Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Andrews

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

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, my Amendment 11 is grouped with the amendment just moved by my noble friend Lord Howe. Having had conversation with him, for which I am extremely grateful, I am perfectly content with the wording that he has referred to.

However, I want to draw to your Lordships’ attention —briefly but forcefully, I hope—one thing that worries me very much. While we sit here, one of the most historic parts of the Palace of Westminster is crumbling. If I asked one of your Lordships to go and get a handful of dust, you might think that I was referring to Evelyn Waugh and go to the Library, but you can get a handful of dust by going to the cloister.

Some of your Lordships may not be familiar with the cloisters, mainly because, until very recently, they were not very good offices for a number of Members of the other place. They are adjacent to the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. They were damaged by, but mainly escaped, the fire of 1834. They were damaged again in an air raid in 1940. Both those unfortunate incidents were followed by restorations—after the fire by that of Barry and after the air raid by that of Scott—and both those restorations were meticulous.

The cloisters date back to the reign of Henry VIII—1520 or thereabouts. They are among the finest cloisters in the country. If you go to them now and if you are proud of this great Palace, you will feel ashamed. I was there just 10 days ago and took a friend who was an architectural historian. I will be going again very shortly, taking the chairman of Historic England, because there is real concern. That is not only because the fabric is in such a parlous state and because this is one of the most historic parts of the Palace of Westminster but because there are no current plans to begin restoration. It is even suggested that nothing much can happen until after restoration and renewal is complete. That would be a total scandal. It would be a terrible neglect of one of the most historic parts of the fabric of the Palace of Westminster.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Howe for our conversation. I am grateful for the recognition signified by the amendment to the Bill that he has moved, but that is only the beginning and it is not enough. If we are to be serious about restoring and renewing this great Palace, that commitment has to extend to every part of it. I am glad to see the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, in her place, because she was an exemplary chairman of English Heritage before it was changed—where English Heritage looks after the properties and Historic England looks after the rest. She will know that what I am saying is right. It is tremendously important that the danger—I am not using the wrong word—facing the cloisters at the moment is dealt with as quickly as possible.

This ought to be one of the true jewels in the Palace. It is of enormous architectural and historic importance because, in the Oratory Chapel in January 1649, the death warrant of Charles I was signed: one of the most seminal moments in our history and in the evolution of our parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. We should be making more of it. It was an office for a few Members of Parliament; it is now disfigured and defaced by radiators, and the stone is crumbling. If we are going to mean what we say about restoration and renewal, we must restore this extremely important part of this great Palace of Westminster and, I suggest, make it available to members of the public to see it.

I use this as an example to underline the need for my noble friend’s amendment. It must become an integral part of the Bill, but that is just the beginning. I would like to hear from my noble friend, when he winds up this brief debate, that he will go and have a look himself and that he will do all he can. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, will also go and have a look, because we need to put it right. I do not have to beg to move, because I am merely tagged on to my noble friend’s amendment, but I draw it to noble Lords’ attention with sadness but determination. It is a determination that I hope noble Lords will share.

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. First, I thank the Government most warmly for the amendment they have brought forward. It is an exemplary amendment: it has none of the conditions attached that I thought might have been tempting. It is a simple, elegant and comprehensive statement of what it is we must take care of and it has the right balance of technical and emotive language. So I am very grateful and I can say that Historic England, with which I still have a continuing connection, is extremely pleased and grateful to the Government for this. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is absolutely right.

We heard a very powerful speech at Second Reading from the noble Earl, Lord Devon, which warned us, essentially, not to be completely obsessed by the simple presentation of a Victorian building. He was absolutely right, but very much of the medieval Palace—in fact most of it—has disappeared and the cloisters are the most significant part of the archaeology and architecture left, so we should have a special care for them. I am not entirely certain whether they are designated as being at risk. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is meeting the chair of Historic England, because we can get very good guidance as to what to do. In my experience, you can always do urgent conservation and repairs, so I see no reason why that should not happen before R&R starts properly, let alone before it finishes, because, frankly, there will be nothing left if it is the stone itself that is so fragile. I would be very interested to know what comes of that meeting, and so, I suspect, will many Members of the House: maybe we can follow that up informally, or maybe through the estates department of the House, to make sure that we know that action is being taken.

Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Andrews

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I associate myself entirely with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. We have been here before. We went through these issues many times last year, when a number of us spoke about constitutional issues. I want to concentrate my remarks there today. Before doing so, I add my welcome to my noble friend on the Front Bench. I am sure that she will have a distinguished career in your Lordships’ House. I was extremely sorry to miss her Second Reading speech but I was recovering from surgery, so I could not be present and take part as I would have otherwise sought to do.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, are members of a group that I have the privilege of chairing: the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber. I want to reflect on those words for a few moments. You can have a truly effective second Chamber in a Parliament, or indeed an effective first Chamber, only if you do not have an overbearing Executive. Everything that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, have said underlines the fact that we are in extremely dangerous territory.

