Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

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

[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.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I very much support these amendments. My noble friend Lady Byford and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, have picked up on the importance of catering for not just those with physical disabilities but those with non-physical disabilities, which are not always visible and which we are therefore not aware of.

I want to make one point, because if I do not, I suspect nobody else will. At the moment, there are parts of the Palace which are difficult, indeed inaccessible, for anybody who suffers from acrophobia—a severe fear of heights. There are real difficulties. I am conscious that architects do not take that into account when designing new buildings. Some buildings are extremely problematic. I want to put that on record because I suspect otherwise nobody else will, but it needs to be taken into account.

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[Lord Stunell]

My Lords, I support the amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. Future proofing is the end of some of our previous discussions, so a great deal of the ground has been covered in one way or another. We need to future proof against possible constitutional developments, developments in public expectation and changes in technology. These two amendments cover that very well.

I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that whenever we talk about constitutional change, a whole lot of people freeze and say, “We don’t want to build in constitutional changes with this; that would be pre-empting another process”. I point out that over the timescale of this project, a lot of constitutional change will take place, independent of repair, restoration and renewal, and we need to ensure that, at the end of it, we do not have a building that does not accommodate the changes that will have been made.

If we wind the clock back 20 years, there was no Westminster Hall debating chamber in the other place. It is now a very important part of the other place, and I would not mind guessing that in 20 years’ time it will be seen as even more important. In this debate we have talked already about a more profitable use for the Royal Gallery—not necessarily financially profitable but how we might use it.

If we spend five or, perhaps, 10 years in the QEII, I have little doubt that our procedures will adapt to that building in ways which people will be reluctant to give up when they come back to this building—whether it is a simple thing, such as somewhere to plug in your iPad when you are sitting on the Benches, or something else that we have not even imagined. All these things need to be clearly in the minds of the sponsor body and the delivery authority.

It might be said that we should not be offloading this responsibility on to the sponsor body. I agree with that, but the alternative is that this House and the other place confront the questions of constitutional reform themselves. My imaginative capacity is insufficient to see how that would happen. I think that the reality will be that the sponsor body will come back to this House and the other place and will say, “We can do this, or we can do that”. Then we might find that we are at last engaged in the kind of thinking that, at the moment, everyone shies away from.

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Moved by

[Lord Stunell]

23: Schedule 1, page 11, line 25, leave out paragraph (b)

[Lord Stunell]

My Lords, debates today have probably added £1 billion to the total cost of R&R. When we look at we have said about disability, constitutional changes, public engagement and future-proofing, I think that we can forget £4 billion and start to look at £5 billion. All that is in square brackets anyway.

This legislation is not a money Bill; if it were, we would not be discussing it. It is a governance Bill, but how we arrange the governance affects how much money is spent. For example, the opaque governance of the process leading up to this Bill reaching your Lordships’ House has already cost us money, because it could perfectly well have come at least a year and probably 18 months sooner, which would have saved money. If it is hard to see how, perhaps I may say that the index of consumer price inflation in the last year was 1.9% and the index of construction price inflation was 2.8%—more or less 1% greater. That 1% leads to the whole project’s expenditure falling one year later than it would have done, which has cost us £40 million on a £4 billion project—probably £50 million—simply by starting a year later than we needed to. That is before we have a plan or a project on the table. My amendment is intended to enable us to avoid unnecessary delay and cost, and to learn from that story and the lessons of Crossrail.

Once upon a time when this project was first floated, the governance model in this Bill was advocated and supported because it was going to follow the magnificent models of UK construction projects where we had at last cracked the problem and, as seen with the Olympics and Crossrail, we could now deliver on time and on budget. We still say that, except we leave out the phrase “and Crossrail”; we only say, “the magnificent example of the Olympics”. What Crossrail illustrated is that once you have a delay you automatically and unavoidably have cost increases. That is not only because it costs money to take longer; it costs even more money to try to catch up.

My amendment is designed to save the large amounts of public money which come from delay in taking decisions about how the project should proceed. A project of £4 billion intended to take eight years is going to spend, on average, £500 million each year. That is not a trivial sum in anybody’s counting and certainly not in the Treasury’s counting. The year’s delay will not cost you all the £500 million but it will probably, à la Crossrail, cost you two-thirds—£300 million, say, will be the cost of holding things back for a year, for one reason or another. So the current way we are going to decide whether we can afford something goes something like this: the sponsor body develops a programme, signs it off and passes it to the delivery authority, which gets the design work and the tendering going and then reports back to the delivery authority, which reports back to the sponsor body, which sends it to the estimates commission, which at that point consults the Treasury. The Bill says it “must have regard to” the information or advice it gets from the Treasury. In fact, three of the Bill’s 15 clauses relate to having to have regard to the Treasury’s advice.

