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  • Valerie Vaz – 2022 Statement on the Conduct of Eddie Hughes and Wendy Morton

    Valerie Vaz – 2022 Statement on the Conduct of Eddie Hughes and Wendy Morton

    The statement made by Valerie Vaz, the Labour MP for Walsall South, in the House of Commons on 13 July 2022.

    On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It relates to hon. Members visiting my constituency. Could you please advise me on how I should deal with a breach of protocol, in that I was informed by two hon. Members, the hon. Members for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) and for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), that they would be visiting my constituency within a few hours of their visits? I have given notice that I would be making this point of order today.

    On 4 February, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills told me, on the day, that she would be visiting Walsall College. On 25 April, I was informed by text. On 1 May, I was informed on the day of her visit that the hon. Member would be in my constituency. On 6 November 2020, 1 January 2021, 11 April 2022 and 1 July 2022, the hon. Member for Walsall North informed me that he would be visiting my constituency on the day in question. Both hon. Members are former Whips and should know the rules.

    I should be grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, if you could confirm that according to the protocol set out in “Rules of behaviour and courtesies in the House of Commons”, advance notice is required of visits to the constituency of another Member. May I also ask you to make a statement to confirm the rule that “advance notice” is not notice given on the day itself?

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

    I am grateful to the right hon. Member for giving notice of her point of order, and also for notifying the Members concerned that she intended to raise this matter. The most recent edition of the “courtesies” booklet to which she referred states that if a Member intends to visit the constituency of another Member,

    “All reasonable efforts should be taken to notify the other Member”,

    although that obviously does not apply to a purely private visit. Not to take such action is considered very discourteous. Although the booklet does not specify a minimum notice period, I agree that receiving notice on the day of a visit does not reflect the intention of the guidance. I think we all know that it is highly unlikely that a visit would be organised on the day, so these visits are very likely to have been arranged beforehand.

    I trust the Members concerned, in this instance, to resolve the issue without my assistance, but I am happy to clarify the general point. I would expect all Members to make efforts to respect not just the letter of the guidance but its spirit, and to give notice at least in advance of the day of the visit itself. I hope that this will be passed back through the relevant channels, in all parts of the House, to ensure that it is made very clear to right hon. and hon. Members. I think we will leave it at that.

  • Margaret Ferrier – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Margaret Ferrier – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Margaret Ferrier, the Independent MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    The building we are standing in today is more than a building; it is a symbol recognised the world over. Politics aside, it is a great privilege to work here. It is a beautiful and historic landmark and, as we have heard, a UNESCO world heritage site. I would like to thank the building for making a timely demonstration in this Chamber yesterday, in preparation for today’s debate; I think its point has been heard, although the water leak has now, thankfully, cleaned up.

    That attachment to this place on the part of many Members has made planning for restoration difficult. It is not hard to see why many colleagues would not want to relocate for so long; so much of British life has been dominated by Westminster, and so a small and convenient world has built around us. Departments are a stone’s throw away, along with media headquarters, businesses and charities. There is not much that is so far out of reach that we could not run back in time for a vote if the Division bell rings. Around that point, there is lots to unpack: the centralisation of British politics; and the view of a distant and far removed from reality “Westminster bubble”. We will each have our own views on that, and certainly employment in such an exciting and meaningful profession should be spread further across the UK. However, that is a broader discussion and I would like to use my time to speak specifically about the Palace and the works themselves.

    Every day we are here, we see groups of schoolchildren excited for the tour. Families, both from the UK and from farther afield, come in their droves too, as do our constituents. This place is iconic—a must-see for tourists from all over the world.

    This is an old building, but actually for the most part it is not as old as some might think. After almost the entire palace was destroyed in 1834, a public competition was held for architectural designs for its replacement. It was actually political reasoning that led to the gothic-inspired choice, designed by Charles Barry, that led to the building we see today. It is interesting to know that the neoclassical style that was popular at the time was seen as symbolic of republicanism and revolution, so the preferred options were designs of gothic and Elizabethan influence.

    The palace is old enough, though, that the place needs a little sprucing up. Construction started in 1840 and most of the site was completed in 1860. That puts various parts of the building at around 160 to 180 years old. There is no doubt about it—we need to invest in some changes, and we have known that for a long time. This is about not just a cosmetic facelift but the preservation of history, and most importantly the safety of everyone that works here or visits. We have heard about Notre Dame; that brings into sharp focus the absolute necessity for fire safety in a building such as this. Of course, it is something that has been on the minds of many colleagues recently, in a slightly different context, too. Fire suppression systems must be a priority, and I know that for those working closely on the project it absolutely is.

    I was lucky enough to join one of the tours put on by the restoration and renewal team last month, to see parts of the palace that we often pass by without thinking about them too much, like the art painted directly on to the stonework on the staircase up to the Committee corridor. That art has considerable historic significance, but it cannot just be lifted off the wall and put away while the works are carried out. Accounting for all these moving parts, the quirks and character of the building, will require a strong strategy. Naturally, the costs involved in bringing the building up to the necessary standards are huge; the restoration and renewal body puts the numbers at between £7 billion and £13 billion.

    It is vital that the costs are necessary and deliver value for public money. Restoration works must happen, yes, and they have been in the works for a very long time. A lot has changed in the wider country in that time, though, and many of our constituents are facing astronomical rises to their living costs. We have a duty to ensure that the cost of this project is scrutinised and that taxpayer money is not wasted when it could be better used elsewhere.

