Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Meg Hillier and Chris Bryant

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th June 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Meg Hillier]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson.

I tabled amendments 8 to 13 partly to explore how we could make sure that the membership of the Sponsor Body would reflect the make-up of the House, to note the importance of having elections, and for consequential purposes. We now have elections for Select Committee Chairs, and for Select Committee Back Benchers. That reform has swept through the House, but it was not proposed for the Sponsor Body. The main point is to enshrine balance and the principle of election in the Bill.

I recognise that if there were an election it would be a challenge for smaller parties to get representation. That would be one of the benefits of going through the usual channels. However, there is of course a benefit in elections, because people are held directly accountable by the electorate, whether it is their party group or a wider electorate. I did not have the opportunity to discuss the matter with the usual channels, who, I am sure, have views, and I should be happy to hear the Minister’s views. However, an important principle is involved, about election and being held accountable, and that is the reason for my proposal. The other point is the involvement of a smaller party, and the mechanism for that.

The amendments may not be the perfect solution, but they enable the Committee at least to probe the idea of an election from among the smaller parties for their representative on the Sponsor Body. The reality is that in the time available I did not have the opportunity to gauge wider opinion and it may be that some Members in small parties would not want to devote a lot of time to the Sponsor Body. I recognise that the amendment is exploratory but I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on the general principle of elections and balance.

We had an interesting discussion in the previous sitting, and there was a lot of talk about UK-wide representation, and getting that reflected in the works. There is a benefit to party-wide representation as the project goes forward, partly to tie in knowledge about what is going on, in each party grouping, so that people are aware. It will give a clear view that this is a cross-party parliamentary matter.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great delight to see you in the Chair, Mr Hanson.

I, too, support the idea of elections to the Sponsor Body. One of the most positive things that has happened since I became an MP in 2001 is the election of Select Committee Chairs. That means that Members from different political parties have to reach out across the whole House, and I think that that would be a positive measure in the present case.

I understand that there is some anxiety about how we would end up with the precise numbers from the different political parties. The fact that the Liberal Democrats have appointed from the Lords adds a further problem, but I still think that that should not detain us too long. It should be perfectly possible to have an election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Meg Hillier]

On the basis of what the Minister has said, I will withdraw this amendment now, but with the right to return to it, perhaps in a simpler form, at a later stage.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clauses 4 to 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 3

The Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission

Question proposed, That the schedule be the Third schedule to the Bill.

[Chris Bryant]

I will not delay the Committee long, Mr Hanson, I promise you, but I want to raise a couple of issues that are important to clarify.

As Members will know, schedule 3 lays out how the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission will operate. It has only four members and its quorum is two, as long as one Member of the House of Commons and one Member of the House of Lords are present. It makes no provision for who the Chair of that Committee should be, but the Commission is able, if it so chooses, to reject entirely an estimate at any stage through to actual delivery of the project.

I want to know what happens if there are only two people there who have different views and there is no Chair. How will it be decided whether they have agreed or rejected an estimate? Also, does the Commission operate according to House of Commons rules or according to House of Lords rules, because those rules are different in respect of what happens on a tied vote? For that matter, they are also different as to whether the record is kept in Latin or in English.

These may sound like light-hearted comments, but they are important, because it may come to a point where the Sponsor Body is happy with an estimate, but only two members of the Commission turn up, with one of them against and one in favour of the estimate, and we have stalemate, with no means of deciding whether the estimate is to proceed.

I think that setting up a new Commission is unnecessary. What we have done with the Members Estimate Committee is that that is now the House of Commons Commission. It has the same membership; that is laid down in statute. I am ruminating on this subject, and I may table amendments to that effect on Report, but I just wonder whether it would be better for the body that makes this decision to be a Joint Committee of the Finance Committees of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Then, there would at least be a broad range of views from both Houses and an established process, whereby there is a Chair and decisions are reached, even when there is an equality of voices.

Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Meg Hillier and Chris Bryant

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

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly commend the right hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin) for his speech, and we now move from the dales to the valleys. I think he and I would agree that, as the Leader of the House said, when we first looked at restoration and renewal—I first looked at it in 2008 when I was Deputy Leader of the House—we saw it with a sceptical eye. I represent one of the poorest constituencies in the land, and I would love to see large amounts of money spent on infrastructure projects in my constituency to improve the national health service and to save people from the food bank existence that many in work still have to pursue. The truth is that this is not either/or but both/and. We have to tackle the poverty in our land and we have to make sure that this building is put right.

