Restoration and Renewal: Location of House of Lords Chamber

Private Notice Question

Asked by

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the location of the House of Lords Chamber during the restoration and renewal programme.

My Lords, restoration and renewal is a parliamentary programme and decisions on how to proceed are for Parliament. Both Houses are reviewing the programme’s shape and the commissions will jointly consider options and seek a revised mandate from both Houses. Further decisions, including on decant and location, would need to be considered by both Houses and debates are currently planned for before the Summer Recess. I repeat: the Government are clear that these decisions are a matter for Parliament.

I am most grateful to my noble friend, so can we take it that Mr Gove was off doing his own thing at the weekend when he wrote to the Speaker on Friday evening to indicate that the Queen Elizabeth II Centre would not be available for us? Would the Government be kind enough to ask him to put in the Library the analysis of how he thought this would enable Parliament to function, if one House was sent to Stoke or somewhere else? Will my noble friend indicate what consultation Mr Gove carried out before he made this statement and just remind the Secretary of State, as he did in his Answer, that the location of this House is a matter for this House and not for the Executive?

My Lords, I will not be tempted to follow speculation about what might have been the motives of a colleague in the Government in relation to a particular letter. The Secretary of State is always inventive, but I will repeat what I have said: that these are matters for Parliament.

My Lords, the simple fact is that the noble Lord answered a similar Question just over two years ago and that this is another recycled announcement from a Government who talked about this two-and-a-half years ago. For all the gimmicks, slogans and press releases, on every measure of levelling up we are going backwards. Instead of making such announcements, this Government should get on with helping families facing the worst cost of living crisis in a generation and use a windfall tax on energy grants to fund up to £600 of help for families. That is what this Government should be doing.

My Lords, the noble Lord is inventive in slipping the Labour windfall tax into a Question about the location of the House of Lords. For the avoidance of doubt, I do not favour that proposition. This is not an announcement; the position remains, as I have previously stated, that the decisions on how to proceed are a matter for Parliament.

My Lords, will the Minister take back to his friends in government that, if they are going to come out with rather bizarre statements like this with no notice or consultation, they should at least try to be a little more original? We have heard this all before. Dozens of us are waiting to give suggestions of our home cities, where it would be lovely to be. Might I make a recommendation for Norwich? Any city that boasts proudly that it used to have a pub for every day of the year would probably be a good environment for suggestions such as this.

My Lords, I am very fond of Norwich personally, but I would not encourage further speculation in this area. I will only say from my personal experience that I was in York last week on a ministerial visit and I did not look at any alternative site for your Lordships’ House.

My Lords, I declare the interest of having been brought up in Burnley. Would the noble Lord care to remind Mr Gove that we are one Parliament and not two, and therefore dividing the two Houses would be a very adverse and unconstitutional act? Therefore, if he wants Parliament to be in Burnley, it should be both Houses and not one.

My Lords, again, I am not going to speak for my right honourable friend, but the noble Lord makes a cogent point which would need to be considered by all of us within Parliament in respect of its future operation. Those of us who have had experience of a Parliament by Zoom know the importance of personal contact within and across the Houses to the good operation of government and Parliament.

My Lords, can the Minister reassure both this House and the public that a full cost-benefit analysis is being undertaken to ensure the good and proper use of public funds?

My Lords, as far as the R&R scheme is concerned, that is a matter for both Houses. As far as government property is concerned, obviously that is a matter for the Secretary of State. The right reverend Prelate makes a cogent point.

My Lords, my noble friend is playing an admirable straight bat, on which I congratulate him. But on whose authority did Mr Gove contact the Lord Speaker, the Speaker or anyone else? Was he speaking for the Government? If so, does he not realise that this is not a matter for the Government, as my noble friend has told us? Was this just another freelance exercise by an intellectual flibbertigibbet?

My Lords, I could not possibly comment on that. The Secretary of State obviously has a standing in DLUHC in the sense that the QEII Centre is an executive agency for which DLUHC is responsible. No doubt he was addressing the matter from that perspective.

My Lords, the Minister really does have to speak on behalf of the whole Government. It was a government letter so I do not think he can wriggle out of it like that. These are really important constitutional issues. The Queen opens Parliament, and she is not allowed into the Commons; she does it from here but with the Commoners present to hear her statement. I am quite sure those issues have to be high up in the Government’s mind as well as this House’s mind. We also need Ministers by us. I do not know whether they were all planning to stay in London so that they could not answer our questions. From their way of dealing with this, maybe that is exactly the plan.