UK Undersea Infrastructure: Hostile Activity

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend will understand that, coming from Scotland where ferries have become a very sensitive issue, I would applaud any approach which produced vessels where and when they were needed. My noble friend makes an important point. The commissioning and buying of this vessel—as I say, it is being refurbished in readiness for operational activity—is an important experience for the MoD. There are lessons we can learn. There may be merit, as my noble friend rightly says, in not looking so closely at the exquisite ultimate product but looking to what we need now and taking steps to get it.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, a couple of years ago the Government witnessed the cutting of a power cable to the Isles of Scilly, putting the mains off for about three months. I asked the Minister at the time whether they were going to claim compensation. They said, “No, it’s a private sector company so it can do what it likes”. I hope that things have changed.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

That area of responsibility, the noble Lord will understand, is slightly outwith my ministerial bailiwick, but I am sure his remarks have been heard by the appropriate department.

Defence: Type 45 Destroyers

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As the noble Viscount will be aware from the refreshed national shipbuilding strategy, which is one of the most exciting developments we have seen for shipbuilding in the UK, there is a desire to nourish, nurture, sustain and fortify our indigenous shipbuilding industry. We are very anxious to do that, but we have never closed our minds to procuring elsewhere if that is what is required in the best interests of the country. At the end of the day, the shipbuilding strategy covers commercial activity, not just MoD activity.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that the work being done on the destroyers will make them more resilient. That is really good, but a few months ago none of them was operational, as other noble Lords have said. We have now got one of our two aircraft carriers with a bent prop somewhere in Rosyth. Have we got anything that works first time these days?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Lord is being slightly mischievous and, as he is well aware, yes, we have a lot of ships that work extremely well. They have been much in evidence, not least when they were supporting the carrier strike group and were part of that global support activity. They have also been active in various arenas, as the noble Lord is well aware. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord West, I cannot comment in detail on operational activity, but we are satisfied that our operational requirements are being met.

Ukraine Update

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness gave a wonderful summary of where the Government have got to. I want to look at the grain export issue. I congratulate the Government on what they are doing in helping to open up the Black Sea. The noble Baroness will know that I have been involved in an international task force to improve the volume of grain exported by rail, but the Black Sea is the answer.

I met some friends from Romania in the summer. They said that so many mines were being washed up in the Black Sea, at Constanţa and the coast nearby—Russian ones that have lost their tether—that people are forbidden to go into the sea. Are the Government or their allies doing anything to minesweep a channel? We do not want any of these ships—and the more there are the better—to hit mines and be damaged.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

That is a very important question. As the noble Lord will be aware, we do not have Royal Navy deployment in the Black Sea, but I understand that we have been amenable to providing training on countermine measures and have offered support to Turkey if Turkey would find that helpful. As the noble Lord will be aware, Turkey has deployed the Montreux convention and therefore there is very restricted activity. However, I reassure the noble Lord that if help is required by Turkey and advice and help are sought from the UK, we will look at that very sympathetically.

Ukraine

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As I said earlier, the UK is looking at a package of broad and high-impact sanctions to raise the cost of any further aggressive actions by President Putin. I cannot comment on the detail of what these proposals are, but we are ready to act—and, as my right honourable friend in the other place indicated yesterday, we are not alone. A range of sanctions is available that are going to be enacted if there is any deterioration in the situation.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

There are terrible things going on in Belarus, between Belarus and Poland. I have some friends in the Baltic states who are reporting similar troop build-ups along the frontiers with Russia there. I suspect similar things are happening towards the south, east of the Black Sea. Are the Government aware of Mr Putin’s attempts, shall we say, to recreate the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and what are we doing about it? Are we just going to wait till it gets worse?

Ajax Noise and Vibration Review

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, listening to the questions and the Minister’s answers persuades me that this is a complete disaster, as we have debated in your Lordships’ House quite a few times now, and it does not seem to be getting any better. I am glad that some further work has been done; we have now spent billions on this, apparently.

I wonder how it is possible that the Army top brass has allowed the situation to get this far without coming along and explaining why it has got so expensive and why it does not work properly. In the previous debate, in addition to the effect on the soldiers inside the tank, there was the question of whether the thing can go backwards up a step or something, and I think I made a comment that the British Army probably does not think we ever retreat so it does not matter—I hope it has some better reasons than that for saying what it has. Nor can it fire on the move or do its designed speed. If any private company were ordering something at a hundredth of the cost of this thing and made these kinds of mistakes, they would have been sacked.

