Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Pete Wishart Excerpts

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

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Of all the things this House can do to endear itself to the good people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, spending billions of pounds on renovating the place where we, the Members of Parliament, do our work probably, just about, would not make the top 10. In these days of austerity and with us still going through all the horrors and psychodramas of this crazy Tory Brexit it almost seems like it is designed to intentionally wind up the good people of this country. So I sincerely wish this House all the very best in trying to sell this to a sceptical and, frankly, had-enough nation.

[Meg Hillier]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I have barely started, but I will give way given that the hon. Lady is Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman is critical of spending money on the UK Parliament so it amuses me that there are colleagues of all of ours up the road, as he would say, in a wonderful, splendid modern Parliament building that cost the taxpayer quite a lot of money.

[Pete Wishart]

I will say two things to the hon. Lady. [Interruption.] She is already hearing a chorus on one of them: it cost less than Portcullis House. And if she wants to know about the difficulties in designing a Parliament and creating a Parliament she only needs to look at the experience of the Scottish Parliament. That was one of the first pieces of work that the Scottish Parliament went into, and I can tell the hon. Lady that it was not particularly easy; there was real discontent about it. That is what this House and Members will experience; that is what they have got to look forward to, because they will have to try to sell this to a sceptical nation, and I wish them all the very best.

On that, let me declare an interest—or maybe a disinterest. Me and my colleagues do not intend to be here at the end of the process.

[Meg Hillier]

Labour gains.

[Pete Wishart]

I was going to tell a few jokes in my speech, but I think we have heard the funniest one already: the idea of the Labour party gaining any seats from the Scottish National party is the best joke we will hear.

Let me declare my disinterest: me and my SNP colleagues are not going to be here. We are probably not even going to be here at the commencement of the project given its tortuous progress. So we will let other Members get on with their vital restoration and renewal work while we get down to the business of restoring and renewing our beautiful country in the shape of the priorities of the Scottish people.

I like the fact that those in charge of this call it restoration and renewal—R and R. Who doesn’t like a bit of R and R? Everybody likes that. If they called it the restoring of a Parliament for the Members of Parliament of this country I am sure they would have a few more difficulties in trying to explain that to the people of this country. And good luck to them in defending the £4 billion to £6 billion that they will have to spend on restoring and renewing this place.

[Jonathan Edwards]

My hon. Friend may recall that when the National Assembly for Wales had a new building the cost was £60 million, and the Conservative party in particular ran a full-scale campaign against that expenditure, yet it seems very relaxed about spending well over £5 billion on this Parliament.

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[Pete Wishart]

I have to say very candidly to my hon. Friend that I have given up trying to second-guess what this Conservative party says about anything when it comes to spending in this country.

I think the people of the United Kingdom will now be trying to figure out how many schools and hospitals £4 billion to £6 billion could build, and I am pretty certain that all other Members will be reminded of that right up until their posteriors return to these restored and renewed green Benches.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

Of course I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Just so the hon. Gentleman knows, I agree with him: every £100 million we spend on this permanent replica Chamber is £100 million less for teachers and doctors and nurses and all the rest. I just want the hon. Gentleman to know that I am fully on his side.

[Pete Wishart]

It is always curious what we pick up in the way of allies when we are going through particular issues and projects. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that additional comment.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

It just so happens, as I will touch on in my own contribution, that I was on the Holyrood progress group, which was in charge of building the Scottish Parliament building, and I can remember the sound and the fury and the brickbats that came my way, John Home Robertson’s way and Linda Fabiani’s way as we proceeded with the project, yet I am bound to say this: I think my SNP friends will agree that now that the building is finished Scotland is extremely proud of it and nobody mentions the price any more—and I for one am proud to have been involved in building such a landmark in Scotland’s history.

[Pete Wishart]

I am tempted to say, “So it’s all his fault then,” but I will not do that—and I stress that I only said that in jest before the hon. Gentleman gets all shirty. He is absolutely right: the Scottish Parliament had a tortuous progress, and I commend the hon. Gentleman because I know he served on that group with distinction and hard work, and that project was down to those people who designed all of that. We should not forget, however, the fuss that was created for a very modest building that cost less than Portcullis House.

