Business of the House
Meg Hillier Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that matter. She will be aware that there are long-standing rules that prevent those who arrive illegally in this country from being granted citizenship. We have strengthened those rules in a small way for those who arrive on small boats, so that they also will not be able to become British citizens. It is important that we take away some of the pull factors that bring people to this country and that we take tough action to control our borders. She makes a very important point about safe routes, which I know the Home Secretary has been taking action on and updates the House on regularly, but I will ensure she continues to do so.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House will be aware that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been in Committee this week, slightly delayed, and for good reason, because it is obviously a very important issue to debate. Can she confirm whether the Government will still wait until the end of the Committee stage before publishing the impact assessment on the Bill?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is right: the Bill has gone into line-by-line consideration in Committee this week. She will be aware that it is a private Member’s Bill and that the Government remain neutral on the issue, as it is a matter of conscience, but the Government have been clear that we will work with the Committee—indeed, there are Ministers on the Committee—to ensure that the Bill is workable and operable, and any such assessments will be made available in due course.
Business of the House
Meg Hillier Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lucy Powell
I join the hon. Lady and the shadow Leader of the House—I meant to do so earlier—in expressing the Government’s condolences to, and support for, those in Spain who have either died or lost all their belongings and their homes in the recent Spanish floods. As she says, we have a general debate in two weeks’ time on flood preparedness, partly in response to so many questions coming forward on that topic during this Session.
I thank the hon. Lady for her words about the Budget. There is a lot of good news in the Budget that her party should welcome, given how much campaigning they have done on many of these issues. They should be grateful for some of the measures, particularly the biggest ever cash increase in the earnings thresholds for carer’s allowance, for which her party has campaigned. As the hon. Lady says, we have announced a huge funding boost for the NHS and an extra £600 million for social care. She is absolutely right, though, that these issues will take time to work through, and will need further reform and investment to deal with going forward. The ageing population and the crisis in social care are inextricably linked to the future of our health service.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I have many tower blocks in my constituency, and too many constituents find that their lifts are regularly broken and are not getting fixed. This is not just down to individual landlords—it cuts across the piece. Is it not time for a debate in Government time about how the four main lift companies organise their structures and maintenance contracts? This is stopping people from living their lives, and very often leaving them trapped in or outside their flats.
Lucy Powell
As an MP who also represents a number of people who live in tall buildings, I completely hear what my hon. Friend is saying. This is a very important matter, and I am sure that if she were to apply for a debate, it would get a lot of attention.
Business of the House
Meg Hillier Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Lucy Powell
I see trying to give the House as much forward business and as many recess dates as possible in order to provide certainty as a key performance indicator, and I thank the hon. Lady for her comments in that regard.
I am very sorry to hear about the murder in the hon. Lady’s constituency, and I join her in thanking all the services—the police, the NHS and others—that do such an amazing job when it comes to these awful incidents.
The hon. Lady rightly raised the truly appalling scandal of discharges into Windermere. As a northerner, I am a frequent visitor to the Lake District, and I am aware of its beauty and its importance not only as a tourist attraction but as a habitat for wildlife. The Government have taken rapid action in dealing with our water bosses and cleaning up our waterways. In his first week in the job, the Environment Secretary ringfenced infrastructure spending and empowered customers to hold bosses to account, and the Water (Special Measures) Bill is currently in the House of Lords and will come to this House soon. However, that is not all we have done: we have also launched a full review of water reform to ensure that we have the governance right and can take appropriate action, including sanctions, to prevent these discharges from happening again.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcomed the introduction of the Renters’ Rights Bill last week, but many more of my constituents are social housing tenants than are private renters, and they are living in seriously overcrowded conditions, often with damp and mould. This is not always entirely the fault of the landlord, but the conditions in which people are living exacerbate existing problems. Will the Leader of the House grant us a debate in Government time about the real need for investment in social housing, which, according to the Government’s own figures, is the best value for money for the taxpayer and prevents health and other problems?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is right: in recent years this country has had a woeful record of building and creating social homes, which is fundamental for many people. I was struck by what the Deputy Prime Minister said once—that she had grown up in a council house, which at the time was seen as impoverishment, whereas today it is considered a privilege to get a council house. The Government are committed to building 1.5 million new homes, a great many of which will be new social and council housing.