I know the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) wants to live in this building, however horrible he was about it, and my one major difference with him is that I do not think we can just sell the building as it would no longer be the icon that it currently is. Every Hollywood movie filmed in London, if it wants to show the United Kingdom, shows this building. The building would no longer be that icon if it were just a hotel. Frankly, I do not think anyone would want to take on the building on a commercial basis unless we had already sorted out the plumbing, the electricity and all the mechanical engineering. In actual fact, it would be more expensive for us to find a completely alternative venue, rather than to make this building good.

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Does he agree that, as the building is a UNESCO world heritage site, it is the responsibility of the Government, through the Treasury, to fund the work or to make sure it happens?

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely, and the point has been made many times not only by my hon. Friend but by the Public Accounts Committee, which she chairs, that this is a cost-saving measure, rather than something to our detriment.

The Leader of the House mentioned many of the problems in the building, including the falling masonry and the danger of fire, but I want to start with the stench. Maybe this year more than any other, but the stench on the Terrace, on the Principal Corridor and in the basement rooms is absolutely appalling because the building’s drainage system is from 150 years ago. There is a beautiful piece of Victorian engineering down in the basement underneath the Speaker’s garden, but it is not fit for the 21st century. We need to be doing these things better.

For that matter, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) said admirably from the Front Bench, we need to get to a place where all the energy we consume in this building is used efficiently and is carbon neutral. That will be possible only if we have a major renewal of the mechanical engineering aspects of the building, which will be 75% of the bill.

I sometimes feel we are like King Canute trying to prevent the sewage from climbing up the stairs towards us. That is fitting because, of course, King Canute was the first person to build a palace on this piece of land at the beginning of the 11th century. It is bizarre that The Times has its office in a portakabin on the roof of this building. We would laugh at any other country in the world that looked after a UNESCO-listed building in such an appalling way.



The cloisters, one of the most beautiful parts of the building, are completely hidden to the vast majority of the public. They were built by Henry VIII, and who knows whether Thomas Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell or whoever else kept their horses in there? It does not matter, because the truth is that this beautiful perpendicular architecture is falling apart on our watch as we simply do not have the capacity to do all the work that needs to be done to the building at the same time.

We have dragged our heels. They may be beautiful heels, but they have been dragged for far too long. I am delighted that the Leader of the House, perhaps seizing the moment after the terrible fire at Notre Dame, which brought home the fact that a building is at most danger of fire during such work—exactly the situation in which we find ourselves—is taking advantage of the moment to put on her wellington boots and stomp over to Downing Street to say that now is the time to bring forward the Bill. I am enormously grateful to her for doing that.

We have already made some decisions, and I know people will want to review and revise those decisions endlessly into the future. The right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) did a good job of making sure that the Joint Committee on the Draft Parliamentary Buildings Bill did not keep on revising the decisions we have already decided. One of the things we have decided is that we will move out in one fell swoop and that we will come back. That does not necessarily mean that every single aspect of the Chamber will look exactly as it looks now.

We have to make sure this Chamber has proper disabled access. That will be complicated but, as the Joint Committee heard, there are many churches across the land that have had to deal with precisely these issues and have done so very beautifully and elegantly in a way that meets all the statutory requirements while respecting the history, the tradition and the architectural beauty of the places concerned. I am sure we can do that in this Chamber so that, for instance, a Clerk would be able to sit at the Table in a wheelchair, if necessary. Or, for that matter, an hon. Member in a wheelchair would not have to sit at the Bar of the House but could sit somewhere else—they could even be a Minister, a shadow Minister or the Speaker. All these things should be obvious to us today.

Other Members have already mentioned the issues for partially sighted people. Some years ago when I sat on the Joint Committee on the Palace of Westminster, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) might mention later, one of the things that came home to me most strongly is that the dim lighting in this building makes it particularly difficult for people with partial sight to feel confident as they go around the building, to read papers and to take part in discussions and debates. That obviously affects Members of both Houses.

We have also decided that we will decant to Richmond House—that is a decision. There is no point constantly revising it. That is what is going to happen. I say to those who want constantly to revise these issues that, by doing so, all we would be doing is delaying, delaying and delaying, and every year of delay is another £100 million added to the bill.

