Restoration and Renewal

Mark Tami Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I agree with my hon. Friend in both regards. This Palace, these Houses of Parliament are the most wonderful testament to our belief in democracy. It is so magnificent to walk along the passageway from here to the House of Lords and see on either side the representation of our history and the pride in our nation’s story that our forebears took because they believed that the democracy and the constitution we have are precious, worth preserving and worth symbolising in stone. To do that, it is worth spending the money to ensure this Palace is secure. However, yes, we must play our part and accept that there is a degree of inconvenience that we can tolerate, because currently we accept remarkably little. Under current rules, work in the Palace of Westminster can be halted on the say-so of a single MP. I am not sure that all MPs realise that each of their gentle and politely worded requests to keep noise down triggers an automatic downing of tools.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

They do now.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

They do—well, those who are paying attention do—and I am glad the right hon. Gentleman is paying such strict attention. It is important that we do accept that we may have to compromise in what we expect in this Palace.

Then there is the question of a temporary decant location, and I look forward to hearing Members’ views about what scale and requirements are thought necessary. The Prime Minister has written to the chief executive of the Sponsor Body and Delivery Authority making it clear that costs should be kept to a minimum. He is quite right that putting a severe downward pressure on cost is vital in the face of phrases such as “scope creep” and “gold-plating”, which are words that should make any right thinking politician break out in a cold sweat. Our goal should be a narrow, simple one—to save the Palace of Westminster without spending more than is necessary. That is the only way we will be able to look our constituents in the eye and explain the steps being taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

As a number of right hon. and hon. Members have said, I am a member of the Sponsor Body—indeed, I think I have served on every committee that has considered this matter. This matter was also the subject of my one Front-Bench speaking engagement in 19 years, although hopefully that will not be repeated. [Hon. Members: “Aw!”] Well, certainly not for the people who were there at the time.

It seems a long time ago that the Joint Committee produced the report that recommended a full decant, using Richmond House as the best option for the safety and security of everybody who works here, with the House of Lords moving to the Queen Elizabeth II centre. We came to that decision after much thought, discussion and debate, and we considered every alternative put before us. That proposal was approved by both Houses, and as a number of Members have said, a Sponsor Body and Delivery Authority were established, based on the experience of the London Olympics. The legislation included a clear provision that when the work was finished, Members would return to this House. I remember that at the time, a rumour was going around that none of us would come back, and that some hideous plot was in place and we would never return.

At the moment, a planning application has been lodged with Westminster City Council to demolish and rebuild much of Richmond House, while retaining the front and side facades. That is in line with the House’s stated desire to replicate much of what already exists here over there. That would give us a very usable building that would also have a legacy for alternative uses.

As we have heard, the Sponsor Body is carrying out a review of the current proposals, which I fully support. The covid crisis has shown us that we can work in ways that were dismissed as unworkable in the past. The vast majority of House and MPs’ staff are working successfully from home. This House has virtual questions, and we even manage to vote virtually, which I am afraid we dismissed previously—I do not know why because it actually works.

The review may return to the option of a reduced intervention in Richmond House—I do not know, and I do not want to pre-empt that—but one thing we could do is have just one voting Lobby. I remember that at the time, the Leader of the House saw that as the end of the world, but I remind him that only in 1836—a year I am sure he remembers fondly—were plans draw up for a second Lobby, at an eye-watering cost of £600, and an extra two weeks to construct. Those were the days. If we are prepared to compromise, we can cap costs and, importantly, cut time. I do not think we will end up with such a great building at the end of the process, but that is something we might have to accept.

In truth, however, a lot of Members want to undermine R&R and do not want it to go ahead—we need to say that. They want to stay here come what may, ignore the decision that we took, and embark on 35 to 40-year maintenance programme. Parliament would be a building site covered in scaffolding and we would no doubt have to evacuate the building every so often, given the asbestos and safety fears.

Asbestos has been mentioned, but it is not in nice, solid sheets, wrapped around piping or in solid boards. It has crumbled and it is in the dust; it is throughout the building in the plasterwork and it is a real safety threat, which we cannot ignore.

