Business of the House
Mark Tami Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Order. A Whip should not just walk through when people are addressing—
Draft Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body (Abolition) Regulations 2022
Mark Tami Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
I should say that I am currently a member of the sponsor body, although not for much longer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West said, I have had the pleasure or the misfortune—whichever way you want to look at it—to sit on, I think, every single Committee that has looked at this process since it began.
I used to work with a colleague who, when he was given legal advice he did not like, would tell us to get another lawyer, and would keep doing so until he got the answer he wanted. That really sums up where we are today. The sponsor body was given a task, and I think it carried out that task very well. The problem is that certain individuals in this place—I will not name them—did not like that, and they did not like what the sponsor body came up with. I think the sponsor body was very honest, and did a hell of a lot of work on this project, but it is not going to be a quick project; it is not going to be a cheap project; and it will be a project where, whatever people want, we will end up having to move out of this building. The fact is that some people do not want to move out, and now, after years of work and hundreds of millions of pounds, I would say that we are back at the beginning again, but I think we are actually further back than when we started.
We also need to remember why the model of the sponsor board and delivery authority was chosen in the first place. Following on from the Olympic model, recognising that this was not going to be a project that could be delivered in one term of a Parliament and that colleagues and views change from one election to the next, we needed a structure that took the project away from us tampering and changing our mind on everything. As my hon. Friend has said, the danger is that we do not actually get anywhere with this, because it is always too difficult for one Parliament to do it.
Colleagues have said, “We need to deliver it quicker, and we need to spend less money.” I would like to see how we square that circle. However, the decision has been made, so we are where we are. We will probably regret what we are doing today; I think bringing the project in-house is a mistake. Certainly, if we look at the many projects that have been delivered in-house, it is not a great record of success in terms of cost and time, but we are where we are.
I have one final point, which is on engagement. I have chaired many sessions, and we all know what we are like in this place: we all say we want more engagement—we want people to talk to us more—but we do not turn up to the meetings, because we have got something else to do. That is the reality of the situation: the decision has effectively been made, but I fear we will rue that decision.
Penny Mordaunt
I do not want to pre-empt the work that is being done next year, but the hon. Lady is right. I am very sceptical about us being able to dislodge their lordships for starters. Although there will be things that can be done to work around and bypass systems while they are worked on, we obviously have to take into account noise, disruption and a whole raft of things. I think the majority of our colleagues want to minimise the amount of time we are out of the building. Of course they do. I think the problem that happened with what she refers to is that, quite rightly, people were given a task, but the conclusions people came to were too far adrift from the expectations.
I think there is a way through this, but unless we change the approach, get granularity in so we can see the schedule of works that needs to happen, and unless we can get into that Chamber and have a proper survey done, we will not move forward fast. That is our shared aim, and I think that is where we will get to. The right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside, who has put in more hours than most on this, rightly notes that today we are just implementing a decision of both Houses. I want to make progress, and I want people to be prepared when they are considering standing for election and when colleagues are considering re-standing that they know what future Parliaments will look like in this place. I think we will be helping ourselves.
Penny Mordaunt
I completely agree. That is why I made that point. What we are doing with this new governance structure places them at the heart of this. They should be at the forefront of our minds, and they also need to be consulted as we are getting the more granular programme together.
Finally, though I was not directly involved in it, I think lessons have been learned from the experience of the Elizabeth Tower and other projects that have been brought in house. We are getting some very good external expertise into these governance structures, and greater oversight, scrutiny and audit is of course to be welcomed. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for being here today. We are delivering on the will of both Houses of Parliament, and I will do my utmost, working closely with the shadow Leader, to ensure the pragmatism that we all want to see is brought to fruition swiftly.
Question put and agreed to.
Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster
Mark Tami Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this timely debate on how we will govern the essential programme of works needed to preserve the heart of our democracy for years and generations come.
Only yesterday, the sitting of this House was suspended as water poured in. It is not the first time that business has been disrupted by a potentially unsafe working environment, and while yesterday’s sitting was suspended for only an hour, who knows how long we could be forced out next time? Electrical, plumbing or mechanical failure—there is urgent work to be done, so I am glad that we have the chance to get things moving again today.
Whether it is the weight of history on one’s shoulders as one walks through the 11th-century Westminster Hall, or the beauty of the sunlight beaming across New Palace Yard through the colonnades, the honour of working on a UNESCO world heritage site comes with a duty to be a responsible custodian. It is an honour to work in the Palace of Westminster, with all its architectural, cultural and historical significance. We also have legal and moral obligations to preserve this listed building, which around the world is a symbol of Britain and our democracy. But those who work here need to be able to carry out the functions of a modern-day Parliament, and those who visit here ought to be able to experience the Palace in all its glory, and they must be able to do so safely.
Whether they are working or visiting, everyone on the parliamentary estate must not only be but feel safe—safe from falling masonry, safe from asbestos, safe from a catastrophic failure of the building. I share the fears of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that we are heading for that catastrophic failure if we do nothing. I recognise the concerns of right hon. and hon. Friends and Members in all parts of the House that that is where we are heading.
When I say everyone, I truly mean it. The estate must also be made more accessible to people with disabilities. Not only does the lack of accessibility make visiting the estate difficult, but it disenfranchises a talented group of people from working in Parliament. Restoration and renewal could provide opportunities to improve access and step-free accessibility, as well as visitor facilities.
I think no one is likely to disagree with anything I have said, which is similar to much of what the Leader of the House said, so Members could be forgiven for wondering why we are here—why we are where we are in the restoration and renewal of the Palace. In 2018, the Commons and the Lords agreed that work was pressing and rightly concluded that it should be undertaken by a statutory sponsor body and delivery authority. Subsequently, as my amendment highlights—it pains me to have to say this, but I do have to and I notified the right hon. Gentleman that I would—the former Leader of the House of Commons, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), worked to undermine progress and spent time wrangling with experts instead of working with them to secure the future of the building. We must follow the evidence and the advice of experts. I did think that the Government could have learnt by now that ignoring experts is just not advisable. I am afraid to say that in my view there is a political dimension. The Leader of the House asked me not to make it a party political matter. I am afraid to say that there is a huge aspect that is. It is on certain members of the Government that we are here. The right hon. Member for North East Somerset just kept changing the goal posts. I have seen that happen. That is typical of the whole Government.
