That the Grand Committee takes note of the report from the Corporate Officer of the House of Commons and the Corporate Officer of the House of Lords, Restoration and Renewal: Annual Progress Report 2024 (HC 228).
My Lords, noble Lords know well that extensive and complex work is required to restore and preserve the Palace for future generations. I suspect, too, that noble Lords share my frustration that we are not further forward than we are. What I intend to highlight as I open this debate is the work undertaken, which is set out in the most recent annual report, and the path towards decision-making.
Most notably, the R&R client board, composed of the two House commissions, agreed and published the strategic case report, which sets out the future direction of the programme. Published in March 2024, the R&R strategic case sets out the three delivery options for how to restore this historic Palace, which the client board agreed should be developed in further detail.
The recommendations of the client board were informed by the extensive work of the R&R programme board in 2023. The programme board considered carefully 36 combinations of scope and delivery approaches to provide a shortlist for how R&R might be delivered. This was judged against a range of criteria, including value for money, health and safety implications, likely disruption to the work of Parliament and lasting benefits, including to accessibility and sustainability. This shortlisting process and the recommendations of the programme board informed the client board’s final decision regarding which delivery options should be developed into fully costed proposals. It is expected that this work will be presented by the end of this year to the Houses to make a decision on the preferred way forward.
The client board agreed to the development of a “full decant” option and a “continued presence” option, as recommended by the programme board, and requested that a further delivery option of a rolling sequenced programme of works to deliver “enhanced maintenance and improvement” also be developed.
Under the “full decant” option, both Houses would leave the Palace and relocate nearby on a temporary basis while the majority of the works are completed. The House of Commons Chamber would be prioritised for return to the Palace. The preferred location for temporary decant of the House of Lords would be the nearby QEII conference centre building for approximately 11 years, with continuing use of the existing southern estate—namely, Millbank House, Fielden House and Old Palace Yard.
The “continued presence” option involves the House of Commons Chamber and essential support functions remaining in the Palace throughout the works. The House of Lords would move out of the Palace for approximately 17 years until the works are complete, again with the QEII conference centre being the preferred venue. Other House of Commons functions currently based in the Palace would be relocated elsewhere on the existing House of Commons estate.
Finally, the “enhanced maintenance and improvement” option would be delivered as part of a rolling, sequenced programme of works. As far as possible, this option would be delivered in a business-as-usual environment, although up to 30% of the Palace may be decanted at any one time. As the client board commissioned detailed work on this option at a later stage in the shortlisting process last year, the timeline for EMI is still being worked through and will be disclosed in the costed proposals, alongside other comparative information.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the Senior Deputy Speaker. I put on record my thanks to him and all those on the two commissions, the programme board for its work and the client team. I apologise to the Committee because I will be saying nothing that I have not said before, and therefore nothing original, but there is nothing new about that in our House. I recommend again that people read Mr Barry’s War, because it is instrumental in understanding the nightmare of getting any kind of renovation of this place and what happened in 1834 and beyond. I fear that we are on the same trajectory today, although perhaps not of 160 years or whatever it is.
I would like to say two things this afternoon. First, I appreciate the email that went out two days ago to request comments and engagement from Members of both Houses; reinforcing that has been very helpful. Secondly, the reason we are here now is the way in which we have had stop/start and not just hiccups but complete reversals. I was very interested in what the Senior Deputy Speaker had to say about the bore-hole. “Bore” is a very good word in these circumstances because we appear now to be doing things that have been done previously. We appear to be covering ground that I thought had been covered by the sponsor body in the early days following the 2019 Act. I thought we went over quite a lot of the ground in the original joint scrutiny committee of 2018, on which I had the genuine pleasure of serving. I thought it was going to be the most unhappy period of my life in politics, but it turned out to be fascinating.
Then, of course, we had the debate on the 2019 Act. I just want to reinforce that we have an Act of Parliament. When I have talked to those working on this programme, past and present, it has struck me that the Act of Parliament is the last thing people turn to. If we are to change elements of that Act, we should bring forward legislation to do so rather than presume that we can override it; I will come back to that in a moment. It is not easy. I do not underestimate for a minute the difficulty that people have gone through. The decision was taken back in February 2022 to change the formula and therefore to change the personnel, many of whom had lived with the programme for quite a long time and had become experts in the challenges. Those recruited to the client team and the new programme board were therefore people coming into it new.
My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, with whom I have had many encounters over the years. I thank the Senior Deputy Speaker for a characteristically thorough, rigorous, courteous and careful report, but decisions have to be made. It is now just on 10 years, and we cannot faff about any longer. We cannot kick it into the long grass, hope an election will come along, conceal or deceive. It is not going to work. We have to make decisions, and we have to make brave decisions.