Business of the House
Meg Hillier Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Gentleman. I am happy to put on record that we are granting the Sir David Amess debate next week, and I will ensure that business is amended to reflect that. As he will know, all Budget matters relating to tax and other issues are announced first to this House in a Budget, and we will be having a Budget on 30 October. I work hard across Government to ensure that big announcements are made first to this House, and that is why we have seen a record number of Government statements since we took office.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
E-bikes and e-scooters are popular with many people, but in London Fields in my constituency I am working with residents and councillors because some are going very fast, and there are issues of safety and regulation. Will my right hon. Friend grant a debate in Government time on the regulation, safety and enforcement of e-bikes across the country?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend raises another important question, which I know has been raised in these sessions and elsewhere on a number of occasions. E-bikes are fast moving—excuse the pun; they are not that fast moving, but these are fast moving issues in the sense that they are new technologies and new vehicles. I am sure that a debate on that issue would be widely supported should she apply for one.
Business of the House
Meg Hillier Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman will know that a great deal of time and effort is taken in the drafting departments in Government Departments. My noble Friend Lord True and I run regular training sessions, as do the officials in my office. We are always on the lookout for good and bad practice so that we can ensure that people know what Members of Parliament need, and we inform those individuals of what is helpful to us in dealing with casework and in which format we might need information. I am always open to example of good and bad practice being passed to my office, and I will certainly raise it with the relevant Department.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Twice in questions today, compensation schemes have been raised, and I am heartened that the Leader of the House herself championed this issue as Paymaster General and has been in contact with the Cabinet Office. However, could she help me and my constituent who was in the secret services? He was dismissed because of his sexuality alone, and is one of a group of people who cannot talk about the matter publicly. Despite my hammering on doors in Whitehall, we are making very little progress. As well as the gay veterans’ scheme and other compensation schemes, would the Leader of the House take up this issue for people who served their country well and were dismissed simply because they were gay or lesbian? It is not fair, it was not right, and it needs redress.
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Lady raises a very important point. Quite often, because of the nature of someone’s service, they are not able to participate in particular inquiries or reports that are produced on historic wrong- doing and miscarriages of justice. Clearly, the agencies have evolved over the years, and the heads of those agencies are now public figures, so I will certainly write to the Cabinet Office and ask it to consider this matter, copying in both the Home Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which are primarily the sponsoring Departments for those agencies.
Points of Order
Meg Hillier Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last week I attended a Committee considering a statutory instrument on the immigration health surcharge, and, as would be expected in such a forum, I was asking questions of the Minister—in this instance, the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove)—who was unable to answer a number of those questions.
I should give credit to the Minister—I have alerted him to my intention to raise this point of order—because he has since written to me, ahead of the House finally agreeing to the statutory instrument yesterday, and I thank him for that courtesy. However, that was not the first time that I have been in a statutory instrument Committee and Ministers have been unable to answer questions. In this case it was off the back of a detailed impact assessment conducted by the Home Office, but on other occasions Ministers have been unable to supply answers on fairly basic information.
I wanted to raise the matter with you, Madam Deputy Speaker, because it seems to me that this is an inadequate and inopportune way for the House to operate. We are there to scrutinise the legislation of the Government of the day, and we are hampered in doing so if Ministers are unable to give us answers and instead promise, variously, to write to us or tell us about the issue involved at a later stage, or sometimes even brush off the questions. I wonder whether you would like to say anything on this matter, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving me notice of it. I assume that she did inform the Minister that she intended to raise it.
Obviously, Ministers are responsible for their own replies to Members in Delegated Legislation Committees, as they are in the Chamber. I note that the hon. Lady said that the Minister did her the courtesy of writing after the event, but I think we would all believe—and it is certainly my view—that Ministers should have all the relevant information to hand when responding to a debate. The Leader of the House is here and has clearly listened carefully to what the hon. Lady has said. I am sure that she will take that point back, as will others on the Treasury Bench.
Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment
Meg Hillier Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I want to raise a number of issues in the Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment debate. One is the issue of passport delays, which is affecting many of our constituents.
Yesterday, at the Home Affairs Committee, the head of HM Passport Office acknowledged that there was a backlog of over 500,000, despite constant reassurances from the Government Front Bench that passport applications were being dealt with within 10 weeks. The backlog is having a real effect on people’s ability to travel not just on holiday but to family funerals and so on. That is unacceptable. I was the last passports Minister in the last Labour Government, so I know there is a predictable upsurge in demand—we saw it after the banking crisis—and it could have been predicted. It reflects some of the challenges raised by a drop in staffing numbers and without enough of a plan to increase them in time. The Passport Office has always been very good at going with the ebb and flow, so the situation is shocking. I hope that in the few weeks of the summer recess, the Government will get a grip of the issue to ensure that, even if many people are, sadly, still unable to go away on holiday or to visit family, it will be sorted by the autumn.