However, today’s motion, much as I might regret that we are here, is purely about the governance structure of the works. As shadow Leader and therefore member of the House of Commons Commission, I was part of the Joint Commission that took this decision, as the right hon. Gentleman said. I will support the motion. I do so not because I am happy with how we got here—I am very much not—but because it seems to me that we are running out of other options. I do not want to undermine the skill and undoubted dedication of the people involved in the Sponsor Body, but for whatever reason—there is a range of reasons—confidence had been lost over emerging costs and so on. The Independent Expert Panel reviewed the situation and has concluded that the current model is unlikely to be viable.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
My hon. Friend talks about costs and we have heard about spiralling costs. The Sponsor Body has been honest about what the costs are. One of the biggest problems in this place is that we come up with figures—the Queen Elizabeth Tower being a classic example—that are totally unrealistic. We have to be honest that this project will cost a lot of money.
Thangam Debbonaire
My right hon. Friend is exactly right. We do not have to be expert builders to see that this is going to cost money and it is going to take time. I see no alternative to both Houses having to move out for a period of time, as yet undetermined.
I also say in response to my right hon. Friend that this shows the critical role of the Commons Finance Committee, the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission, chaired so ably by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), and the Public Accounts Committee, which has done such excellent work. Members of the PAC are here today and are very knowledgeable and skilled at exactly that sort of line by line scrutiny. We would need that whoever was commissioning the works—whether it was the Sponsor Body, and both Committees have paid close attention to the current structure, or any future structure.
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is new to this. I recognise that both as a friend and a thoughtful politician he is approaching this in the way he judges the most sensible, so I do not want him to take any of the comments from me or from other Members tonight as being about him, but it is about seven years of failure, in my view.
We are standing in what is, for all of us, the office, but it is also a global landmark. We have all seen how—thank goodness, in the wake of the pandemic—the streets outside are full of tourists again. People come here to be photographed alongside the Elizabeth Tower and see this building as a symbol of the United Kingdom. The reality is that it is a world heritage site. People who question whether we should spend money on updating, restoring and protecting it, and say that we should move to a new building elsewhere, miss the point that we have a legal duty, whatever we do as a democracy, to restore this building and protect it for the future.
Back in 2015, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and I, and others, including the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), sat on a Joint Committee of both Houses saying, “What are we going to do about the problem?” It is a very real and acute problem. When I became Leader of the House in 2015, about four days later, we very nearly had to relocate out of this building because up there in the vents the engineers found asbestos. Had they discovered that that asbestos had been disturbed—fortunately it had not; it had remained unmoved for decades—we would have had no choice but to close the Chamber for months and months.
That kind of risk is with us every day of every week. The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) referred to the leak yesterday. Thank goodness it was a small problem. But we saw what happened at Notre Dame. Yes, the Leader of the House is right that it was down to a workman in the building doing the wrong thing, but we have workmen right across this building all the time, and it can happen. We saw what happened at Clandon Park. The thing that really brought it home to me at the time of the Joint Committee was when Kingsway caught fire—a road caught fire—because of electrical problems underneath its surface, and it burned for about two days.
The shadow Leader of the House is absolutely right: the fire service have always said, as they said back in 2015—it is not just about now—that, if there is a serious incident in this place, they could save the people but they could not save the building. So every day of every week in this building, we live with the risk that we may discover that an asbestos problem or a critical failure of the plumbing system means that we have to move.
Mark Tami
The right hon. Gentleman is a fellow person who has been at this for seven years. We have already seen a release of asbestos in Speaker’s House that will lead to a group of people having to be monitored for probably about 40 years to see whether in those terrible circumstances anything actually develops, and that can happen in any part of the building.
Chris Grayling
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We went through all this seven years ago. It is hugely frustrating to me that we are here seven years later still working out what to do about it. I thought that we would have done something by the time we got to 2022.
The right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Rhondda will remember me pushing hard to get the northern estate project started so that we could move on and decant quickly. At least the northern estate, or some parts of it, is being done, and we have taken over Richmond House, as we planned at the time, but here we are seven years later still discussing how we are going to do this. It is not about discussing how we are going to do it starting in about a year’s time. I cannot see how we quickly get to a point where the works are actually starting. With every week that goes by, there is the risk that we as Members of Parliament wake up in the morning and discover that we have relocated to Church House indefinitely. We have to accept that.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
It is four and a half years since we reached our decision and I think it has been said that it is seven years since we started the whole process, and where are we? Nowhere. We are back where we started.
I should say that I am a member of the Sponsor Body—until we abolish it, that is. I believe it has carried out the task that it was set. The fact that certain individuals do not like the recommendation for a full decant is not the fault of the Sponsor Body. If the House wants to change the remit or scope of the project, that is fine, but let us not blame the Sponsor Body. Let us at least have the good grace to be honest about that, and let us not make up stories such as “Restoral and renewal was responsible for the change of Speaker”, because that simply is not true: it had absolutely nothing to do with R&R.
As a number of Members have pointed out, we should not forget why we chose the structure that we did choose, learning from the Olympics and recognising that this place would change. In the event of a project which, however it is carried out, will continue for many years, Members will change, Governments will change and there will be different views, but what we recognised at the time was that that should not be allowed to undermine this project—which is exactly what has happened. The project has been derailed by a constant stream of new asks, all with one aim: to delay. We have heard suggestions that the House of Lords should move to York, or, more recently, to Wolverhampton, Stoke, Burnley, Edinburgh, Sunderland or Plymouth. I am sure that they are all fine places, but those suggestions were not realistic.
More time was wasted by the suggestion that we should not decant at all. I challenge any Member to come up with any report or any figures that suggest that it is cheaper to stay here than to move out. We need to be honest about that. Then we had the Richmond House debacle. Those who were opposed to a decant seized on Richmond House: they became great defenders of it, which, surprisingly, very few of them had seemed to be previously. Why was that? Because they saw Richmond House as a convenient vehicle for more dither and delay.
So what is the plan now? It is to get rid of the Sponsor Body and bring the function in-house, creating some new department and some hotchpotch of a new governance structure.
