Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Meg Hillier and Andrea Leadsom

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

This is a matter for the House to decide. I am talking about seven parliamentarians, because that is what is currently on the shadow Sponsor Body. It is, of course, for the House to make such decisions. The parties put forward their nominees, and that is the reason there are four peers and three Members of this House. This is precisely a very good example of where it is for the House to decide what structure it wants. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall make a bit more progress.

The Bill is not simply about restoring an old building in an urgent state of disrepair. This is about the ambition we have for a 21st century Parliament, which is more family-friendly and a truly modern workplace. The work we are undertaking provides Parliament with the opportunity to consider the daily working of the Palace. It is clear that the programme should seek improvements to the Palace for people with disabilities to gain access, but there is also an opportunity to resolve issues with long queues at visitor entrances and to offer more inclusive access to Parliament across the country by improving some of our broadcasting services.

The work will also provide employment opportunities right across the UK. The programme will require specialist skills, which, especially in the heritage sector, tend to be found in small and medium-sized enterprises. Apprenticeship schemes right across the UK will be able to engage in the work of restoring the Palace. This is already happening on other projects being carried out on the parliamentary estate, such as the encaustic tile conservation project. R and R also offers the opportunity to enhance the experience of students visiting Westminster, whether through improved educational facilities in the Palace or the opportunities of the Richmond House replica Chamber.

As hon. Members across the House know, I passionately believe in making Parliament a more family-friendly place to work. R and R will provide an opportunity to help make our workplace the best it can be in supporting Members to balance the long hours they work in this House with their family commitments and better reflect the public we are here to represent. That is just a run-through of some of my own views, but I recognise that all Members will have opinions on what they want to see delivered as part of R and R. That is why the Bill includes a specific duty on the Sponsor Body to consult parliamentarians on the strategic objectives of the R and R works.

Members across the House will also have views on the decant to our temporary workplace during R and R. In passing the motions in early 2018, Parliament was clear that as part of R and R it would temporarily leave the Palace, so that the restoration and renewal work can be done more quickly and more cheaply.

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

One concern people have expressed to me, and which we all have concerns about, is mission creep. Will the Leader of the House explain clearly how she sees the Sponsor Body and the Delivery Authority ensuring that once the case is set, future generations do not add in bells and whistles that will cost a lot more?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I hope I can assure the hon. Lady that the outline business case will be the project outline. The Estimates Commission will lay the annual estimates to the House for it to reject or approve. I have no doubt that the hon. Lady’s Public Accounts Committee and others, including the National Audit Office, will want to look very carefully at value for money and to ensure that there has not been scope creep. I absolutely accept the point she makes. This is a parliamentary project, so a very important feature will be that Members accept and respect the fact that we are seeking to restore this place at the best possible value for taxpayers’ money.

The work on the decant of the House of Commons is at present led by the House authorities and is not the responsibility of the Sponsor Body. I know that many of those who are engaged with the programme already, through visiting the booth in Portcullis House and reading the consultation strategy, will have had their own views and made them known. I have heard plenty of positive comments about the innovative and modern plans for the temporary Chamber, but there may well be something specific that Members would like to see. I therefore hope that everybody will feed their ideas and views into the consultation on the plans for the temporary decant and for the northern estate project.

I want to point out that the redeveloped Richmond House will provide a number of potential legacy benefits, the first of which relates to business resilience. All major organisations require a contingency plan. The works to Richmond House will provide a more robust future resilience plan, making sure that Parliament is prepared for business continuity, should it ever be needed, outside the Palace. Secondly, there is no doubt that it will improve the experience of the more than 1 million visitors to the parliamentary estate each year. The replica Chamber could become a hub for educational facilities, where schoolchildren could learn at first hand how Parliament works and could hold regular debates. It could become a home for the Parliamentary Archives, and it could be a location for major parliamentary and other exhibitions. The views of Members will be very welcome.