We are talking about something that it is said will cost £4 billion to £6 billion, but nobody actually believes it will cost that; it is never going to cost £4 billion. Most people suspect that that figure will come in at closer to £10 billion or £12 billion, and that is before we even find out all the different things that will be underneath as we start to dig under. We have already heard about Edward the Confessor; that was just in the car park of this building. Goodness knows what else will be discovered and the archaeological programmes that will be undertaken. So I salute the other Members of this House in their bold and courageous move and look forward to them selling this to the people of this nation; and from afar we will be watching and wishing them all the best as they get down to restoring and renewing this building.

But I agree that this building is falling down and becoming a hazard to all those who work here. Decades of neglect and indecision have seen to that. Anybody who stands still for a moment in this place now stands a very good chance of being hit by falling masonry. It is so overrun with vermin that even the mice in this place now wear overalls. Because of decades of prevarication this building is practically falling down. The failure of successive Governments to face up to their responsibilities means we now have a building that could face a catastrophic failure or massive fire at any time.

Everyone has drawn the comparisons with Notre Dame and that is right. The Leader of the House has given that example in her many comments on this; she has said the example of Notre Dame shows why this is now imperative. But there are key differences between this House and that cathedral on the Seine: one is a building where people think they speak to God and the other is Notre Dame cathedral.

It will probably not come as a great surprise to learn that me and my SNP colleagues do not share the same dewy-eyed affection and nostalgia that some Members feel towards this place. I have to say that I personally love this building. It is a truly iconic building, and it is a real pleasure and privilege to work in it; walking down Victoria Street to work I feel a sense of pride that I am coming to work in what is a fantastic building. But I have to say that I could probably just about discharge my responsibilities as a Member of Parliament from somewhere else.

This is a beautiful building, but it comes with particular historical baggage. It was very much associated with a height of empire when it was built, and with some of the worst excesses of global imperialism, which we have to concede was a feature of the 19th century United Kingdom. It is a building that is ingrained with 19th-century power relationships, and with a historical cap-doffing, forelock-tugging culture. We even have one part of the building where we refer to people as lords and ladies, and we actually think that is okay! What type of building is this that creates this kind of culture? If we are serious about being a new, modern 21st-century Parliament, we should have a building that reflects these new ambitions and aspirations. We should not be trying to shoehorn Parliament into a mock-Gothic Victorian tourist attraction. Why are we not thinking properly about this?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I always love the hon. Gentleman’s banter, but I must gently point out to him that the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) is a member of the House of Commons Commission, and I remember feisty discussions in which I was worrying about the value for money for taxpayers and the hon. Member for Dundee East was insisting that the money must be spent and that we had to get on with the project. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is telling a slightly different story now, but it is his Scottish National party colleague on the House of Commons Commission who wants this work to go ahead.

[Pete Wishart]

The Leader of the House is right in one respect. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East was the Scottish National party member of the House of Commons Commission, but I am now the new member of that commission. Let me make it clear that we are all for moving out of this place—of course we are. We have to move out. It would be ridiculous to try to stay in a place that is practically falling down and that is infested with vermin. It is no place for our visitors to come to and it is imperative that we should move.

I am coming on to talk about what I think we should be moving out to, and what we should do to ensure that we get value for money, because that is the key feature in our discussions today. We know that this very technical and mechanical Bill provides for the governance of the project, but it is very much caught up in the whole idea of how we present a modern Parliament in the future.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is right to say that no one is arguing against spending any money whatsoever. This is about achieving value for money and doing the right thing. Let us look at the new Scottish Parliament, with its new, modern Chamber that is accessible to everyone; it has electronic voting and even has normal daylight coming in. That is what that money was spent on. What is being proposed here is simply to do everything up but keep it exactly the same, even though it is not fit for purpose.

[Pete Wishart]

That is the key point. Why are we taking this place apart, only to reassemble it in the same way and do the same old bad things in the same old venue? It is so unimaginative. Whoever presented this idea really must have been up all night thinking about it, mustn’t they? “Let’s just come back to the same place that we are going to be leaving! And when we leave this place temporarily, let’s just create a carbon copy for us to use before we come back to this place!” That makes absolutely no sense.