    The majority view of the public, according to quantitative quarterly public polling, is that they care deeply about this place and want to see it restored. The strength of that feeling might vary regionally or across parts of the four nations—I do not know—but it shows that largely, constituents are interested in protecting our heritage. That polling also found that 70% to 80% of the public felt that an important benefit of the restoration was the jobs that it would create. While the jobs themselves might not be political, they would be protecting our political institution, the cornerstone of our democracy, and the prosperity that creates must be shared equitably.

    I mentioned the need for a strategy, and want to say now that I believe that a decant of Members, peers and staff is probably the most efficient way forward. I hope that we will see some more detailed and convincing proposals on that in the near future, to carry out these works as swiftly as possible and without costly delays charged to the taxpayer. That may mean that everyone needs to move out for the duration. We cannot expect our staff, or the staff of the House, to work in a building that could potentially be a hazard, literally crumbling before our eyes. So the quicker colleagues all move out, the quicker colleagues can all move back in and the quicker the Palace can be restored to its former glory.

  • Nick Smith – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Nick Smith – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Nick Smith, the Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    I will be quick, Madam Deputy Speaker. My contribution tonight is born of seven years of frustration at making so little progress with this project. In 2018, I voted for the decant, as I thought it was the simplest thing to do. I also thought we would go to Richmond House, because that was the safest place for us to stay in and it was close to the Departments of State in Whitehall. I really thought it was very straightforward and I hoped we would make good progress.

    Tonight, I support amendments (a) and (b). I support amendment (a) not because I think in policy the Government have stopped progress on this, but because Ministers have stymied progress on this important project. I support amendment (b) because we need new machinery and new energy to take this forward. I also support it because, although we need occasional reviews and challenge for experts, most of all we should provide the way forward through this.

    Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), I think we need full transparency on cost. We need to go into this with our eyes open, but see it as an investment in our country’s history and in this great place. Most of all, I want to crack on, as we have delayed progress for far too long.

  • Meg Hillier – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Meg Hillier – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Meg Hillier, the Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    This is a very disappointing debate because, as other hon. Members have said, we have been going round and round this issue for far too long. I think we need to slay some myths here. Value for money is one thing, but it does not mean cheap. There is no way that the work can be done to this building—minimally or maximally—on the cheap. It will cost billions of pounds. There is no getting away from that. This is a UNESCO world heritage site, and under the rules of UNESCO, that responsibility falls on the Treasury or the finance department of the country responsible, which in this case is Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Government of the day.

    There is huge risk in this building. Only in recent weeks we have had masonry falling down, and yesterday we had the leak. It is only a matter of time before somebody gets hurt. I know that former Leaders of the House have worried about this a great deal, and not surprisingly.

    We are a group of people who aspire to run the country, and the Conservative party is deciding who will be its leader and the next Prime Minister. We all want to be in a position to make decisions, yet on this issue everyone seems to hope or believe they will not be standing when the music stops and that, somehow, the problem will be someone else’s.

    This is a time for decisions. These delays are ongoing and repeated. The Joint Committee’s report was not debated until about a year after it was published, and there was a further delay as the votes on the report kept being put off. I vividly remember the date, 31 January 2018, because I came from my daughter’s hospital sickbed to be here for that debate. I thought, “Great, we might get something through that means we can get moving on this.”

    Then there were endless delays in funding the Sponsor Body’s work to develop the business case. Money was eked out, a bit at a time, so there was never really enough to get on with the job and do the very detailed work that needed to be done. We know it might mean getting the mechanical and engineering in place, two floors below the basement, to run this building. It might mean stripping out asbestos between the Committee corridors. They are the things that make this place dangerous. The required decisions have been endlessly delayed.

    I want to slay another myth about the money. The Leader of the House cited the £3.5 billion figure that was originally mooted, and £4 billion has been mentioned at different times. This was never the figure for all the work to the building; it was an indicative figure, based on work by Deloitte that looked at the options and modelled certain works. The figure was an order of magnitude and was never for the full work on the building. It said, “If you take this approach, this approach or this approach, this is the scale we are looking at.” Unfortunately, that figure has repeatedly been embedded as though it were a fact.

    The House asked the Sponsor Body to come up with what needed to be done to the building and how much it would cost. The answer came back that it would cost £7 billion to £13 billion, with a full decant for up to 20 years. The Commissions did not like that answer, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said. There is no point asking the experts to do the work and then ignoring what they have to say. This place does not have the experts to do the work the Sponsor Body did. Nobody is perfect, and I am not saying that every decision of the Sponsor Body was absolutely right and on the nail, but it did what it was told to do and came back with the numbers, and it was told that they were too high.

    The Leader of the House talked about shortcuts to expedite the process. He said, “We can do both, get value for money and progress as rapidly as possible. We need a common-sense approach.” I do not have a problem with a common-sense approach, but I do not think it is possible to have a common-sense approach that halves or changes the costs for something on which we have already set the parameters for what we want to do. I cannot see how that can be delivered.

    We will create two corporate officers and a client board made up of the two Commissions. I have to confess that I was surprised when a senior member of one of the Commissions—I will say no more, so as not to identify them—approached me in the last week to say, “We will need your help to do this job, because we are not sure we have the ability to do it.” As I said before, I may chair the Public Accounts Committee, ably helped by the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who is the deputy Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) and others, but we are not experts in running major projects. We scrutinise, which is a different thing. We need to make sure we have that expertise in place, so I hope the Leader of the House can tell us how he will ensure there is real expertise on the Commissions because, let us be honest, they are made up of members who rotate very fast and do not necessarily have any understanding or experience of running a major project, and do not necessarily know which questions to ask.