Thirdly, Richmond House is well placed in terms of security. The Murphy review, following the tragic murder of PC Keith Palmer in 2017, brought home the need for a fully secure perimeter around the Palace. Richmond House is the only option for decant within that secure perimeter. I encourage all Members to provide their views during the consultation on Richmond House, which is currently under way. However, I want to remind Members that the Bill before the House today is not concerned with where we will go while the works take place; it solely puts in place governance arrangements in order to deliver the vital works to the Palace at the best value to taxpayers.

To conclude, the time for patching and mending this place has come to an end. Those of us who are fully aware of the speed of deterioration of the Palace know that the sensible and decisive option is to facilitate a full restoration project. The choice before the House is to preserve the Palace of Westminster as the home of the UK Parliament for future generations or to keep risking a catastrophic failure, which I believe would be an unforgivable dereliction of duty. I look forward to hearing today’s contributions, and I commend the Bill to the House.

Business of the House

Debate between Meg Hillier and Andrea Leadsom

Thursday 11th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman feels extremely strongly about this, and I absolutely sympathise with his view. He will appreciate, as will all hon. Members, that this issue comes up frequently at business questions, and I do keep the House updated on the several different measures that the Government have in train to tackle it, including through early prevention, through working with communities and with police officers, through legislation such as the Offensive Weapons Bill, through our serious violence taskforce and indeed through the public health approach to preventing knife crime. However, I hear what he is saying and I will take this up again with the Home Office.

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

We have seen the scandal of Windrush and, in Hackney, we have thousands of Commonwealth citizens who are likely to be affected. Some 41,000 European citizens are going through the immigration process and there are increasing problems with entrepreneur and spouse visas. Is it not time we had a proper debate in Government time about the functioning, or mis-functioning, of the Government’s immigration system?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady will be aware that the Home Secretary made a statement to the House about the Windrush compensation scheme only a few days ago, so I hope that she had the opportunity to raise her concerns with him then. I understand that she has particular concerns. If she wants to raise those with Home Office Ministers, I am sure that they will be delighted to meet her to discuss them.

Business of the House

Debate between Meg Hillier and Andrea Leadsom

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman will know that there has been a steady desire on the part of the Government to seek agreement to the withdrawal agreement and future political declaration and to seek legally binding changes that would enable parliamentarians to support it. The Prime Minister indicated her extreme sadness at the fact that the House has declined to support the deal. She set out two weeks ago the next steps should that be the case. So we are following the process that the Prime Minister set out a couple of weeks ago. It is still our intention, if at all possible, to leave the European Union on 29 March with a good deal.

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

Will the Government lay out on Thursday, alongside the motion, their considerations on what will no doubt be a proposed period of extension, which could obviously be amended? Through the work of the Public Accounts Committee, we see the real challenges of being prepared to leave, even with a deal, by 29 March. Even a short extension would give little comfort to people out there. So will the Leader of the House give us, either now or then, an indication of the length of time that the Government would be proposing on Thursday for an extension to article 50?

Restoration and Renewal (Report of the Joint Committee)

Debate between Meg Hillier and Andrea Leadsom

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s perspective on this, but the reality is that we have to look at the best value for taxpayers’ money, not simply at the one proposal made by the Joint Committee, which it acknowledged it had not fully costed. To quote the Joint Committee report:

“We recognise that there is still work to be completed in order to validate our conclusions.”

The costs allocated were not budgets for the programme, and there are real concerns around value for taxpayers’ money arising from the hon. Gentleman’s amendment.

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

The right hon. Lady is seeking to say that her motions suggest better value for the taxpayer, but if we make a decision with three options that have to be fully worked up and costed, that will mean a considerable cost in time and taxpayers’ money. However, making a decision now, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, will mean that we can get on with it, set the path forward and get value for taxpayers.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am sorry, but I must absolutely disagree with the hon. Lady. The problem with going for the one solution that she suggests is that the Joint Committee itself made it clear that it had not fully costed the options or even considered the options for fully decanting both Houses. She is also wrong, as is the amendment, on the grounds of the capability for full decant. If Members consider the challenge of decanting from this place, what exactly are they proposing? The planning that will go into fully decanting potentially 7,500 people—the works of art, the furniture, the books—will take a considerable amount of time in itself. That has to be properly planned, properly costed and properly evaluated, so the option for partial decant could, potentially, be a better, more valued option for the taxpayer than the proposal for full decant.

