Restoration and Renewal

Debate between Paul Beresford and Nicholas Brown

Thursday 7th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Brown]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Also, the Chamber of the House of Commons, of course, was rebuilt in the 1950s when asbestos was extensively used as a fire prevention and building material. The dangers were not as well known then, or were not as accepted as they are now. The survey work to see how much asbestos is there has not been fully undertaken yet. Some excursions have been made and, as he hints, it is not looking good. There was a large exercise in the 1990s, I think, to remove asbestos from the House of Lords. How well that was done needs to be checked. Asbestos is a killer. Mesothelioma is a terrible condition.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

The thinking behind decanting is not just about the asbestos. There is a sewerage system that runs from one end of the building to the other. Stopping it halfway down—be it left or right—is not feasible because it would involve a sewerage system outside the building and considerable complications. Added to all the other facilities in there now, we would have the same problem.

[Mr Brown]

That problem goes back to the beginning of the debate about whether we could decant Chamber by Chamber, or whether it would all have to be done as one big decant because of the pooled facilities. Again, survey work is not completed yet. We have agreed the R&R estimate that should bring the survey work to completion, and I eagerly await the conclusions.

Re-routing has been thought of. The interesting thing about the article I referred to is that it had photographs of what the original conduits look like now. They have been colonised by electricity cables, which are not labelled. They have been colonised by gas and water pipes that run through the original utility that was supposed to draw in air, so that it would become hot air heated by the fires underneath, which, given the fate of the previous building, was quite a brave thing to install in Victorian times. Is it appropriate now? Probably not. A bolder solution might be to just concrete over the whole thing and put new services in. A great danger of being on a Members’ scrutiny Committee is that we start finding Members’ solutions to problems, and that is probably worse than calling in the experts.

We have made mistakes; we should admit it. I do not think they are quite as expensive as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds thinks, but there are things that have not been done as well or as elegantly as they could have been. I do not think we will get another chance to make a major change because we are about to embark, in perhaps two years’ time, on really big expenditure, depending on the directions we choose. For certainty, that will require another decision of the House, perhaps in the next Parliament, but soon-ish in our terms, and then there is no going back. If the costs are to escalate dramatically, we need to get there first. If the time that we are decanted from this place is to be longer that we had hoped, given the starting point for this discussion—it could be a lot longer than we hope—we had better get the decision on that right and reconcile ourselves to it. I do not think there is a more rational way forward.

House of Commons (Administration) Bill

Debate between Paul Beresford and Nicholas Brown

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

I would like, very briefly, to explore with the Minister why the Government hold the view that the two estimates should remain separate and that the Bill should not even be permissive on the subject of merging the two estimates. One estimate covers a maximum of £22 million of public expenditure in the context of £700 billion of expenditure. The Members estimate, for which the House is responsible, is something of an anomaly now. It is effectively residual following the setting up of IPSA. It is not possible for the sums spent to be increased by a decision, say, of the Commission or of any other House body because the pay and rations for MPs are now dealt with exclusively by IPSA.

Effectively, the Members estimate covers residual things such as Short money, which is wholly conditioned by a resolution of the House and not open to serious adjustment via any other mechanism, as well as the computers and stationery that Members use. I think that is just about it now. It is not an extensive budget head and there is not much scope for it to expand.

In an ideal and virtuous world, we would be looking at ways of merging these necessary expenditures with the main functions of IPSA. Certainly it seems odd that the Government are not even keeping the idea alive. Parliamentary vehicles such as this Bill do not come along very often. I fully accept that the Government are assisting with this one so I will not push my point too far. I wish the Bill well. The hon. Member for Mole Valley, who I will call my hon. Friend, has done well to get the Bill this far, and I appreciate the generally constructive approach that the Government are taking as, indeed, previous Governments did when they tried to get a similar measure through. I just think that the Government may have got it wrong on whether the estimates—not the monies—could be merged at some future point.

Such a merger could not take place before 2017 in any event. The Treasury would have to agree to it, as would the other parties, before anything like that could be done. The idea is that agreeing to it now would somehow commit the Treasury, but it is not as though anybody could do that. The Treasury would still have to consent. It seems to me a bit narrow of the Government—it clearly is the Government—to insist that that not be a route taken at some stage in the future. From a House of Commons point of view, it might be sensible to at least leave the option open and to leave legislative provision, perhaps making it clearer on Report that the Treasury would have to consent before anything such as this could be done.

In an ideal world, that is the approach we would take. There may be some Member resistance because of dissatisfaction with IPSA, but that would be about the functioning of IPSA rather than the merging of the estimates. The Minister was open enough to say that this was opposed, but she did not explain why. I would like to hear that explanation.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I hope we can resolve this issue because, to be quite blunt, this is an opportunist clause put in for an opportune moment, and it looks to me as though—to use a colonial phrase—we were rumbled. I therefore support the Minister’s position, particularly as the clause is not related to the fund itself directly or the management of the fund.

On the assumption that it is appropriate to do so, I will speak briefly to amendment 11, which is to the schedule. This is a belt and braces amendment for the trustees, because it allows them to make arrangements under which a commercial institution could undertake the commitments or liabilities of the fund. That follows the thinking of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.