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Tag: 2022

  • James Cleverly – 2022 Statement on the School Rebuilding Programme

    James Cleverly – 2022 Statement on the School Rebuilding Programme

    The statement made by James Cleverly, the Secretary of State for Education, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    I am delighted to confirm details of the next 61 schools prioritised for the School Rebuilding Programme.

    The School Rebuilding Programme was announced by the Prime Minister in June 2020 and will transform the learning environment at 500 schools and sixth form colleges over the next decade, supporting teachers in England to deliver a high-quality education, so that pupils gain the knowledge, skills and qualifications they need to succeed. The programme will also support levelling up of opportunity by addressing school buildings with the highest condition need across England.

    It represents an important commitment to invest in construction sector jobs and skills, helping drive growth in the economy. The programme will have a continued focus on modern methods of construction and provide opportunities across the industry, including for small and medium-sized enterprises.

    As with the first 100 schools announced in 2021, this group of schools has been prioritised solely on the basis of the condition of their buildings. The projects include primary and secondary schools, as well as special schools. This also represents a substantial investment in schools in the midlands and north of England, with 37 out of 61 projects in these regions.

    The new school buildings will be energy-efficient designs with high sustainability standards, delivering a generation of new school buildings that will be net zero carbon in operation and mitigate the risks of climate change.

    The 10-year programme will continue to target school buildings in the worst condition across England. From 19 July to 8 October 2021, we conducted a public consultation with the sector on our approach to prioritising schools for the long-term programme. As set out in the Government’s response, we invited responsible bodies—such as academy trusts and local authorities—to submit nominations for their schools with the poorest condition buildings to join the programme.

    In 2022 to 2023, we expect to prioritise up to 300 schools in total. We are announcing a smaller group of 61 schools now to maintain the pace of delivery and address some of the poorest condition buildings as soon as possible. We are still assessing all other nominations received and have not ruled out any nominated schools for selection at this point. We plan to make another announcement later this year to confirm further schools selected.

    Alongside the rebuilding programme, the Government have committed £1.8 billion in the financial year 2022-23 for maintaining and improving the condition of the school estate.

    Further details, including lists of the school rebuilding projects, have been published on www.gov.uk. Copies will be placed in the House Library.

  • Amanda Milling – 2022 Statement on Cross-Border Aid to Syria

    Amanda Milling – 2022 Statement on Cross-Border Aid to Syria

    The statement made by Amanda Milling, the Minister for Asia and the Middle East, on 12 July 2022.

    The United Nations Security Council has today adopted Resolution 2642, allowing the delivery of UN cross-border aid into Syria to be extended for just 6 months. Russia has again placed political support for the Assad regime above lifesaving aid for the Syrian people, using its veto to force a reduction in the mandate from 12 months to 6.

    The UK will continue to stand with the Syrian people and support international efforts to avoid a further humanitarian crisis, including by pressing for renewal of the UN’s mandate to deliver this aid in January. We will also push even harder for a credible political settlement, which is the only way to bring an end to this dreadful war.

  • Greg Clark – 2022 Article on Protecting Leaseholders

    Greg Clark – 2022 Article on Protecting Leaseholders

    The article written by Greg Clark, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, published in the I newspaper and issued as a news release by the department, on 13 July 2022.

    Writing for i, Levelling Up Secretary Greg Clark announces that contracts to turn the building safety pledge into legally binding requirements have been sent to major housebuilders to be signed within a month.

    Just under 4 weeks ago, we marked the 5th anniversary of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. That devastating tragedy should never have happened and nothing like it must happen again.

    To achieve confidence in this requires far-reaching action by many people and organisations: government, parliament, local councils, regulators, fire and rescue services, housebuilders, insurers, building owners, construction product manufacturers, contractors and many more.

    Progress has been made, though it has taken too long. Nevertheless, it is now becoming irreversible. The Building Safety Act came into force last month – the biggest reform to building safety in a generation. Leaseholders are now protected in law from unfair bills to make their homes safe, and a rigorous regulatory regime will bring order to decades of lax practice.

    My predecessor, Michael Gove, was absolutely right in his drive to ensure that companies should fix the buildings they played a part in constructing. A landmark agreement has seen a majority of the UK’s major housebuilders pledge an estimated £2 billion to this end. That pledge was given to the house building industry in March and there have since been over 45 signatories. I welcome the proactive approach taken by those developers like Barratt that have gone beyond the commitments in the pledge.