This has also been debated before in your Lordships’ House, but Ajax came out very badly in the Infrastructure and Projects Authority annual report. I remember asking at the time: do Ministers ever read that report, and do they take action? It is clear that in this case they have not, otherwise they would have done something by now to get the answers. I appreciate that the report is a step in that direction, but they need to take stronger action to control the costs.

My last question is: why do we need this at all? Is it really part of the Army’s necessary equipment? Do we need to spend all this money on tanks? I do not know where we deploy them apart from Salisbury Plain. Is it not time that someone took a step back and said, “Do we, as a medium-sized power in the world, need tanks that can’t go backwards and cause injury to the people inside them?” We do not seem to be questioning it.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I will respond to the noble Lord’s questions in reverse order. Yes, Ajax is an important capability for the future British Army. It will provide a mobile, resilient and crewed ISTAR capability that is optimised for “find, understand and exploit” effects. It will offer the newest and most technologically advanced capabilities, equipped with a best-in-class sensor suite and other cutting-edge technological aids. It is a very important piece of equipment and I think that is universally acknowledged.

The contract for this is a firm-price contract. We know what the price is. It is now down to the company, in collaboration with the MoD, to resolve the issues that have been causing the noise and vibration.

The noble Lord raised the question of the IPA report. The IPA released its public data in July 2021, showing that the Ajax programme had moved from amber to red status back in April 2021. The then senior responsible owner asked the IPA to review the programme over concerns that it was not progressing as it should be. However, as the health and safety report indicates, that is just one element of a very confused system of accountability, communication, acknowledgement of warnings and reaction to warnings. The noble Lord is right to express concern about that, and I will not diminish the significance of his question. If you look at the recommendations of the health and safety report, there is a lot of comfort to be derived from it, not only in relation to the Ajax programme but the relevance of some of these recommendations to the wider procurement programme. The noble Lord is correct that there are still questions to be answered. That will fall within the jurisdiction of the forthcoming follow-on review.

Army Restructuring: Future Soldier

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend covered a lot of ground there. Let me see if I can deal with some of the points. He mentioned the possibility of too many chiefs, but I would make two observations. First, as was indicated in the Statement, at Army headquarters, there will be a 40% drop in the number of regular Army personnel, so that is one way of reassuring the Chamber that we are alert to the need to simplify the structures. The other thing implicit in the new structures is that we are providing opportunities for people to join and see career progress. If we have chiefs, we want them to be the right people —in my case, I want them to be women as well as men. If we can broaden the base, which is what this is all about, and provide more channels for activity and for operational work, we will get more people into these units, and they will see a fulfilling career ahead of them.

My noble friend was a little pessimistic about whether we are biting off more than we can chew. I would say no, we are not. The Army will continue to be a fighting entity and to have a warfighting division at its heart. The future structure will comprise two deployable manoeuvre divisions—the 1st and 3rd (UK) Divisions—and one information, manoeuvre and unconventional warfare division, which is the 6th (UK) Division. Thought has been given to what we are trying to do and how we do it.

On the Challenger tank, I am afraid my mechanical engineering knowledge is way short of what is necessary to reply to my noble friend. I will offer to write to him, which I hope is acceptable to him. His final question was on the important matter of the welfare of our Armed Forces. Indeed, I have a sense of déjà vu here, because we talked about this at length in our debates on the Armed Forces Bill. At the heart of what the Government and the MoD do with our Armed Forces is their welfare and well-being. Very important developments have been made in that field. I would hope that my noble friend’s prognosis as to the future would not manifest greater instances of people suffering from post-operational trauma or from mental health issues. We want to ensure that our Armed Forces personnel operate in environments where, with the support and advice that they get, they are spared that. If there are people who are unfortunately affected by such health conditions, we absolutely will make sure that we are in there supporting them, whether directly within their Armed Force environment or through many of the other support agencies available in conjunction with the MoD and the NHS.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, there are many things in the Minister’s Statement that I welcome, and a more high-tech, more professional military with the most modern equipment is something that I think we all welcome. What worries me is that the Statement mentioned the word “global” four times. Do we really think we are a global power any more? We have one aircraft carrier, I think, which is fiddling around in the China Sea; maybe it has some Ajax tanks on trial there, but do we think we are going to invade China with it? We are getting to be a bit naive on this. Surely the time has come to get rid of some of this gear and concentrate on the humanitarian elements that the Army does and has done so very well, and to cut out some of these vanity projects that, to me, are just a massive waste of money.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I can see that the noble Lord is not filled with festive enthusiasm for the Statement. I disagree with his assessment; I think that being a global power is not about chest-beating or trying to talk big and look big. Being a global power is about trying to make sure that, where you can work with allies and partners who share the same values, then, together on a global basis, you can influence agendas and bring support to where it may be required.