In all honesty, we are being asked to rubber-stamp a decision that has already been made. That is the reality of the situation. Parliament decided something, but that does not matter because behind closed doors, the two Commissions have decided to do something completely different. That is the reality of the situation. We can dress it up as much as we like but that is effectively what has happened.
As a number of Members have mentioned, we do not have a great record on doing things internally. I know that the cast iron roofs are always wheeled out as a great example, but the Elizabeth Tower has been mentioned, and Derby Gate is another project that went massively over cost and time. One of my favourites—not one of the biggest projects—was the Cromwell Green security entrance, which I think was condemned after 10 years because of leaks, with water pouring through when it is raining. So we have to be honest: we are not very good at doing this. We do not have the experience or the expertise to manage such projects. I am not blaming the people in-house; it is not their fault, but we sometimes set them tasks that they are unable to do because they do not have that expertise. That is why we drew up the model that we did, but if we go down the road that we are going down, we are going to repeat those mistakes.
One thing I will challenge, which I have heard being put about, is that one of the failings of the Sponsor Body was that it did not consult Members. Actually, there have been loads of consultations and loads of individual consultations. I have had the pleasure, or misfortune, of chairing numerous meetings where one, two or three people—and sometimes no people—would turn up. Maybe that was me; maybe it was just the fact that I was chairing them and nobody wanted to go. But this is the nature of politicians. We moan and groan about people not consulting us, but we do not take up the consultation when it is available. So I think that is a really unfair criticism of the Sponsor Body, because a lot of people worked extremely hard to make sure that Members had the opportunity to express their views.
Kirsty Blackman
Just to link that to the hon. Member’s earlier point, does he think there is much point in consulting all the Members when the House of Commons Commissioners are going to make a decision anyway that might be totally different from what Members have said?
Mark Tami
That is a very fair point. As I said, the decision has effectively been made.
Let us be honest: it is not about the cost; it is not about the time it will take; and it is certainly not about the people who actually work in here. So what is it about? It is about people who want to stay in here, come what may, with some fantasy vision that we can somehow live in a little bubble in here, that we can stay put, come what may, while everyone works around us, and that we can come up with some costings and then say, “We don’t like that costing so we are going to halve it or quarter it”, and somehow the project can be done for that amount. We are ignoring the reality, and just because the Sponsor Body gave us that reality, we do not like it. The Leader of the House does not like it, so he says we are going to come up with something else and do it on a cheaper basis. It is as if we did not look at these things seven years ago. But this is where we are. As I said, I do not really know why we are having this debate, because the decision was made behind closed doors some time ago. That is a very sad state of affairs, and the House will rue this decision.
Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body
Mark Tami Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
I am sure that the Leader of the House has other things on his mind at the moment, but as a north Wales MP, I welcome the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) to the board. I am sure that he will play an important role.
Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body
Mark Tami Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
I also thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for all the work that he has done, and welcome the new members, Mr Lewis and, of course, the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). I am sure that they will be keen to build a business case as quickly as possible—the business case that this place needs and that will be put to the House, because the one thing that we cannot do is what we have been doing for too long: kicking the can down the road.
With the greatest respect, the Leader of the House is a champion can kicker. He is one of the best can kickers I have ever seen. He is an expert at can kicking. No one is better in this House. But we cannot keep doing that, because not only is this about the Chamber and this place; it is also about the other buildings on the parliamentary estate. Portcullis House has a leaking roof and an atrium roof that is becoming increasingly unsafe. Norman Shaw South was out for five weeks. It was just fortunate that that happened when the recess was under way. Even the usually reliable Parliament Street building is leaking in places. We really need to get on with the job.
The one thing that I would say to the new members of the board and to the House is that nobody on the sponsor body wants to create Disneyland. I have been there—it is terrible! I did not enjoy Disneyland. We are not going to create it and we are not going to spend the sort of money that the Leader of the House thinks we are. The only people living in a fantasy world are those who think we can put this off and ignore it, and that ignoring the issue does not cost money. It does. It is costing a fortune—year in, year out. We really need to get on the job and make sure that we have a Parliament that is fit not just for now, but for the centuries ahead.
Question put and agreed to.
Business of the House
Mark Tami Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think the hon. Lady was ungallant in relation to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), who has been a very hard-working and diligent public servant over many years. It is inelegant not to thank people after a reshuffle for the service they have provided and to gloat instead; I am rather surprised at the hon. Lady behaving in that way.
The hon. Lady made some important points about inflation, but she will of course remember that monetary policy is run independently by the Bank of England, as a result of a decision taken by Gordon Brown when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997. The main control of inflation therefore rests with an independent body, but Her Majesty’s Government are doing their side of the bargain, although opposed by the Opposition, in ensuring that fiscal policy is responsible.
The two causes of inflation are widely believed to be the connection between monetary policy and fiscal policy. One of them is independently determined, but Her Majesty’s Government have taken steps to shore up the finances of this country. That must be correct, and the sensible and right thing to do, and universal credit is part of that; £9 billion of additional support has been provided to people on UC during the pandemic as exceptional support because of the circumstances that arose during the pandemic. As the pandemic is ending and as the furlough scheme is ending, it is right that we return to normal. What my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions so rightly pointed out was that those on UC who have children or limited capability to work, for example, through a disability, are able to earn up to £293 per month before the taper rate kicks in, rising to £515 for those who do not receive housing support. What she said is absolutely right and reasonable.
The hon. Lady then moved on to the issue of children in poverty, so I can point out to her that since 2010, a period of majority Conservative government, 100,000 fewer children are living in absolute poverty. That is one of the successes of which those on this side of the House are rightly proud. There is up to £2,000 per year per child of tax-free childcare, which was introduced by the Conservatives. We have given her an Opposition day next week if she wants a debate on that. She may have been listening when I read that out, but in case she was not, let me read it out again: the subject is to be announced. Perhaps she is hinting at what the subject may be, but it seems to me that when time is provided for an Opposition day and the hon. Lady raises pressing issues, one can fit a round peg in a round hole, and she can answer her own question.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made it clear that the covid inquiry will begin before the end of this parliamentary Session. This Session will run, as usual—since the reforms in 2010—until around May, so the date has already been set out.