We have also decided in principle to set up arm’s length bodies, just as the Olympics were delivered, with the Sponsor Body and the Delivery Authority, which is precisely what this Bill introduces. I fully support that process. There are, however, some problems that will need to be addressed in Committee and during the Bill’s remaining stages. The first is the issue of planning. The biggest risk to this whole process is the planning process. If we end up in protracted planning rows with Westminster City Council or if there is a judicial review, which could take many years, about either the northern estate programme or the restoration and renewal programme, that could put paid to the whole project. Everyone might at that point throw up their hands and say, “Oh gosh—this is too impossible. We will have to go back to ‘patch and mend’.”

I really want us to make sure that we have made the right decision on the planning question. The Committee considered the matter, but I think it was given wrong advice—bad advice, if I am honest. Notwithstanding the earlier comments of the Leader of the House about the difference between this and the London Olympics Bill—five local, planning authorities in east London were involved in that Bill, but only one is involved in this one—the repeated advice seemed to be that if we included a planning clause in this Bill, it would become a hybrid Bill.

I do not think there is any reason why this should become a hybrid Bill solely because of that. If we wanted to state that this was not to be such a Bill, that would be entirely within our power. It would be perfectly possible for us to say that we would give planning to the Delivery Authority, which could do exactly what was done during the Olympics: chair a planning committee, present planning proposals to itself and consider them openly. It managed to carry everybody with it, and the process was not confrontational; it simply meant that things could be done in a time-efficient way.

Members may not be aware of this, but one of the issues that has plagued us now for more than a decade— 16 years, I think—is what lighting we can put in Westminster Hall. We have put forward endless proposals; I have seen at least a dozen sets of pictures of what the lighting could be, yet we have still not managed to replace the hideous things up there now. I fear that we are going to go through exactly the same process—round and round in circles, not voting in Division Lobbies but trying to persuade another authority that we are doing the right thing.

I also want to raise accountability to Parliament. At the moment, there are more peers than MPs among the membership of the Sponsor Body. As the Leader of the House said, there are seven members, and the Whips Offices decided that the individual parties should nominate—not elect—people for it. Those on the Sponsor Body will be the major conduit for accountability to the House of Commons. They will make sure that the project does not run completely out of kilter with what Members of this House or the House of Lords think acceptable. I think it would be better if there were more Members of the House of Commons than of the House of Lords on the Sponsor Body because we have the primary responsibility for finance and have done since the 17th or maybe 16th century—and, after all, we are the representatives of our constituents.

Secondly, it would be better if Sponsor Body members were elected rather than appointed. Our experience thus far of electing Select Committee Chairs has been entirely positive: they have a mandate of their own and manage to bind views across the whole House. In general, transparency is a good thing. I note that the Leader of the House, when giving evidence to the Liaison Committee about something completely different last week, said that she is always in favour of elections whenever possible. I very much hope that we will be able to make that change during the passage of the Bill.

The Committee considered questions to the House, which could be made easier. Members will have genuine questions—why wouldn’t they, given that this will be one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country? There will have to be somebody who answers for the Sponsor Body. That cannot be an external person; it needs to be a Member of Parliament. My suggestion is that the vice-chair of the Sponsor Body should be a Member of the House of Commons and respond to questions in the House. We should set aside a time every six weeks or so for 10 or 15 minutes of questions.

As Members will know, the next step is the northern estate programme. As chair of the finance committee, I would prefer that programme to move on a couple more steps before it is handed to the Delivery Authority and Sponsor Body. We are close to presenting a planning application to Westminster City Council and we need to get a little further down the road before we hand it over; otherwise, there is a danger that the Delivery Authority and Sponsor Body will get obsessed with the northern estate programme rather than with developing a full budget and costed plans for restoration and renewal.

We should be ambitious in this project. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire expressed valid concerns, and although I disagree with some of them, there is no point in our coming back to a building that looks exactly the same as now in every single regard. It has to have much better access for the public. My constituents have a long way to come if they want to see Parliament. At the moment, they find it difficult to do a proper tour of Parliament unless they can get here by 10 o’clock on a Monday morning. That is really difficult to achieve, especially for a primary school.

I would like us to have a system whereby the Gallery is much more convenient for members of the public to use. Perhaps they might even be able to talk in the Gallery, so that what is going on in the Chamber can be explained to youngsters, rather than their having to go out of the Gallery to have it explained. I see no reason why members of the public should not be able to tweet when they are in the Public Gallery, as visitors can when they go round the Bundestag or most other Parliaments. I would like us to have much easier physical access for disabled people, not only to the Gallery, which is obvious, but because the rest of the building needs to feel far more like it belongs to the whole of the public in this country.