    But it is time these commitments are put into force.

    I will today publish the contract that will turn that pledge into legally binding undertakings.

    I will make it available for comment for 4 weeks, after which the contract will be finalised. The faithful translation of these pledges into action is essential to the reputation for dependability that such an important sector of our economy must maintain.

    Nor will there be backsliding on the £3 billion building safety levy. The taxpayer is contributing £5 billion towards fixing those buildings which have been left orphaned by absentee developers: the industry must pay its share too. The levy will be raised against all qualifying projects in England, and companies and firms who headquarter themselves overseas will pay it, as well as home-grown developers. Ensuring that this funding is available to all affected buildings is essential to re-building confidence in the sector. The approach to industry contributions and leaseholder protection has the strong and unambiguous support of all parties in parliament.

    The Building Safety Act has given strong powers to disrupt the business of those developers that do not deliver on their pledge. Parliament rightly expects that the powers it has legislated be used unflinchingly, and they will be. The new Act also gives us new tools to pursue those who have contributed to this problem, not just housebuilders. I have instructed my department’s new Recovery Strategy Unit to target any individuals or companies – not just developers, but freeholders, product manufacturers, and contractors, wherever they register themselves – that do not step up to do what is required of them. For those large developers yet to commit to doing the right thing, it is time to step up and be prepared to pay up. As we identify more developers responsible for fire safety defects in buildings, I expect them to follow suit and take responsibility for repairs – and to do so quickly.

    During the months and years ahead, we have an opportunity to have a productive partnership between housebuilders, the government, local councils and housing associations. I want to increase housebuilding and the most straightforward way is with existing housebuilders. I am proud that when I was a minister in this department for the first time, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which I led, galvanised housebuilders, increasing planning permissions granted from 166,000 in the year before it was published to 268,000 within 3 years of it being adopted.

    Developing the NPPF, I worked closely and effectively with housebuilders as well as local authorities, environmentalists and the planning profession. It is rare to meet anyone today that does not believe the NPPF was the most significant advance in planning in decades.

    It is an object lesson in how a good working relationship between all parties can achieve big results. I want this to be our approach again. But a working relationship depends on the efficient discharge of commitments given, without havering after agreements have been made.

    This is true in the normal course of business and policy. In the case of Grenfell, where we have a strong moral obligation to put right the failures that robbed families of the lives of 72 innocent people, that requirement is absolute.

  • Damian Collins – 2022 Statement on the Online Safety Bill

    Damian Collins – 2022 Statement on the Online Safety Bill

    The statement made by Damian Collins, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am honoured to have been appointed the Minister responsible for the Online Safety Bill. Having worked on these issues for a number of years, I am well aware of the urgency and importance of this legislation, in particular to protect children and tackle criminal activity online—that is why we are discussing this legislation.

    Relative to the point of order from my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), I have the greatest respect for him and his standing in this House, but it feels like we have been discussing this Bill for at least five years. We have had a Green Paper and a White Paper. We had a pre-legislative scrutiny process, which I was honoured to be asked to chair. We have had reports from the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee and from other Select Committees and all-party parliamentary groups of this House. This legislation does not want for scrutiny.

    We have also had a highly collaborative and iterative process in the discussion of the Bill. We have had 66 Government acceptances of recommendations made by the Joint Committee on the draft Online Safety Bill. We have had Government amendments in Committee. We are discussing Government amendments today and we have Government commitments to table amendments in the House of Lords. The Bill has received a huge amount of consultation. It is highly important legislation, and the victims of online crime, online fraud, bullying and harassment want to see us get the Bill into the Lords and on the statute book as quickly as possible.

    Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)

    I warmly welcome my hon. Friend to his position. He will understand that those of us who have followed the Bill in some detail since its inception had some nervousness as to who might be standing at that Dispatch Box today, but we could not be more relieved that it is him. May I pick up on his point about the point of order from our right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis)? Does he agree that an additional point to add to his list is that, unusually, this legislation has a remarkable amount of cross-party consensus behind its principles? That distinguishes it from some of the other legislation that perhaps we should not consider in these two weeks. I accept there is plenty of detail to be examined but, in principle, this Bill has a lot of support in this place.