The right hon. Lady—the hon. Lady; I am sorry to have promoted her inadvertently, though no doubt the Privy Council for her is merely a matter of time—raised the question of suspension from this House and recall. The Government did bring forward a motion, one that was agreed by the Commission and supported by the chairman of the independent expert panel, and it was a pity that the hon. Lady blocked it. If she decides not to block it, it will be back on the Order Paper straightaway. [Interruption.] She chunters, “Amended it.” She is an experienced parliamentarian and knows full well that amendments block when there is not time set aside for debate: so she blocked it.
As regards restoration and renewal, the hon. Lady’s oratory on my views was fundamentally inaccurate. It is well recognised that work needs to be carried out and that we need to re-plumb and re-wire. We have already done a huge amount of work ensuring that the fire safety systems are improved, and we had a successful fire safety test earlier this week to ensure that the structure of the building and the lives within the building are safe. The work is planned and I am supporting it enthusiastically.
Mr Rees-Mogg
That is a very helpful heckle. The right hon. Gentleman is a great expert on this issue and asbestos is one of the key parts of it.
What I have always been opposed to is spending very large amounts of taxpayers’ money. We had forecasts of £10 billion to £20 billion for trying to turn this place into Disneyland. That I am opposed to; that I will continue to be opposed to. We want rewiring, replumbing and the removal of asbestos, but we do not want Disneyland.
English Votes for English Laws
Mark Tami Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Rees-Mogg
The West Lothian question has not had a very satisfactory answer since it was posed by Tam Dalyell, who was a most distinguished Member of this House, but if there were an answer, EVEL would not be it.
The EVEL measures were first proposed by way of a counterpoise to the extension of devolution, which saw further legislative powers handed to the devolved Administrations and their Parliaments in the wake of the 2014 once-in-a-generation Scottish independence referendum. The argument put forward then, as some Members may recall from a Chequers summit held at that time, was that an English votes for English laws process represented an honest attempt to answer the West Lothian question.
Proposals for Standing Order changes were not brought forward until after the 2015 general election, during which the potential influence of Scottish MPs on English matters featured especially prominently. Some Members may remember a rather marvellous election poster, depicting the then Leader of the Opposition tucked into the pocket of Mr Alex Salmond in the place of a pocket handkerchief. Once the initial excitement over the proposals’ introduction had abated, it quickly became obvious that their practical implementation would prove unwieldy and—dare I say it?—even baffling.
The procedure amended the legislative process to provide MPs representing English constituencies—or English and Welsh constituencies—with the opportunity to have an additional say on matters that applied to England only or England and Wales only. The procedure also applies to legislation introducing a tax measure that affects only England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which must be approved by a majority of MPs representing constituencies in those areas.
Mark Tami
I represent a border area and many of the specialist hospitals that my constituents go to are on the English side of the border. Indeed, the Countess of Chester Hospital was built as a Welsh and English hospital to serve the residents of Deeside in Wales and Chester in Cheshire. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it was unfair that I could not effectively vote or express a view on that whereas someone from the south-east of England, who had no interest in that matter, could?
Mr Rees-Mogg
As the majority of taxation is set on a United Kingdom basis and the Barnett formula ensures that the level of spending provided for services is proportionate to decisions taken by the Union Parliament, I do not think that is as unreasonable as the right hon. Gentleman suggests. Sometimes the West Lothian question’s significance gets exaggerated.
Last week, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster told the House that the Government believe that the procedure has added complexity and delay to the legislative process. Slightly over 10% of all our Standing Orders are taken up with enabling EVEL-doing and its additional parliamentary stages, notably the Legislative Grand Committee, which is held on the Floor of the House between Report and Third Reading. In theory, that allows English MPs to veto provisions, but not to propose them. In practice, it has resulted only in short-lived and poorly attended debates that have always concluded with English MPs, or English and Welsh MPs, giving their consent to England only, or England and Wales only, provisions.
Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster
Mark Tami Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Many of us, and I hope all of us, love this place. I share that love, obviously, with the Leader of the House—this place, its history, its architecture and what it means to be working in the home of our democracy, one of our greatest traditions and most successful exports. Today, we get our first chance to debate the restoration and renewal of the Palace since a major review recommended that the full decant—moving everybody off the estate for a short period—is required. We will debate whether that is short or long enough, but it is indeed required—for cost as well as for safety and effectiveness.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, this is a place of work, but it is a place of work in which we are the custodians of a world heritage site, a world heritage site that has seeping sewage, asbestos, and pipes and wires going who knows where, doing who knows what, and where there is flood and fire risk. That needs fixing urgently, and we can no longer rely on luck. The public care deeply about this place. The right hon. Gentleman is right to mention our accountability to the taxpayers; they want us to spend the money wisely, and they deserve to have this monument to democracy preserved as a place of business in a way that they may continue to be part of, scrutinising our proceedings in this place safely and accessibly.
The House of Commons Commission, before I became a member of it, asked the sponsor body to investigate works for “a continued presence” on the estate. However, the review has already recommended that the best and most cost-effective thing is to continue with a full decant. We cannot carry on like this, endlessly going backwards and forwards, with debates and reviews, endlessly revisiting decisions that have been taken. I declare right now, if it is not already obvious, that I am firmly in the camp that many MPs, staff, trade unions and specialists are in, which is the “let’s get on with it” camp.
I know what it is like—I understand right hon. and hon. Members who worry about missing this place. I know what it is like to miss it and, like all of us, at some point to wonder whether we will even return to it after an election. We all come to this place knowing that we could leave at short notice, and we all want to make the most of it while we are here. Only those with a heart of stone could fail to be moved by the magnificence of Westminster Hall—a millennium of history, a cathedral to democratic representation and civic engagement, from the throwing of ordure in the civil war to, yes, the gift shop and caff. There is, too, the wonderful art of the “New Dawn” stained glass, celebrating women’s suffrage. I get that people are in love with this building—I am, too.
I will never forget my first experience of this Palace, as a young campaigner wanting to change the law on domestic violence, sitting right up there in the visitors’ Gallery till the early hours of the morning, watching the debate on a law that I had helped to shape and hearing a Labour Front Bencher—from this Dispatch Box—propose amendments that I had campaigned and provided the evidence for. I felt in awe of what happens when democratically elected representatives—not just the campaigners—are convinced of an argument sufficiently to change the law of the land in ways that benefit millions of people.
