be vastly expensive and no Government, be they Labour or Conservative, will want to commit that kind of money to it. I look at the Elizabeth Tower as it is today. What a fantastic example of restoration that is. Yes, the costs overran, but the Elizabeth Tower is seen as a symbol of the United Kingdom around the world—it is absolutely prominent. While it was being prepared, it looked awful. In fact, when most people go past the Palace of Westminster today, they think we have started restoration and that we are committed to doing it. We are doing not restoration but repair, because in places the building is falling down.

I understand why we are where we are today and the sensitivity about the whole decant. When I spoke in the other place on this matter, I made the case that one of the large infrastructure projects that I saw commenced when I was Secretary of State for Transport was the rebuilding of London Bridge station. That was four years of sheer hell because it was still being operated. If you look at it today, everybody says what a fantastic job has been done, and likewise with some of the other restorations that have taken place.

The simple fact is that restoration is incredibly complicated and very difficult to do. I very much sympathise with what the commission has been saying. However, one suggestion I would like to make at this point is that perhaps we should think in the future of giving the planning authority to the Commons so that it can get on with the job. I fear that there will have to be a decant. Nobody really likes the idea that some of the works that need to be done, certainly in the basement or the cellars, will require it, but it will be impossible without it. Parliament used to have a three-month Recess and sometimes a lot of the building work was done in it. That is now seen as impractical and something that we will not go back to. I do not think we should—there might be a desire for it but I would certainly not like to see the headlines in the papers. I can say that today because I think the headlines in the papers tomorrow will be of a different nature. Therefore, I do not think we will go back to that position. Now, however, the whole Palace is almost like a building site; that is not to take away from the very difficult jobs that a lot of people do in and around the building, trying to maintain it.

I should like to see us give ourselves our own planning permission and to see 24/7 working once we start that basement work. We could get access via the river; that could be one way of overcoming the problem. Some of the things that the sponsor body has been attacked for coming up with were never its plans in the first instance. The whole Richmond House idea was not something that the sponsor body did; it was told that it had to do that. Sometimes I feel that elements of the sponsor body have been unfairly criticised for coming forward with proposals that were not originally theirs—the body was told that it was necessary to do them.

The noble Lord, Lisvane, aptly summed up the challenge to us. It is a huge challenge. I understand why the Leader of the House and the commission have come forward with today’s proposals, and that is why I will support them tonight. However, this is an incredibly special building, not just in the United Kingdom but in the world, and we need to make sure that it is looked after and maintained to the highest possible standards.

Part of the reason we are in the mess we are in is that past Governments have not wanted to do any of this work. There has to come a time when we are on the front foot, saying why it is right and necessary to do it. I hope that the Leader of the House can reassure us that this will not lead to even longer delays. If we get longer delays, one day there might be a catastrophic incident and then people will say, “Why didn’t you do this before when you knew about it?” We did know about it but, at the moment, we are not acting.