Whatever might be said in some idyllic constitutional theory about parliamentary supremacy, the actual tap is turned on and off by the Treasury. That is no surprise and certainly it is the reality of this piece of legislation. The point is that at least a year, and probably 18 months to two years, after the sponsor body has commissioned the work to be done, the Treasury will say, “Oh, no, sorry, that is not in scope, we cannot afford that. Spread it over 10 years, drop all the stuff about getting into the turrets, never mind Lord Stunell and hearing, let us just have it like it was in the old building and cut costs”. We will still have the delays. Incidentally, it will be very difficult to save as much by cutting things out of the design as it will cost to have the delays—which, of course, is another Crossrail story as well.

What we have is a system where we know it will be the Treasury taking the decision on whether the money is going to be spent, but instead of asking before we start, “Can we have the money to do this?”, we are going to wait until we have done everything and then the Treasury is going to say no. Amendment 23 simply short-circuits that in a very simple way. It says that it is permissible to have a Minister of the Crown on the sponsor body. It does not require that there shall be, and it is therefore still a matter of choice as to whether such a person is appointed or not. What that means is that, at the start of the process and not at the end, the Treasury would be saying what can and cannot be spent. In terms of parliamentary accountability and lots of other things, people will say, “That is completely wrong”, but the Government’s fingerprints are going to be on this and they are going to do their best to wipe their fingerprints off it, which they will be well able to do if they present it in anonymous advice to the estimates commission two years after the process began and the delays will be there.

My amendment allows the Government to find a way of being more transparent about taking the inevitable decisions that the Treasury will make and putting those in the public domain at the earliest moment. I know that I do not have too many friends on this, but I have given the House an option, which it does not need to exercise but which in five, 10 or 15 years’ time, a future Administration and the future House will be very grateful for, so that they can indeed save any more delays than those that will by then already have accumulated. I beg to move.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. If I understand his argument correctly, he seems to be expressing a lack of confidence that Her Majesty’s Treasury will come up with the money and deliver on the funding at the end of the project, and to avoid that he is suggesting putting it on the committee that is deciding what the project should do and what money should be requested.

I understand why the noble Lord made his arguments, and, as I said, I listened carefully, but I am not persuaded by them. This is a parliamentary project, not a government project—that is an important distinction to make. There are times when I suspect that there may be battles between Parliament and government on this, although I hope not. I hope that in bringing forward the Bill, government is showing its intention to recognise that the work has to be done and paid for.

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[Baroness Barran]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, for tabling his amendment, which, as he explained, would allow a government Minister to become a member of the sponsor body. I also thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition for reinforcing the point that this is a parliamentary project and that we need to make that clear at all times.

I understand from the noble Lord’s speech at Second Reading that his key concern was about the potential lack of transparency around the Treasury’s advice on the estimates of expenditure, which in turn could lead to delays, waste and extra cost, as well as the need for Treasury buy-in to the project. The noble Lord has again articulated these points clearly tonight. He also stole the next part of my notes when he explained exactly how the process worked. However, I should add—I did not catch the noble Lord saying this, so I hope he will forgive me if I missed it—that the estimate is laid after it has been reviewed by the estimates commission and there has been consultation with the Treasury. The estimate is then laid before the other place for approval, including any comments made by the Treasury. I am advised that this is more transparent than the current estimates process for the funding of Parliament. To be clear to the House, this provides the opportunity for the Treasury to comment on the annual estimate, but it does not provide it with a veto. Furthermore, in terms of approval for the parliamentary building works, the Treasury is not given a role in respect of the outline business case. That is exclusively a matter for Parliament.

At Second Reading and again tonight, the noble Lord argued that a Treasury Minister could sit on the sponsor body, as recommended by the Joint Committee that examined the Bill. The role of the Treasury in this project is as an external party looking inwards, with the ability to review and advise upon the sponsor body’s annual estimates. The Treasury’s comments on the annual estimate will be laid before Parliament with the estimate. Therefore, the advice of the Treasury will be available when the House of Commons considers the estimate, and that provides for a clear role for the Treasury. The sponsor body and Parliament will therefore have transparent access to the Treasury’s views on the value for money and affordability of the project, which I hope addresses the noble Lord’s concerns around the transparency and the timeliness of that advice. Our view remains that, if a Treasury Minister was a member of the sponsor body, it would compromise that and could restrict the Treasury from being able objectively to assess the sponsor body’s annual estimates. In the light of these arguments, I hope that the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Lord Stunell]