I was reflecting on those infrastructure projects that many of us have been involved in. Very few people who come into politics know anything about project management or infrastructure. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, does because he was leader of Sheffield City Council and knew a lot about this. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Morse, knows a great deal about this area, but many of us came as innocents to the subject.
We have all been bruised and burned in the bonfire of public opinion and hostility, and we have all had to make impossible decisions. I suppose my first one was after there had been 29 reports into why London had too many hospitals, all not very good. It needed to have fewer, better hospitals—it needed critical mass—and they needed to integrate with the universities. I just knew that I had to make this decision. Sir Bernard Tomlinson came along and helped on it. He could not believe the hostility and viciousness of people in the public sector. My former boss, the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, used to say that the charm of a board is often in inverse proportion to the virtue of its project. The BAT board was charming, but the Great Ormond Street board was often very difficult indeed. As many in health will know, people can get very emotional. But I made the decisions, and I was not going to back off them.
I commend the noble Baroness on what she is saying. Perhaps she will recall that on this issue—perhaps not on others—I backed her to the hilt as the shadow Health Secretary, and nearly lost my place on the shadow Cabinet as a consequence but was praised enormously by Tony Blair. I thank her for that.
People do notice. Various vice-chancellors kept writing and saying, “We’ve got a new project or development, and we wouldn’t have had that without the decision”. This is not supposed to be a vain speech in any way; I am just trying to gird us up to make the decisions. No more paralysis by analysis—it is time for action, not options. We know the options; we do not want to know them.
I will touch on one or two other examples. There were terrible rows about the British Library—which is now an iconic, world-famous library—with rage that it had overspent, overrun and so on. Gloriously, at the Millennium Commission I was charged with all sorts of projects. For example, there was rage about the Portsmouth millennium tower, which was going to cost £32 million but actually cost nearly £40 million. It opened five years after the millennium; what a disgrace. I was getting a fierce kicking by the media on this one, and I needed to go and look at my sources. So I thought, “Well, the Battle of Trafalgar was in 1805, and Nelson’s Column wasn’t unveiled until 1843—and the price had doubled”. So I felt I was not alone. These matters are almost inevitable.
But what is best practice? We cannot talk just about all these problems. Who has done this spectacularly well? I must declare all my interests from my professional life. The 2012 Olympics were an excellent example of project delivery and management. I say this to the politicians: appreciate that, of all those who campaigned for the Olympics, none of them was on the implementation team. This is one of the dilemmas of government. You campaign in opposition, but in government you have to implement, and they are totally different skills. Most people, when they come into government, think that a press notice is an implementation plan. You have a 10-year programme, as a Minister, to work out that this is not actually the same activity at all.
My Lords, we are at last now reaching the critical decision-making phase in relation to the restoration and renewal of this building. I should say up front that although I am currently a member and deputy chair of the R&R programme board, and chair of its sub-board, I am speaking today on my own behalf, not on behalf of any of those bodies. I think we all share the frustration that this seems to be taking a very long time, but I want to try to strike a slightly more optimistic note, at least looking forward.
Although many noble Lords have the impression that not much has been happening over the last few years since the delivery authority was established, that is not correct. This is a very significant project, and an awful lot of work has been done to ensure that we are able to make the right decision later this year. I have been critical, and remain critical to an extent, of the amount that the delivery authority has spent or is spending—and perhaps slightly of how it has been spent. To refer to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, about whether we are duplicating bore-holes and things, I do not think we are, but for various reasons they have happened slightly later in the process than would have been good. They seem to be getting there now, which is good.
There is no doubt at all that a lot of extremely valuable work has been carried out. Importantly, huge expertise and a lot of very deep knowledge about the building have been created. I think we all know all too well that starting a project of this nature without that detailed and deep knowledge is a recipe for disaster.
In addition, over the last few years the governance of the project has changed and is—in my view, anyway—working rather better. The two Houses are working much more closely together and are better, if not perfectly, aligned. In particular, our in-house Strategic Estates team, which knows the building well over the history, is much more involved, which is positive. The delivery authority and Strategic Estates are now working really quite closely together and we seem to have reduced the “them and us” mentality that I think quite seriously dogged the project in its earlier days.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, for his very clear annunciation of the report. It is tempting to look backwards, to dwell on the sorry story of complete failure of political will and the shocking neglect of our heritage. To an extent, it is inevitable that this debate will feel a bit like Groundhog Day. However, I will concentrate on the political sell, on health and safety, and on the risk to our working relationships in this building as it continues to deteriorate.
This morning, a friend and neighbour in Peckham asked me what I was working on. I said, “Well, Parliament’s falling down and it’s going to cost gazillions”. She said, “Well, there’s only two buildings that matter—the Tower of London and Parliament. Tell them to get on with it, or I’ll come down and sort them”. I thought that was quite a good reaction from somebody who had not thought very much about the issue.