After being taken for tea in what I now realise must have been the cafeteria, the late noble Lord Russell, with whom we had been working, took my colleague and me back through the Palace to his car to give us a lift to the station. As we turned a corner, I heard what I still swear was Shirley Bassey singing. I cannot prove that but, if any hon. Members were here in 1996, on Third Reading of the Family Law Act 1996, I will be grateful if they could not disabuse me of that special memory and tell me that, actually, it was they who were singing “Goldfinger” at 3 o’clock in the morning. My heart stopped as I saw for the first time the Gothic temple that is Central Lobby and heard that voice.
I never tire of skipping up the majestic staircase from Members’ Cloakroom to Members’ Lobby, thinking of Members in times past who had to do their casework on their briefcases at one of the side seats. The Library is where I have done some of my best work for my constituents, researching their problems, finding solutions and, of course, gazing at the river outside. Make the most of it. Enjoy the Library, make friends with the Members’ staircase and marvel at Westminster Hall, but please do not let us be selfish and mess this up by blocking what is needed to preserve this place as a place of democracy, either by insisting on keeping a presence—thereby introducing delays, further expense and possible risks to safety—or by endlessly delaying it. The work need doing, and doing urgently, if we are to hand over this place and its history to the next generation.
When surveyed, the British people say that they want us to look after Westminster. They support restoration and renewal. Yes, it is a tourist site. The Leader of the House is correct to say that that is not its only significance, but it matters to people so much that they care about it, even if they do not visit. We are its custodians, but the taxpayer, the British people, and their children and grand- children to come, own it. It is theirs. The right hon. Gentleman talks about Members needing to know the price tag, and I completely agree. On behalf our constituents, we have to know that price tag, but we must also know the price of not doing certain works, and of not doing them in a timely manner. In my experience, the price of such things does not tend to go down by delay, and we must understand those counterfactuals.
I understand from the Sponsor Body that we will have clearer information by September and October, but we can already assess some of that from the assessments made so far, and from the evidence of our own eyes, ears and noses. There is leaking sewage. Who here in the summer of 2019 could forget that delicate scent, as they walked down the corridor to the Library? There are wires and plumbing that nobody knows the function of. There is asbestos, flooding, fires—please let us not say, “Well, we’ve managed to avoid disaster so far.” We have been a whisker away too many times, and eventually our luck will run out.
As hon. Members may—or may not—know, in 2016 the Joint Committee recommended a full decant as the safest, quickest, and most cost-effective way of fixing all that. Yes, we have learned a lot in the past year, including that we can be swift enough at moving to different arrangements, and then moving back. In 2018, that decant was endorsed in the Joint Committee’s full report, which also made the case for the Sponsor Body to act as client on our behalf—quite right too; politicians interfering as clients can be incredibly unhelpful—and the Delivery Authority to carry out the work.
Also in 2018, this House rejected the options of a rolling programme or partial decant. We voted for that. We made our views known, and in 2019 we voted for the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019. That Act established the Sponsor Body and Delivery Authority, which came into existence last year. The Sponsor Body was asked to review the full decant, and consider the potential for continued presence in this House throughout the works. It published its recommendations recently, and it strongly recommended that we continue with a full decant on the grounds of value for money, safety, and speed.
If we attempt to maintain a continued presence in this building while building works go on around us, I invite all hon. Members to consider what that would be like. Will the right hon. Gentleman really tell the builders to keep the noise down? If he were to get builders into his own home, and commission them to work on every single part of it, sorting out sewers, wiring, lighting, and removing dangerous materials, would he tell them that he also wants to continue living in the middle of it? What contractor would take on that job?
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that experience suggests that what people say they are prepared to put up with and what they will actually put up with are two very different things?
Thangam Debbonaire
Yes, I could not put it better myself. It would be interesting to know whether the Leader of the House intends to come in here in a high-vis jacket and a hard hat. Will he expect his staff to do the same? He said that we need to maintain our work without being unduly hindered, but we would be hindered on a building site.
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day—surely a day to take stock and to reflect on what that means for restoration and renewal. If any hon. Members have accompanied a constituent in a wheelchair around this place, they will have experienced, as I have, the acute, painful embarrassment of realising that the democracy we prize is on show for them only via a very awkward, pre-booked route, if that.
If Members have been here with partially sighted constituents, they may have noticed poor lighting and hidden hazards around the building. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for recognising my commitment to autism awareness, which is at least in part inspired by our much missed colleague, Cheryl Gillan—surely no Member here has not been on her training course—and any Member aware of that issue will know what a challenge this place is for many autistic people, and that making it good for autistic people, and for those with disabilities, makes it better for us all.
Disabled people make up 10% of the population—our voters. They have a right to be here. They have a right to scrutinise us. They have a right to be unimpeded witnesses to democracy. Are we really saying that they should not have that?
Our staff and the thousands of other staff who work on the parliamentary estate are dedicated public servants. They are patriots; they love this country and the democratic institution of Parliament. They come to this place each day to serve it and the people of this country. They deserve our gratitude, and like so many public servants, they deserve a pay rise, especially those who kept coming into the building throughout the pandemic, although that is not the subject of the debate. They surely deserve safe working conditions.
A full decant will ensure that staff have the safest possible conditions in which to work while the works are done and when they are over. Remaining on the estate will mean that those who are required to be here—although that may be a smaller group than once thought, some will be—will not have safe working conditions while that work is going on. It will put them in an intolerable position. It will mean delays. It will mean risks. It will mean that those staff required to be on the estate will have to tolerate all of that.
Many of those staff will outlast many of us, but they will not have had a say or a vote. They may have been consulted, but that is not the same as what we have. We have decision-making powers that we need to take seriously on behalf of our staff, parliamentary staff and our constituents. We have had our say, we have taken a vote and we need to honour that commitment. I invite the right hon. Gentleman to imagine himself saying to the Doorkeepers, cleaners and Clerks that some of them will be required to work on a building site, which will remain a fire risk and where asbestos is being removed. I wonder if he will ask his own staff to do that.
