Restoration and Renewal Programme Board

Membership Motion

Moved by

That this House concurs with the Commons message of 8 February, and

(1) notes the report from the House of Commons Commission and the House of Lords Commission on the membership of the Restoration and Renewal Programme Board (HL Paper 138), published on 24 January;

(2) notes the names of the Members of the House of Commons appointed to the Board on 7 February;

(3) appoints Lord Collins of Highbury, Lord Morse, Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury, and the Clerk of the Parliaments, as members of the Restoration and Renewal Programme Board; and

(4) agrees with the Commons that Paul Duffree, Steve Hails and Sir Jonathan Stephens should be appointed as external members of the Board and that Nigel Evans MP should be Chair of the Board.

My Lords, this Motion invites the House to note the decision of the House of Commons to appoint members to the Restoration and Renewal Programme Board. The Motion further invites the House to appoint the proposed Lords Members, the external members of the programme board, and its chair. The parliamentary and external members proposed were agreed unanimously by the Restoration and Renewal Client Board, which comprises the House of Lords and House of Commons commissions. The membership proposed for the programme board is set out in the report to your Lordships, which the House is also invited to note. The appointment of the programme board delivers the final piece of the new governance structure for the restoration and renewal programme, as agreed by both Houses in July last year. I beg to move.

My Lords, I wonder whether I could just ask my noble friend a question. He very kindly answered a Written Question from me quite recently, which indicated that the cost spent on restoration and renewal in the last two years is over £200 million, and the cost in respect of this coming year is anticipated at a further £85 million. That is £300 million being spent largely on design and corporate costs and other matters. It does seem to be an excessive amount, so can he assure me that this new body will have the necessary expertise and resources to ensure that money is spent wisely and carefully?

My Lords, further to the matters raised by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I often get asked by people outside this House, “When did you agree to that?” It was agreed by the House of Lords and was passed, I am told—but I cannot remember it because we do it on the nod. We do too much on the nod in this House, and this is one example. Again and again we have been looking at this.

Going back over 10 years, we had the pre-feasibility study; we discussed it and set up a whole structure. That structure has been continuing and—as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said—we have spent hundreds of millions of pounds already, and nothing has happened. If we had agreed what some of us were suggesting—that we should build a new, purpose-built building away from here that would satisfy all our needs, have offices for every Member and for staff, have facilities for the disabled, who have great difficulty getting around this awful building, and provide proper services, that could have been built now, for a few hundred million pounds—well, a few billion. Then we could have sold off all the buildings around here—Portcullis House and all the others.

We could have moved out of this building, so that it could be restored slowly, securely and made into a good museum—a museum of democracy. Big Ben and the Elizabeth Tower would still be there. As was suggested at the time, we could recreate great events in history in the other Chamber and here. We could have used this whole building in another way. But we did not do that and we are now going into yet another phase which will cost more hundreds of millions of pounds. We are already going to spend £7 million just on the front door.

£9 million.

£9 million is it now? You see, it has gone up £2 million since yesterday. We have been putting up scaffolding all around the place, spending millions and millions of pounds, but this building will never be satisfactory. It will never be good for people to get around and do a proper job.

I mean no disrespect to those who have been suggested as members. They are excellent. They are all younger than me, particularly my noble friend Lord Collins. Of course, the Clerk of the Parliaments is the youngest of all; he is the baby of the lot. The other two are only in their 70s. Will they still be around when we even get to the next stage of this hilarious—no, not hilarious: awful—exercise that we are undergoing at the moment? At some point, is someone going to say that this is all going in the wrong direction and we should not be doing it? In the 21st century, a modern and dynamic country, as the United Kingdom purports to be, ought to have a modern, dynamic parliament building and make this into a museum, which it could be appropriately.

My Lords, I am not looking to join the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in his garden shed across the way, but there is a very real issue of accountability. We are already talking about millions and millions of pounds. Nobody is quite clear how this has happened. I am delighted that we have a new commission. Who is making the decisions and when will they be made accountable to Parliament for this huge spending of public money that a lot of us disagree with?

