Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to contribute to this debate and to follow the noble Baroness. I certainly echo her views and feelings about the building that we occupy.

I came into politics having spent 20 years in the construction industry. Some of that was on refurbishment work, some on new work, some with good clients, some with bad. Whether it is better or worse to be a politician than working in the construction industry is perhaps for others to say.

I have been on the obligatory tour of the basement, as well. As someone who came to it with a semi-professional eye, I would say that in almost any other public building where a tour like that was conducted, you would have inspectors, enforcement notices and the whole corporate world of regulation dropping on your head. We are getting away with it in the regulatory sense as well the risk sense.

There is a big risk. There is a risk of fire, from asbestos and from clashing services. They have all been well set out. Of course, there is a risk because so many of the repairs and alterations have been piecemeal, which involved lost opportunities, additional costs and more delays and difficulties for users of the building. Every delay to going ahead with this project—which I am enthusiastically in favour of—increases the risk and will increase the cost.

I must say that the “stay put and do it round us” option is in every way the worst. It gives the ultimate delay. I liked one finding of the joint report, which said that the likely time for a stay-put option is 32 years to completion, by which time you would have to renew the mechanical and electrical equipment put in at the beginning. In other words, that option would be like the Forth Bridge, and I hope that we will dismiss that without too much further consideration.

It is worth thinking about the fact that if we had started in good time on a 32-year period of renovation of this place, we would have started in 1985 and it would be finishing this year. I call to mind the point made, in particular, by the noble Lord, Lord Maude, about building in obsolescence. At that time, there was no web, no IT. What would have been started in 1985 would have been totally inappropriate by the time we got here. There are good reasons for doing it quickly and thoroughly, and I hope I have just sketched a couple of them.

We work in a building which is a masterpiece, but it is worth remembering that it was every bit as controversial as Portcullis House when it was built—I remember some of that, as I arrived in this place in 1997. Its cost, design, appearance and performance were controversial from the very beginning. The heating system never worked, and it is because of that that we have those huge horizontal ducts and vertical risers. Subsequently, no one has ever had to bother about finding anywhere for stuff to run: just stick it in those disused ducts and risers. We have been living on the borrowed capital of a failed heating system for 150 years, and now we have filled them up. We have got to the point where we have to do something about it and take something out of those ducts and risers for safety, cost and performance reasons. Ever since, those ducts and risers have been getting fuller and fuller and no one has ever needed to take anything out because there was always space. There are three generations of electric wiring, at least two generations of telephony and, I think, two generations of IT equipment, quite apart from the steam pipes, and so on.

The maintenance regime has been necessarily constrained by cost, because neither House has at any time wanted to spend a penny more than it believed it could get away with, so maintenance has lagged further and further behind. There are pressures of time. Noble Lords have said, “Let us get rid of the September recall period”. Again, the Joint Committee reported on the number of times that there has been a recall, most recently following the tragic death of Jo Cox. Who is to say that the convenience of this House and a maintenance programme should take precedence over the necessary democratic business of this House and that House at a time of recall? Much of the maintenance has been just in time or, sometimes, just too late, and there is an overwhelming case to tackle the backlog, update the services, modernise the facilities and avoid disaster.

I also want to pick up the positive points which have been made. We should have a building that is to the highest standards that can be achieved in the country —in the world, even—setting high standards for heritage, high standards of safety and high standards for the staff and those who work in the building. There are 14,000 pass holders; we are but 800-odd of those 14,000. We should deliver a world-class, 21st century Parliament.

We should be talking about the how and the when, not the if, the maybe and, “Can we put it off any more?”. We have certainly wasted time. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, pointed out that we have wasted 10 years thanks to us not listening to him in the first place. In any case, since the Joint Committee reported, time has been slipping. We were talking about a 2020 start. We now seem to be talking about a 2023 start. A Parliamentary Question was answered by the Minister last month to say that the earliest possible time we could be decanted would be 2025—seven years from now. I join other noble Lords in saying, “Surely that is an incredibly long period ahead and we can shorten it”.

That brings me briefly to the governance point. One of my former employers was a new town development corporation, which is another version of a delivery authority. That, the Olympic Delivery Authority and the Crossrail authority all provide models which can and have worked and should be used to make this one work. For the long term, we certainly need the sponsor board, we need the delivery authority, and for the immediate future, we need the shadow sponsor board and the shadow delivery authority. That means that we must get the enabling legislation going as soon as possible.

That leaves me with just one or two questions for the Minister. We need from her a commitment to make sure that the legislation is introduced without delay. The Government are very prone to delay on this topic. They have other things on their mind. I will not mention the dreaded word, which has been avoided in this debate, but they have other things on their mind. But this is important, even if it does not look urgent. I ask the Minister to ensure that, when she takes the message back to those drafting the Bill, she asks them to be particularly careful to include a carryover provision. It is entirely foreseeable that there could be an interruption before we get to 2025 created by an unexpected and unintended general election. It would be such a pity if, like last year when an unexpected election provided an excuse to delay this report, something else led to a delay in bringing forward the substantive legislation that we need.

Finally, High Speed 2 has two colleges, committed and dedicated to making sure there is a skilled workforce to deliver that project. If we think apprenticeships and skills training are important national objectives, can we please set up our own college for the renewal and restoration of Parliament? We could then ensure a constant stream of suitable, world-class persons to work on this magnificent and exciting project.