This reflects what the report says about public support. The same public have little or no confidence in politicians. The symbolism is important. Although I take what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, and will try to be as open-minded as I can, not being an expert, a total decant would be a signal that we embrace that symbolism. I make a plea to the client board that the narrower issues of finance, architecture and complexity should not swamp that message that we are protecting our heritage. One of the reasons why people are very often disenchanted with politicians is the short-termism and the feeling that they are managing decline rather than protecting our heritage. This is a very good opportunity to try to turn that around.
Of course there will be grumbles about money; frankly, that will happen whatever we do. I have to say that my heart sank when I read that the client board had asked for work on the third option. I hope that, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, said, this work will prove me wrong. However, what happens if there is a disaster in the meantime? I assume that there are contingency plans, but it will mean us being forced to take drastic action rather than controlling events. I still believe that this could happen in this building, which is so fraught with difficulties—not just leaks and security issues and all the stuff going on in the basement. This really could happen. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, can reassure us that there are contingency plans. I am not asking what they are.
My Lords, I realise that as a chartered accountant, my remarks will be quite different to those of some of the other speakers, and I apologise for that in advance. Noble Lords have already had a very clear exposition of the project from the Senior Deputy Speaker and my noble friend Lord Vaux. We have three options to look at, and I am planning to focus primarily on one of them. The others have been covered very well, but I will just say a bit more about the EMI—enhanced maintenance and improvement—option. I have no preference about which option is selected, but I think that it is the one that is possibly the most difficult to understand at this stage, and it needs to be understood. I will make a few remarks only on that subject. All the projects will take a significant time—we have heard that—but it is generally expected that this enhanced maintenance and improvement project will take much longer. That is the first point.
From this, there are more possibilities, or probabilities, for changes in scope to occur during the project because, if you are talking about a project going on for decades and decades, what is wanted will change. People have to understand that. Therefore, we are not talking about a certain prediction of what will in fact be in scope of the project. That will change, or is highly likely to change, perhaps because of inflation, which is higher than we provided for—of course, we are providing for it—and because of changes in information and technology that are almost certain to happen, given the rate of change, as well as because of changes in standards on safety and accessibility. We take those into account, but they are highly likely to change.
From my experience of being involved in major projects, I can say that one of the features of these types of changes is that they all involve additional costs. I have never yet heard somebody running a project run into my room and say, “Look, good news: we’ve changed the scope of the project and we’re cutting a quarter off the cost”. That is just never going to happen. The cost will go only one way: upwards, and quite substantially so. There is already a substantial existing repairs and renewals programme running in the Palace, estimated at £1,045,000 a year—no, a week; I wish it were a year. That is a very substantial sum of money.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Morse, who set out the scene wisely on how we manage a future that will undoubtedly change.
I thank the committee, the staff and the contractors for their work on this marathon of marathons. I also thank ParliAble for advocating for disabled staff and parliamentarians. I am particularly grateful for the meeting that I and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, had with an architect and some of the staff to discuss disability access in the proposed committee rooms and Lords Chamber. I will return to disability access as my principal point in a minute.
First, though, I was for a decade senior bursar of first one and then a second Cambridge college, both of which had listed buildings. Partial decants or, worse, the “muddling through” option, are financially irresponsible and utterly impractical—I have tried them. We are finding the current works difficult, but that is nothing to these two options. So, frankly, for both the public purse and the smooth running of both Houses of Parliament, option 1, the full decant, is the only sensible option.
The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was right to say that costs should be annualised. Cambridge college bursars discussed this matter regularly in my day. The older colleges thought that 100 years minimum was probably quite a wise move. Indeed, when we were discussing chapel repairs, the kinsman of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, George Reid, senior bursar of St John’s, turned to the bursar of Emmanuel, founded merely in the 17th century, and said, “You modern post-Reformation colleges”. This period of time that we are considering is absolutely vital for us. We are not building for the next 50 years—indeed, if we go for the “muddling through” option, it will not be done in 50 years—but perhaps we are following Barry and doing it for the next 200 years.
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Noble Lords will wish to know what improvements we can expect to see in the Palace following the R&R works. The client board agreed that a “reasonably ambitious” scope be adopted for the R&R works. This would see improvements to areas such as health and safety, including to fire safety and addressing asbestos; renewal of mechanical, electrical and other services—perhaps this week I should say heating; building fabric conservation; security protection measures; and accessibility. This includes improving audibility and increasing step-free access from 12% within the Palace at present to approximately 70%, with the highest step-free access provided in the most visited and used areas of the building.