Business of the House

Debate between Meg Hillier and Andrea Leadsom

Thursday 6th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

May I say that that is utter nonsense and not worthy of the hon. Gentleman? Would he like to mention the Secretary of State for Scotland’s support for the Scottish oil and gas sector? He gave hours and hours of committed time to the discussion of a package of fiscal reliefs to support the oil and gas sector in Scotland. I was an Energy Minister myself, so I know very well what he did in the energy space: he spent hours with me working on a supply chain to give Scottish fabrication yards the chance to build the parts for the offshore wind sector that this Government have supported. We have half the world’s offshore wind turbines, but the hon. Gentleman does not mention any of that. This is a petty and spiteful act from an Opposition who should be ashamed of themselves. The Secretary of State for Scotland has spoken up for the people of Scotland at every opportunity.

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

In the previous Parliament, the Public Accounts Committee and several constituency Members from all parties expressed concerns about Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs estate reorganisation. It appears that major contracts were signed while Parliament was dissolved, which appears to fly in the face of official guidance to the civil service on not making big decisions on commercial contracts during purdah. Will the Leader of the House, the champion of the House in the Government, undertake to look into this matter and report back, or ensure that a Minister reports back? As HMRC is not a ministerially led Department, will she grant a debate in Government time so that Members can express their concerns directly?

[Andrea Leadsom]

If the hon. Lady would like to raise specific issues relating to HMRC processes, I will certainly take them forward for her, but I wish to use this opportunity to point out that since 2010 HMRC has secured £150 billion for this country in additional compliance revenues as a result of its actions to tackle tax evasion, tax avoidance and non-compliance. In 2016 alone, HMRC collected record revenues of £26.5 billion from compliance activities. We have secured nearly £3 billion from offshore tax evaders and more than £2.5 billion extra from the very wealthiest since 2010. If the hon. Lady or anyone else in the Chamber would like to praise HMRC for its contribution to sorting out the economy and getting us back to living within our means, I would be delighted to hear it.

Business of the House

Debate between Meg Hillier and Andrea Leadsom

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

We will all have seen recent press reports of close shaves, and this certainly seems to be an increasing challenge. If my hon. Friend would like to write to me on this point, I will certainly take it up with the Department for Transport.

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

The National Audit Office says it will cost nearly £7 billion to get existing school buildings up to scratch, yet the Government are spending money hand over fist on developing free school sites, including four in London that have cost more than £30 million each. Should we not have a debate in Government time about how we manage the capital budget for schools so that all our pupils can be in schools with decent sports facilities and playgrounds, rather than in old office blocks that are not fit for purpose?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I remind the hon. Lady that 1.8 million more children are in good and outstanding schools than in 2010—[Interruption.] Opposition Members tut but, for parents, a decent education is absolutely essential in a globally competitive world. She makes a good point about the fabric of buildings. It is not as important a point as the quality of education that our children are getting, but I would be very happy to take it up for her if she would like to write to me.

Business of the House

Debate between Meg Hillier and Andrea Leadsom

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

As luck would have it, the very next debate on the Queen’s Speech is on the subject of housing. My hon. Friend may well want to take part in that debate later today.

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

Last year the Department of Health laid its accounts before the House on 21 July, the last day the House sat before the summer recess. Will the newly appointed Leader of the House—the champion of this place in Cabinet—ensure that this does not happen again? Could the accounts of not only the Department of Health but all Government Departments be laid so that we can scrutinise them?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I appreciate what the hon. Lady says. As she will appreciate, Departments move heaven and earth to ensure that they get reports out on sitting days. There is always a rush to try to get them out before the recess begins. I have some sympathy for Departments trying to meet those deadlines and trying not to deliver during recesses, but I certainly take the hon. Lady’s point and will ask colleagues to try to ensure that there is time for parliamentary scrutiny.