    Damian Collins

    I completely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. That is why the Bill passed Second Reading without a Division and the Joint Committee produced a unanimous report. I am happy for Members to cast me in the role of poacher turned gamekeeper on the Bill, but looking around the House, there are plenty of gamekeepers turned poachers here today who will ensure we have a lively debate.

    Mr Speaker

    And the other way, as well.

    Damian Collins

    Exactly. The concept at the heart of this legislation is simple. Tech companies, like those in every other sector, must take appropriate responsibility for the consequences of their business decisions. As they continue to offer their users the latest innovations that enrich our lives, they must consider safety as well as profit. They must treat their users fairly and ensure that the internet remains a place for robust debate. The Bill has benefited from input and scrutiny from right across the House. I pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who has worked tirelessly on the Bill, not least through 50 hours of Public Bill Committee, and the Bill is better for his input and work.

    We have also listened to the work of other Members of the House, including my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden and the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), who have all made important contributions to the discussion of the Bill.

    We have also listened to those concerned about freedom of expression online. It is worth pausing on that, as there has been a lot of discussion about whether the Bill is censoring legal speech online and much understandable outrage from those who think it is. I asked the same questions when I chaired the Joint Committee on the Bill. This debate does not reflect the actual text of the Bill itself. The Bill does not require platforms to restrict legal speech—let us be absolutely clear about that. It does not give the Government, Ofcom or tech platforms the power to make something illegal online that is legal offline. In fact, if those concerned about the Bill studied it in detail, they would realise that the Bill protects freedom of speech. In particular, the Bill will temper the huge power over public discourse wielded by the big tech companies behind closed doors in California. They are unaccountable for the decisions they make on censoring free speech on a daily basis. Their decisions about what content is allowed will finally be subject to proper transparency requirements.

    Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)

    My hon. Friend did not have the joy of being on the Bill Committee, as I did with my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who was the Minister at that point. The point that my hon. Friend has just made about free speech is so important for women and girls who are not able to go online because of the violent abuse that they receive, and that has to be taken into account by those who seek to criticise the Bill. We have to make sure that people who currently feel silenced do not feel silenced in future and can participate online in the way that they should be able to do. My hon. Friend is making an excellent point and I welcome him to his position.

    Damian Collins

    My right hon. Friend is entirely right on that point. The structure of the Bill is very simple. There is a legal priority of harms, and things that are illegal offline will be regulated online at the level of the criminal threshold. There are protections for freedom of speech and there is proper transparency about harmful content, which I will come on to address.

    Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)

    Does the Minister agree that, in moderating content, category 1 service providers such as Twitter should be bound by the duties under our domestic law not to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of a protected characteristic? Will he take a look at the amendments I have brought forward today on that point, which I had the opportunity of discussing with his predecessor, who I think was sympathetic?

    Damian Collins

    The hon. and learned Lady makes a very important point. The legislation sets regulatory thresholds at the criminal law level based on existing offences in law. Many of the points she made are covered by existing public law offences, particularly in regards to discriminating against people based on their protected characteristics. As she well knows, the internet is a reserved matter, so the legal threshold is set at where UK law stands, but where law may differ in Scotland, the police authorities in Scotland can still take action against individuals in breach of the law.

    Joanna Cherry

    The difficulty is that Twitter claims it is not covered by the Equality Act 2010. I have seen legal correspondence to that effect. I am not talking about the criminal law here. I am talking about Twitter’s duty not to discriminate against women, for example, or those who hold gender critical beliefs in its moderation of content. That is the purpose of my amendment today—it would ensure that Twitter and other service providers providing a service in the United Kingdom abide by our domestic law. It is not really a reserved or devolved matter.

    Damian Collins

    The hon. and learned Lady is right. There are priority offences where the companies, regardless of their terms of service, have to meet their obligations. If something is illegal offline, it is illegal online as well. There are priority areas where the company must proactively look for that. There are also non-priority areas where the company should take action against anything that is an offence in law and meets the criminal threshold online. The job of the regulator is to hold them to account for that. They also have to be transparent in their terms of service as category 1 companies. If they have clear policies against discrimination, which they on the whole all do, they will have to set out what they would do, and the regulator can hold them to account to make sure they do what they say. The regulator cannot make them take down speech that is legal or below a criminal threshold, but they can hold them to account publicly for the decisions they make.