When I look around this building, I get a sense that it is a sad metaphor for Brexit Britain. It is dilapidated, falling to bits around our ears and unloved, and it could go up in flames at any minute. Is that not a truly fantastic representation of the Brexit Britain that we are heading towards? Perhaps this Parliament and this building are exactly what this country deserves. The Leader of the House is right to say that we have to move out, for the sake of the thousands of people who work here and the many visitors who come here. It is for them that we must move out, but to move out simply to come back to the same building, with all its cultural and historical trappings, is a serious mistake.

It is a real pity that we were not listened to when we were going through all these Committees, when we proposed selling this building off to the private sector. People would be queuing up and biting our arm off to get hold of a place like this. It is a UNESCO site and one of the most iconic buildings in the world. They would be fighting each other to get their hands on it. Selling it off to the private sector would obviously save us billions of pounds on the redevelopment costs. We could then move out to a new building that would meet our requirements as a modern 21st-century democracy. It would meet all the security arrangements that we obviously need, and it would actually accommodate all 650 Members, which is more than can be said for this place. Why was this not thought about seriously? I think it is a huge deficiency that that was not done. My hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) tried to ensure that that proposal was properly considered in the Committee, but it was not even given the time of day. The House has definitely let the country down by not considering it.

Let us imagine what would happen if we did sell this place off. I would like to see it become a museum to British democracy, where people could come and be amused by how Members of Parliament behaved and did their business in the early 21st century, braying like perfidious donkeys on speed to show their approval because they are not allowed to clap, and wandering around in circles for hour after hour just to register their decisions on what happens in this place. People would laugh out loud at the fact that Members referred to themselves as “honourable” and “right honourable”. I can just imagine the joy and amusement that would be brought to visitors from around the world who came to a museum of British democracy here in the House of Commons on this UNESCO site. It was a failure of diligence of the House not to consider that option.

We now have this Bill, based on decisions that were taken last year. The Leader of the House was right to say that it is all about the governance involved. It creates the Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body, and we will also have the Delivery Authority, which will operate as a company limited by guarantee. This is reminiscent of the London Olympics, but I was here when the London Olympics were first being considered, and I can tell the Leader of the House that the way in which the Olympics Delivery Body was shaped was not exactly a positive experience for us in Scotland, or for Wales and the regions of the United Kingdom.

What I remember about the way in which the London Olympics were designed was that we got next to nothing in the way of contracts. Large sums of our lottery money were diverted to pay for activity down here, and there were years of wrangling over the Barnett consequentials. The Government attempted to define the spending in London to build all that activity as UK-wide spending. If I remember correctly, it was only following the intervention of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that this was eventually resolved in a Joint Committee. That experience was not good for us, and that is why my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts has to be supported. This has to be a project for the whole of the United Kingdom. We were all shocked by what happened at the Olympics, and this new project has to be seen to be of real benefit for the nations and regions of the UK. I hope that when the Bill goes into Committee, my hon. Friend will be listened to carefully and patiently—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) says he wants to be listened to as well. I think we have an alliance here, and knowing him and my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts, it would be a formidable one that would obviously deliver what we want. I look forward to them getting substantial and solid results. I see that the Leader of the House is perhaps wondering how she will be able to take them on to ensure that we all get the right results.

We have no issue with the northern estate programme. Looking at the plans for Richmond House, it is hard to see how any alternative could be designed. I know it was a hard job to figure out where we would go, and I do not think there is any issue about how this should be done. Richmond House was the right choice. Looking at the figures, I see that the works there have been vaguely costed at about £500 million, and that it will then become some sort of education centre. That has not yet been specified, so we are not too sure about what will happen there.

However, the plan seems to be to create a carbon copy of this place in Richmond House. Have we all seen the photographs of this? I am looking round, and I see that most Members have done so. It will be almost exactly the same as this place. What is the point of that? What is the point of moving all this somewhere else for six years, only for that place to become something else again? Why are we not using this opportunity to do something more imaginative? Why are we not thinking about all the difficulties that we have in this place, including our laborious processes and the ridiculous and silly conventions? Apparently it is even the job of the Speaker to dress the male Members of this House! How about looking at some of the ridiculous, absurd things that waste our time and get in the way of how we approach our business in this House? Why can we not go away for a few years and do things like a 21st-century Parliament? What is wrong with that? What is wrong with the idea of going to the northern estate, doing something different and then coming back here? Members can then come back to this 19th-century palace and get on with their usual business, but it shows such a lack of imagination.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is having fun, but there is a kernel of truth in that. One reason why they are having to demolish Richmond House is that the House authorities insisted that they wanted a Chamber of exactly the same size and these very wide division Lobbies, which means that we have to demolish a whole listed building. If we had modern voting during the temporary decant, as they do in every other Parliament in Europe, and just had a card to put next to a machine, we would not need the Division Lobbies, and we would not need to demolish Richmond House.