Another key issue in the Home Office—there are so many—is immigration. I am one of the top six customers, if you like, as a Member of Parliament on immigration issues in the Home Office. There is delay, inaction, inaccuracy and lives being wrecked all over the place. The Syria resettlement scheme was, as the Public Accounts Committee highlighted, run quite well, and we have now had the Afghanistan and Ukraine resettlement schemes, but all of them have knocked out the normal day-to-day work done to support family visas and other immigration cases. I have people living in limbo, unable to get on with their lives, their children unable to go on school trips or to universities. A women wrote to me just today, hoping that her partner would be able to come here as she is due to give birth in Homerton Hospital. She has been told that the 12-week wait for a family visa has now been extended to 24, blowing out their careful planning to make sure they could be settled and together as a family for the important occasion of the birth of their first child. That is just one example out of many of where lives have been wrecked.
On the Afghanistan resettlement scheme, the Syrian resettlement model was well-worn and worked pretty well. The Public Accounts Committee gave it a fairly good thumbs up—although there are always issues on which we want to see improvements—so there was a blueprint in place, yet in a hotel in Old Street in my constituency, Afghan families and individuals have been stuck since last August, unable to move on. We are getting to the one-year anniversary—not a birthday we want to celebrate. While of course we all recognise the challenge and vital importance of supporting our Ukrainian neighbours in their need, the excuses coming out of the Home Office—“We are dealing with these issues, but we have delays because of Ukraine”—are just not acceptable. This is the British Home Office. It should be able to deal with more than one issue at a time. However, we are repeatedly seeing a version of whack-a-mole, in which an issue arises and everyone is shipped over to deal with that issue while other people wait in the queue. These people are stuck, they are living in limbo, and, as I have said, they are suffering devastating consequences. It is a litany of poor communication and delay, and it is having a huge impact on people’s lives.
I have been an immigration Minister, and if someone does not qualify to be in the UK that is fine, but many people who do qualify are sitting in limbo as they wait to renew a leave to remain application which is very unlikely to be refused. What a poor welcome to our country—a country that is built on the shoulders of many migrants. Indeed, we have a candidate for its leadership whose parents entered the UK from another country, and have created a life and a potential new Prime Minister. We should be doing much more to welcome these people.
I do not lay all this on the staff. There have been staff cuts in the Home Office, and indeed across the civil service. Civil service staffing fell to its lowest ever level before 2016 and, although there has been an increase since then, largely connected with Brexit and trade issues, the Government’s proposal to remove 20%, 30% or 40% of officials from Departments poses a real challenge. The Government need to be clear about the consequences of those potential cuts.
Climate change is obviously a huge issue for us all, and I am very concerned about the Government’s repeated failure on home insulation, which is an issue in my constituency and across the country. We have seen a number of failed projects, but the Government now have an opportunity to kick-start the economy. I make this plea now in particular because by the time we return in September we will have a new Prime Minister to hear how we can create jobs, growth and opportunity for people by ensuring that we can get that insulation into people’s homes. Emissions from properties constitute 19% of total emissions, and that needs to be tackled, but it will not be tackled unless we get this right.
As the Public Accounts Committee pointed out in a report published a while ago, the Government have plans for electric vehicles but no real plans for a charging structure. How are people going to make the leap into buying electric vehicles unless they can be sure that they can charge them?
These are small but clear examples of the need for us to turn the challenge of achieving net zero into something that is manageable, meaningful and affordable for the people who need to make those moves in order for us to achieve it. This cannot be done to people; they have to be empowered to do it, and the Government are not helping in that regard. They are missing a real opportunity to drive green jobs, growth and investment.
Finally, I want to reiterate my concern about people living in flats in my constituency. I declare an interest, in that I live with a communal heating system and with cladding—although that is fast being removed from my building by the developer, which, happily, is not charging my neighbours and me.
Communal and district heating is not covered by the energy price cap. Let me give some of the worst examples of what is happening in my constituency. One constituent faces a 600% increase in his gas bill. Another has a well-paid job but is still struggling, with energy prices rising by 400%. In a third case, the increase is over 100%. It is very difficult to absorb such prices during the current cost of living crisis. The Government have said that they will change this eventually, but they need to provide support now for people with communal heating systems, who are really struggling.
Several hon. Members rose—
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I have just emerged from conducting a leadership contest in Parliament before we rise for the summer recess. Had you not been elevated to your current position, Mr Deputy Speaker, no doubt you would have been alongside me carrying out that process. I am very relieved that, as per usual, we have delivered on time and within budget, with two candidates going forward to the country.