The noble Lord said that he thought we had one aircraft carrier. I am pleased to inform him that we in fact have two. I am also pleased to inform him that Carrier Strike Group 21, which has been operating over the last few months, most recently in south-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific, has proved an amazingly effective convening power. I can tell the noble Lord at first hand that the interest of other powers in what we have been doing has been extraordinary. They want to understand what we are doing, they want to visit and be on the carrier, and they want to be part of that activity. It is not about going around the world threatening people; it is simply making sure that we are a global presence, that we have a convening power and that we can reassure our friends and allies in different parts of the world that we are in the business of wanting to stand with them, shoulder to shoulder, and to support them if they feel in any way intimidated, never mind threatened. That is what we try to do.

The noble Lord suggested that there is a binary choice between having an effective defence capability—which of course is what the Government want and, I would argue, is very much what we do have—and dealing with humanitarian challenges. It is not a binary choice; the obligation of a responsible state is to deal with both. It is in fact our naval and military capabilities that enable us to respond to humanitarian situations. He makes an important point, but I do not think that it is a question of one or the other—you try to address both.

I certainly disagree with his somewhat depressed assessment of where we are. What we are doing with our defence capability in the United Kingdom is positive, strong, necessary, effective and, let me tell him, much admired, not least in NATO. He has a vision of what is meant by the phrase “global power”, but it is not about some Victorian caricature of people strutting around looking self-important; it is being at the cutting-edge of the real-life, 21st-century global existence and trying to be a presence for good within that.

Royal Yacht

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con) [V]]

As I indicated, the MoD is one government department but we operate in conjunction with others. We consider it our duty to support these other government departments in their respective obligations and missions. As I also indicated earlier, the MoD spend on shipbuilding will double to over £1.7 billion a year over the life of this Parliament, while the national flagship is less than 0.1% of that defence budget over the next four years.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I would like to explore why the MoD is the right department to take forward this vanity project. When we debated its record on procurement a couple of weeks ago, we heard that the 400 tanks it had ordered cannot reverse, cannot go forward very fast and cannot fire on the move. The staff inside also had to be changed every hour and a half because it was too noisy. Why is the MoD the right department to procure this, rather than the business department?

[Baroness Goldie (Con) [V]]

As I indicated on a previous question, the Defence Secretary is the Government’s shipbuilding tsar and the MoD’s role as the lead department for this project reflects our knowledge and experience in shipbuilding and procurement. That has been a very active part of our defence engagement and continues to be so, with a really proud and substantial shipbuilding programme in process.

Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 22nd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to take part in this debate—I have an amendment a little later—but it seems to me that we are touching on an extremely important subject. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for tabling these amendments. Following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has just said, we need to make some practical suggestions. I entirely agree with him when he says we must have exhibitions in Westminster Hall—of course we must; people must know what we are doing—but we need to take them out to the country. I would like to see an exhibition on our restoration and renewal programme in every town and city hall in the country. It is not impossible—indeed, it would be very easy to do it—and modern technology makes it easy to simulate, project, let people have virtual reality shows and all the rest of it. We ought to go to every town and city in the country, so that whether it is Lincoln, where I live, or Wolverhampton, the city next to the constituency I represented for 40 years, people should be able to go and see.

There should be a follow-up, of course, and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is right that we should get as many schoolchildren as possible, because it should be part of the citizenship education of every child in this country to come to Parliament. Citizenship is a Cinderella subject; it is badly neglected in many schools. They pay lip service to it, but do not engage in the way they should.

I go further, because I believe we should also endeavour to ensure that people in every university in the country know what we are doing. After all, it is from the universities of this country that most elected parliamentarians —and, indeed, most appointed parliamentarians—in the future will come. If we are to engage in a proper way, we need to do it systematically, practically and with concrete suggestions such as those I am putting forward. Whether it is part of the renewal body’s remit to draw up that programme or whether it wishes to set up some committee of both Houses to discuss the practicalities, that detail is a little further down the line, but that it should be done is very important. Indeed, it must be done.