    One of the most important aspects of this Bill with regard to the category 1 companies is transparency. At the moment, the platforms make decisions about curating their content—who to take down, who to suppress, who to leave up—but those are their decisions. There is no external scrutiny of what they do or even whether they do what they say they will do. As a point of basic consumer protection law, if companies say in their terms of service that they will do something, they should be held to account for it. What is put on the label also needs to be in the tin and that is what the Bill will do for the internet.

    I now want to talk about journalism and the role of the news media in the online world, which is a very important part of this Bill. The Government are committed to defending the invaluable role of a free media. Online safety legislation must protect the vital role of the press in providing people with reliable and accurate sources of information. Companies must therefore put in place protections for journalistic content. User-to-user services will not have to apply their safety duties in part 3 of the Bill to news publishers’ content shared on their services. News publishers’ content on their own sites will also not be in scope of regulation.

    New clause 19 and associated amendments introduce a further requirement on category 1 services to notify a recognised news publisher and offer a right of appeal before removing or moderating its content or taking any action against its account. This new provision will reduce the risk of major online platforms taking over-zealous, arbitrary or accidental moderation decisions against news publisher content, which plays an invaluable role in UK democracy and society.

    We recognise that there are cases where platforms must be able to remove content without having to provide an appeal, and the new clause has been drafted to ensure that platforms will not be required to provide an appeal before removing content that would give rise to civil or criminal liability to the service itself, or where it amounts to a relevant offence as defined by the Bill. This means that platforms can take down without an appeal content that would count as illegal content under the Bill.

    Moreover, in response to some of the concerns raised, in particular by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam as well as by other Members, about the danger of creating an inadvertent loophole for bad actors, we have committed to further tightening the definition of “recognised news provider” in the House of Lords to ensure that sanctioned entities, such as RT, cannot benefit from these protections.

    As the legislation comes into force, the Government are committed to ensuring that protections for journalism and news publisher content effectively safeguard users’ access to such content. We have therefore tabled amendments 167 and 168 to require category 1 companies to assess the impact of their safety duties on how news publisher and journalistic content are treated when hosted on the service. They must then demonstrate the steps they are taking to mitigate any impact.

    In addition, a series of amendments, including new clause 20, will require Ofcom to produce a report assessing the impact of the Online Safety Bill on the availability and treatment of news publisher content and journalistic content on category 1 services. This will include consideration of the impact of new clause 19, and Ofcom must do this within two years of the relevant provisions being commenced.

    The Bill already excludes comments sections on news publishers’ sites from the Bill’s safety duties. These comments are crucial for enabling reader engagement with the news and encouraging public debate, as well as for the sustainability of the news media. We have tabled a series of amendments to strengthen these protections, reflecting the Government’s commitment to media freedom. The amendments will create a higher bar for removing the protections in place for comments sections on recognised news publishers’ sites by ensuring that these can only be brought into the scope of regulation via primary legislation.

    Government amendments 70 and 71 clarify the policy intention of the clause 13 adult safety duties to improve transparency about how providers treat harmful content, rather than incentivise its removal. The changes respond to concerns raised by stakeholders that the drafting did not make it sufficiently clear that providers could choose simply to allow any form of legal content, rather than promote, restrict or remove it, regardless of the harm to users.

    This is a really important point that has sometimes been missed in the discussion on the Bill. There are very clear duties relating to illegal harm that companies must proactively identify and mitigate. The transparency requirements for other harmful content are very clear that companies must set out what their policies are. Enforcement action can be taken by the regulator for breach of their policies, but the primary objective is that companies make clear what their policies are. It is not a requirement for companies to remove legal speech if their policies do not allow that.

    Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)

    I welcome the Minister to his position, and it is wonderful to have somebody else who—like the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp)—knows what he is talking about. On this issue, which is pretty key, I think it would work if minimum standards were set on the risk assessments that platforms have to make to judge what is legal but harmful content, but at the moment such minimum standards are not in the Bill. Could the Minister comment on that? Otherwise, there is a danger that platforms will set a risk assessment that allows really vile harmful but legal content to carry on appearing on their platform.