This scope was agreed by the R&R client board because it would deliver significant improvements to the Palace for those who work in and visit it, while representing best value for money for taxpayers. These three options are being developed in detail over the coming months by the R&R delivery authority and Strategic Estates. Once this work is complete, all three options will be assessed by the programme and client board. These options will be costed and presented by the end of this year to enable, as I said, informed decisions by the Houses and a genuine choice on the preferred way forward.
Turning to the contents of the 2024 annual progress report, I will first note the expenditure. The annual report sets out the financial performance and expenditure of the R&R programme. In the 2023-24 financial year, the delivery authority expenditure amounted to £75 million, with a further £5 million of expenditure by Parliament’s R&R client team.
In addition to supporting the development and assessment of options considered by the programme board, which I have outlined, activities last year included continued work on complex surveys to the Palace, which are helping to shape the detailed plans for design and construction work. This is enabling the Houses to develop the most accurate building information record of the Palace’s condition that has ever existed and will support maintenance of the Palace.
In 2023-24, 24,500 hours of intrusive survey work was completed, which included eight bore-holes, bringing the total to more than 63,000 hours of intrusive surveys being completed. The deepest of the bore-holes completed last year was 84 metres—275 feet in old money. To put that in another context, the Elizabeth Tower is 96 metres tall. That bore-hole was the deepest to date conducted by the R&R programme and will allow surveyors for the delivery authority to understand further the ground conditions, archaeology and other useful design parameters ahead of the future works.
Archaeological discoveries have included sections of the ancient river walls and piles from the Charles Barry construction. The delivery authority, working with Parliament’s heritage and collections team, also completed its audit of the approximately 13,000 collections objects—paintings, sculptures, furniture, decorative arts and other unique and important objects—to consider how these can best be managed during the R&R programme.
The concept designs for the recommended outcome level for the Palace restoration works and the outline design for House of Lords temporary accommodation also progressed in the last year.
Engagement and communications activity supported the development of the strategic case and informed decision-making by the R&R political boards with the parliamentary community and external experts, and engagement with industry and professional sectors across the UK.
Tours of the Palace basements and the historic Cloister Court continue to be made available to Members and staff. More than 80 Peers have taken this tour since April 2022. I suspect all noble Lords present have undertaken the tour, but I recommend it wholeheartedly. It captures and makes one understand the challenges, and indeed the opportunities, of restoration. Noble Lords can sign up by contacting the R&R client team. One-to-one briefings can also be arranged with R&R officials to discuss the programme in more detail.
Engagement about the programme has not been confined to Westminster. As set out in the annual report, more than 250 representatives of supply chains and small businesses, and local officials in all four nations of the UK, have been met with to highlight future opportunities that the R&R programme may provide to businesses across the UK. It is perhaps a good reminder that this programme can have benefits all across the United Kingdom. Over 50% of the value of contracts awarded by the delivery authority has been to companies based outside London and the south-east.
I hope that what I have sought to outline demonstrates that there has been tangible progress—politically, with the agreement of the strategic case and the three options taken forward for development, and at the technical level to assess in much greater detail the condition of the Palace and develop approaches for how the building could be restored and renewed.
Noble Lords will want assurances that the expenditure spent on the programme has been necessary. Expenditure for the client team and delivery authority is scrutinised in various ways. The client team, as a joint parliamentary department funded by both Houses, is subject to the scrutiny processes faced by the budgets of both Houses’ administrations, such as the Finance Committees of each House. The annual estimate for the independent delivery authority is scrutinised by the client team, the programme board—including its sub-board, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and previously the noble Lord, Lord Morse, both of whom I am pleased to see participating in today’s debate—and the client board, of which the noble Lord, Lord Morse, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, are also members. Finally, there is the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission, of which I am a member, receiving advice from the Treasury before it is laid in the House of Commons. The programme also continues to draw on outside, independent expertise to provide assurance on plans. This will help to ensure that costed proposals brought forward are robust, providing confidence to both Houses in the information presented.
While we prepare to take a decision on R&R, work on the Palace is not standing still. Parliamentary teams continue to move forward with projects to ensure the safety of the Palace, and all who work within it, before the R&R works commence. This includes plans to repair the Lords Chamber roof; the Victoria Tower programme, which will commence this year alongside wider stonework conservation repairs; and mechanical, electrical, public health and fire safety replacement of life-expired services to ensure the continued operation of the Palace until the start of R&R.
This explains the direction of the programme and the work undertaken over the last year. I continue to emphasise the responsibility that we all have, as custodians of this historic Palace, for the decisions we will need to make on the way forward. The ongoing work that I have outlined will enable the Houses to make the significant decision on the way forward for the programme based on evidence, and—I emphasise this—to make progress. I look forward to hearing the contributions of all noble Lords today. It is a subject on which all of us in this Room and well beyond have our concerns, we are putting in place now what will, I hope, provide us with some lasting solutions. I beg to move.