    The hon. Member for The Cotswolds highlighted some of the issues we see in Government, but we also regularly see non-executive members of boards who do not take their role seriously, who do not do it properly, who do not get on top of the subject and who do not always call out things that need to be called out. That needs to be built in so that we have clearly focused non-executives from both outside and inside the House to deliver that and make sure the programme board has that expertise.

    I am really concerned today. We need a long-term decision to be made on this. Parliament will face these difficult decisions—I am quoting the Leader of the House back at himself—but he also talked about future Parliaments revising this. If we start fiddling around, as we have already done, and delay progress considerably, we will be in a very bad place.

    It is outrageous that the very body that legislates and passed an Act of Parliament to set up this structure has dismantled that in a secret, mineral-water-filled room. The minute from that meeting revealed so little about what the discussion was. Reports of it suggest that there was not a serious discussion about the real consequences. That is not a model for democracy, yet it was the mother of Parliaments that made that decision in that very underhand and secretive way. That is one of the most disappointing things about the whole saga.

    Our words will echo down the halls of history if we see this building burn down and we were the people who let it happen. The hand of history is here. I believe that six generations of the family of the hon. Member for The Cotswolds have been here. He stands up for the future of this place, as we all should do. We need to see real action now.

  • Mark Tami – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Mark Tami – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Mark Tami, the Labour MP for Alyn and Deeside, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    It is four and a half years since we reached our decision and I think it has been said that it is seven years since we started the whole process, and where are we? Nowhere. We are back where we started.

    I should say that I am a member of the Sponsor Body—until we abolish it, that is. I believe it has carried out the task that it was set. The fact that certain individuals do not like the recommendation for a full decant is not the fault of the Sponsor Body. If the House wants to change the remit or scope of the project, that is fine, but let us not blame the Sponsor Body. Let us at least have the good grace to be honest about that, and let us not make up stories such as “Restoral and renewal was responsible for the change of Speaker”, because that simply is not true: it had absolutely nothing to do with R&R.

    As a number of Members have pointed out, we should not forget why we chose the structure that we did choose, learning from the Olympics and recognising that this place would change. In the event of a project which, however it is carried out, will continue for many years, Members will change, Governments will change and there will be different views, but what we recognised at the time was that that should not be allowed to undermine this project—which is exactly what has happened. The project has been derailed by a constant stream of new asks, all with one aim: to delay. We have heard suggestions that the House of Lords should move to York, or, more recently, to Wolverhampton, Stoke, Burnley, Edinburgh, Sunderland or Plymouth. I am sure that they are all fine places, but those suggestions were not realistic.

    More time was wasted by the suggestion that we should not decant at all. I challenge any Member to come up with any report or any figures that suggest that it is cheaper to stay here than to move out. We need to be honest about that. Then we had the Richmond House debacle. Those who were opposed to a decant seized on Richmond House: they became great defenders of it, which, surprisingly, very few of them had seemed to be previously. Why was that? Because they saw Richmond House as a convenient vehicle for more dither and delay.

    So what is the plan now? It is to get rid of the Sponsor Body and bring the function in-house, creating some new department and some hotchpotch of a new governance structure.

    In all honesty, we are being asked to rubber-stamp a decision that has already been made. That is the reality of the situation. Parliament decided something, but that does not matter because behind closed doors, the two Commissions have decided to do something completely different. That is the reality of the situation. We can dress it up as much as we like but that is effectively what has happened.

    As a number of Members have mentioned, we do not have a great record on doing things internally. I know that the cast iron roofs are always wheeled out as a great example, but the Elizabeth Tower has been mentioned, and Derby Gate is another project that went massively over cost and time. One of my favourites—not one of the biggest projects—was the Cromwell Green security entrance, which I think was condemned after 10 years because of leaks, with water pouring through when it is raining. So we have to be honest: we are not very good at doing this. We do not have the experience or the expertise to manage such projects. I am not blaming the people in-house; it is not their fault, but we sometimes set them tasks that they are unable to do because they do not have that expertise. That is why we drew up the model that we did, but if we go down the road that we are going down, we are going to repeat those mistakes.

    One thing I will challenge, which I have heard being put about, is that one of the failings of the Sponsor Body was that it did not consult Members. Actually, there have been loads of consultations and loads of individual consultations. I have had the pleasure, or misfortune, of chairing numerous meetings where one, two or three people—and sometimes no people—would turn up. Maybe that was me; maybe it was just the fact that I was chairing them and nobody wanted to go. But this is the nature of politicians. We moan and groan about people not consulting us, but we do not take up the consultation when it is available. So I think that is a really unfair criticism of the Sponsor Body, because a lot of people worked extremely hard to make sure that Members had the opportunity to express their views.

    Kirsty Blackman

    Just to link that to the hon. Member’s earlier point, does he think there is much point in consulting all the Members when the House of Commons Commissioners are going to make a decision anyway that might be totally different from what Members have said?

    Mark Tami

    That is a very fair point. As I said, the decision has effectively been made.