Of course, as they have done, I entirely absolve my noble friend on the Front Bench. She has been given a poisoned chalice and she will handle it with dexterity and finesse, but whatever she does, she will not be able to remove the hemlock and replace it with quaffable wine because this really is a very dangerous Bill. The name of Henry VIII has already been quoted a number of times—and even Henry XVI, although I am not quite sure what he will be up to. But I prefer to call this Bill a carte blanche Bill because what we are being asked to do is to give the Executive a totally blank cheque. That is inimical to constitutional parliamentary democracy. There has been a great deal of talk recently, and there will be more next week, about the role of Parliament vis-à-vis the Executive. We have to have a proper balance, but we do not have a proper balance if we have an Executive invested with so much power that Parliament really counts for nothing.

Of course, I know why we are going to have to give this Bill a speedy passage, but I deeply regret it. It goes against the parliamentary grain as far as I am concerned. In the almost 49 years that I have been in one House or the other, I have seen what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, referred to as the steady accretion of power to the Executive branch. No lip service to the power of Parliament paid by the setting up of Back-Bench committees and all the rest of it has really disguised that. It is one of the reasons why colleagues in another place have recently been flexing their muscles in seeking to wrest back power from the Executive to Parliament. I will not pursue that argument now because, frankly, in a Committee stage it would be straying out of order. But what I will say to your Lordships is that if we give this Bill its passage, as I suppose we must, it is crucial that we redouble our resolve to ensure that this sort of thing happens less frequently in the future.

In a parliamentary democracy there has to be a true balance of power and a responsibility to scrutinise legislation, but how can you scrutinise legislation which is so open-ended that it gives unbridled power for years to come? The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, referred to that. I do not want to trespass on the private grief of friends opposite—and I do regard them as friends—but do I really want powers like these to be exercised by Mr McDonnell or Mr Corbyn? No, I do not, and I suspect that there are very few, if any, in your Lordships’ House who do.

I therefore put down a marker in total support of the eloquence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and say that when we have got over the next few traumatic weeks, if we get over them—I suppose we will—we must send an emphatic message to the Executive that this sort of sharp practice is something up with which we will not put.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I welcome the Minister. I will not add to her burdens by trying to find another metaphor for the difficult position she is in. We have had poisoned chalices and hand grenades, but I am sure she would be more than capable of dealing with all that. I am sure she will already have picked up some of the deep frustrations in the Committee about the position we find ourselves in—having to deal with legislation that is, frankly, rather surreal. We are trying to deal with the worst possible scenarios just in time, just in case we should need to be as draconian as necessary in the most extreme emergency situations. We are focusing on the exercise of powers that may never need to be used but which we may have to reach for in the most ghastly circumstances—so we are over a barrel. This is an essential Bill. We have to protect UK citizens from the worst that could happen to them, having sadly neglected to do what we could have done at the very beginning of this two-year process and given them assurances and the sort of security—as we would have been expected to be able to offer EU citizens in this country—that many in this House tried to achieve.

My speech in support of the amendment moved by my noble friend will be much shorter, because I can do hardly anything other than compliment the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, on his most forensic and splendid interpretation of what the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said, and my colleague on that committee, the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. The one thing on which I might take issue with him is that in that committee we have not, in fact, become habituated to the ways in which government departments always try to take more power. We are not naive but we deeply resent the ways in which government departments have tried to accumulate powers over the past few years and to sneak it under our noses.

Coming down the track we have Bills—the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, has already referred to them—with swathes of inappropriate delegation cultivated by civil servants and Ministers, for whom, frankly, this is Christmas. They have wanted to acquire these sorts of powers for years and have tried on many different occasions. They have been stopped in Bill after Bill and sent back. But now they have the power of post-Brexit uncertainty to aid them. It is extremely difficult to know where our vocabulary might lead us next. It is a fabulous opportunity, because for years they have chafed against the boring predictability of our scrutiny committees telling them to go away and think again. They come back with excuses about urgency, technicalities and flexibilities, yet when we expose these for what they are, they tend to try to do it again in another form.

One of the most disappointing things is that this was our second report; our first was blunt enough. We thought that between November and now the department and Ministers would respond more sensitively—perhaps more in the spirit of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, with our agonised discussions over the fine-tuning of appropriateness and necessity—but we received not a word; not a blink. I am sad to say that what the department came back with—I know the Minister was not responsible—was another 43 paragraphs about all manner of explanations, most of which were not relevant. They did not address the fundamental question that the Committee is raising this afternoon: why are these powers necessary? What is it that only these powers will be able to achieve? The Minister was very flattering to the scrutiny committees at Second Reading; she called our powers “forensic”. There is nothing that needs forensic scrutiny here. You could take a spade to this Bill; it is that blunt.