Of course, at the moment we are faced with more than half the House of Commons being new Members from July last year and, as a consequence, coming at this issue fresh. That brings a wholly new challenge. One of the benefits of the House of Lords, of which there are many, is some degree of continuity. We in this House are in the position of having voted on more than one occasion on the options—because the options really have not changed over this past eight and a half years, have they? The options that have been spelt out this afternoon are full decant, which is by far the most economic and practical option; partial decant, which means that, whatever happens, the House of Lords decants; or a muddle over something like 48 years in trying to do this piecemeal. We have been doing piecemeal for several decades.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, for indicating the costs and expenditure that are necessary to keep the building and Parliament functioning but lack transparency. He mentioned the word “transparency”, for which I am grateful, but, like others, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has been doing his best to try to get into some of the detail on how decisions are made and who actually makes them in the end. I know that, theoretically, the commissions do, but the Peers’ Entrance fiasco—it has been a fiasco, with the kind of money we have spent on it—is an example of the way in which minds have been changed over the years.
If we can, we must make some progress in 2025 on either reaffirming or changing the decision—but determining it with a manageable timetable, with commitment from both Houses and without interference by single individuals who do not like a particular programme, timetable or outcome and have, over the past three years, grossly interfered with making progress. Let us speak a language that we all understand in saying that that has happened, and try to address the future.
The political consequences of the decisions made are never talked about. Particularly in this House, we need to understand the decisions that will be made by Members about whether they stay on as active Peers and work through the consequences that will have for planning the decant and the office, administrative and support systems that will be required, the political consequences for the balance of groups in our House, and the nature of how we plan for that in a way that we have not done so far. Reducing the numbers in this House, which I am totally in favour of, requires us to take account of personal decisions that will be made once people know what the true timetable will be, even if they believe it is likely to slip.
My final point is, as ever, about access. I welcome very strongly in the introduction this afternoon the commitment to reach 70% access into and within the Palace of Westminster. That is a substantial improvement on previous commitments. It is not what was expected in the 2019 Act, when we envisaged between 80% and 90% access, but it is progress.
I want to reinforce that with new members of the client team and new people brought into the delivery authority, it is really important that they understand that it is about not just restoration but renewal. That was spelled out in the Act after considerable negotiations across groups and with Ministers at the time, who were extremely helpful in understanding that we are thinking of 50, 100 or 200 years ahead, not just the immediate future.
My final final point is: why do we keep on rolling up the total cost in a way that frightens everyone to death? It frightens parliamentarians, it frightens the public and it is a gift to the media. Why do we not talk about the annualised expenditure over the period of time we are talking about? If we had that, people would understand the nature of the investment and the possibilities of managing it within very tight budgets —and whatever the future might hold, they will continue to be very tight—and they might understand that we will then have the kind of ambition that occurred when Notre-Dame, or at least a substantial part of the interior, burned down. The ambition of the French was to make sure that they did a thorough and tremendous job of both restoration and renewal, and they did it in a timescale at which we can only be amazed. We have a history in this country of failing to be able to deliver major projects. This one should be an exemplar. It should be one where we get the costings right to begin with and get the timetable realistic. With artificial intelligence and the use of new technology, we can do things now that we could not even have envisaged back in 2016. It is time to move on from the sterile debates that we have had and to look to the future.
I decided that the Olympics were a very good example. What was their advantage? They had a deadline: a decision had to be made. Otherwise, we would be humiliated in public. Of course, this was Notre-Dame’s great advantage, in a sense: a crisis mobilises people, so action had to be taken and taken fast. It is difficult for us to create that sort of timescale.
Money is always tight: there is never enough money. What the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said was interesting. You must not be entirely duplicitous, because that just generates the rage and cynicism of the public. You can modify scope. Some of the ideas for the redevelopment or refurbishment of Parliament are thrilling. Somebody who helps me was talking about the US congressional visitor centre—a wonderful, state-of-the-art centre. We should take the opportunity to make this a great centre of education, tourism and so forth.
Personally, I am for the decant and am very in favour of Portcullis House for the Commons, but I am not an expert, I am not on any of the committees, and I hope I will not be serving on any of them. I remember going around with Michael Hopkins when he first finished the design—I was a Heritage Minister—and it is a thrilling location. But I am sure we have to move—we cannot do it in half-measures.
The real issue is to have a good client. A former Permanent Secretary used to do a lot of the funding of the renovation of some of the royal palaces, and it was quite difficult at that stage to get not only the lead members of the Royal Family but some of the junior members to realise that if you have a contract, every time you modify it, tinker with it or change it, that is money down the drain. You have to make your decision, stick with it and get on with it, and that of course is what we have to do.