[Pete Wishart]

I am warming to the right hon. Gentleman. That makes it two interventions in a row that contained practically nothing to disagree with. Alliances are building up all over the place and—who knows?—we might actually be able to make some progress when it comes to modernising this place and making it look and feel like something belonging to this century, not the 19th century. I am pretty certain that he is already thinking, “I’m going to vote for this guy for Speaker,” because that is the sort of agenda that I will be putting forward. We need proper reform of this place, and it cannot come quick enough. I am looking forward to support from right across the House for that agenda.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I can see that I am wearing your patience a little thin, so I will end by saying that the SNP will not oppose the Second Reading this evening. I hope that some of our modest suggestions and proposals will be at least considered—even just for the temporary decant. There is no reason why we cannot do things a little differently and be a bit more imaginative in how we do our business. We could have a look and see whether our absurd conventions actually have any value and work for us. Let us redesign how we work in this place.

We will be watching just how much the project is going to cost, because I must say again that this is not going to go down well. I do not think that the public have actually caught on to this yet—they might have done after my speech—and I do not think that they have really realised what this House is doing with this money. If the price tag is going to be £10 billion to £12 billion, I can only foresee difficulties, problems and issues as the process progresses through the House. Best of luck with it all. The SNP will not oppose the Bill tonight. We will try to get something for the nations of the UK and regions of England, and I hope that the House considers that as the Bill goes through Committee.

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[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I hope what I am about to say will be helpful to the Leader of the House. As I said in an intervention earlier, my history is that I served as a member of the Holyrood Progress Group up until 2004 with two other elected Members of the Scottish Parliament. I therefore know a bit about what it was like to be in a temporary structure, at the top of the Mound, before moving into the new building we created in 2004. The temporary building we were in at the top of the Mound in Edinburgh was the original IKEA Parliament, if ever I saw one. I want to make three points today.

First, when I was a child in my home town of Tain in the Highlands—we all know about the pride of small towns—it was said among the good Tainites that the stone that comes from the quarry behind the town was the second choice for the Palace of Westminster. Sadly, I fear that that turned out to be something of a myth, but it was a lovely myth to believe in at the time. When we came to build the Scottish Parliament, we deliberately went out into the regions of Scotland to use materials. What is used outside and within the building, and in Queensberry House, is Caithness flagstone, a beautiful material. That was a considerable boost to the industry and the economy of that part of Caithness. The building is clad with granite from Kemnay in Aberdeenshire. My point and my plea to the Leader of the House is this: as and when works proceed here, could we make the most strenuous effort not necessarily to use Caithness flagstone —although I very much hope that we would—but to source materials from different parts of the UK? That would be one way of selling the project, if you like, to the people.

Secondly, when I rose to my feet in the temporary Chamber at the top of the Mound, one thing that was very apparent to me—my wife is disabled, and I take on board the very good points made by the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman)—was that the access to the temporary building was frankly appalling. Because I was married to a disabled person, that fired up my passion for making the new building absolutely disabled-friendly. When times got tough, which they most certainly did, that was my guiding light. I was damned if I was going to give way on that. We were going to complete this building and it was going to be the best thing for my wife and all the other disabled people. As I said in my intervention, the flak that we got was unbelievable. I say as a friend to the Leader of the House and to everyone who will be involved in this project in future that there will be flak and there will be trouble. There always is with a project of this nature, but be of good heart.

The flak got particularly bad when I had to announce the winning design for the reception desk in Holyrood. I was chairman of the arts committee—[Interruption.] I see the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) nodding; he will recall this. I chaired a small committee and we had the television cameras and the newspapers there. I said, “Ladies and gentleman, I am very proud to say that this is the winning design.” A certain newspaper—I almost called it a rag—called the Daily Mail asked a tricky question of me, which was, “How much did it cost?” I said, “Well, cost wasn’t really a consideration,” and the civil servants whispered to me, “£88,000”—for a desk. At that point, the world fell on my head.