I thank the Minister very much for her reply and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her words of comment on the amendment. She asked whether I trust the Treasury. If I replied yes to that, I would be the only person in this House who did. The Treasury rightly considers itself the guardian of the nation’s purse. In my experience, from both inside the system and looking at it from the outside, it is very rare for the Treasury to say, “Why don’t you take more money? Why don’t you speed up this project?”. I think we can all anticipate that the role of the Treasury in this is to be the gatekeeper of money. It sees that role as reducing the flow of money, particularly if Members of both Houses arguing the case for hospitals, schools, aircraft carriers and goodness knows what else, at the expense of this self-serving project for Members. You can see the national newspapers and media joining in that school.

The idea of someone turning the tap off is real. The only question is whether we have a system where we turn it off at the end of a long process, thus wasting a lot of money and time, or whether we turn it off at the beginning, so that we know we have to take 20 years, not 10 years, because we can spend only £300 million a year, not £500 million a year—as the case may be—in which case, we can design the project on a completely different timescale and get efficiencies that way.

The Minister said that the Treasury’s advice will be published. Yes, it certainly would be, but the question is whether the estimates would have been trimmed as a result of the advice given and the dialogue that goes on. The estimates commission “must have regard” to any advice that it receives from the Treasury. If the Treasury says, “You can spend only £400 million”, and the estimates commission is being invited by the sponsor body to spend £600 million, it is not statutorily in its power to put the £600 million figure on the table in front of Parliament, because it “must have regard” to any advice. The Minister may say that that is incorrect, in which case I should like to have that on record.

I will not pursue this tonight, not just because of the time but because I have no one here who agrees with me. I just say that I think that this is a problem that will come back to haunt us, and I may yet say something at the next stage of the Bill. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 23 withdrawn.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 29th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the power to designate an area is a significant power, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. However, I think it is a desirable power, provided that we amend the Bill slightly in the way we have discussed. I am not clear why anyone would want to go to a designated area other than for any of the purposes we have outlined in Amendment 17.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I should like to add to the remarks of my noble friend Lady Hamwee by making two points. First, if one looks at the current situation in Syria, there are clearly many women there who do not have the freedom to leave. Will they have committed an offence simply by virtue of being held as virtual or real captives? These are aspects which need to be looked at quite seriously.

I want also to make the darker point that, at the moment, we are focusing on the Middle East and terrorism as we appreciate it there. However, if this legislation had been in force in 1936 or 1937, I wonder what would have been the realpolitik of designated areas within Spain. We need to understand that legislation passed for one reason can sometimes be adapted and used in a completely unforeseen way or, as I am perhaps suggesting, in a foreseeable way. I would like to hear what the noble Earl might have to say about these two points.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, it is probably best if I write to the noble Baroness in response to her specific questions. The broad answer is that we have thought of the practicalities. As regards informing people who are already in the designated area that it has been designated and that they therefore have 28 days to leave, there would be FCO travel advice that would almost certainly have pre-existed the designation. The regulations would be given significant publicity, including as part of the requested debate of the designation regulations. There would be a notice on the government website and we would consider other methods of publicity depending on the area being designated.

On the question of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, about innocent people who have already been caught up in events and the situation within a designated area, the reasonable excuse defence would kick in. As we said in our earlier debates, where it is perfectly obvious that someone is in a designated area for an innocent reason, it is almost unthinkable that the authorities would spend time trying to make a case against them. Their reasonable excuse would be advanced and the circumstances of the case, if they are innocent, would be obvious from the outset. As I have said, we have had the reasonable excuse defence in place for 18 years and, as far as I am aware, there have been no instances of innocent people being arrested or convicted.

That is as far as I can go at the moment, although I am conscious that I have not completely covered the issues raised. However, I will write and copy my letter to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate.

Nuclear Test Veterans

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Baron]

Having served myself, I sympathise with what the hon. Gentleman says and I understand the campaigns that he mentions. This is one of the key points that we wish to make about the benevolent fund: if we look at other countries—I shall come on to this very briefly—and compare how they treat their test veterans, we rank very near the bottom. However, I suggest to the Minister—this is where there has been confusion in the MOD before—that the payment should be ex gratia; in other words, there would be no admission of liability. There has been some confusion within the MOD that the BNTVA, as an organisation, has been involved in litigation through the courts, when that has not been the case. If we look at other countries that have made ex gratia payments, we see that the case being made very much stacks up. There would be no admission of guilt or liability, but it would put right an injustice.