I so admire the committee. Michael, the chairman, is a really excellent man, as we know, and his team are excellent. But poor them, having to deal with parliamentarians, because parliamentarians cannot help but think in five-year terms, and they are particularly vulnerable to getting a kicking from public opinion and so on. I am very sympathetic, and I greatly admire all those who have taken on this huge responsibility. I have looked at their backgrounds. They are obviously extremely competent, capable people, and let us hope they can stay the course and not be driven to frustration by all of us. In short, I admire all those who have put so much into this already, but it cannot go on; we now have to make decisions at the earliest opportunity.
I have a small point that I know noble Lords will appreciate. As I understand it, the renewal and restoration of Parliament requires quite a large working area, and I think Victoria Tower Gardens is the area they will be looking for. That is surely the final nail in the coffin of the ridiculous Holocaust memorial museum, which is an utter waste of public money. It should shoot off to the Imperial War Museum or somewhere else. This is another excellent argument in that department.
I will leave noble Lords with the comments of that Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke—words that I often used to refer to:
“Those who carry on great public schemes must be proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults, and, worst of all, the presumptuous judgements of the ignorant upon their designs”.
In my humble opinion, courage, tenacity and decision-making are required.
We will make the decision as to how we renew the Palace later this year, with the two Houses making the final decision after it has been recommended by the client board, which is the two commissions working together. It is the process to make that decision that I want to speak about a little. As we heard, three possible options are now being worked on. These are the original “full decant” option, the variation of that option where the Commons would retain a continued presence in the Palace and the Lords would decant, and the newer and slightly less mature option that has become known as “enhanced maintenance and improvement” or EMI, where the project would be phased over a longer period. But let us be brutally honest: all three options will take many years. None of them is quick. I suspect that none of us in this Room is likely, even on the shortest decant process, to come back into this building in our time.
Historically, there has been a bit of a tendency for people to support one or other option, in effect to prejudge the outcome before the output from all the work carried out by the experts over the last few years has been presented. I have argued before that the debate had become rather Brexity, with decanters in one camp and non-decanters in another, so I urge noble Lords to be open-minded. We have not yet seen the findings of all the work that has been carried out, including the expected timeframes, costs, impact of safety and security or levels of disruption.
What is important is that we make the right decision—the one that will stick. The decision should be taken only once we have seen those findings and plans. Anything else would be based not on evidence but on just our own gut feel. The other criticism of politicians, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, is that we are all slightly guilty of becoming armchair experts on things. We need to trust the experts who have been working so hard in recent years, so I hope noble Lords will be open-minded and park any judgment until they have seen the evidence and what is actually proposed.
I also want to comment briefly on the third option, the so-called, and perhaps badly named, “enhanced maintenance and improvement” option. It is sometimes described by some Members—I think we have heard it already today—as kicking the can down the road or the “do nothing” option. Someone suggested to me a few days ago that it just means muddling along as we have been to date. I hope I can assure noble Lords that that really is not the case. All three options are being scoped as far as possible to achieve the same levels of outcome as far as safety, accessibility and so on are concerned.
On accessibility, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, that the accessibility and inclusion aspects of this are absolutely front and centre of the appraisal process that we are going through for all three. The difference between them is only how the work would be carried out and over what timeframe.
Noble Lords may remember that we were told in the past that because the building’s services are a single set of services, serving the whole building, it would be possible to do this work only in a single stage and therefore the “full decant” option was the only realistic way forward. But following the work that has been done, it is clear that that is not necessarily the case. There appear to be ways of breaking this up and phasing the work over a longer period, which would potentially reduce the requirement for expensive and disruptive decants.
That is not to prejudge the outcome. I have no idea at this stage which will be the better option: “full decant” may well be the right way to go, or it may not. I want to reassure noble Lords that all three options will be appraised fully and that all three aim to attain the same level of outcome. All will be appraised against the same criteria, which include, among other things, fire protection, health and safety and security, accessibility and inclusion, as I have just mentioned, business continuity and disruption during the process, value for money—very important—timescale, the impact on the heritage of the building and the environmental and social value elements.
We are at a critical point. We must make a decision this year. We must make the right decision that will stick and will save this iconic building for the future. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, just mentioned, noble Lords will have received an email recently from the chair of the programme board, Judith Cummins, and from me, encouraging them to engage with the process during this critical next few months. I want to use this opportunity to encourage noble Lords who have not yet done so to take up the opportunity for the tours and the one-to-one sessions with the R&R team. Most importantly, I again urge noble Lords not to prejudge the outcome before the evidence has been provided, to be open-minded and to have trust in the experts who are doing the work. That should make it more likely that we make the right decision for the building and for Parliament.