I will start with a number of subjects relating to Transport for London. We still have an extension to the current arrangements under which the Government have provided £5 billion to TfL to keep it going, but we still have no long-term agreement. It appears that the Labour Mayor of London refuses to do what is required, which is to make economies and produce more revenue for TfL. He refuses to take any action on fares, pensions and some of the rather bizarre working arrangements that exist for TfL. We are seeing the effect of that. During the recent heatwave, services were being reduced even before we got to the state where, when temperatures reached 25°, services were cancelled or altered. The Mayor is now proposing a managed decline of bus services in London, which will damage the system still further. It is clear that the Government need to reach an agreement with the Labour Mayor of London to ensure that we have a long-term arrangement.
As Members who regularly attend these debates will know, I always raise Stanmore station.
Dame Meg Hillier
As a fellow London MP, I want to be clear with the hon. Member: no one wants to see buses cut. Is he asking the Government for more money for London to make sure that we backfill the loss of fares as a result of covid? That will mean that the buses do not have to be cut. The Government’s funding is causing the problem, so is he asking for more money?
Bob Blackman
Clearly, Transport for London finances need to be put on a proper footing, and the capital funding that will be required is the most important aspect for the long term. The suggestion at the moment is that Crossrail will be the last investment in London for a very long time. That is the principal concern.
As I was saying, the Mayor of London wanted to build tower blocks all over Stanmore station car park. I am pleased to say that Harrow Council—then under Labour control—rejected that planning application. The Mayor called it in and the developer has now pulled out because they cannot make the financial scheme work, so it is in a state of limbo. He also suffered defeat on Canons Park station. Once again, he wanted to build tower blocks in the car park but was defeated at the planning committee. They are not content and have come back with another proposal for Queensbury station car park, again, for tower blocks on the car park. There is a trend, and it is not providing any new homes for anyone, because the plans will constantly be stalled and prevented by the local authorities concerned.
I am pleased that the new Conservative regime in Harrow has made a great start following the elections in May, with the pledges that were made to the electorate being honoured already. One hour of free parking outside shops will be implemented from 1 August, in record time. There will be a ban on tall buildings in Harrow, so we will no longer see buildings above six storeys built. Tower blocks end up, I am afraid, as ghettoes and in the social discontent that we regularly suffer in London. The council is also combating fly-tipping, with the introduction in September of free bulky waste collections from homes. Those are all new initiatives.
I must declare an interest: my wife was elected to the council to represent the good voters of Edgware. She topped the poll in that ward, which was historically a safe Labour seat. She is now in charge of trying to sort out customer contact—Harrow Council’s email traffic and its telephone system. I wish her well in that regard, because the system has been dreadful; people wait on the phone for 45 minutes and then they get cut off. I am certain that that is all going to change.
Let me turn to some of the problems we are suffering in the constituency. I very much echo what the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) said about passports. Even people who have paid for the priority service are not getting the service within the promised timeframe. That is scandalous. There seems to be a lack of co-ordination and communication, because the Home Office says one thing to constituents and another thing to my office. That cannot be right. Yesterday, at the hub in Portcullis House, staffers waited up to four hours to see someone. It just cannot go on like this. We have even had delays with applications for biometric cards. One constituent has been stuck in Turkey since Christmas; they are still waiting and cannot get home to be with their family. That must change.
There are still 12,000 Afghan refugees stuck in hotels. We have one case of an 11-year-old boy who was unfortunately put on a plane to France instead of the UK. He is still in France and has not been reunited with his family. The bureaucracy is a nightmare. We need to get that resolved. I have just had an excellent briefing from my new friends in Harrow Council—the officers—on what we are doing on Ukrainian refugees. I will be writing to the Minister concerned with a lot of proposals for what needs to happen and change.
I had the pleasure on Monday of meeting former Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. One thing about Israel is that they love elections. The one thing I hope they never inflict on us is their voting system, because we would perennially be in elections here. It was a great pleasure to meet ex-Prime Minister Netanyahu. I wish him well and I hope that Likud is returned to power in the forthcoming election.
The Javed Khan tobacco control review was published recently. Unfortunately, because of the current position in the Government, we are not seeing any movement on that. I hope that the Government will come forward speedily and implement the review’s recommendations without too much delay.
I shall be spending the summer in the constituency. I am delighted to say that I have had a record number of applications for work experience with me—no fewer than 56. Those people will be out on the streets with me, meeting the voters.
Finally, I trust that now we have a new Deputy Leader of the House, he will implement without delay the business of the House Committee that he pledged to introduce a long time ago.
Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster
Meg Hillier Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Mark Spencer
I am happy to confirm that to the hon. Gentleman, who I know has taken a great interest in this project. It is important to be clear with the House today that taking the Sponsor Body back in-house and back under the control of the House does not rule out any option. It does not rule out the option of a decant of 20 years. What I am saying to the House is that I do not think that that is a deliverable option. We need to look at some more practical measures, and I will come to that later in my speech. It is difficult to comprehend how we can deliver a project of this magnitude without some form of decant, but I am not an expert and, as the hon. Gentleman says, lots of Members are not experts in this field, so we need the delivery authority, which will have that expertise, to guide us and to come to those decisions very quickly.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House has acknowledged that he is not an expert, and that most of us in this House are not experts on running major projects. The original intention of the Act of Parliament passed by this House, which has been unpicked in private in the Commissions, was that an expert body, the Sponsor Body, would be created to deliver that expertise. That body has now been abolished. He says that it has been brought in-house, but many people have left it. Can he be very precise with the House about exactly what will replace it, and where he thinks that expertise will come from in the Commissions, which in both Houses do not have the inbuilt expertise to deliver this project?
Mark Spencer
I will come to that, but the hon. Lady is absolutely right. What we need to do is get on with this project and stop dilly-dallying, which is why the direction of travel was not as rapid as the Commissions and I wanted. We were heading for a huge confrontation with this House, because I do not think the plans would have been palatable to Members when we finally got there. There is a shortcut we can take to expedite this process, and I will come to the structure later. I think we can get to a place where we can all agree to tap into the expertise she says we need, and that is what we are trying to establish.
Mark Spencer
Where my hon. Friend is right is that it is a little bit like the Forth Bridge, in that there will always be something that will need to be maintained, protected or made safe. In the short term, we need to prioritise those things. There are four areas that the Commissions want to prioritise; I hope the House will agree that they are all very important priorities. No. 1 is fire and safety; that is absolutely fundamental to what we should be driving towards. Building services are second, then asbestos, and then building fabric conservation. I hope Members will agree that those are indeed urgent priorities for us to focus on.
Dame Meg Hillier
On the point of fire safety, could the Leader of the House confirm that the tens of millions of pounds—£140 million or so—that has been spent on the fire safety system to date protects those of us who may be working or in the building at the time, so that we could escape; but it does not protect the building? Would he also confirm that he is aware of, and understands, the responsibilities that UNESCO places on the Government of the day to make sure that this world heritage site does survive?
Mark Spencer
Of course; it is absolutely vital. I hope that the hon. Lady will recognise that actually Notre Dame burned down—a terrible disaster—because workmen were in there. They had actually decanted, and it was the workmen who were working in there that finally burnt down Notre Dame. So we do have a responsibility to make sure not only that people are safe, but that the building is here for hundreds of years to come. I think we can achieve that by making those our four most important priorities.
For the medium and long term, the Commissions’ report sets out the parameters of how to deliver the works, above all advocating better integration of all the various safety, repair and renewal works that are taking place across the palace. That approach could allow decisions to be brought to Parliament quicker, work to start faster, and priorities to be flexed where required.
Turning to the next steps, the motion before the House is to endorse the recommendations of the Joint Commission and agree the change to the response function and the revised mandate to the works. Secondary legislation will be required to give effect to some of these decisions. So over the next year options will be reviewed, and a strategic case will be presented to the House in 2023. It is important for Members to understand that the House is not being asked for a decision on decant or costs today. Members will be consulted, and will have opportunities to engage with the decision making, and the House will need to take future decisions on these issues at a later date. In the meantime, the Commissions have endorsed a pragmatic approach that will allow work to be undertaken in the interim.
Thangam Debbonaire
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. She is right to raise it and to pay tribute to the work of the Public Accounts Committee. Am I confident? I am not currently confident or certain of where we are at the moment in terms of delivering anything in the way that we wanted to, but I am confident that we need to do it. Having spoken to the Delivery Authority, I am confident that it views this as doable, and it is the authority that will be carrying out the work. Having reviewed the situation, the Independent Expert Panel noted:
“in principle the existing governance model could be made to work, but that lost confidence and momentum means that retaining the current model is unlikely to work.”
What it has also said, which might speak to my hon. Friend’s question, is that the recommendation of bringing the Sponsor Body function in-house should be viewed as a pragmatic measure to cover what is needed for the next 12 to 24 months—the decision phase if you like. It has also recommended that that pragmatism should not preclude alternative future options. We need to see this as part of a process to get us to the decision. Regrettable though it may be, and I do regret it, that we are where we are, this appears to be a compromise way of moving forward, with best value for money, safety and time.