    Let us be honest: it is not about the cost; it is not about the time it will take; and it is certainly not about the people who actually work in here. So what is it about? It is about people who want to stay in here, come what may, with some fantasy vision that we can somehow live in a little bubble in here, that we can stay put, come what may, while everyone works around us, and that we can come up with some costings and then say, “We don’t like that costing so we are going to halve it or quarter it”, and somehow the project can be done for that amount. We are ignoring the reality, and just because the Sponsor Body gave us that reality, we do not like it. The Leader of the House does not like it, so he says we are going to come up with something else and do it on a cheaper basis. It is as if we did not look at these things seven years ago. But this is where we are. As I said, I do not really know why we are having this debate, because the decision was made behind closed doors some time ago. That is a very sad state of affairs, and the House will rue this decision.

  • Geoffrey Clifton-Brown – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Geoffrey Clifton-Brown – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative MP for The Cotswolds, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye in this debate. May I say straightaway that although the Leader of the House has come in for criticism today, he has only been Leader of the House for a short time? He is having to answer for the mistakes of the past, but he now has a huge weight on his shoulders because he can rescue the project, get it on the right path and get work started, for all the many reasons that we have heard today. I draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as a chartered surveyor. I was able to articulate my views more fully in my Westminster Hall debate last Thursday.

    This debate could not be more timely, given yesterday’s water leak in the Chamber. That was the second time in not many years that we have had a leak in the Chamber; the previous leak was in the Press Gallery. Small fires are reported virtually every month in this place, and it is only because of the diligence and hard work of the staff who patrol on a virtually 24-hour fire watch that nothing more serious has happened. There was also an asbestos leak in Speaker’s House last year, with an impact on more than 100 construction workers.

    As I said to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), we are obliged to protect and preserve this UNESCO world heritage site—a grade I listed building with more than 900 years of political history—for our country. I fear that we are leaving the building at risk of a much larger failure than a leak in the roof, which would inevitably involve our having to move out of Parliament and would leave us all looking rather stupid for not having taken major action more quickly.

    The project’s cost is estimated by several experts as approximately £10 billion—somewhere between the £8.77 billion cost of the Olympics and the £18.25 billion cost of Crossrail. It is a vast and complex project. I know such projects only too well from my role as deputy Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and a member of the Finance Committee. I am glad that the Chairs of those Committees, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) and the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), are present; they both do a splendid job. On almost a weekly basis, we see large Government projects that end up costing hundreds of millions of pounds more than anticipated. The Ajax defence vehicle project, for example, has already cost £3.2 billion, has not delivered a single workable vehicle and is more than 10 years late. My fear is that the restoration and renewal project could go the same way. Governance on such large projects is paramount to ensuring that they are delivered on time and on budget.

    When the Sponsor Body gave figures to the Commissions, the cheapest plan involved a full decant of the Palace of Westminster for between 10 and 20 years, with work costing in the region of £7 billion to £13 billion. The suggestion it came up with that would have taken the longest was for the project to be done on a continuous basis, with the Houses remaining in both Chambers. That option would have cost a staggering £11 billion to £22 billion and would have taken somewhere in the region of 46 to 70 years. The Commissions took fright and decided that the Sponsor Body should be immediately abolished and replaced with a joint department of both Houses.

    The problem with that is exactly the one that has happened in past projects. The Elizabeth Tower, which has ended up costing almost three times what was estimated; the purchase of parliamentary buildings, which have cost more than £100 million each and a great deal to exit—all these projects have been overseen by the present in-house incumbents. What is to suggest that R&R would be managed any differently? What is to suggest that it would not end up costing billions of pounds more and taking many years longer than it needs to?

    In contemplation of the new joint department of the two Houses, an expert panel has been appointed. As I have said, it should be enshrined in statute so that it can continue to give advice. The new budget should not be subsumed into the main vote on the House of Commons; it should be entirely separate, so that this House can monitor it properly and see how much the cost is on an ongoing basis, in a similar way to the quarterly reports that we get from HS2.

    I should warn the House that during a Public Accounts Committee hearing in March, the chief executive, David Goldstone—who knows a thing or two, having managed the Olympic project—was questioned about what the continued presence assessment had found in relation to the building. He said:

    “The conclusion it came to is that, in effect, it is technically possible to do it but, consistent with all previous work on this subject, it would take an enormously longer time, would cost an awful lot more and”—

    this is the key point; these are his words, not mine—

    “would create extraordinary risks in relation to health and safety and fire safety…The risk of disruption is very significant as well.”

    If we take all that advice into account, it should be possible to come up with some well-informed costings and outlines of a plan of operation showing how long we need to decant, whether the whole project can be done as one, and whether, if it cannot, it can be done in two halves so that parliamentarians can stay in one House or the other.

    I think there is a real and evident danger that the proposed joint department, which will in effect be the “client”, will not give clear instructions to the Delivery Authority. There will always be the temptation for it to be constantly involved in mission creeps, adding the latest bells and whistles to the project, but, beyond that, it will be continually changing its mind. The Leader of the House presaged exactly that possibility this evening in his speech, and how is that compatible with what he said about wanting to provide the very best value for money?

    We in the Public Accounts Committee know full well that big projects do go wrong when the client changes its mind. There is a big risk of that with the new joint department, because the composition of the House will change after each general election, as, no doubt, will the composition of the Commissions. There is therefore a real risk that the Commissions will change their mind and want to alter the remit yet again.

    We owe it to the next generation to grip this problem today and sort it out once and for all, otherwise the next generation will not thank us.