When I chaired the former Information Committee 10 years ago, I visited the archives in the Victoria Tower. I could not believe that we were storing our national assets in such an inappropriate building. This has been going on for so much longer than the 10 years that was referred to. Last year, I fell in the Committee Corridor on the first floor because there was a hole under the carpet. It turned out that the metal covers for computer wiring had worked loose and had moved, and repairs had to be done all along that corridor. Members will have noticed the different strips of carpet that have appeared there. Although I went down like a sack of potatoes, fortunately I am well padded and suffered no harm, except perhaps for a dent in the dignity area. However, what might have happened if someone with a stick was walking along, or someone suffering from osteoporosis? It could have been a life-changing experience.
I believe that when work starts on the basement area, it will be a horror story—I fully expect to find Peter Cushing and Vincent Price down there. Bear in mind that the “pipes and wires” referred to on page 24 of the report stretch from Westminster Bridge to Victoria Gardens and will be a continuous process. That is where I find it difficult to find a patchwork approach, or option three, but I am still striving to keep an open mind.
Fifteen years ago, I prepared a report for the then Government on fatalities in the construction industry. Noble Lords might ask what on earth is the relevance of that here. I spent a lot of time on building sites and refurbishment areas, and refurbishment is the area where most accidents take place. It does not take a lot of intelligence to know that you do not leave the family in the house when you are fixing the foundations. Health and safety and access, as has already been said, are vitally important issues, and that includes the workers on site both now and in the future. I believe that it is unfair on our maintenance staff that we expect them to make do and mend in increasingly challenging conditions, and construction workers should be enabled to get on with their job in a controlled environment, not with hundreds of busy people milling around.
My final point is on a more domestic issue, perhaps a sensitive one. It is vitally important and harder to describe. It is the relationship between us as politicians and the administration. As the building throws up more and more problems, the administration does its best to keep the show on the road, and Members, and possibly the leadership, become more and more stressed, anxious and grumpy about the developments or the lack of developments. I believe that there are real dangers here with regard to the working relationship that we have and the understanding, not least because we have this not very well defined area of who is responsible for running what and where the power lies. No matter how much it is written down as joint responsibility, joint boards, joint programmes, this, that and the other, it is not the clearest possible management system that any chief executive officer would welcome if they were taking over an organisation. The longer we allow this to continue—someone actually mentioned 74 years to me as one of the possible options—the less effective we will be as an institution and the more difficult it will be to change the culture of our organisation.
It is important to realise that it will be difficult to distinguish this new expenditure on enhanced maintenance and improvement from the existing activity, and I am concerned about that. As we go forward, in future, will we really be able to keep these streams of activity, happening on the same site, clearly separated? I do not doubt that we have plans to do that, but it will be challenging, I suspect. We need to think about that very carefully and make sure that we do not find costs sliding from one category to another because it is managerially convenient at that moment in time. This is not something I am making up, by the way. There are current experiences where you can see that sort of thing happening. So, if we are going to go for this approach, we will need to go very strongly indeed in terms of financial control at a level that we do not always accomplish at the present time, frankly.
The reason we are considering EMI alongside the other options, which were there much earlier, is that a significant number of Members were not attracted to decanting. They made their views clearly known. Therefore, we found ourselves with Members who told us that they were prepared to accept inconvenience and delay as a price for staying in the Palace. But, having contracted to pay that price, will they continue to want to pay it once we get into the project? I am sorry but there is such a thing as renegotiation of a contract, and there are plenty of Members who are perfectly capable of renegotiating this one. I just remark to noble Lords that, if this approach were to be agreed, we may find that there is more negotiation and more change in the project.
Finally, there is a risk that this approach may be regarded as kicking the can down the road, as regards substantial expenditure at a time when the public finances are under extraordinary pressure. It is not just ordinary pressure right now; it is extraordinary pressure. Therefore, we must recognise that, although there may be no kicking the can down the road, the temptation when we actually come to vote may be quite strong. It is worth watching out for that.
My conclusion is that, if we select EMI, those initials may come to mean “enhanced money invested” instead of “enhanced maintenance and improvement”—that is quite possible. That is my little bit of poetry for today. We need to exercise vigilance if we go down this route. I am not saying that we cannot do it, but—I am repeating myself—it will require a quality of vigilance and control that we do not always exhibit. Therefore, we need to do better on that.
Turning to accessibility, I want to start with the bullet point on accessibility on page 13, which the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, referred to. It mentions
“an average enhancement from the current 12% step free access to circa 60% across the Palace and greater coverage in public areas”.