We are embarking on an enormously expensive exercise. I believe it is totally justified. Democracy is beyond price, and this is the greatest secular building in our country, but it belongs to everyone. This is the people’s Palace—the people’s Parliament. They should know what is being done, why and how. After all, at the end of the day they are paying for it. I would like to see a practical programme drawn up, and nobody would be better able to direct and help in that than the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. If he wanted to get a few like-minded souls around him, I for one would very happily be involved.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I will just correct the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, because he said this place belongs to everyone. With respect, it does not. We were talking about having a coffee bar in the Royal Gallery—which is a wonderful idea—but a few years ago I asked if I could have a concert there in aid of a charity. I asked Black Rod—not the present Black Rod, of course—who was in charge of the room. He said, “No, you can’t”. I asked, “Why?”. He said, “It belongs to Her Majesty and she won’t allow it”. I asked, “Who advises Her Majesty?”. He said, “I do, and I shall advise her not to”. I asked, “Why is that?”. He said, “It’ll wear the floor out”. It was one of the stupidest reasons. In planning, building regulations and everything else, this is technically a royal Palace. We have to sort all these things out before we end up finding we cannot do something because of some idea that has been around here ever since the place was built.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

I am a bit confused because the Minister said that accepting my noble friend’s amendment would divert the sponsor body’s activity from the main activity, which is to build a new Palace, but he also said that it is doing it anyway. If it is doing it anyway, the amendment is surely all right.

[Earl Howe]

The point I was seeking to make is that if you set out in the Bill something that looks quite distinct and separate from the main task that the sponsor body has before it, you risk distracting it. What we are saying to the sponsor body is, “Yes, public engagement is vital, you are already doing it, so you should do it in the best way you can because you know best how to deliver R&R”. That is the position I come from. Therefore, there is no need to change the wording of the Bill. We should not be frightened of leaving the Bill as it is because we know that the sponsor body has its heart in the right place in a way that reflects exactly what noble Lords have been talking about this evening.

The restoration and renewal of the Palace should increase the number of visitors and see that visitors have an even better experience. I absolutely agree that R&R also provides the opportunity to re-engage the public in how democracy functions in the UK. The programme will develop better educational facilities, and it has been suggested that the additional chamber in Richmond House can be used to engage schoolchildren in our democratic process. That would be added value from the R&R process.

I just want to say something about building in a statutory duty to consult. I have talked about the need to avoid being over-prescriptive but, over and above that, the Government are concerned that placing a statutory duty on the sponsor body to consult the public, as prescribed in the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Bethell, is a particularly onerous requirement. Public engagement, as I have said, is essential for the works to succeed, but a duty to consult, I would strongly argue, would divert resource and time from the essential job at hand, which is to formulate proposals on the design, cost and timing of the works for parliamentary approval.

Let me turn briefly to Amendment 6, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, requiring the sponsor body to have regard to non-cashable benefits when assessing whether the programme delivers value for money. Clause 2(4) (b) to (h) contains a wide range of non-monetary benefits to which the sponsor body must have regard. They include safety and security, the environment, accessibility, educational facilities and the spread of opportunities to secure economic or other benefits across the UK. These benefits, which are, of course, important, have got to be balanced against the need to ensure that the works represent good value for money, as required under Clause 2(4)(a).

Value for money is core to the programme, and we consider that that has to remain explicit in the Bill. If we go on adding other non-monetary matters to Clause 2(4)(a), we run the distinct risk of watering down the explicit imperative of achieving value for money for the works, which is something that the Bill as drafted ensures the sponsor body must have regard to. Therefore, I think that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would be detrimental to the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Byford]

My Lords, I want to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, because I have added my name to his second amendment. In the Joint Committee, we had long discussions about the whole question of access, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has said, about access within the building once one gets in. I want to support the noble Lord in his desire to get something written on to the Bill with regard to disability. We had long discussions in Committee about this. It is a matter not just of people getting into this building but, once they are in the building, of how they get around it. The figure quoted in one of the briefings we had is that currently only about 12% of this building is accessible to people with a disability. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has indicated, there will be rooms in this building that will not be accessible after renewal and I am sure that is probably right. I think it falls on the sponsor body itself to decide what is an acceptable percentage: if it is 12% now, are we talking about 25% or 30% eventually?