  • Nicholas Brown – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Nicholas Brown – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Nicholas Brown, the Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). When he and I first arrived in this place, Richmond House was being built. We had the pleasure of seeing it go up and contribute to the parliamentary landscape—the hanging gardens of Babylon, I think it was referred to at the time.

    Since I have been sent back to take part in these events again, I find there is a collection of people who serve the public interest loyally, hard and well, and that the more we discuss it among ourselves, the closer we get to very similar conclusions. I will cut straight to the chase, Madam Deputy Speaker, so that other people can get into the debate. My views are very similar to those of the Leader of the House, and I have sympathy with the motion he has tabled. I also see a lot in both amendments. The Government do deserve chiding—let me put it nicely—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) did in a pretty gutsy way. The contents of the other amendment make points that, mostly, I agree with and think are probably the right way to go. It is possible that we are getting the worst of both worlds for ourselves: that we will have a political involvement that is not enough or does not satisfy us all, and still have sufficient specialist oversight and interest for there to be tensions between the two. I hope that that does not happen. The best way of avoiding that is to make sure that there is a climate of openness, rather than of caution or—I would even go as far as to say— concealment. It would be better to know that we had a shared problem up front rather than to be presented with it afterwards, particularly on the costings.

    Not only have you served on the House of Commons Finance Committee, Dame Rosie, but you chaired it, so time after time, you will have had instances where you have been told at the end of a programme what the cost looks like. It might have been more helpful to know what the true costs looked like at the beginning of the programme. That has happened too often with the Commons Finance Committee for it to be endured. We must have a proper, realistic sense of what is going on, rather than an estimate that those who propose it hope will endure over time.

    I am happy to report that the House of Lords has a similar Finance Committee to us—it has had it, I think, for five years—and that it had its first joint meeting with the Commons Finance Committee last week. It examined in some detail the Elizabeth Tower project, which has been the subject of some comment and high overspend. It went through that in some detail. Everything that we would expect to be said about lessons learned was said. We have heard it before. But this is my core point: this has to stick. Lessons have to be learned. Projections have to be realistic.

    In two or perhaps three years’ time, we will face a decision about the cost of the decant and the substantial rise in public expenditure that will accompany the costs of running the new building, as well as the costs of continuing the work on the old one. I am still convinced that this is the correct way to proceed, if we can, but we have to know what we are in for. It seems that we should do our bit to look at what else we are spending money on, whether we are getting value for money, whether there are ways to bring the costs down and whether expenditure could be better managed over a longer period. We cannot demand that everything is treated as a priority and just say, “We want this project, but we also want that project.” We must try to get our house in order and do what we can to have the twin objectives that the Leader of the House spelled out. They are reasonable objectives, I think, to proceed on cautiously, learning the lessons of what has not gone terribly well before.

    Also, we should pat ourselves on the back for things that have gone right. Everybody says how nice the Elizabeth Tower looks. The work on the Victoria Tower is proceeding at pace. The determination is to make sure that the masonry does not fall off on top of people. Unfortunately, the buildings continue to be corroded by acid rain and pollution, so we will never be without a maintenance programme. Eternal vigilance will have to be our watchword, certainly for the foreseeable future, on prosaic matters such as fires and damage. It is comforting to know that people can be got out, but we want to save the building as well, which is exactly where we started. I urge the proposers of the amendments not to push them to a vote at this time—I think their points have been well made—and to support the Leader of the House on the main motion.

  • Edward Leigh – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Edward Leigh – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    That was an interesting speech, although I am not sure that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) carried the rest of the House. This is the iconic centre of the United Kingdom, and it is not surprising that the SNP wants to make it into a museum.

    I commend the Leader of the House for the moderate, sensible, open-minded way in which he opened the debate. I suspect that very few people would disagree with anything he said, and most of what the shadow Leader of the House the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) said was sensible, too.

    We all agree that we have to just get on with it. There have been too many delays, and—let us be realistic—they will probably still be working around us in 50, 60 or 100 years’ time. That is the way of these old buildings.

    I hope we will move on from this endless debate about whether or not we have a decant. I rather resent the fact that those of us who have been arguing the case against a very lengthy decant are accused by others of just wanting to live in a comfortable place. I serve on the Sponsor Body with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar). If we had proceeded with its plans, which would have entailed a decant of up to 20 years, that decant would not have started before 2031. I can assure the House that by 2031, I will certainly be retired and quite possibly dead, so it is nothing to do with me. What the Sponsor Body finally came up with might have been a fair evaluation of what it would cost to do a full singing-and-dancing renovation and change of everything, but it was totally unrealistic, and the Commission had to step in.

    There will be ways of working creatively around us. I accept that it may well be necessary to have a decant, but we have no idea how long that decant will last. If we get rid of the Daily Mail September sittings and stop sweating the building through the entire summer recess, there may come a point where we will break in July and not come back until the following January, or it may take longer—we have no idea. However, I say with the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) that we should not, I am afraid, accept an amendment that just lays down a set time. We have to look at the evidence. The new Commission will do its work, and will do whatever is necessary.

    There has been so much delay, and I think it is very unfair of the hon. Member for Bristol West who leads for the Opposition to blame the Government and the former Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), for that fact. The reason why we have had so much delay is that the Sponsor Body has come up with wildly expensive proposals, the first of which was the demolition of Richmond House. That would have been financially wasteful, with millions of pounds spent on a white elephant permanent replica Chamber; it would have been architecturally destructive, making a mockery of heritage laws; and it could have cost up to £1 billion. That proposal caused an enormous amount of delay, and I think there is a general consensus that it was right for us to do away with it. It has been delay, delay, delay.