Please let us get on with this. The right hon. Gentleman mentions the value of quiet words with Ministers in corridors. He must know that other corridors exist. Ears of Ministers can be bent in corridors far and wide. Some of us may not be MPs by the time the work is done—if we get a move on, some of us might be—but it is not about us. It is about the British people, their love of democracy and the rule of law and their right of safe access to bear witness to the lawmaking done in their name. It is about making sure that our staff and the entire parliamentary staff have a safe place to work as soon as possible, without working in risky situations in between. It is about the public of the future. If we mess this up and it ends up costing us more through delay and removing essential parts of the works, they will rightly blame us for putting off what should not have been put off, for fudging what should have been done with clarity and for failing to avert a disaster that could and should have been avoided.
For goodness’ sake, let us heed the assessments of the experts, let us allow the Sponsor Body to get on with creating the detailed plans for the outline business case and costing, and let us commission the Delivery Authority as soon as we have those agreed plans. Politicians do not make good project managers for things like this. That is why we voted for the Sponsor Body. We interfere beyond our skills, we change our minds, we have to think about elections. We are not the experts; we are the custodians, and now that we have been given the information, we need to get a move on. Those who come after us will not thank us if we duck it, but they may just recognise that we were the parliamentary generation that put first the British public and our love of history and democracy and got this done.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Let me start by saying that I agree totally with the words of the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who is very knowledgeable on this subject. I recommend that Members watch her presentation to the Institute for Government, which was also very good.
I remind the House that it is nearly three and a half years since we voted in favour of a full decant and the establishment of the Sponsor Body and the Delivery Authority—which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) said, was enacted in 2019—and nearly five years since the Joint Committee produced its report. I have the pleasure, or some may say the misfortune, of serving on all these bodies, including the current Sponsor Body board. There is great enthusiasm on the board for this project, and work is under way to produce a business case for the required work with the intention of putting it to the House in 2023. Personally, I would like that to happen sooner, but I accept that we have to produce a robust business case and then we need to make our minds up in this House.
Doing nothing, patching up and making do, and pretending it is all fine are not viable options. Carrying on as we are, as if this is somehow a no-cost option, is just ridiculous. We are spending millions of pounds every year on work much of which will probably have to be ripped out and done again as part of the overall project. The Leader of the House is a decent chap but he does not like or accept the decision of this House to decant completely. He believes that we should stay put, even though every estimate that I have seen says that that is the most expensive and time-consuming option that we could choose. I accept that it is an honest view and he believes that that is the best thing for us, but where I would part company with him is in the practice of persistently kicking the can down the road.
The Leader of the House wanted a review of the decision, and that has happened. I hope that he and others will accept that the review broadly went along with the established position and recommended a full decant. It did accept that there are ways in which we could minimise the amount of time that Members are absent from the estate. Of course it is technically possible that we could stay on site, but, as other Members have made very clear, that would probably cost billions more and take 30 years to complete. Not content with these delays, the can has received another good kick and we are to have further work undertaken to find whether we can have some form of presence on the estate. We can go on and on like this, but all it does is to incur more delay and more cost.
Why do we want to stay here? Do we honestly believe that if we move out the world is going to fall apart? Do we believe that this is part of some terrible plot and that if we leave we will not be allowed back in? I have heard all those stories, but they are just not true. As other hon. Members have said, this is not just about us. It is not just about the 650 MPs or the 800-odd Lords; it is about the thousands of staff—the Clerks, Doorkeepers, caterers, cleaners and on and on—who make this place actually function, because, without them, this place would not function. We are the minority, and this should not be just about what is convenient for us; it should be about meeting the requirements, and most importantly ensuring the safety, of everybody.
R and R is not a vanity project, as some would have us believe. It is not a blank cheque to spend public money on luxury surroundings. It is about saving and restoring this great building and, importantly, creating a safe and secure environment for everyone to work in. Of course we have to deliver value for money for the taxpayer, but, equally, we have to deliver a building that can offer much greater access for all and that is actually fit for purpose.
I firmly believe that Richmond House should be the preferred option for a decant for the Commons. However, while knocking most of it down and rebuilding it may offer the best outcome in terms of a useful building, I acknowledge that that is probably not going to happen, and we will have to work within what we have now. That is not the end of the world—far from it. As the Leader of the House said, we have seen during the pandemic that we can do things differently. I am not the biggest fan of electronic voting, but we have managed to make it work. Virtual participation means that the amount of space we will need can be reduced. At the time of the Joint Committee, the Leader of the House was very concerned that we would not get two Division Lobbies, but we could probably live without that.
As the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire said, R and R will be a great opportunity for the country as a whole. The Prime Minister is always going on about shovel-ready projects, and this surely meets that criteria. However, the Leader of the House wants to rip the shovel from the hands of the Prime Minister and throw it in the Thames.
Although R and R is a project in London, it should not be a London-centric project. The Sponsor Body has made very clear its determination that businesses from around the UK should have the opportunity to bid for work. We cannot and must not allow some big company just to dish out the work to its usual mates, as we have seen with many big contracts in the past. We then find that all the steel has come not from the UK but from China. We cannot make those mistakes again. To achieve that, we have to ensure that the tender process, while fit for purpose, does not deter smaller companies because of its cost and its length.
Central to the project must be the establishment of a substantial apprenticeship scheme, hopefully taking on at least 160 or more people from around the UK, creating the next generation of heritage experts. I hope Members will embrace that and encourage businesses and individuals from their areas to play their part in what will be an exciting project.
In the coming months, R and R will be reaching out to Members and Members’ staff and administration staff to help explain and build that business case. I hope colleagues will take part in that and help the process. There are those who will always say that this is not the right time to restore this place—“Let’s just keep putting it off and make it the next generation’s problem.” That has been the approach for 80 years; for 80 years we have been putting it off, patching and making do—"Don’t worry about it. This'll get us through the next 10 years.” We knew the problems then and we know the problems now, and they have just got worse. If we persist in kicking that dreadful can down the road, we will face not only mounting costs, but the real prospect of a catastrophic fire or other significant failure. That would put not only this building at risk, but the lives of the people who work in it. I believe that it must be in everybody’s interests that we just get on with the job and stop putting obstacles in the way. Let us restore this place and create a Parliament fit for the 21st century.