Dame Meg Hillier
I thank my hon. Friend for her comments about the Public Accounts Committee. To be clear, the role of that Committee is no substitute for the role of a proper sponsor or client function that keeps a close eye on the cost on a day-to-day basis. We look at things retrospectively, although we may make recommendations. Nor are we, as the Public Accounts Committee, expert enough to deliver this process. She talks about our report. Our report said that we regretted that decisions were made secretively and in private on a decision that was before the House and an Act of Parliament of this House. Does she have any comment about how we got from that Act of Parliament to where we are today?
Thangam Debbonaire
I completely support what my hon. Friend says. Why are we here? I have already mentioned my own view on why we are here, at least partly. We need to note here that the Sponsor Body was repeatedly asked, as if we had had a referendum—goodness me—and asked people to keep voting on it until they came up with the answer that was wanted. It is very difficult to avoid looking at some of what has happened over the past couple of years and coming to the conclusion that there were people who were just going to keep asking until they got a different answer and, eventually, when they got a different answer, they said, “I don’t like that answer.”
That is problematic. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is not the duty of the Public Accounts Committee to scrutinise the day-to-day spending of this body, whether it is in-house or external. It will need a very strong programme board, which will need expertise. There will also have to be extremely tight accounting measures.
I do not yet know exactly who will be on the programme board. I urge all those right hon. and hon. Members who have not just an interest—interest alone is not enough—but actual skill in this area, and ideally some of those who have history, having sat on so many Committees, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) and the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) have, to consider whether they should be part of the programme board. I certainly urge them to think about it.
Doing nothing is not an option. There is no doubt that large-scale work is needed. Asbestos, leaks, wires, plumbing nobody knows the function of, a building at risk of fire and flood—my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) is quite right that the fire remediation works mean that we are protected, but the building is not—this work has to happen. It is testament to the hard-working House staff and to contractors that we thankfully have not yet witnessed a catastrophic failure of the building, as has been seen in others around the world, but at some stage that hard work will not be enough.
I want that on record. We must make sure that we are not the Parliament that delayed, at the cost of this magnificent building with its magnificent history. The parliamentary estate is in desperate need, and it is important that the restoration and renewal process works well with Parliament’s maintenance teams, who do such a good job. We have therefore no choice but to find a way out.
I note the amendment in the name of my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda and for Hackney South and Shoreditch and other right hon. and hon. Members, who are incredibly knowledgeable. I agree with their desire for urgency and that everything must be done to avoid unnecessary delay, cost and risk. I particularly pay further tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch for the work she has done on the Public Accounts Committee. I reiterate that in its recent report, the Committee encouraged further scrutiny. Value for taxpayers is important.
Before I close, I also recognise my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East, who in his role as Chair of the Finance Committee and the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission has been invaluable, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside. Many hon. Members have sat on the Committees for many years, but I do believe he may be the only one to have sat on pretty much all of them for a significant amount of time. His incredible wealth of knowledge seems to me to be unmatched.
However, having made my points, I will not test the House’s patience by pushing the amendment in my name to a vote. I will end by saying that we are the generation who have been given the honour, the privilege and, yes, we could say the burden of sorting this problem out. I think it is an honour and a privilege. Some of us will not see the end of it—either we will be no more, or we will be no more Members of Parliament. That is just where we are. We are the generation who decided to put it off no longer. We must go on record as having done everything we can to get the process moving, to preserve and enhance the Palace of Westminster so that it can go on as a safe, thriving and accessible workplace for many, many more centuries to come.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
This is a very disappointing debate because, as other hon. Members have said, we have been going round and round this issue for far too long. I think we need to slay some myths here. Value for money is one thing, but it does not mean cheap. There is no way that the work can be done to this building—minimally or maximally—on the cheap. It will cost billions of pounds. There is no getting away from that. This is a UNESCO world heritage site, and under the rules of UNESCO, that responsibility falls on the Treasury or the finance department of the country responsible, which in this case is Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Government of the day.
There is huge risk in this building. Only in recent weeks we have had masonry falling down, and yesterday we had the leak. It is only a matter of time before somebody gets hurt. I know that former Leaders of the House have worried about this a great deal, and not surprisingly. We are a group of people who aspire to run the country, and the Conservative party is deciding who will be its leader and the next Prime Minister. We all want to be in a position to make decisions, yet on this issue everyone seems to hope or believe they will not be standing when the music stops and that, somehow, the problem will be someone else’s.