As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will recall, I was on the front page of every single newspaper in Scotland—not a place someone wants to be when the publicity is as bad as that. My daughter took one look at the Daily Record, published that Thursday morning, and said, “Oh Dad, you’re finished.” But we pulled through and today, as I said, the building is seen to be an icon of high-quality modern architecture in Scotland. When I say to people, “What about the desk?”, they say “What desk? What are you talking about?”

[Pete Wishart]

I recall, of course, the hon. Gentleman’s little difficulties with that desk. I am interested in his views on the expectations versus the reality, which was one of the issues with the Scottish Parliament. If my recollection is correct, the cost of the Scottish Parliament was estimated to be £50 million and it came in at something like 10 times that cost. Is it not best just to be honest and up front with people as we go down such routes? We should not suggest that this can be done on the cheap and that it will only cost a few billion pounds when it is not going to be that at all. Be up front and honest and I am sure, if the Government do that, that they can learn from the experience that we all had to go through bitterly in the Scottish Parliament.

[Jamie Stone]

That is very sage advice. To get the record as straight as I can within what we know, much as I was very friendly with and admired hugely the late Donald Dewar, at some point as the Bill that established the Scottish Parliament passed through this place, I think he said on the record that it would cost some £40 million, and therein lay the trouble, because we were never going to build very much for £40 million.

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[Kevin Foster]

Of course, as the Bill progresses, the Government will be interested to hear all proposals that come forward. Let us consider the work that is already going on. For example, the cast-iron tiles on the Elizabeth Tower are being produced in the Sheffield area, and the tiles for the encaustic tile conservation project have been manufactured at a factory in Shropshire. There will be plenty of opportunities for businesses throughout these four nations that make up this United Kingdom to be part of a project that all nations will be able to look to over the coming decades.

Let me turn to the detail of the views expressed today. I shall start with the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), who opened the debate for the Opposition. I thank him for his constructive approach. He was an excellent stand-in for the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), whose name appears on the Bill in a sign of the consensus we have been able to achieve. I recognise some of his points about opportunities for skills and education arising from the work. It is about making sure that businesses know how to put themselves forward. There are plenty of models—for example, Heathrow airport is currently working on trying to spread its supply chain throughout the United Kingdom. I hope the Delivery Authority will be able to learn from that, although we need to get the thing set up, via the Bill, before it can.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) was an excellent Chair of the prelegislative scrutiny Committee. I pay tribute to the work that she and her Committee did to enable us to bring forward the Bill. She was right to highlight the fact that disability access in this building is from another era. The facilities reflect different attitudes to those with disabilities—not just in the visible examples, such as staircases that are hard or impossible for anyone with mobility issues to climb, but in those hidden aspects that make this building not the place for accessibility that it should be. Let us be blunt: we stand in the Chamber and argue that businesses and public services should be accessible, but we need to make sure that the building in which we do that arguing sets the bar, rather than just meeting a minimum standard.

As the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside said, it is interesting to hear the comments of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). To anyone who raises the potential for spending on this project, I say that the alternative is not to spend nothing. The alternative is to carry on with a make-do-and-mend process, which is not making do and which is not going to mend the place. Public money will still end up being spent in great amounts on this building, achieving worse outcomes. I would certainly reflect on the contrast between some of those remarks and the role that the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) has played as part of the commission. Again, this is a choice about how we deal with the pressing issues of this building. There is no question of them not being dealt with at all.

[Pete Wishart]

rose—

[Kevin Foster]

I will briefly give way as I referred to the hon. Gentleman.

[Pete Wishart]

When I was making my speech, the Minister was, I think, at an Adjournment debate elsewhere so I am surprised that he is even able to make a comment on these matters. I am not suggesting that at all. I agree that we have to do something with this building, but let us be imaginative about where we decant to and what we come back to. We do not always have to do the same things again and again and again.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Of course I take an interest in the remarks that have been made. These works have been looked at on many occasions by professional advisers who are coming up with appropriate things. We can all talk about being imaginative, but the reality is that there has been a great deal of analysis that has gone into this project. Come 2021, the House will again be able to scrutinise the detail of business cases, to take votes based on real estimates and to scrutinise the estimates to ensure that everyone has the information that they need to make a decision.