Sir Edward Leigh
That is extremely helpful because, as I said, I have to work with what we have at the moment, and from what the spokesperson for the Sponsor Body now says, we seem to have moved on from the demolition of Richmond House. This will be of enormous comfort to the heritage organisations such as SAVE, with which I have been working very closely. If we are looking at a grade II* listed building, even the lowest level of listing is defined as
“warranting every effort to preserve”
these buildings—that is according to Historic England—and Richmond House is above that. It was, of course, one of the most important public buildings created in the 1980s.
I can cut short my speech, because I appear to be on a bit of a winning streak. I do not really need to quote all the various points that have been made by numerous distinguished architects and historic buildings organisations in favour of Richmond House, which was put up only 30 years ago. Of course, demolishing it would be environmentally unsound.
Mark Tami
I do not want to upset the right hon. Member, but my preferred option would be to knock the building down, apart from the façade, and to create something that would have a useful legacy. The reality is that I do not think that will happen, so we have to work within the given footprint. That would probably mean that we had only one Division Lobby rather than two, which would not be the end of the world.
Sir Edward Leigh
It is so wonderful to all come together and find a way forward. I can provide a way forward, because I have been working with SAVE on the matter. This is called the Mark Hines proposal, and it is from a professional architect. SAVE commissioned Mark Hines Architects to look into preserving Richmond House. He found that a replica Commons Chamber would fit into the Richmond House courtyard. His proposal includes a full Chamber of the same size and layout as at present, Division Lobbies, public and press seating at gallery level—somewhat reduced, understandably —and handicapped access. It would fulfil the full security needs, having a separate public entrance with security clearing area and a blast-proof structure. A private security firm has assessed the plan and said that it meets security requirements.
Architectural plans prove that this is possible. The building could be prefabricated off site and installed using cranes within a matter of months, and independent security consultants confirm that it is as safe as existing proposals. It is professionally costed at £46 million, in contrast to reports in the architectural press that the current plan would cost £1.6 billion. To reassure my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), the former Leader of the House, if the House of Commons insists that we decant and create an alternative Chamber, I proffer that solution. It would save a listed building and provide a perfectly adequate alternative.
I must say that there is an even cheaper proposal, and I hope the House will forgive me if I share it. That is the Anthony Delarue proposal—again, he is a professional architect—which I commissioned. He accepts that a top-to-bottom renovation makes sense, because, as we have heard, the systems need a total revamp. He proposes that we move temporarily to the House of Lords Chamber, as we did in the second world war, and that the House of Lords move to the Royal Gallery. He suggests—this is a professional architect, not me—that these areas could be sectioned off with complete external servicing, with linear access to Portcullis House via New Palace Yard, and with temporary canteens, lavatories and so on accommodated in Old Palace Yard, Victoria Tower Gardens or Abingdon Street Gardens.
That proposal has all the advantages of a full decant. Every electrical socket, bit of wiring, air duct and climate control system can be pulled out and comprehensively done in one go. It solves the most expensive problem—the provision of temporary accommodation—by housing two plenary Chambers within the existing Palace. Richmond House will not be just preserved but integrated into the estate, to house workers displaced from the Palace. The proposal eliminates the lengthy timeframe of potential public inquiries into the demolishing of a listed building. Of course, it retains the QEII conference centre, with all the financial advantages to the Treasury of retaining its income from the centre. That is the proposal. I put it forward as probably the very cheapest option, rather akin to what we did in the second world war. If the House insists on a full decant into Richmond House, however, I proffer the courtyard idea.
None of these plans is set in stone. We can be clever, and we can pick and choose. Surely, time has moved on. As has been said again and again in this debate, we have proved that we can work virtually. I am with the Leader of the House; I do not like virtual working, but it can greatly shorten the time for which we have to be away from this Chamber. There are other proposals I have put which are even cheaper. We know—I know we cannot say much about it—that there is already an emergency alternative pop-up Chamber stored somewhere. If we had to move away for a few months or a year, we could use the atrium of Portcullis House. I met the architect of Portcullis House. He actually designed it so a Chamber could go in the atrium. A Chamber with Division Lobbies could fit exactly in that space. Not ideal, but surely we have proved during this pandemic that we do not have to move out of this place for ever. I was very interested in what the Leader of the House said, and I think what the Chairman of the Committee said, if I remember rightly, that while we would want to move out all the Committees from here, we could actually seal off the Chamber and have access through the corridor past the Prime Minister’s office.
I want to emphasise that this is not a debate between decant and not decant. I am perfectly happy, and all those colleagues on the Back Benches I have been working with are perfectly happy, if we have to decant for a few months, eight months, nine months, a year. What we do not want—I will finish on this point, Madam Deputy Speaker—is a gold-plating operation. We do not want Richmond House demolished. We do not want a permanent replica Chamber created at vast cost. We do not want to surrender our fate to an army of consultants and architects to leave this place and be out of it for five or 10 years. Look at the Canadian example: we could be out of this place for up to 10 years. I do not believe that that is what the public really want. This is a citadel of our democracy. For many people in the world, this democracy is about this building. By all means, let us come together and get on with it, but let us have a short decant, not a long, highly wasteful decant of up to 10 years.
Mark Tami
I thank my hon. Friend for the very kind words she said about me earlier. On the point she is making, I am sure the Leader of the House agrees, because he was also on the Joint Committee, and we spent months—probably more than a year—looking at every one of the options, including using the House of Lords. On the surface it seems quite a sensible case of just moving down there, but as my hon. Friend rightly says this is one building and one set of services. It would be incredibly expensive and difficult to try to create new services, and we would still be working in a building site, so it just would not work.
Thangam Debbonaire
I thank my right hon. Friend for that detailed and informed view.
It is also worth reminding Members—and I say this respectfully to newer Members—of the awful day when we were locked in here because of the terrible murder of PC Keith Palmer. That cannot have failed to have alerted everybody in this place to security risks that we all would really rather we did not have. We have to remain within a secure perimeter, and I want to take seriously the advice that we have had from security specialists who say that staying within the northern estate is vital if we are to maintain security. Again, I have to say that it is not about us; it is about our staff and the public.