This is a time for decisions. These delays are ongoing and repeated. The Joint Committee’s report was not debated until about a year after it was published, and there was a further delay as the votes on the report kept being put off. I vividly remember the date, 31 January 2018, because I came from my daughter’s hospital sickbed to be here for that debate. I thought, “Great, we might get something through that means we can get moving on this.”
Then there were endless delays in funding the Sponsor Body’s work to develop the business case. Money was eked out, a bit at a time, so there was never really enough to get on with the job and do the very detailed work that needed to be done. We know it might mean getting the mechanical and engineering in place, two floors below the basement, to run this building. It might mean stripping out asbestos between the Committee corridors. They are the things that make this place dangerous. The required decisions have been endlessly delayed.
I want to slay another myth about the money. The Leader of the House cited the £3.5 billion figure that was originally mooted, and £4 billion has been mentioned at different times. This was never the figure for all the work to the building; it was an indicative figure, based on work by Deloitte that looked at the options and modelled certain works. The figure was an order of magnitude and was never for the full work on the building. It said, “If you take this approach, this approach or this approach, this is the scale we are looking at.” Unfortunately, that figure has repeatedly been embedded as though it were a fact.
The House asked the Sponsor Body to come up with what needed to be done to the building and how much it would cost. The answer came back that it would cost £7 billion to £13 billion, with a full decant for up to 20 years. The Commissions did not like that answer, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said. There is no point asking the experts to do the work and then ignoring what they have to say. This place does not have the experts to do the work the Sponsor Body did. Nobody is perfect, and I am not saying that every decision of the Sponsor Body was absolutely right and on the nail, but it did what it was told to do and came back with the numbers, and it was told that they were too high.
The Leader of the House talked about shortcuts to expedite the process. He said, “We can do both, get value for money and progress as rapidly as possible. We need a common-sense approach.” I do not have a problem with a common-sense approach, but I do not think it is possible to have a common-sense approach that halves or changes the costs for something on which we have already set the parameters for what we want to do. I cannot see how that can be delivered.
We will create two corporate officers and a client board made up of the two Commissions. I have to confess that I was surprised when a senior member of one of the Commissions—I will say no more, so as not to identify them—approached me in the last week to say, “We will need your help to do this job, because we are not sure we have the ability to do it.” As I said before, I may chair the Public Accounts Committee, ably helped by the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who is the deputy Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) and others, but we are not experts in running major projects. We scrutinise, which is a different thing. We need to make sure we have that expertise in place, so I hope the Leader of the House can tell us how he will ensure there is real expertise on the Commissions because, let us be honest, they are made up of members who rotate very fast and do not necessarily have any understanding or experience of running a major project, and do not necessarily know which questions to ask.
The hon. Member for The Cotswolds highlighted some of the issues we see in Government, but we also regularly see non-executive members of boards who do not take their role seriously, who do not do it properly, who do not get on top of the subject and who do not always call out things that need to be called out. That needs to be built in so that we have clearly focused non-executives from both outside and inside the House to deliver that and make sure the programme board has that expertise.
I am really concerned today. We need a long-term decision to be made on this. Parliament will face these difficult decisions—I am quoting the Leader of the House back at himself—but he also talked about future Parliaments revising this. If we start fiddling around, as we have already done, and delay progress considerably, we will be in a very bad place.
It is outrageous that the very body that legislates and passed an Act of Parliament to set up this structure has dismantled that in a secret, mineral-water-filled room. The minute from that meeting revealed so little about what the discussion was. Reports of it suggest that there was not a serious discussion about the real consequences. That is not a model for democracy, yet it was the mother of Parliaments that made that decision in that very underhand and secretive way. That is one of the most disappointing things about the whole saga.
Our words will echo down the halls of history if we see this building burn down and we were the people who let it happen. The hand of history is here. I believe that six generations of the family of the hon. Member for The Cotswolds have been here. He stands up for the future of this place, as we all should do. We need to see real action now.
Mark Spencer
With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to conclude by thanking all hon. Members who have taken part in this interesting and at times robust debate. I hope we can find a way forward through consensus. I hope hon. Members will recognise that we have much in common. We all want to achieve the same aims: we all want to protect this fantastic building, we all want to save taxpayers as much money as possible and we all want to do it as quickly as can be delivered. I think that the way forward that we are now suggesting does allow for all those things to happen.
Let me respond to some of the comments made in the debate. Reference was made to the Speaker’s House restoration, which is an example of how projects can be done “piecemeal”. That project was done completely independently, and during the course of the work, there have been innovations. For example, all the light fittings in the Speaker’s apartments are now completely sealed and airtight, so that in future it will be possible to change the a light fitting for another type without disturbing the asbestos above it. I think that is a huge step forward, because those who work on that part of the building in the future will be safe and taxpayers’ money will be saved. That leap forward in technology is an example of how we can make progress efficiently and save taxpayers’ money.