The other thing that we had a long conversation about was how people come into the building in the first place. The Cromwell Green entrance is totally inadequate for our needs now. It sometimes takes people an hour to get in, and if it is raining it is pretty miserable. Access to the building needs to be looked at as well.

I will not pre-empt the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, but it is not just those with physical disabilities who have difficulty accessing the building—those in wheelchairs or like the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, have difficulty in getting around. There are also people with hearing disabilities, but I will leave that issue to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell.

There are many ways in which this building could be made much more friendly and supportive of people so that we could use everyone’s skills that otherwise would not be included. I am very happy to have put my name to this amendment. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be more supportive of this one than of some of the others. When I broke my ankle last year, as I reflected at Second Reading, that made me realise the true difficulty of getting around this building; I think there are something like 90 different stairs, and many of the lifts are not accessible. If I can go further, some of the ladies’ and gentlemen’s facilities are totally inadequate for those with disabilities. This is an opportunity to put those basic needs right.

My questions for the shadow sponsor body are: where are your priorities going to come in this? In view of where you are going, what way can you see of achieving that while recognising that some of the building will not, I suspect, be suitable for getting the sort of access that most of us would like to see? I am hoping that my noble friend will be more encouraging later. I am very pleased to support these amendments.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I spoke about some of these issues in response to an earlier amendment. All I will say is that the amendment asks for a report for the building to be fully accessible, which I support, but to achieve that and the things that my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, have mentioned—including lifts, toilets and other areas that are currently inaccessible—will involve some massive works in this building and they will be very expensive. They will also reduce the amount of space available for other things, but I am sure that they have to happen.

My Amendment 17A proposes that the same criteria that my noble friend has put in Amendment 17 in respect of this building when we come back are also applied to the temporary accommodation that we might have in the QEII or wherever.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, to some extent my contribution has been prefigured, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for that. I strongly support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has said. I particularly want to pick out his phrase about making this an exemplar project.

In the many discussions that I have had over the years about making this place accessible to people with physical deficiencies, if you want to put it that way, or disabilities—I speak as someone who is not profoundly deaf but is quite deaf and certainly needs his hearing aids—all too often the attitude and the response have been grudging, a sort of reluctant admission that under the Disability Discrimination Act they have a duty to do it, but it is certainly not one undertaken with great joy.

I would have thought that this building—as we are a national Parliament and representatives of a democracy that in other aspects is trying to promote civilised values around the world, and here I am thinking of the work of our international development department, our Foreign Office, God bless them, and others, where we are constantly saying that we set an example—should surely set an example when it comes to access for those of limited mobility or with some other disability.

I want to put a word in for my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Thomas of Winchester, who, as noble Lords will know, make their way around this building in electric wheelchairs. This brings into focus the fact that our different priorities are in conflict. A whole lot of additional fire doors have been put in, which make it virtually impossible for those two noble Members to proceed around the building other than with an assistant to open and close the doors. Various arrangements have been put in place for the doors to be left open during sitting hours and so on, but for all sorts of reasons—some might say bureaucratic reasons—those commitments do not always work.

Each of my noble friends has personal stories about the problems they have had of being trapped behind those doors waiting for somebody to come and open them. There are challenges, but there are solutions. One can imagine that in 10 or 15 years’ time, it will be entirely feasible for every door and every electric wheelchair in this building to be fitted with a transponder, and for the doors to open when a wheelchair approaches. However, the idea of anybody thinking of or implementing that seems a very long way away.

As for deafness, I am inclined to say: do not get me started. Can we at least make sure that the new provision complies with existing law? This building does not comply with existing law and although people have wriggled and squiggled when they have talked to me about how they believe they have put in place various so-called first aid measures to make it okay, it all comes down to the person with the disability fitting into a system which, frankly, does not work or deliver. We certainly need to make sure we have standards that comply with existing legislation.

We need to consider what standards we as a legislature will impose upon employers and other public buildings when we get to 2035. Will our standards for them have risen? If so, can we make sure that we design our standards to do that as well? In fact, I would go further than that and say we ought to set outstanding standards and aim to be best in class for a public building in the United Kingdom—and why not best in class throughout the world? We need to see what that would mean and how we would make it work, rather than reluctantly dragging this along behind us and seeing what we can get away with.

