HANSARD
Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill
- Committee (Continued)
- 7:20 pm
- Amendment 4
- 4: Clause 2, page 2, line 26, at end insert— “( ) to promote public understanding of, and engagement with, the Restoration and Renewal programme and its objectives.”
- My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 6 and 10 and will endeavour to be brief. Rather than repeating myself later, I will set out here why it is important that this amendment should be in the Bill. I suspect that I will have a slightly more uphill struggle than on the amendment we debated before the Statement, but I hope not, because I am seeking consensus. Once again, I am deeply grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and other noble Lords on this and subsequent amendments.We have to have some understanding of why it is important to have some essential elements written in the Bill rather than in letters from present or past Leaders of the House, or reassurances from the Dispatch Box. It is patently obvious that nobody knows who the Minister will be from Thursday onwards. I suspect—I have written about this—that there may be an election sooner rather than later, so elected Members in the other House do not really know who will be there. As far as we are concerned, the grim reaper can determine whether we are here or not rather rapidly.On staff servicing the sponsor body and members of the sponsor body who are not in either of these Houses, it is obvious that going for promotion, or leaving for another job or another part of the country is part of life. Therefore, the notion that a letter of assurance or a word or two from the Dispatch Box, or even, importantly, the trust we place in existing sponsor body members and staff is not worth the paper it is written on or the emotion it uses. Who knows who will be here by the time we decant and, certainly, by the time we return?I place on record that none of what I am going to say disparages either the commitment or the appreciation of Ministers or sponsor body members, or Liz Peace and her team; I have nothing but respect for their work, their good offices and their words. However, we need to ensure that the electorate, who are already totally disillusioned with politics and Parliament, feel that this has something to do with them. As we discussed on the consensual amendment on the economic benefits to accrue from the restoration and renewal programme, if we can get them, so on the political gains that can be made: there is the need to gain consent. That is why these amendments endeavour to ensure that the Bill, whoever is in this House and serving on the sponsor body, and the direction they give to the delivery authority, make it absolutely clear what Parliament’s will is.
- My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment and share the views of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.To me, the principles of this massive investment are that of course it is about the engineering, heritage and security of the House, the comfort of Peers and Members of the House of Commons and their ability to do their jobs, but the most important legacy will be to contribute to the rebuilding of trust between Parliament and the people. It is not uncommon for infrastructure projects of this size to have important secondary benefits without which they can be deemed a failure.
- 7:30 pm
- Delivery of rebuilding of civic trust in our country is a massive focus that needs to be seen more clearly in the Bill. That can be best secured by two major themes. One is through access for the public to the Houses of Parliament. This is an uncomfortable subject, because there are serious considerations about the practicalities and impact on parliamentarians of having more members of the public in and out of the House—and on security arrangements. But given the huge amount of money that we are set to spend, we need to reconcile those two considerations and ensure that members of the public have a much better opportunity to meet their MPs and come to talk to Peers about legislation going through the House to educate themselves about what is going on. I am mainly thinking about schoolchildren having civics lessons to understand what Parliament is up to and observing legislation going through on the issues that they care about. We all feel frustrated that our wonderful Galleries are not more filled, but who can blame people for not coming to watch legislation being passed when it is so uncomfortable, the wait is so long and the experience is so profoundly negative?
- Those three things need to be squarely addressed. The way the Bill is written at present puts parliamentarians and their desires very much at the front of the process. That is right in one respect—this is a parliamentary building and parliamentarians will drive the process—but I should like the public to have a much clearer voice.
- The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, spoke very well about the limited expectations we should have for Members of Parliament engaging with their constituents on the difficult and sensitive subject of how billions of pounds will be spent on this building. A consultation process is described in Clause 5:
- “The Sponsor Body must prepare a strategy for consulting members of each House of Parliament for the purposes of section 2(3)”.
- That is a thoughtful and pragmatic approach, because I am sure that the noble Lord is correct that once we are presented with a difficult plan, it will be very difficult to tweak and change it, because a huge investment in professional services will have gone into it; to try to change the staircase, move things around and put the kitchen on top of the sitting room is, as all householders know very difficult, when you have reached that stage.
- It is critical that the public have a voice from the very beginning and that questions of access and education are hard-baked into the project from the very beginning. You can use modern forms of consultation to get a very clear, subtle, deliberative snapshot of what the public might want from a project, although it is very complicated and they may need to have both it and the options explained to them.
- We should tweak the amendment to include the public clearly in the consultation process. What would people like to see from a modern, 21st-century Parliament? How would they like to meet parliamentarians to discuss constituency matters or legislation? How would they regard matters of security and travel? How would they get to Parliament and how would they like to see their children engaged in education and civic programmes?
- If we do not face up to this challenge—if we brush it off and put it in the too-hard-to-try bucket—my fear is that we will invest, say, a billion pounds, trying to get the plan right but it will then be rejected by the public. It will be met with unhappiness and discord. I have seen it happen with infrastructure projects time and again. Then it will be sent back to the drawing board and we will have wasted time and money, whereas, if we grab the nettle at this early stage, take the plunge and listen to what the people want in terms of engaging, accessing and educating themselves on Parliament, we can save a huge amount of the budget, get a better product and save some money at the same time.
- My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. I absolutely agree with everything that has been said. Frankly, it is a no-brainer for the Government not to agree with the amendment. Apart from anything else, if they do not, they will be seen to be offside with common practice these days in restoration projects.If the House were to come to the Heritage Lottery Fund—I declare my interest as deputy chair of the board—with a proposal for a fairly significant grant, as the House may still do although we could not fund the whole thing, the very least we would expect is a clear strategy. It is not necessarily as simple as consultation; I mean a serious public engagement strategy which would allow us to tell who would actually benefit, how their voices had been collected and heard and how they had been reflected in the proposal. We would not consider proposals which could not provide us with that obvious proof of public benefit.What we are considering here, for all the reasons we know and which the noble Lord has again spelt out, is a national project of the greatest public benefit that we could conceive of. By not acknowledging that in the Bill or making clear plans to involve and listen to the voice of different communities around the country, we are missing a massive opportunity. We also neglect our public duty.
- Did I follow my noble friend correctly in thinking that the lottery might fund parts of the restoration and renewal work? I would strongly deprecate that. This should be paid for by the Treasury.
- No, my Lords, I did not say that. I was making a hypothetical case that, were such a grant to be considered—I am not saying that it would be—it would have to satisfy different conditions. Of course I agree that this is a public project for national Treasury funding.I have now lost my thread completely. This is the second time that my noble friend has interrupted me when I was developing my strategic thinking. I return to the principle. It is extremely important, for all the reasons we know, that this change is owned by the people we are here to serve. It is absurd not to recognise them in the Bill or to give them a voice.We know how to do this, although it is complicated. At what point do you start involving people? How do you structure it? How do you reach out? How do you collect the voices, as it were? But we do it every day in major and minor projects around the country. It is not a miracle; it is a science.To take just one example before I close, the National Museum Wales has, I am delighted to say, just won a national museum of the year award. In its redevelopment, which involved a great deal of new building, it involved thousands of people from all manner of excluded groups in the local and national community. The result has been transformational in their and our understanding of what people expect from a national museum.This is not a museum. We have a much greater duty. But those principles and methodologies can certainly be adopted and followed.