There is a clear brief to the Delivery Authority to get on with the job. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) and my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) share my passion for getting on with this project, which is why their names appear on the Order Paper with that of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). To be absolutely clear, it is not possible for me to stand here at the Dispatch Box and guarantee that the House will have a vote on an eight-year decant. What I can say is that the members of the Delivery Authority and the Commissions have heard this debate and I will make sure that an eight-year decant is one of the proposals they consider very seriously.
The concept outlined by my right hon. and hon. Friends of turning the telescope around and saying, “This is the time available. What can be delivered in that time?” is an interesting one. We may well be able to pursue it and look at what it is possible to achieve. Clearly, there is a sliding scale. I am told it is technically possible to deliver restoration and renewal without decanting from the House of Commons, but the timescale and the cost to the taxpayer would be enormous. We can consider all those matters as we move forward.
I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), who is no longer in her place. She met me on a number of occasions to assist in the decision-making process and has been of great value to the thinking behind the way forward.
The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said there is not enough expertise on the House of Commons Commission. I can assure her that there will not be expertise on the House of Commons Commission; the expertise will be on the programme board, which will advise the Commission. While the Commissioners, of whom I am one, may not be experts, we will recruit and secure expertise on the programme board to give the Commission professional advice, which I hope the Commissioners will follow. I am sure they will.
Dame Meg Hillier
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way at such a late stage. One of my concerns is that the Commission has been rather spooked by numbers that, in major project terms, are not extraordinary. It is costing £2 million a week just to do the maintenance and basic repairs to this place. We need to see figures for what it will cost to do that on an ongoing basis versus what the cost would be to do it in one hit. The public are not fools; if we kick the can down the road so that it costs more overall, they will see through that.
Mark Spencer
The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to that. One of the fundamental problems is that, because restoration and renewal was on the horizon, what was happening was that a piece of masonry, for example, would become unsafe; a scaffold would be erected to retrieve that piece of masonry, and the subsequent decision-making process would end in, “Well, there’s no need to do anything too dramatic here, because it will be swept up with restoration and renewal in the future.”
Under this new system, instead of putting the scaffold up and bodging it—for want of a better expression—we will be able to get up there and mend it properly once for the next 50 years, rather than waiting for restoration and renewal to come and sweep the project up. The Victoria Tower is a really good example. It was being delayed because restoration and renewal was on the horizon, but we will now be able to bring that project forward, get on with it and do it properly for once in a generation. We will be able to crack on with it in the short term. There is a way to save money for the taxpayer, expedite some of these repairs and make sure that the process happens in a more timely way.
Business of the House
Meg Hillier Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Mark Spencer
The Home Secretary will be at the Dispatch Box on 20 June, but the hon. Lady can rest assured that in 91% of cases there is now a rapid and improved response. [Hon. Members: “Really?”] Those are publicly available statistics. However, I recognise, and the Home Office recognises, that that means that 9% of people are not getting the level of service that they should expect. There are routes through Portcullis House for hon. Members to raise individual cases, and I encourage them to do so, but if the hon. Lady writes to me with the specific case that she raises, I will write directly to the Home Secretary on her behalf.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Dom Phillips, a British journalist, has been missing in the Amazon for more than three days with his Brazilian colleague Bruno Pereira. Will the Leader of the House raise the matter with Foreign Office Ministers? Will he urge them to contact the Bolsonaro Government and urge them to act very fast to help to track him down and put every effort into finding him? Will he get them to write to all Members of the House to explain what actions they have taken to support finding Dom Phillips?
Mark Spencer
I know that the Brazilian authorities are currently trying to find the gentleman to whom the hon. Lady has referred, but I will of course raise the issue directly with the Foreign Secretary as a matter of urgency. The sooner we can find that gentleman, the better.
Business of the House
Meg Hillier Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Mark Spencer
If my hon. Friend writes to me with the details, I will raise his question directly with the Home Secretary on his behalf.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth, according to a report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights 18 months ago and, prior to giving birth, they are 40% more likely than white women to suffer a miscarriage. That is a shocking inequality. Will the Leader of the House consider a debate in Government time on how to breach those serious inequalities in maternity care between black and white women?
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Lady for that question, and I join her in the ambition to close that gap in service that those women feel. Maternity services up and down the country are working hard to help with childbirth. Hopefully she will be in her place on 14 June for Health questions, and I think an Adjournment debate or Backbench Business debate would be widely supported.