Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 19th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will not repeat the many thanks outlined by the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) and others, because they have listed everybody that I would list. However, I pay tribute to them and particularly to the members of the original Joint Committee, who really set the tone.

It seems a long time since 31 January last year, when we were on a knife edge here—not knowing. I hot-footed it here from my daughter’s hospital bed to ensure that we could get the amendment through, but we were really not sure what was going to happen. I give real credit to the former Leader of the House for taking up the ball and running with it, and ensuring that the Bill reached this position today. I also thank the Ministers since then who have picked up the pace.

It is really important that we get on with this now, and there is a real will to do so. As Members, we need to keep a very close eye on the process. The Public Accounts Committee will certainly do that, although probably not under me. I think my term of office will have almost come to an end—if I am still here—by the time we move out, so I will leave a note to my successor. The National Audit Office is already looking at how it can engage with the process, although there are still some discussions to be had about how that will work.

I urge Ministers to look again at amendment 6. I apologise for not being here when the Minister discussed it—I was chairing the Public Accounts Committee—but I thank him for the assurances that it will be looked at in the other place. It seems to me that amendment 6 follows neatly on from amendment 4, which has been adopted, because for amendment 4 to work we will need some sort of audit of how the work is going. Amendment 6 is a very simple measure, so I welcome the fact that the Minister has agreed to look at it and I know that colleagues in the other place will do so.

It feels like a long journey since January last year, but this has actually been going on since 2016 in this Parliament, and of course it has been decades coming. The key lesson is that we must ensure not only that we move out, get the work done and move back, but that no future Parliament allows the future, modernised, refurbished, restored Parliament building to fall into such disrepair. If this building is going to work for successions of future MPs, peers, staff and members of the public who visit, and if it is to remain the icon of democracy that it was set up to be, we need to maintain it in the future. We must make sure that that is part of the plan now—I lay a warning for our successors. That cyclical maintenance, boring though it may be, is vital so that we are not in this position again in our dotage. I can imagine the former Leader of the House sitting up in the Public Gallery and getting very frustrated if we come here as we get older. Let us hope that we do not have to do that, and that future Members will be good custodians of this building, as we and some of our predecessors have sadly not been in the past.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.