    The plans for the Palace were not much better. The Sponsor Body was planning on removing 14 lift shafts, and wanted office space for MPs cut by as much as one fifth. The programme was in danger of becoming a vast feeding frenzy for contractors and consultants at the taxpayer’s expense. A lot of those ideas were simply unrealisable, so the plans for the R&R programme that have been put forward have failed. As the Leader of the House said, we need to look at working models that have been successful, such as that used for Elizabeth Tower, which has been beautifully restored—of course, that project went over time and over budget because too little preparatory work was done, but the result is magnificent. The cast-iron roofing that the Leader of the House talked about has been an immense success. It is the largest cast-iron roof in Europe. Each piece has been taken apart, restored or replaced, and put back with meticulous skill, so I do not think it is fair to criticise the estates programme.

    Chris Bryant

    One of the problems is that lots of people advocate for having lots more of those individual projects. Something like 32 or 33 projects are going on at the moment, and one of the difficulties with the estate is that it is very tight for space, with nearly every available inch already covered in a portakabin or some kind of contractor’s arrangements. We cannot do many more projects at the same time as the current ones, and the cast-iron roofs would have been done quite a bit quicker if the previous Speaker had not insisted that work stopped whenever he was in his house. That is what is going to happen if we keep on trying to do all the work around the building while we are still in it.

    Sir Edward Leigh

    The hon. Gentleman makes his point and we just have to learn to compromise. He mentions Mr Speaker. We should congratulate Mr Speaker on his own creative thinking. The Speaker’s house needed urgent repairs, which meant he had to be accommodated elsewhere. The R&R programme drew up plans costing £20 million, to tear up a Georgian townhouse on the estate and put a lift shaft through it. Mr Speaker and the previous Leader of the House grasped the nettle, visited the site itself, and decided it just needed a lick of paint and some basic work. The right hon. Member for North East Somerset, who is sitting in his place, reported that it cost just 5% of the planned £20 million to get all three empty houses back into use. That is exactly the kind of mentality we need. It requires good decision making, an eye for savings, and cutting out unnecessary embellishments.

    Serving on the sponsor body has been informative. The sponsor body’s job is to oversee and scrutinise the delivery authority, but I personally believe that the information provided to the sponsor body has often been mired in the worst kind of management speak. Operations are often totally opaque and lacking in clarity. I believe that our ability to thoroughly scrutinise work has not been fully facilitated. Every time it came across a problem, it reached for the most invasive and most expensive solution. I believe that in the end it was going to provide very bad value for money. Every time we proposed alternatives, ridiculous claims about costing and timescale were thrown back. Inadequate figures were given to us. There was a lack of awareness of MPs’ work. For example, it was suggested that MPs’ staff move to shared open-plan offices. Parliamentary politics requires privacy and discretion, and dealing with constituents’ cases even more so. Often, we deal with very sensitive information. We do not work like other entities and we have to accept that Parliament is a unique place.

    In conclusion, I believe that what the Leader of the House is proposing today is a sensible compromise. We are not ruling anything in or anything out. We are going to get on with it. We love this building. We are not going to put ourselves first and we are going to do the absolutely essential work to restore this Barry and Pugin masterpiece. We are not going to make it carbon neutral and fill in atriums and all the courtyards. All that sort of expensive stuff is for the birds. We are going to make this building safe and fireproof, and we will do it, hopefully, with good preparatory work, within time and within budget.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    First, I want to note an interest, in that I am on the sponsor board; I have been the SNP’s delegate to it for a hugely long time now. I must apologise for the fact that I am not my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is unfortunately on Committee business and cannot be here, so Members are stuck with me. I will do my best—probably not with quite the flair that he would normally bring to this—to fill his shoes in some way.

    I agree with the point that the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) just made. The fact that we are here—that this position has been reached—is indefensible. The SNP’s position has been that this is an absolutely horrible building to work in. It is dreadful for our staff, it is a grim place to work and it is not a nice working environment. As a result of that, of the colossal amount of money involved and of the fact that we do not want to be here—we are going to be an independent country, and we are going to toddle off and leave yous to it—we suggested that if others were going to do anything with restoration and renewal, they should build a new Parliament. That will cost far less money than anything they could possibly do with this one. For our staff and people who work in this building, and for future MPs and staff who work in this building, it would be a significantly better and safer working environment. However, that was rejected.

    We agreed an Act of Parliament—an Act of Parliament—about how this was going to work. The Act said, “Right, we’re going to have a sponsor board and a Sponsor Body, and we’re going to have a delivery board and a Delivery Authority. We’re going to have all of those things, and they are all going to work together in a groove and deliver what the House has said they are going to deliver.” The Sponsor Body, led by the sponsor board, came up with the memorandum of understanding between the Sponsor Body and the House, and that huge and massively detailed document explained exactly how things would work.

    It feels as though the House of Commons Commission—although not so much the Lords one—and successive Leaders of the House gave argued at every opportunity about how this was going to work. They have said, “Actually, we don’t really agree with the Act of Parliament. We need to do this differently.” It feels as though those on the Government Front Bench and, at times, other Members on the House of Commons Commission—this must have been the case—have ended up costing more and more by adding on so many extra things, coming up with new stipulations and having us do ridiculous surveys.

