Restoration and Renewal (Report of the Joint Committee)

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

It sounds as if it is a free vote, and all Members are free to make the choice they wish to make.

There are some critical risks in the Palace of Westminster. First, the lack of fire compartmentation increases the risk of fire, meaning that 24-hour fire patrols are necessary to keep us safe. Over the past 10 years, 60 incidents have had the potential to cause a serious fire. Secondly, there is a huge amount of asbestos packed into the walls that needs to be carefully and expensively removed to enable repairs. Thirdly, many pipes and cables are decades past their lifespan, with some now being impossible to access. The likelihood of a major failure grows the longer the systems are left unaddressed.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

As a doctor, I know that asbestos is dangerous when it is exposed, not when it is hidden and packed in walls. To what extent does asbestos hidden and packed in the walls, where it is not disturbed, act as quite good fireproofing for the building?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point that I am really not qualified to answer, but I agree that the health risk is in moving and removing asbestos.

As Leader of the House, I work closely with the Clerk, the Director General and others who are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of those in this building to ensure that risks are minimised. There are more than 7,500 people working in Parliament, and we welcome 1 million visitors each year, including many schoolchildren. Nevertheless, keeping everyone safe is becoming a growing challenge with each passing year.

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[Valerie Vaz]

As with everything, we do delegate things to people—we do delegate things to professionals. I am pretty sure it would be impossible for 650 Members to have their say on how this place operates. That is why we have the delivery authority and the sponsor body.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

The hon. Lady believes there will not be an overrun, but when work on the Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, is to take five years, does she think six years for the entire Palace of Westminster is a realistic estimate?

[Valerie Vaz]

I cannot look into the future, but I will address those points later.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I confess to being one of those who holds this building in enormous esteem. There are bits of it I do not particularly like, but I have to say that the experience of walking through Westminster Hall, looking up at the angels, carved in probably the 14th century and supporting the roof, is one of the great joys that I would want every single one of my constituents to be able to experience at some point. It is against that background that I care passionately about what we do.

It is not just that we enjoy being here and fought to be here, because we wanted to come into this building and change the world and this country in the way we think is right according to our particular light; it is that we know we are trustees of this building for future generations. The best political generations in our history are the ones that have taken that responsibility the most seriously. In the early 19th century, they did not do it well and it led to a massive fire in 1834, which destroyed ancient paintings and buildings that had been here since the 13th century and before. My terrible fear is that if we do not take our job as trustees seriously now, regardless of party political advantage or, I say to my SNP friends, of ideological interest, we truly risk losing one of the great treasures of this country.

The problems have already been laid out. As the Chair of the Administration Committee, the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), said, there is a single 130-year-old drain that could burst at any time. There is a high-pressure steam heating system next to high-voltage electricity cables, with wires that are decaying into flammable dust every day, next to gas pipes, phone cables, broadband cables and running water, all wrapped in asbestos.

To answer the point made by the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) about asbestos, about two years ago the Clerk had to ring the Leader of the House to say that part of the central heating system had burst through some of the asbestos around the cabling, which was immediately next to the air conditioning system of the Chamber of the House of Commons. There was a real danger that he would have to close the Chamber and Parliament indefinitely until that was sorted out. The real problem is that we have a central heating system that is elderly, at high pressure and could burst at any time. It normally takes us about two and a half weeks to switch it on because of the fear of its doing that. That is the real problem about asbestos in the building.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

My point was that we are told that these wires and cables are in tall stacks, which are full of asbestos. We are also told that they are going to burn, but they are clad in asbestos. My point was about the assessment that has been made of the fire protection provided by that asbestos, which we know to be one of the most non-flammable products.

[Chris Bryant]

This is the problem. In many of the spaces we are talking about, which are effectively very narrow chimneys, there is very little room, because they were intended to be ventilation shafts, in essence, but are now so full of generations of heating, electricity and other kinds of cabling that it is impossible to get in there to check. It is even impossible to get in there to check the extent to which the cabling has decayed.

We know that there is asbestos in some places, but we do not know whether there is in others, so of course we have to take precautionary measures. That is the problem; we do not know where all the asbestos is. A lot of it will have to come out because we have to remove other things, not because we are specifically removing the asbestos.

There are long corridors with no fire doors. We have 98 risers in the building and miles of inaccessible and narrow wooden tunnels that would act as funnels for a fire that, I tell you now, would speed through the building faster than most of us in the Chamber could run. We do not meet the national fire safety standards that we impose on other buildings in the country, so we have fire wardens patrolling the building 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Remember the fire at Windsor castle? The major problem was that it spread rapidly because there was no compartmentalisation. The only royal palace in the country that has not had compartmentalisation brought in since that date is this one, which is the most visited by the public. It is a nonsense.

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[Mr John Hayes]

rose—

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I cannot give way very often because the Speaker asked me not to speak for long, but I had better give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Could we imagine for a moment the United States Congress doing this, or the French National Assembly? This is actually on the table. [Interruption.] The United States Congress is building a replica Chamber? I think not.