I have heard mention of Portcullis House; I walked across Portcullis House atrium yesterday and counted not one, not two, but three buckets collecting water from a leaky roof, so we are going to have to do some work if we think we are going to decant into Portcullis House. That is also a cautionary tale of what happens when we do not keep up with the maintenance.
I say to all right hon. and hon. Members, whether new or long-standing, that if they have not—as I have not yet, but I am booked to—taken the tour of horror, which I am told is really quite the horrifying tour, please will they do so? I think it will help those who have said that they do not how to explain it to their constituents. I completely get that, because to begin with I was not sure how, but once I had seen some of the pictures and heard some of the tales—I am about to go and see for myself—I finally understood how to talk to my constituents, because my constituents own this place, as do the constituents of other Members. That is why we need to stop the delays, recognise that the costs of delay are high and realise that a partial decant is in and of itself both a delay and a cost.
We need to recognise that the specialness of this place is worth preserving. This place is worth modernising and enhancing. Debate itself can take place anywhere that there are two politicians of different parties in a room—and even more so if they are of the same party. That debate can take place anywhere, and we now know that we can also vote in really quite constrained circumstances. It is not ideal, but it will do us until we can get back in here, fully modernised and fully safe.
Business of the House
Mark Tami Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
The business for the week commencing 1 February will include:
Monday 1 February—Opposition day (16th allocated day). There will be a debate on a motion relating to cladding and building safety, followed by a debate on a motion relating to border security. Both debates will arise on a motion in the name of the official Opposition.
Tuesday 2 February—Second reading of the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [Lords].
Wednesday 3 February—Motion to approve statutory instruments relating to sanctions, followed by a motion to approve the draft Value Added Tax (Miscellaneous Amendments to Acts of Parliament) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 and the Value Added Tax Act 1994 and Revocation) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 1544), followed by a motion relating to the Travellers’ Allowances and Miscellaneous Provisions (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, followed by a debate on a petition relating to grooming gangs. The subject for this debate was determined by the Petitions Committee.
Thursday 4 February—General debate on the future of the UK space industry, followed by a general debate on the towns fund. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 5 February—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 8 February will include:
Monday 8 February—Second reading of the Armed Forces Bill, followed by a motion to approve the Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2021.
Tuesday 9 February—Motion to approve the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2021, followed by a motion to approve the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2021, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Trade Bill.
Wednesday 10 February—Motions relating to the police grant and local government finance reports.
Thursday 11 February—General debate relating to the publication of the integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, followed by a debate on a motion relating to the UK’s commitment to reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 12 February—The House will not be sitting.
Hon. and right hon. Members may also wish to know that, subject to the progress of business, the House will rise for the constituency recess at the conclusion of business on Thursday 11 February and return on Monday 22 February.
Sittings in Westminster Hall (Suspension) (No. 2)
Mark Tami Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for bringing forward these motions. I will speak to the motions and against the amendments. We are debating them against a background, as at 12 January, of more than 83,000 deaths. If we think about Wembley stadium, all the people who have died would fill it. Yesterday, there were 1,243 deaths, which is the second-highest number of fatalities reported on a single day. That is the background to why we are debating these motions and to why Mr Speaker has changed the arrangements in the House. Everyone has seen where the Dispatch Box has been moved to. This is a serious situation. This is not business as usual. This is not normal business.
At the Commission, we expressed our views on all sides—everybody expressed their views. We heard from Public Health England, and it is fair to say that it was so concerned about what was happening on the estate and the number of people who were coming that, before Christmas, it was ready to close us down. We resisted that because we want to hold the Government to account. Believe me that, more than anyone else, the Opposition want to hold the Government to account.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that this place functions not just because we turn up, but because of all the staff who work so hard here to actually make it happen? We need to think about them and not just ourselves.
Valerie Vaz
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments; I was just coming to that.
We have to do everything we can to keep people safe. At the Commission, we tasked the usual channels and the business managers to come up with a package. This place operates because we trust each other and the three Chief Whips work well together and allow business to take place. We sent them away and they came up with the package that is before the House, which the Leader of the House has put forward.
The Leader of the House previously mentioned that Westminster Hall would cost £100,000. I say to the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who mentioned that, that I have also spoken to the Broadcasting Unit, because we are very keen to have Westminster Hall debates, as are all hon. Members. It is working on it as we speak. It has given us a timeframe of four weeks because that gives it an opportunity to do that. It said that Westminster Hall is so badly set out that it is looking at other arrangements, and it is looking at them as we speak. It said that, as a result of that, the costs will be less, so we will be able to have Westminster Hall debates and we will be able to hold the Government to account, if the Government will only answer the questions carefully.
Let us look at what the Government have done in terms of the amount of money that they have spent on private consultants—£375 million. Given that, £100,000 or less is easily doable. There was £40,000 for a pay rise for a very special adviser; I am sure there will be savings from the fact that he has now left his job.
We are trying to facilitate full parliamentary scrutiny, which is essential to our democracy. It is slightly strange that the Leader of the House has allowed virtual participation in private Members’ Bills; I will deal with that in a second. Hon. Members will know that to have a closure motion, 100 right hon. and hon. Members need to come down here. We want to support our colleagues, but we do not want to make people unsafe. I do not want to say this, but a really serious incident happened today. Many hon. Members know about it, and it is frankly shocking. It is the death of a person who worked on the estate, and we send our condolences to his family. It is covid related, and I am sure we will look at that.
We have the bizarre situation where Members have to come down here for a closure motion, and yet we can take part virtually. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—I am not sure whether he is here; he might even be taking part virtually—[Interruption.] There we are. He is dealing with the situation as it arises. Labour’s position is that we want remote voting. In that way, private Member’s Bills can take place because hon. Members can vote remotely.
I hope that the Broadcasting Unit will continue to look at the hybrid preparations for Westminster Hall. As I said, this package was agreed by the business managers who we entrusted to deal with this to keep people safe. What is the slogan that the Government are saying? Protect the NHS, and save the lives of other people—not just the lives of hon. Members, but those of the people who work here and facilitate our democracy. Labour supports the motion.