    One of those surveys was about making this bit of the House into a bubble so that we could continue to work in it, walking here from Portcullis House with hard hats and boots on, which I do not think anybody would have much enjoyed. This would have been a bubble where we could have continued to meet, because key people cannot bear to leave this awful, leaking room that is too small for 650 MPs to sit in. If this is going to happen, and we do not agree that it should, nobody could do it in a more cack-handed way than the way it is being done.

    This structure was agreed and set up by the Houses, and at every opportunity the Government and others have tried to dismantle the structure and then complained because it cost too much money. Of course it will continue to cost money if people keep moving the goalposts—if they do not really want disabled access, but they just said that in an Act of Parliament, and if they are going to complain when the Sponsor Body pitches up and says, “This is how much it will cost to have disabled access.” If they do not want it, of course what they to try to deliver is not going to suit the House. The governing structures have not worked because the Commissions want one thing, the pre-2019 Members of Parliament wanted a different thing from the post-2019 MPs, the Speaker wants something different, the Leaders of the House have wanted something different, and the sponsor board and Sponsor Body have been trying to serve all those masters, and it has proved to be impossible.

    The new structure that the Leader of the House suggests will have exactly the same problems as the previous one. It will have exactly the same number of people suggesting they are the right person to make all the decisions, and that person is going to change on a regular basis—even if it only changes once in every five years, that is still on a regular basis. Ever more money will be expended while bits of masonry continue to fall off, while asbestos continues to be in this building and while the fire risk continues to be massive for a UNESCO world heritage site. This building is a relic; it is not a suitable, appropriate working environment.

    Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

    I apologise to the hon. Lady for stopping her in full rant, but does she not appreciate that this is a UNESCO world heritage site and a grade 1 listed building, and whether we are in this Parliament or not, this Parliament has a responsibility to maintain it properly? How does she answer that?

    Kirsty Blackman

    Maintaining this building properly, making it safe and making it so it does not burn down is a very different thing from making it safe so it does not burn down while thousands of people work here. The majority of the fire incidents here are caused by issues with people, as are many of the safety issues. If we take the people out of the equation, it is significantly cheaper to do all that; if we only have disabled access visitor routes, we take away a huge amount of the risk that is created. We could rip out almost all the services that go up and down the vertical risers if we did not need to keep them because we need internet in office T306. Clearly, we would not need internet in office T306 if there was nobody working in this place.

    Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

    What does the hon. Lady envisage this building would become? Would it just become an empty shell, in which case it would certainly deteriorate quite quickly? What alternative use does she envisage for it?

    Kirsty Blackman

    Honestly, I do not really care: I am going to be out of here, the Scottish National party is going to be out of here, Scotland is not going to have any stake in this building, and the UK without Scotland can decide what it wants to do with the building. It is not my responsibility to make that decision; it is the responsibility of the people who will carry on being here after Scottish independence. I am not trying to dodge the question; I am just not fussed, as it is not my decision. Just as I am not really fussed about what happens with council tax rates in England, it is not my decision to make. It is the hon. Gentleman’s decision to make, and it is for the people who will be here to decide what this building should be used for in the future.

    I am testing your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I have spoken for a bit longer than I had intended. I do not think this has been done well; in fact, I do not think it could have been done worse. I do not think what is being proposed is going to fix the issues, and in the meantime our staff, House staff and MPs are all working in a very substandard, dangerous working environment, and that is totally and completely unacceptable.

  • Chris Grayling – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Chris Grayling – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Chris Grayling, the Conservative MP for Epsom and Ewell, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is new to this. I recognise that both as a friend and a thoughtful politician he is approaching this in the way he judges the most sensible, so I do not want him to take any of the comments from me or from other Members tonight as being about him, but it is about seven years of failure, in my view.

    We are standing in what is, for all of us, the office, but it is also a global landmark. We have all seen how—thank goodness, in the wake of the pandemic—the streets outside are full of tourists again. People come here to be photographed alongside the Elizabeth Tower and see this building as a symbol of the United Kingdom. The reality is that it is a world heritage site. People who question whether we should spend money on updating, restoring and protecting it, and say that we should move to a new building elsewhere, miss the point that we have a legal duty, whatever we do as a democracy, to restore this building and protect it for the future.

    Back in 2015, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and I, and others, including the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), sat on a Joint Committee of both Houses saying, “What are we going to do about the problem?” It is a very real and acute problem. When I became Leader of the House in 2015, about four days later, we very nearly had to relocate out of this building because up there in the vents the engineers found asbestos. Had they discovered that that asbestos had been disturbed—fortunately it had not; it had remained unmoved for decades—we would have had no choice but to close the Chamber for months and months.

    That kind of risk is with us every day of every week. The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) referred to the leak yesterday. Thank goodness it was a small problem. But we saw what happened at Notre Dame. Yes, the Leader of the House is right that it was down to a workman in the building doing the wrong thing, but we have workmen right across this building all the time, and it can happen. We saw what happened at Clandon Park. The thing that really brought it home to me at the time of the Joint Committee was when Kingsway caught fire—a road caught fire—because of electrical problems underneath its surface, and it burned for about two days.

    The shadow Leader of the House is absolutely right: the fire service have always said, as they said back in 2015—it is not just about now—that, if there is a serious incident in this place, they could save the people but they could not save the building. So every day of every week in this building, we live with the risk that we may discover that an asbestos problem or a critical failure of the plumbing system means that we have to move.