My final point is that we will not be able to deliver this project unless we train thousands more British people to be able to do the work. It is not just about the crafts, such as being able to cut stone and make new gargoyles. No doubt there will be a new gargoyle of the Leader of the House, or the next Leader of the House, or, if the Leader of the House becomes Prime Minister, perhaps several gargoyles—[Interruption.] Or one of the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), indeed; that would be an even nicer gargoyle.

It is not just the craft skills that will be needed; we will need skills at the high-tech end of energy conservation, information technology, cabling and central heating in a system such as this, as well as conservation. I really hope that we will set up academies in every part of this country—we should be doing so now—so that young people from every single constituency in the land will think about working in this building as a matter of pride. I hope that at least 100 or 150 youngsters from the Rhondda end up working here, so that it is genuinely a palace for the people again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Meg Hillier]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I see that I have immediately prompted something. I give way to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Restoration and Renewal (Report of the Joint Committee)

Debate between Meg Hillier and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about big houses; I think he is asking me to advertise my book on the history of the aristocracy, which is in all the good bookshops at the moment. I would simply say to him that nearly every one of the major houses that fell into disrepair in the last 100 years did so as the result of a massive fire. I think we should take a lesson from that, which is that we must be very, very cautious in this building. When that fire comes, I would not want to be a Member who had voted against taking direct, clear action now; I truly would not.

It must surely also be a disgrace that this Parliament, which introduced proper legislation to ensure disabled access in every other public building in the land, has the worst disabled access of any public building in the land. It is almost impossible for somebody with mobility difficulties to get up into the Gallery, although the staff try really hard. On top of that, the building is very dark—it is almost impossible for many people who are partially sighted to see their way around—and we should, as a matter of honour, be putting that right.

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

My hon. Friend mentions fires, as a number of hon. Members have done. We have talked about actual fires. Only a few months ago, in my office there was a smell of burning and soot falling from the grates in my ceiling. I phoned the emergency number, but by the time I had reached the door of my office there were fire wardens in the corridor. That is the reality of preventing fire, and happily, so far, it has been successful.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. As several others have already said, this is not primarily about us; it is about the safety of the thousands of people who come to visit the building, the 8,000 who work in it, and the 15,000 who have passes.

The hon. Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) was absolutely right to say that it is crazy that great big scaffolding has been put up in the cloisters to make work possible on one of the most beautiful bits of the Palace, one of the other bits that survived the 1834 fire—the cloisters that were put in by Henry VII and then Henry VIII. The problem is that at the moment we simply do not have the capacity and the capability within the House authorities to get those major pieces of work done in the House. That means that parts of the building are falling apart, water is coming in where it should not, and we are degrading a national asset. That is why it is so important, as the right hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin) said, to set up a proper sponsor body and delivery authority to do this properly—to bring in really high-quality staff and to make sure the work is delivered on time and on budget, as we can do in this country.

In all honesty, motion No. 1, if left unamended, says, broadly speaking, “Let’s not do anything in this Parliament.” It is not the long grass; it is the very, very long grass. I believe that would be an utter dereliction of our duty, which is why Historic England, who are, after all, the Government’s own advisers on the built heritage in this country, have said that if we were to go down that route, they would have to put this building on the at- risk register. That is a profoundly shocking thing for us to be told if we are not going to take action.

Motion No. 2 is mildly better. I am a bit disappointed in the Leader of the House that she is not going any further than that motion, because it also means that we refuse to make a clear decision now. It means that we try to set up a sponsor body and a delivery authority, for which we want to get the best people, without giving them a clear direction of travel. It means that they will be repeating the work that was done by the Joint Committee.

We produced our report 16 months ago and it is only now that we are getting the debate, so my bet is that when this sponsor body reports, with the three options that it has looked at, the Government will not want to table the motions. There will be a general election coming up; there will be some issue that has to be sorted out, and the debate will be another two years after that. I say to hon. Members that if they are thinking of voting for motion No. 2, they will have to make this decision all over again in four years’ time, by which time the risk will have increased—and the cost.

That is why I support amendment (b) to motion No. 1. It implements the unanimous recommendations of the Joint Committee and the Public Accounts Committee; it sets up a sponsor body and a delivery authority; and it takes an in principle decision. It is the only way to take an in principle decision today.