This debate fits somewhere in between the debate we have already had on public engagement and the one we are going to have on future-proofing. I will just make the point that if you exclude or do not engage with people with disabilities, you are not doing the job that we set out to achieve in the first set of debates. I will not use all my ammunition on future-proofing at this point, but when we get to those amendments, it is worth remembering that not just the standards but the expectations of people in 20 years’ time will not be lower than they are now. If we are not achieving current standards now, simply doing things the same way in the revised, upgraded building will not do it.

I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said. He has much more experience than I do of both being a guerrilla and sitting at the big desk taking the decisions. In so far as I can give him any support from either of those dimensions, I shall certainly do so.

--- Later in debate ---

My hope is that if the sponsor body has a responsibility or duty to report on any delays and why they are taking place, it will help to focus minds and do some good. It will be able to show that this project has the priorities and makes the progress that I think we wish to see. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I fully support the amendment, although I would go one step further. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has rightly identified the planning problems that could occur with Richmond House. I suspect that there will be equal problems with the design of the temporary Chamber for our friends down the other end—the colour of the carpet, the comfort of the Benches and so on. However, the same problems will occur when we start thinking about what this place will look like when we come back. We have been speaking about it all evening but I am referring to the kind of facilities that we want, how much it will cost and what changes there will be. No doubt that will cause delays as well, if only because the Treasury will say that the costs are too high or something like that.

I agree with the noble and learned Lord’s amendment. There should be very regular reports—maybe every six months—on the timescale of the decant and, subsequently, on the refurbishment of this place. But, if he considers bringing it back on Report, he should add something about cost. We are not very good at maintaining costs for things; he knows my views on Crossrail and HS2. Whoever is to blame, we are very good at hiding the real costs or results of programmes for several years then suddenly shocking Parliament and the public. Crossrail was on time and on budget until this time last year; now it is several years late and we do not yet know what the budget is going to be as we have not been told. People must have known about these things, as relating to HS2, several years before the problem occurred.

I hope that we will not have the same problem here. We need to be honest and transparent and set an example with respect to the changes that we have made. I hope the Minister can give us some kind of commitment that such honesty and transparency, and regular updates, will be features of rebuilding this place. It will be very difficult; there will be many changes and probably cost-overruns, which is not surprising when you are working in a building like this, but let us at least know what is going on, in good time.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I will be brief: the situation is worse than that described by my noble friend Lord Berkeley, if I can deepen his gloom. With HS2 and Crossrail, with which I was deeply familiar, by the time we came to publishing legislation we knew what the project was going to be. The project was defined; indeed, at the second stage of the HS2 Bill, which had just been agreed by the House of Commons, we knew within a few metres what the line and specification of works would be and so on. We have a defined project—it has just proved much more expensive and problematic to deliver than was conceived. The problem we face with the parliamentary rebuilding work is that we are setting up the sponsor body before we have a defined project.

There is a very good reason for that: we are literally starting from scratch and trying to decide the best way forward, and this probably is the best way forward. I have views on whether we should consider other options —we will come to that in a while—but we are currently at such an early stage of the work that we do not have the faintest clue what the costs will be. We do not have a project description; all we have is a few back-of-the-envelope, broad objectives, a very old costing on the basis of them and a few timelines plucked out of a hat. We also have the potential for massive controversy, which we can already see, about the nature of the decant, where we will go, what we will come back to and so on.

What the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is proposing—that there should be best estimates for the timeline at the point at which the strategy is published—is perfectly sensible. There is also another reason why it should be done: it is my view that we are at such an early stage of planning, and the issues involved in the restoration and renewal of the Houses of Parliament are so great—because of the wider context referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, of big questions about the future of our parliamentary democracy—that I do not believe it is sensible to be closing down significant options at this stage; we are at such a preliminary stage in devising what the project will be. I am sorry to keep making this point but, since we will be returning to it in September, I am very anxious to keep it open: we should include the question of where the decant should be—there is very good reason to propose that it should not be somewhere immediately adjacent to the Houses of Parliament but could be in another part of the United Kingdom—and where the ultimate Parliament will be.

