Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, like many other noble Lords, I thought this day would never come, but I am very glad that it has. The fact that the Palace of Westminster is in imminent danger of the collapse of one or more of its essential services is a major indictment of previous Parliaments and Governments. Having taken the initiative and established the Joint Committee on the Palace of Westminster—I too pay tribute to its work—it is a particular indictment of this Government that they have allowed 17 months to elapse before even agreeing to a debate being scheduled.

The delay apparently flowed from the personal unwillingness of the Prime Minister to countenance a few potentially hostile headlines. The fact that the safety of those working daily in the Palace was at risk seems to have weighed less heavily with her. On this issue, as on so many others, she has displayed a shameful lack of leadership in a manner which has now become her hallmark. We are, however, now faced with a Motion which will belatedly allow us to make progress and, although this is not a whipped vote, it has my personal strong support and, I believe, the overwhelming support of these Benches. I particularly pay tribute to Chris Bryant MP for successfully steering this Motion through the Commons against, it has to be said, the position of the Government, and that is a signal achievement. I hope, therefore, that the sponsor board and delivery authority will now be established as speedily as possible and that the decant can start as speedily as possible. I do think that 2025 seems like a very long time away, and I hope that we can, if anything, move more quickly than that.

I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, said. I am disappointed that he has so little faith in the strength of our parliamentary institutions, and indeed in us as parliamentarians, as to suggest that if we move out of this building, suddenly the principles that we hold dear will be undermined. I am sure that that would not be the case for him: if he were to move somewhere else, he would not stop being the profound democrat that he is. I hope I would not, and I am sure that other noble Lords and Members of the other place would not. I just do not think that that is a valid argument. As for St Pancras, the trains may more or less have kept running, but, unless I am very much mistaken, the hotel, which is a more direct analogy to this place, did not keep its bars, restaurants or rooms open through the entire refurbishment process.

As we set up the new bodies to run this process, we will need to give a lot of thought to their relationship with Members of both Houses. In particular, we must avoid the situation so brilliantly described in Caroline Shenton’s book about the building of the palace, Mr Barry’s War. She describes the continual delays and frustrations caused by a never-ending sequence of Select Committees set up especially to examine the design and construction process. We will need to establish at the start a clear and manageable reporting mechanism of the sponsor board, in particular to both Houses. It will also be extremely important for the sponsor board to put in place a comprehensive communications strategy with parliamentarians and more generally. If people know what is going on, they are more likely to be supportive. Transparency and consultation must be the watchwords of the board.

As for the approach taken to the work, I hope that it will be ambitious. The restoration of the Bundestag shows what can be achieved if there is a bold vision of what the newly restored Parliament can be. I hope that this will be taken as a model. It may be difficult and unnecessary to make major changes to the Chamber itself, and it would be presumptuous of me to make any suggestions about what they do at the Commons end. But beyond those spaces which are currently public, and rightly protected, there are many opportunities for change, in ways which can improve facilities for Members and visitors alike. My personal hope is that many of the internal courtyards will be enclosed so that further meeting rooms, and possibly classrooms, can be created. I gather that the basements, once cleared of the detritus of over l50 years of equipment, might yield space which can be more constructively employed.

When it comes to the process and to letting the tenders, I wonder whether we should think of doing this in two stages: first, a tender and a process for clearing out; and, secondly, another to decide what to finally put in. I suspect that, as anybody who has renovated an old building knows, once we take everything out, we will discover all kinds of things that we did not realise were there in the first place.

As for the decant option, the QEII Centre seems the most obvious choice for us. Whatever we do, life is likely to become more difficult, particularly our interactions with Commons colleagues. But the combination of Richmond House and the QEII Centre will probably minimise this inevitable disruption.

When we recently debated how to reduce the size of your Lordships’ House, it was clear that many people thought that the move to the QEII Centre would lead to a number of your Lordships deciding to retire. This is not exactly an uplifting view of why noble Lords choose to remain here when they might retire anyway, but it is probably the reality. So my first thought was that in order to achieve the maximum reduction in numbers, we should have the most spartan arrangements in the QEII Centre, by pensioning off the armchairs in the Library perhaps, or not replicating the gentle pleasures of the Bishops’ Bar. However, having given the matter more thought, I think that we also have to guard against the opposite threat: that arrangements in the new facilities are so spartan that even Peers who are minded to be active are put off by them. There is a real problem, for example, with our irregular and unplanned timing of votes when those with offices in Millbank and Fielden House will no longer be able to reach the Lobbies in the eight minutes after a vote is called. If we are to continue with voting on important matters up to the dinner hour, we will need to ensure that there are enough facilities in the QEII Centre to cater for large numbers of Members over large amounts of time.

Whatever we do, we must now get on and do it. Many noble Lords have now visited the basements and seen the horrendous conditions down there. It is a tribute to Victorian engineering that many near-original features still operate—the sewage ejection system, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, referred, was installed in 1888—but their day is long done. This Motion today gives us the chance to consign them to history, which is where they surely now ought to go.