Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Neil Gray and Meg Hillier

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

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I come to this debate, as others have already said, having sat on various Committees, bodies and boards regarding the restoration and renewal project. I was on the first Joint Committee, which assessed the independent options appraisal and reported in September 2016. I have been a member of the Finance Committee, currently chaired by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), which has looked at this project and at the northern estate programme since I was elected in 2015. I am currently a member of the shadow Sponsor Board for the R and R project, and I served on the Committee chaired by the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), which scrutinised this Bill. Although I have been sceptical of this project, I have approached the work of all the bodies I have served on constructively. I will come to my concerns later, but I will first address the areas of consensus that I think are important.

There is no doubt that this Palace is in need of significant work. It has been neglected for decades by the British political class who call it their home, and it is now this generation of politicians who need to take the difficult decisions about the building’s future. Members will not be surprised if I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), do not hold much sentimentality for the building itself as the home of Parliament because I can see how modern Parliament buildings allow politics to flourish elsewhere. However, I do acknowledge that this is an important listed building and a world heritage site, so action is required.

If we are to insist on Parliament remaining in this building, we have to acknowledge that crowbarring a 21st-century Parliament into a 19th-century building will require compromises and premiums. It will cost more for us to get a less functional building than if we were to look at a new building. That said, we are where we are—that is, discussing a Bill to progress the project. I agree that, should the project go ahead, it can only realistically be achieved if Parliament is fully decanted, as the risk to personal safety, project delays and cost overruns all significantly increase with any form of partial decant. I concur again with my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire that we have a responsibility to the safety of staff. I also agree that the delivery model of the Sponsor Board and the Delivery Authority is the right one. As has been said, the London Olympics derived much of their success from their organisation, and this project seeks to mirror that model. However, other factors in the success of the London Olympics were the support of the Government and the support of the public, and there is some work to do on both fronts with regards to this project.

Ever since the first Joint Committee was ready to publish its report, the Government have been lukewarm in their support. It is hardly surprising that while another controversial issue has been at play, the Government would want to kick this one as far away from them as possible, although I acknowledge that this Leader of the House has driven the matter of late. A line of discussion in the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee was how to bind the Government in—to make them owners and cheerleaders for this project. One way to do so would be to have a Treasury Minister appointed to the Sponsor Board. The Chancellor of the day will be signing the massive cheques for this project, so it would seem sensible to have them as part of the operational decision-making process, but this has not yet been accepted by the Government. In spite of the recent enthusiasm for getting on with the job shown by the Leader of House, that is a point of concern for me.

There has always been a concern about the reaction of the public to billions of pounds being spent on the workplace of politicians, and I believe that our constituents’ scepticism will be most keenly felt the further they are from London. As it stands right now, this project will be another massive London-centric capital project. London and the south-east already benefit from a third of UK capital spending, coupled with all the job creation and economic benefits that come from it. I am a massive sports fan and a former athlete so I was a supporter of the London Olympics, but there is no doubt that we have lessons to learn from that process. The most important lesson is the way in which good causes funding was sucked away from the nations and regions to pay for the Olympics. In Scotland, that amounted to £75 million. We heard just last week—seven years on—that £30 million of that money is to return over several years. In that sense, there is no doubt that it was the London Olympics and not the UK’s Olympics.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. We are looking at getting jobs and business from around the country into the project. I hope that the Sponsor Body insists on a proper evaluation to check that that aim is actually being delivered on, and that we do not get charlatan contractors promising the earth and then not delivering for constituents across the country.

[Neil Gray]

Yes, and that is a line from the report that the hon. Lady and I both helped to author, alongside the right hon. Member for Meriden. The devil will be in the detail as this project progresses. It will be important not only that the Government accept that fact—and that that is clear through the Bill’s progress—but that the Sponsor Body is attuned to it, so that we do not see the same mistakes again. If this project has any chance of gaining political and public support, it must be a genuinely UK-wide project, and that means that we should see discernible benefits across the UK. That was a topic that I and others on the scrutiny Committee were keen to explore. I have a possible solution that I have already discussed and that I hope the Government will take seriously.