I agree with what the noble and learned Lord said. On the basis of my knowledge of big infrastructure projects and the stage we are at currently, it is very plausible that there could be three or four years’ delay before the decant starts. If the decant does not start until 2028, we will not move back here until between 2038 and 2040. To put some context on this, phase 2 of HS2 is currently scheduled to open in 2032. So, relatively speaking, it is going to take much longer to complete the restoration and renewal of Parliament than to build a 330-mile high-speed line, which is the biggest single infrastructure project in the world outside the Republic of China. Keeping a few options open at this stage is sensible in terms of planning. We should take advantage of the situation at the moment to think a bit more broadly about where we intend our parliamentary democracy to go over the 100 to 150 years ahead, and in doing so demonstrate the same vision that our Victorian forebears showed when they designed these Houses of Parliament to be the centre of an imperial legislature in the 1840s.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

In many ways, it is actually much easier to do it if you are building on a greenfield site next to a major transport interchange such as Birmingham International, where the National Exhibition Centre is. That would be much simpler than the hugely complex, difficult and historic estate here. I wrestled with exactly the same argument on the question of whether we should upgrade a 200-year-old railway line to provide additional rail capacity between our major cities or build a completely new line. Often, building completely new is a good thing.

This is a debate that will run for the next few years, and we have done a good job of planting the idea. I strongly encourage my friends and colleagues who are mayors of the major cities and city regions in the Midlands and the north to advance this idea further. I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, but I suspect that he has not heard the last of this, by any means. Whatever decision is taken in this Bill, we will return to this, because it is a fundamental issue about the governance of the United Kingdom, alongside what will be a £5 billion, £10 billion or £15 billion investment—who knows what the final figure will be?—in the future of Parliament. I do not think that we will be able to keep these big strategic issues off the agenda.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on this amendment because it has started a debate which I have supported for a long time. Maybe she should have gone one step further. We are talking about a report on the temporary relocation of Parliament outside London, but if you are going to build a new temporary Parliament, be it in Richmond House or outside London, there is a cost attached, and I suspect that the cost would be not very different either way. The work in Richmond House will not be prefab but extremely glossy, expensive and difficult, as it so often is with building in a capital city. And we can forget for the moment what will be done in the QEII—although I suspect it will be lovely. There is actually an argument for building something somewhere outside London, as my noble friend Lord Adonis said, and staying there.

This place has to be refurbished because, as many noble Lords have said, it is in a bad state, but it could be used for educational purposes and conferences. That is what they do in Hungary: they built a parliament in Budapest—almost mirrored on this place—and the architect got a second prize for doing it. Hungary now has a parliament with a single chamber and the other half, which I have been to, is used as a conference and education centre. It is a lovely building and it works really well. If we really wanted to maintain a link with this place, we could still use it for the State Opening of Parliament and then go and do our work somewhere else. There are a lot of options.

Offshore Patrol Vessels

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the Defence Secretary published a Written Ministerial Statement on 19 July, as the noble Lord will be aware. It set out the headline conclusions of the modernising defence programme. I know that noble Lords were slightly disappointed with that Statement. We had hoped that it would be informative and reassuring—we had certainly intended it to be so. It confirmed the direction of travel; it described the work done to date; it set out some headline conclusions. Strictly speaking, the matter of the offshore patrol vessels is not part of that but, as I have explained, it is important to prepare now for the contingencies that may ensue from Brexit.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, how many of these ships will protect our fishing fleet after Brexit at any one time? After all, we are taking back all these waters and presumably clawing back the allocation of catches from the Spanish and everybody else.

[Earl Howe]

As we speak, the Marine Management Organisation within Defra is making a full assessment of the scale and volume of both sea-based and non-seaboard patrol and surveillance capability required after we leave the EU. This is the key point for us to focus on. The Ministry of Defence and other agencies are tracking this work, but it is important to remember that fisheries protection is multilayered. It is not just the Royal Navy that enforces protection. The Marine Management Organisation relies on a lot of other systems to do that very thing.

A159 Wildcat Helicopter

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

Naturally, that is being looked at in the context of the Government’s wider industrial strategy, but the 10-year industrial strategic partnership arrangement we have with Leonardo will act as a driver and influence to ensure that that company focuses on using the skills and expertise available in this country over the medium to long term.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, when the Government published a statement last week saying that the new aircraft carrier to be launched this year would dramatically increase Britain’s firepower in the defence of the world, did they understand whether there would be any planes to fly on this aircraft carrier, or are they relying on helicopters, machine guns or whatever?

[Earl Howe]

We have already taken delivery of seven F35E aircraft for the “Queen Elizabeth” aircraft carrier. There are more to come. Indeed, we accelerated the procurement programme when we announced the results of the SDSR in 2015. The “Queen Elizabeth” aircraft carrier will be fully manned and fully equipped when she is ready to sail.