The improvements to the visitor routes are really helpful, because the public have found it very difficult. But I am concerned that only 60% step-free access—the detail of what that means is unspecified—will still mean that parts of the Palace will be no-go areas or that there will be equally bad alternative routes. I use these daily, as do my other colleagues in wheelchairs, and they are long, slow and sometimes reliant on other people’s intervention. For example, when I wish to go into one of the W committee rooms off Westminster Hall, I have to go to the stair lift and find a member of staff, who has to ring the member of staff with the key, who then has to come back, unlock the stair lift and turn it on for me. I have to repeat the same when the meeting I am attending has finished. On one occasion, it took half an hour to find someone, so effectively I missed the meeting. I know that in theory that should not happen, but it does.
The ministerial corridors immediately behind the Speaker’s end of the House of Commons are also inaccessible because the lift is behind a stone arch and you cannot get a wheelchair through it. If you go the long way around, because of the way the stairs work, you have to leave your wheelchair on a landing from the wheelchair-accessible lift and go upstairs, which is fine for those who can do it. I understand from the 60% figure that some of these things will not be dealt with, and that concerns me.
As I have already mentioned, we hope that the fully restored Palace will last 200 years, and it is absolutely vital that the vast majority of the Palace is accessible—fully accessible, including step-free. I have already mentioned the tourist route being more accessible, but why, oh why, are the two lifts by the Commons cafeteria linked when one of them is too small for wheelchairs? By the way, the same is true in Portcullis House: the only way to get to the lower ground if you are coming from the top floor is to get into the next lift, go down to the ground floor, get out and then call the lift to go to the lower ground floor. That sort of practicality is something that gets lost in mechanical design because it is convenient to have two lifts side by side that operate together. The problem is that, when I am going from Portcullis House back into this building to vote, I can miss the vote. So, I am really grateful that the House still allows me to vote remotely, because otherwise it would be hit and miss. I cannot use the escalator; I get completely stuck. I am making this point, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, would make similar, or perhaps different, points about wheelchair users. We cannot use the building as it stands now in the same way as everybody else, and most people are not aware of those issues, which is completely understandable.
Security now means that heavy doors are shut when tourists are going through. Normally, in any other building, you would hold them back with electric magnets, or you would have a pass reader and they would open automatically. I am told that that will not happen, partly for heritage reasons and partly for security reasons. Because of my condition, I cannot open the heavy doors. I have had to ask permission to have the doors just outside here from Peers’ Lobby into this corridor held open for 10 minutes after the House rises because otherwise I literally cannot get out without somebody opening those doors. I really hope that the committee will look at the disability issues in the day-to-day life of different people. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would have many points about how he and his guide dog have to navigate the building.
I move to committee rooms and the Chambers, including this Moses Room, in the future. This space and the space opposite are the only places that wheelchairs can fit in this Room. We cannot get into the back row, we cannot get down to the top end, so if we were Ministers or shadow Ministers, we could not participate, we cannot get out at the back and once we are in place, we block everybody because they cannot get past the wheelchairs. I know that work on the Moses Room is planned, and I am really grateful, but it is the mindset for the design of the future that I am most concerned about.
I am particularly concerned about the Lords Chamber. I thank the Lord Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and Black Rod for listening to my concerns and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I am really grateful; it was much appreciated. Politicians want to sit with their groups. Even Cross-Benchers would describe themselves as politicians, although they are not in a political party. It is good that, unlike the Commons, our House has what my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester describes as the “mobility Bench”—the nobility on the mobility Bench.
However, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said in the Chamber the other day that she found it very difficult sitting beside me when I was being a Front-Bencher because people immediately assumed that she was in the same party as me. The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, and I sit beside each other the whole time, and we quite often have to sit beside each other and argue completely different points. That changes the dynamic of how the politics work. It is not like the European Parliament or other modern ones where you may even be seated alphabetically. In our House, it really matters.
I was very disappointed that when the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I met the people to look at the plans no disabled politicians had been talked to before they were drawn up. In the plans that we saw, we could not get our wheelchairs around the new committee rooms planned on the main committee room corridor. There is no facility for a Minister or shadow Minister from the main opposition party to speak at the Dispatch Box because you cannot get a wheelchair in there. There will be some tip-up seats, which is good, but that will still mean that some people who are not in the main parties will not be able to sit with their colleagues. I do not believe that this matter is yet being addressed.
As the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, said, we are now reaching the key decision-making point. Nearly 200 years ago, Peers and MPs would have been carried upstairs, in or out of their bath chairs, to get into the Chamber. Today, many disabled Peers and staff still find the Palace seriously problematic to navigate and participate in, including not being able to fulfil their roles politically. To put it at its simplest, do we really want a disabled parliamentarian in 150 years’ time to face not being able to speak from the Dispatch Box? I hope these issues can be readdressed.