Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that we will all want to take careful note of what the noble Baroness just said. She made some powerful and persuasive points. I make it plain at the beginning that I hope that the Lords will approve, without Division, the Motion before us tonight, and will not vote for the amendment, much as I have sympathy with many of the points which my noble friend Lord Naseby made.

Before the Commons took its vote last week, I was minded to argue for remaining. I took advice from architects and others, all of whom said that it was an entirely practical course. But I have often said in this House, in debates on Brexit and on the size of your Lordships’ House, that we should defer to the elected House, and this is a case in point. Therefore there will be no opposition from me to the Motion that was so eloquently moved by my noble friend the Leader of the House.

However, I wish to raise points which we ought to consider. First, we should reflect on the expense, but in a rather different sense from that indicated by my noble friend from the Front Bench. We should not spare expense in the restoration and renewal of this building. As we have been reminded several times, we are merely trustees of it. This building is regarded throughout the world as a symbol of democracy. We should make sure that, 100 years from now, a similar debate does not take place.

However, we should look carefully at how we use taxpayers’ money for the interim solution. We have not got it right there. I have great sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, in his remarks about Portcullis House. I know about Portcullis House because I was on the new building committee in another place when we selected Sir Michael Hopkins as the architect and oversaw the building of that important addition to the Parliamentary Estate. For part of the atrium to be used for a five or six-year period or maybe more seems a prudent use of space and a sensible way to go on rather than to demolish Richmond House. That would be an unnecessary extravagance and expense, and I hope it will be resisted.

I am also not happy about the suggestions that your Lordships’ House should go to the QEII Centre, for various reasons. First, proximity between the two Houses is important. Secondly, the accommodation afforded would not be entirely what we need. Thirdly, however, and in a sense most importantly, the QEII Centre fulfils an important role in our national life, and if it were made over to Parliament for a decade—which is what it has been asked to consider—it would cease to exist as a conference centre.

I believe that there are other solutions that we should explore. There is a very controversial proposal to build a Holocaust memorial on the Embankment gardens. I yield to no one in my desire to see a Holocaust memorial built in our great capital city but there is a much better space by the Imperial War Museum. It would be an entirely appropriate use of the Embankment gardens to have a temporary Chamber there, behind the education centre, for your Lordships’ House, and I hope that that solution can be considered by the bodies established to look at these things—the sponsor board and the delivery authority.

When the composition of those boards is decided upon, it is very important that the sponsor board should be composed entirely of parliamentarians from both Houses. I would favour a joint chairmanship arrangement, such as we had when my noble friend Lady Stowell and Mr Chris Grayling jointly chaired the body that has brought us here today. The delivery authority is a different beast. Of course, the suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Maude could well be adopted and we could have a parliamentary chairman of that, but that is for the future. However, I believe that parliamentarians should ultimately be answerable for delivering to Parliament this restored and renewed great Palace.

It is a building that has meant an enormous amount to me throughout my life. My first visit to a Young Conservatives conference in London in the year of Suez—1956—was when I first fell under the spell of Barry’s and Pugin’s great Palace. Fourteen years after that I had the good fortune to be elected to the other place. So enamoured and enraptured was I by the building that 11 years later I produced a book—long before Mr Bryant produced his—about Westminster Palace and Parliament. It is in my blood, and it is a potent symbol of democracy. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, when he says that we should take opportunities during the next few years to try to reinforce the democratic appeal of the building. That is essentially what he said.

Many of your Lordships have referred to the dates and times. If we are to embark on this course—and I hope that we will—we should try to accelerate the timetable. We should take carefully into account the fact that one thing that prevents work being done on a continuous process is the abandonment of the long Summer Recess. If Parliament needs to meet in September —frankly, I question the need—a temporary solution can be used. We could meet for a day in the QEII Centre or in Church House, but we should keep this place clear of parliamentarians for the period from mid to late July until the beginning of October so that as much of this work as possible can be got on with. If that shaved off a year and saw us moving out in 2023 or 2024, that would be all to the good.

We must now set our hands to this plough. We must ensure that this work is done and that no Government of any political persuasion withdraw from the commitment that I hope we will bind them to tonight.