It is important to reinforce that point. The campaign organised by the BNTVA, other hon. Members and I has been very much focused on Parliament and not on taking this issue through the courts. Perhaps I should also add that the BNTVA has put in a submission to the medal review led by Sir John Holmes, and it is waiting for the outcome of Sir John’s deliberations. However, that is separate from the campaign that we are discussing today.

I return to both interventions, in a way, and to the point about how other countries treat their test veterans. It is clear, when looking at the comparisons, that we rank towards the bottom of what I would call the international table of decency. Let us take the US for example. Our campaign is about recognition, and all that people have to prove for compensation there is that they were present at a nuclear test—one is sufficient—and there they have a list of more than 100 illnesses. They do not have to provide a causal link between the two. Providing that someone can prove those two things, they will automatically get compensation—£47,000 for the first illness and £47,000 for any secondary attributable illness as a bonus. No causal link between service and illness is required; payment is simply automatic. That is in addition to the fact that veterans in the US have access to free health care.

Commonwealth countries played a great part in our nuclear tests. Canadians were there in large numbers, and Canada pays some £15,000 to each veteran, in addition to war pensions, and enjoys a health care system like the NHS—free at the point of use. Closer to home, the Isle of Man, which has been supportive of our campaign, makes an ex gratia payment of £8,000 to any resident test veteran, and 17 such payments have been made to date.

I stress that our proposals are different from the comparisons that I have just listed, because the £25 million would be distributed on the basis of need, not entitlement. That is why it is important to stress the ex gratia nature of the payment. There is no admission of liability; no admission of guilt. The benevolent fund would be there to help veterans and their descendants who need help with their care and treatment. The fact that someone is a veteran does not necessarily mean that they would gain access to the fund in question.

I urge the Minister, when considering the proposals, to look further afield again. I remind her that in the 1990s this country made an ex gratia payment to Australia that just so happened to be for the exact sum of £25 million, and that payment was made in compensation for having undertaken tests in Australia. It was the equivalent sum of money, and if it is good enough for Australia, I do not see why it is not good enough for our own test veterans. I remind the Minister that Australia already offers a generous pension to its test veterans.

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I very much appreciate the work that my hon. Friend has put into this. Does he agree that the test veterans, by far and away, will be better supported by the £25 million fund that he has talked about than the Australian Government? In other words, their need is greater than that Government’s ever was. Does he also agree that, with ex gratia payments, far less administrative time, effort and money would have to be put in by the Ministry of Defence and other state bodies in disbursing that money than if compensation was based on a careful assessment of all the criteria implied by a strict compensation scheme?

[Mr Baron]

I agree completely. The benevolent fund would be administered by a board of trustees; it would be an established charity. It would be up to them to distribute the funds, as I said, on the basis of need, not entitlement, and the payments would be ex gratia. Therefore, there would be no admission of liability or guilt.

Perhaps we need to focus on progress with the Government to date, during the second phase of the campaign, which was launched only on 11 June here in Parliament. We also had a superb art exhibition on the theme of the veterans’ experiences during the tests. Some of the pieces were created by the descendants themselves. Progress since 11 June has been somewhat slow. I had a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, who was then responsible for veterans. I had a brief meeting with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I wrote to the Prime Minister. I have now received a response, and there are warm words about the role of the nuclear test veterans, but there is no sympathy for the idea of a benevolent fund at all.

What the Prime Minister did mention was the war pensions scheme, and no doubt the Minister will address at length the generosity of that scheme when it comes to our veterans generally, but many test veterans—I must say this to her—have found the system not sympathetic to their cause. War pensions are fine on paper, but time and again, veterans find that the system is stacked against them. A recent questionnaire of BNTVA members revealed that 90% had seen their application for a war pension declined. For one thing, with claims made seven years after leaving service, the burden of proof is on the claimant to show that the illness or injury was caused by service; for another, the system is time consuming and complicated for these elderly veterans, even when successful. The perception is that they are still having to take on the system. As if to illustrate the point, a British lady received payment from the US for the role that her British husband played, while flying for the RAF, during one of the American nuclear tests. She had been repeatedly refused a war widow’s pension in this country, but managed to get a payment from the US authorities.

The Government, including the Minister, should be in no doubt that we will not walk away from this campaign. On 27 November, veterans and their descendants will march on Parliament to draw attention to the cause. We are determined to see this through. In welcoming the Minister to her new post, may I urge her to reconsider our campaign? After all, the Government have a very good record of recognising just causes and righting past wrongs—mesothelioma and thalidomide victims are just two examples. The nuclear test veterans fit into both categories. I suggest that we do owe our veterans a debt of gratitude for helping to ensure our safety. Many people would argue that they were instrumental in helping us to win the cold war.