[Dr Johnson]

On the original costings of £3.52 billion for the full decant, I was told today in a meeting with the business director of the project that at the time, they assumed that a building was available of the right size and in the right location. In fact—it has not actually been properly costed yet—the estimate is that the new work on Richmond House would cost an additional £550 million.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We are worried, and we are right to be worried, about the costs of the replica Chamber. It has been said to me that it may be necessary at times, if we carry on with this work—nobody is denying that we should proceed with it as fast as possible—that this Chamber may have to leave. I fear that if the replica Chamber is built, we will be out of the Palace of Westminster for up to 10 years. We will be too comfortable, so we have looked for and have consulted on alternatives. We tracked down Sir Michael Hopkins, the architect of Portcullis House. Nobody had raised this idea with him before then—he built the most bomb-proof, the most secure and the most expensive, by metre, building in the country—but the atrium of Portcullis House is exactly the right width, with this Chamber and the Division Lobbies, for an emergency Chamber for a few months. It would not be too comfortable there, but it is possible. Westminster Hall has been mentioned. The Second Church Estates Commissioner, my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), mentioned Church House, which is built to bomb-proof standards. There are alternatives if we have to move out, so get on with it.

The argument that the Joint Committee has established beyond peradventure that it is cheaper to have a full decant is not accepted by many experts—I say this to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley. It was not accepted in the Deloitte report, which talked about net cost analysis. The Joint Committee report did not take sufficient cognisance of the cost of the replica, the work of the patch-up, which will have to be done in the coming years and months, the security costs and the VAT costs. All these costs have been factored into the Deloitte report. There is no time to go into detail, but do not accept the facile argument about the two proposals. We have the decant proposal, which would stop 1 million people a year visiting this building and have all the other disadvantages that I have talked about—do not accept that the decant proposal is much cheaper. Many accountants and experts take an alternative view.

Before we proceed to a vote, let us listen to the hon. Member for Ealing North and remember the thousands of employees working in this building. Of course, we want them to be safe, but we also want them to have a job, and what would happen with a full decant? This is urgent. We must get on with the work now, build the fire doors and so on, and let us remember this historical point—the hon. Member for Rhondda has made many historical points, and I will end on this one: when this House of Commons Chamber was destroyed by firebombs in 1941, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, representing the best in their two parties, made a conscious and absolute decision that this House of Commons would not be bombed out of its historic home, and that was why we moved to the Chamber of the House of Lords.

I commissioned an architect, pro bono, who proved conclusively that this would be perfectly possible. He looked at all the wiring issues, the sewage issues, all that we have talked about, and found that it would be perfectly possible. Are we really being told that in this day and age we cannot divert sewerage and electrical wiring? They do it all the time in the private sector. They build pop concert arenas for tens of thousands of people in two or three days, but we are told by the experts that it is impossible to resolve this problem. I return to my historical point: when the chips were down in 1941, Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill decided that this Chamber would not move from this building. I therefore urge colleagues to vote down the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch and vote for motion No. 1. We must get on with the work.

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[Sir Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

It is good to follow the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), but I wonder how many times people have said in this place, “This is a critical time of national importance, and therefore we should do nothing.” I am sure those words have rung in many people’s ears.

I declare an interest: after the 1840 fire, the stone for the building we now sit in was brought from my constituency. Quarried near a village called Anston, it came via the Chesterfield canal. This icon we have lived in for all this time is something that the people of my constituency like and enjoy, and they—especially children at local schools—are very proud of where it came from. Most of those who, like me, worked in industry and have looked at the health and safety issues here say, “You need to sort that out, Kevin. It’s not as it should be.”

This place is changing quite rapidly. I have been here longer than most, but for the last few weeks, for the first time, I have had workmen outside my office window. There would be nothing surprising about that, except that my office is at the very top of the building, above Speaker’s House, overlooking the Thames. As everyone here knows, work on the roof has been going on for quite a long time now, because of the state the roof is in. When I came to the Chamber today, along the corridor by the Hansard offices to a lift that brings me down to Members’ Lobby, I saw some steel props holding up the roof. It looks a bit like my workplace before I came into Parliament—Maltby colliery. There are some yellow covers, but the props are pinned on the carpet and holding the roof up in the corridor—such are the needs that this House has.

Many hon. Members have talked about the money, so let me look in this excellent publication answering Members’ frequently asked questions about the restoration and renewal programme. We have been—I have three decades’ experience of this—in a position of patch and mend in this place. The publication states:

“Nearly £60 million was spent on essential work to the Palace during 2015/16, £49 million was spent the year before that, and the backlog of essential repairs”

was

“estimated at more than £1 billion in 2012”.

It continues:

“in turn, the risk of system failure, is growing significantly over time. By 2020, some 40% of the mechanical and electrical plant…will be at an unacceptably high risk of failure. By 2025, it will be more than 50%.”

I worked with my hands before I came here, and I would not want to be responsible for some of the kit I have seen when looking around. When I worked underground as an electrician, I was responsible for keeping equipment in proper order so it would not blow up, probably taking hundreds of lives with it. Some of the work here needs to be sorted out, and sorted out quickly.

I listened to the talk about cost, and I looked at the 2014 figures for the three options we have. The cost given for the rolling programme, taking place over 25 to 40 years, is £5.67 billion; for the two-phase approach, taking between 9 and 14 years, £4.42 billion; and for the full decant, single-phase approach, £3.52 billion.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Kevin Barron]

No, because other people want to speak.

Last night, the HS2 Bill was debated in this Chamber. In 2010, it was estimated that it would cost £32.7 billion, and then it went up to £55.7 billion. In 2016, the National Audit Office said it had a running cost overrun of some £7 billion, and most people on the Conservative Benches voted in favour of it. I can tell the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who is no longer in his place, about the cost overrun on most things—you know about them if you get somebody in to build an extension on your building. They cannot put in a bathroom without cost overruns. It is about time that this House took the right decision and sorted itself out. Of course we love this iconic place, but we will not like it if we cannot sit in it because of emergencies that may come along. I shall be supporting amendment (b) to motion No. 1 in the Division Lobby tonight.