    Mark Tami

    The right hon. Gentleman is a fellow person who has been at this for seven years. We have already seen a release of asbestos in Speaker’s House that will lead to a group of people having to be monitored for probably about 40 years to see whether in those terrible circumstances anything actually develops, and that can happen in any part of the building.

    Chris Grayling

    The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We went through all this seven years ago. It is hugely frustrating to me that we are here seven years later still working out what to do about it. I thought that we would have done something by the time we got to 2022.

    The right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Rhondda will remember me pushing hard to get the northern estate project started so that we could move on and decant quickly. At least the northern estate, or some parts of it, is being done, and we have taken over Richmond House, as we planned at the time, but here we are seven years later still discussing how we are going to do this. It is not about discussing how we are going to do it starting in about a year’s time. I cannot see how we quickly get to a point where the works are actually starting. With every week that goes by, there is the risk that we as Members of Parliament wake up in the morning and discover that we have relocated to Church House indefinitely. We have to accept that.

    Chris Bryant

    Is not one of the difficulties that all the alternative places that we would have to go to in an emergency are not safe? Church House is not safe from any kind of bomb attack, and there is no other venue that we could go to. I think the Government have just sold the one other place that we might have gone to. There is nowhere. So this is not only a risk to us and the building; it is also a risk to our democracy.

    Chris Grayling

    We have been around the houses on this. We had all the proposals, whether it was “Let’s build some great gin palace on Horse Guards”, “Let’s have some great building taking up the whole width of the River Thames”, or, “Let’s move out of London”, but the logistics of this place mean that Parliament and Government have to be close to each other. In order that Ministers can go to and fro between their Departments and the Front Bench, in order to have interactions between both Houses of Parliament, and in order to have basic levels of security—given the horrendous events that have taken place in recent times, we absolutely have to make that a priority—the reality is that Parliament will not move off the secure estate. It is why we recommended taking over Richmond House, because it was the one place that gives us extra capacity within a secure environment.

    The reason I have put my name to this amendment tonight and the reason I am minded to push it to a Division, unless I can achieve an extra bit of assurance from the Leader of the House—I hope he will be able to say a couple of words at the end—is that we have been around the houses on this issue, and we have talked about all the different options. We have explored the issues and challenges, and the Leader of the House is absolutely right that we do not have the expertise in-house. We need the expert advisers. I respect the fact that he will bring in further expert advice to help him, but, at the end of the day, there are only a certain number of ways in which we can do this.

    On the Joint Committee, we agreed that doing this bit by bit over a 30-year period does not work, because that would leave too much risk for too long. We explored whether we could do half the building and then the other half, but the problem is that the services are all common to both Houses. There is not a shutter that can be brought down between the Commons and the Lords—the sewerage and plumbing systems work for both, and the risers full of asbestos serve both. There is no simple option that allows us to move into the Lords Chamber while this is done, and so forth. We came to the clear conclusion that a decant was the only realistic option.

    Many Members have expressed concerns that if we move out, we will never move back. I do not think we can just move out with an endless timeframe. There has to be a clear mandate for the people who will do the work, and that is the purpose of the amendment. It states that we think the only viable option—I have discussed the fact that we spent a year debating it—is a decant that lasts a maximum of eight years, because no Parliament will accept being asked to write a blank cheque. This is where I agree with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. The idea that we could do a 20-year decant is crazy. We cannot do that.

    We need to give a clear brief to the Delivery Authority and all those working on the project that we are prepared to countenance a decant that takes us through much of one Parliament and much of the next, but we do not think that any generation of Members of Parliament should be deprived of the opportunity to spend at least a part of their time here participating in debate in this Chamber. Realistically, an eight-year timeframe is the most that is possibly sellable to Members of Parliament. It is, in my view, the only deliverable option. It will cost money, and there is nothing we can do about that, because this is a world heritage site. It is a duty that we just have to perform. If we do not give a clear brief to those who will be deciding the way forward and making recommendations, we will frankly be kicking the can down the road yet again.

    I seek my right hon. Friend’s assurance that at the end of this debate, and as this approach goes forward, he will give a clear mandate that we will see what it will cost and what it will take for us to be decanted from here for eight years and then return. If he can assure me that that will be part of the brief and we will all be able to see the outcome, I will be happy not to press the amendment to a Division. However, we spent a year coming to this conclusion, so I am not happy to cast it aside, and I do not think the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is either.

    We have done an awful lot of work, and we are all deeply frustrated that we have got to this point seven years later. We cannot possibly defend that, and I describe this amendment as the “Bloody hell, get on with it” amendment. We worked out that the decant was the only way forward. When the plans are laid before this House next year, we want to see the eight-year decant and what it entails on the table for Members to consider. If my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is happy to give me that assurance, I am happy not to press the amendment, but I am adamant that we must have that on the table.

    This is a historic responsibility for us all. The shadow Leader of the House is absolutely right that we cannot be the Parliament that swept this under the carpet; we have got to get on with it. It is not the fault of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that we are where we are, but we should never have got into this position in the first place. I ask him and all on the Commissions to ensure that we really get on with it at pace. If we do not, one day we will find that we are no longer sitting in this Chamber, but stuck in Church House, thinking, “What on earth are we going to do now?” That would be letting down our democracy and letting down our country.