My Lords, I remember when we moved from the old governance system to the new one. Without any disrespect to the Members mentioned today, I am not at all confident that we have the expertise inside this House and in the Commons to do the job. An outside body should be doing it. This has been going on for 10 years. Only this morning, I was leaked on by water coming from yet another falling ceiling. It is a national disgrace that we have been talking about this for at least 10 years. We have no answers on when and if we are going to move out—and, if so, where. We do not know when the work will start and when it will be completed. We spend more time discussing governance than getting on with the job. I want to see it started.

My Lords, I too have no disrespect for the members who have been suggested. The composition of the programme board is common to noble Lords and external advisers. Can the Senior Deputy Speaker confirm that there is some oversight to ensure that the members appointed by the three bodies are gender-balanced? We have ended up in a situation where are spending significant public money and there are only three women—all appointed by the other place—on the programme board. In the run-up to International Women’s Day, we should be giving the best example to companies, charities and other bodies by having a gender balance on such an important body.

My Lords, first, I would like to be excused from any future museum of democracy. Secondly, I have a very simple question, as someone who served on the scrutiny committee for the now long-forgotten 2019 legislation: could the Senior Deputy Speaker give us an idea of the timeline for the first report back?

My Lords, we should remind ourselves that we had agreed a plan in both Houses. Mr Rees-Mogg had other ideas. If the bill is to be placed on anybody’s desk, it should be on Mr Rees-Mogg’s.

I strongly disagree with what my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said about museums and this building. To use the word rightly for once—it is misused almost every day—this is the iconic parliamentary building in the world. We have a duty to keep it as such, and to ensure that it is passed on to future generations as a living Parliament and that it is in good order. We need to resurrect the plan that was agreed and get on with it.

My Lords, before we go any further on this matter, we should look to what has been done so far. A number of people have raised the issue of the modernisation that has taken place already. Scaffolding has been around this building for three, four or five years. I do not know whether anyone knows about construction, but that needs to be paid for. As far as I can see, we have spent millions of pounds on scaffolding and achieved nothing.

My Lords, will the Senior Deputy Speaker take on board and perhaps review what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said about having completely outside advice on how we go forward?

My Lords, noble Lords’ interventions show how strongly we all feel about this matter and that we do need to make progress. Even the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, cares about the building, even if he wants a different story to it than many of us do. Personally, I believe we have a responsibility as this generation’s custodians to get on with the task.

One of the reasons why it is really important that we pass this Motion is to get the governance arrangements agreed. I do not think that we can go backwards: the decision of both Houses was that we needed to change the governance arrangements. That is where we need to be today.

I obviously entirely endorse the essential nature of scrutiny, of financial probity and of transparency. That is why it is really important that there are these layers of scrutiny. In the new arrangements, the client team will scrutinise and provide assurance of the delivery authority’s proposed annual estimate. The programme board will review and, if satisfied, recommend the estimate to the R&R client board, which reviews and, if satisfied, approves the estimate for submission to the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission. That commission must take advice from His Majesty’s Treasury.

In addition—and I think this is helpful to noble Lords on probity—I am delighted that one of the nominations from this House is the noble Lord, Lord Morse, a former Comptroller and Auditor-General of the National Audit Office. I think I can say that he is going to become vice-chair of the programme board, which is extremely helpful. I should also say that the delivery authority has its own accounting officer, internal audit function, and risk assurance and audit committee. This is subject to the external audit of the National Audit Office.

When asked about the supplementary estimates recently, His Majesty’s Treasury described them as “taut and realistic”. Those who are conversant with the Treasury will understand that well. I would be the first to say that it is absolutely essential to have the scrutiny not only of our own Finance Committee but of the two Houses’ audit committees into the activities of the in-house client team, which is the new joint department within their purview.

The noble Lord has heard the views expressed from around the House. I feel very privileged to come and work in this beautiful building every day and, like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I want to see it preserved for future generations, but we have to get a move on with this now. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, we need proper financial scrutiny and probity; we cannot spend hundreds of millions of pounds and not see anything happening. That is really important. I fully support the report and I wish the body well, but we have to get our act together and get a move on with this now.

I know the noble Lord does care desperately, but we have not heard one word this afternoon about the architectural and historical importance. Can the noble Lord make sure that this will be included?