    Damian Collins

    The right hon. Lady makes a very important point. There have to be minimum safety standards, and I think that was also reflected in the report of the Joint Committee, which I chaired. Those minimum legal standards are set where the criminal law is set for these priority legal offences. A company may have higher terms of service—it may operate at a higher level—in which case it will be judged on the operation of its terms of service. However, for priority illegal content, it cannot have a code of practice that is below the legal threshold, and it would be in breach of the provisions if it did. For priority illegal offences, the minimum threshold is set by the law.

    Dame Margaret Hodge

    I understand that in relation to illegal harmful content, but I am talking about legal but harmful content. I understand that the Joint Committee that the hon. Member chaired recommended that for legal but harmful content, there should be minimum standards against which the platforms would be judged. I may have missed it, but I cannot see that in the Bill.

    Damian Collins

    The Joint Committee’s recommendation was for a restructuring of the Bill, so that rather than having general duty of care responsibilities that were not defined, we defined those responsibilities based on existing areas of law. The core principle behind the Bill is to take things that are illegal offline, and to regulate such things online based on the legal threshold. That is what the Bill does.

    In schedule 7, which did not exist in the draft phase, we have written into the Bill a long list of offences in law. I expect that, as this regime is created, the House will insert more regulations and laws into schedule 7 as priority offences in law. Even if an offence in law is not listed in the priority illegal harms schedule, it can still be a non-priority harm, meaning that even if a company does not have to look for evidence of that offence proactively, it still has to act if it is made aware of the offence. I think the law gives us a very wide range of offences, clearly defined against offences in law, where there are clearly understood legal thresholds.

    The question is: what is to be done about other content that may be harmful but sits below the threshold? The Government have made it clear that we intend to bring forward amendments that set out clear priorities for companies on the reporting of such harmful content, where we expect the companies to set out what their policies are. That will include setting out clearly their policies on things such as online abuse and harassment, the circulation of real or manufactured intimate images, content promoting self-harm, content promoting eating disorders or legal suicide content—this is content relating to adults—so the companies will have to be transparent on that point.

    Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)

    I congratulate the Minister on his appointment, and I look forward to supporting him in his role as he previously supported me in mine. I think he made an important point a minute ago about content that is legal but considered to be harmful. It has been widely misreported in the press that this Bill censors or prohibits such content. As the Minister said a moment ago, it does no such thing. There is no requirement on platforms to censor or remove content that is legal, and amendment 71 to clause 13 makes that expressly clear. Does he agree that reports suggesting that the Bill mandates censorship of legal content are completely inaccurate?

    Damian Collins

    I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and as I said earlier, he is absolutely right. There is no requirement for platforms to take down legal speech, and they cannot be directed to do so. What we have is a transparency requirement to set out their policies, with particular regard to some of the offences I mentioned earlier, and a wide schedule of things that are offences in law that are enforced through the Bill itself. This is a very important distinction to make. I said to him on Second Reading that I thought the general term “legal but harmful” had added a lot of confusion to the way the Bill was perceived, because it created the impression that the removal of legal speech could be required by order of the regulator, and that is not the case.

    Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)

    I congratulate the Minister on his promotion and on his excellent chairmanship of the prelegislative scrutiny Committee, which I also served on. Is he satisfied with the Bill in relation to disinformation? It was concerning that there was only one clause on disinformation, and we know the impact—particularly the democratic impact—that that has on our society at large. Is he satisfied that the Bill will address that?

    Damian Collins

    It was a pleasure to serve alongside the hon. Lady on the Joint Committee. There are clear new offences relating to knowingly false information that will cause harm. As she will know, that was a Law Commission recommendation; it was not in the draft Bill but it is now in the Bill. The Government have also said that as a consequence of the new National Security Bill, which is going through Parliament, we will bring in a new priority offence relating to disinformation spread by hostile foreign states. As she knows, one of the most common areas for organised disinformation has been at state level. As a consequence of the new national security legislation, that will also be reflected in schedule 7 of this Bill, and that is a welcome change.

    The Bill requires all services to take robust action to tackle the spread of illegal content and activity. Providers must proactively reduce the risk on their services of illegal activity and the sharing of illegal content, and they must identify and remove illegal content once it appears on their services. That is a proactive responsibility. We have tabled several interrelated amendments to reinforce the principle that companies must take a safety-by-design approach to managing the risk of illegal content and activity on their services. These amendments require platforms to assess the risk of their services being used to commit, or to facilitate the commission of, a priority offence and then to design and operate their services to mitigate that risk. This will ensure that companies put in place preventive measures to mitigate a broad spectrum of factors that enable illegal activity, rather than focusing solely on the removal of illegal content once it appears.

    Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)

    I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment to his position. On harmful content, there are all too many appalling examples of animal abuse on the internet. What are the Government’s thoughts on how we can mitigate such harmful content, which is facilitating wildlife crime? Might similar online protections be provided for animals to the ones that clause 53 sets out for children?

    Damian Collins

    My hon. Friend raises an important point that deserves further consideration as the Bill progresses through its parliamentary stages. There is, of course, still a general presumption that any illegal activity that could also constitute illegal activity online—for example, promoting or sharing content that could incite people to commit violent acts—is within scope of the legislation. There are some priority illegal offences, which are set out in schedule 7, but the non-priority offences also apply if a company is made aware of content that is likely to be in breach of the law. I certainly think this is worth considering in that context.

    In addition, the Bill makes it clear that platforms have duties to mitigate the risk of their service facilitating an offence, including where that offence may occur on another site, such as can occur in cross-platform child sexual exploitation and abuse—CSEA—offending, or even offline. This addresses concerns raised by a wide coalition of children’s charities that the Bill did not adequately tackle activities such as breadcrumbing—an issue my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), the Chair of the Select Committee, has raised in the House before—where CSEA offenders post content on one platform that leads to offences taking place on a different platform.

    We have also tabled new clause 14 and a related series of amendments in order to provide greater clarity about how in-scope services should determine whether they have duties with regard to content on their services. The new regulatory framework requires service providers to put in place effective and proportionate systems and processes to improve user safety while upholding free expression and privacy online. The systems and processes that companies implement will be tailored to the specific risk profile of the service. However, in many cases the effectiveness of companies’ safety measures will depend on them making reasonable judgments about types of content. Therefore, it is essential to the effective functioning of the framework that there is clarity about how providers should approach these judgments. In particular, such clarity will safeguard against companies over-removing innocuous content if they wrongly assume mental elements are present, or under-removing content if they act only where all elements of an offence are established beyond reasonable doubt. The amendments make clear that companies must consider all reasonably available contextual information when determining whether content is illegal content, a fraudulent advert, content that is harmful to children, or content that is harmful to adults.

    Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)

    I was on the Bill Committee and we discussed lots of things, but new clause 14 was not discussed: we did not have conversations about it, and external organisations have not been consulted on it. Is the Minister not concerned that this is a major change to the Bill and it has not been adequately consulted on?

    Damian Collins

    As I said earlier, in establishing the threshold for priority illegal offences, the current threshold of laws that exist offline should provide good guidance. I would expect that as the codes of practice are developed, we will be able to make clear what those offences are. On the racial hatred that the England footballers received after the European championship football final, people have been prosecuted for what they posted on Twitter and other social media platforms. We know what race hate looks like in that context, we know what the regulatory threshold should look at and we know the sort of content we are trying to regulate. I expect that, in the codes of practice, Ofcom can be very clear with companies about what we expect, where the thresholds are and where we expect them to take enforcement action.

    Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)

    I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking his new position; we rarely have a new Minister so capable of hitting the ground running. He makes a crucial point about clearness and transparency for both users and the social media providers and other platforms, because it is important that we make sure they are 100% clear about what is expected of them and the penalties for not fulfilling their commitments. Does he agree that opaqueness—a veil of secrecy—has been one of the obstacles, and that a whole raft of content has been taken down for the wrong reasons while other content has been left to proliferate because of the lack of clarity?

    Damian Collins

    That is entirely right, and in closing I say that the Bill does what we have always asked for it to do: it gives absolute clarity that illegal things offline must be illegal online as well, and be regulated online. It establishes clear responsibilities and liabilities for the platforms to do that proactively. It enables a regulator to hold the platforms to account on their ability to tackle those priority illegal harms and provide transparency on other areas of harmful content. At present we simply do not know about the policy decisions that companies choose to make: we have no say in it; it is not transparent; we do not know whether they do it. The Bill will deliver in those important regards. If we are serious about tackling issues such as fraud and abuse online, and other criminal offences, we require a regulatory system to do that and proper legal accountability and liability for the companies. That is what the Bill and the further amendments deliver.

  • 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.