If we go down the road of being a building site for 30 years, what sort of advert is that for this country? What are we really saying we can do? However, if that is what the Government want and they believe the House will support it, they should introduce legislation to that effect and not just rely on anonymous briefings about the current proposals to undermine them. Members now openly say, “R&R isn’t happening. It’s been cancelled apparently.” Yesterday, we had the Prime Minister’s letter, which seems to say that it is vital to do something because the place could burn down, but we should also open everything up again for consideration, including the possibility of moving to York, presumably—I hope—on a temporary basis. What about the thousands of staff? Are they to move to York for a period? Was that considered when the option was put forward?

We have options, but let us be sensible. In the light of the Prime Minister’s letter, I hope that the Leader of the House will confirm that any proposal to decant Members and staff from the northern estate to Richmond House, which could delay R&R by up to three years, will not be considered at least until the report has been published, hopefully in October.

We have been kicking the can down the road for more than 70 years. This building is not a safe working environment. As has been said, in the past few weeks, we have had a fire and a collapse of scaffolding. We need to think about everyone who works in this building and act accordingly.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

It is a particular pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). It is a bit like a reunion of the Joint Committee today—many of us served on it—

[Mark Tami]

Bring the band back together!

[Chris Grayling]

Absolutely. Many of us served on the Joint Committee back in 2015-16, when we looked at all the issues exhaustively. We considered all the ideas that were submitted to us, some partially credible that did not understand the nuances of this place and some frankly less credible, but I want to make the point to everybody, particularly new Members, that this is not something we have an option about. We have got to do this. When I became Leader of the House in 2015, two things happened in quick succession that brought that home to me, one here and one elsewhere.

First, we nearly had to close the Chamber indefinitely within a few days of my becoming Leader of the House because asbestos was discovered up in the ventilation shafts. If it had become dislodged, or if it were to be dislodged in future, we would have no choice but to immediately close the Chamber indefinitely. What would happen then? The right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside is right: the building has huge amounts of asbestos. It is a genuine health hazard, which can bite us at any time. That alone is a reason to do the work.

The second thing that happened had nothing to do with Notre-Dame. A few days after I became Leader of the House, Kingsway caught fire. Kingsway is a road and the wiring under it caught fire and burned for days. I advise all those who have not been down into the basement here to do so. Apart from the sewerage system that was mentioned and the asbestos, the basement contains a jumble of wiring, some very old, that could do just the same—catch fire and burn for days.

The House authorities have always said that they can get us all out and save our lives, but they cannot save the building. If we have a serious fire, this building will burn down, in the way that Clandon Park burned down and in the way that Notre-Dame burned down. That would not only be a gross dereliction of our duty as stewards of this building but a national tragedy. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people come to visit what is a world heritage site. It brings people from around the world; it is one of the world’s iconic landmarks. We cannot possibly put ourselves in a position where year after year the risks increase because the wiring gets older and all the systems get older, so we are making it more likely that there will be a devastating fire and this building will be destroyed. We simply cannot do that.

As my successor as Leader of the House rightly said, we all come to this project slightly sceptical. It is a lot of money to spend and it is not something that is going to be universally popular with constituents around the country. However, the more one delves into the subject, the clearer it becomes that we have absolutely no choice but to do this. We looked at all the alternatives. We considered whether we could put a temporary Parliament somewhere else. But even if we just went up to Horse Guards or somewhere like that, could we really, at seven o’clock on an Opposition day, have queues of MPs walking across Whitehall to come and vote? What a security risk that would be—what a target for terrorists. We have to keep Members of Parliament and, in particular, people who work for us, who are often as at risk as we are if something terrible happens, within the secure estate.

That is why and how we came to the conclusion that Richmond House was the best option. It is within the secure estate. It is a building that has flexibilities. The one bit I have a problem with is that I do not buy the argument that it is not possible to put a temporary Chamber into Richmond House without the scale of work that is being considered at the moment. We might need a compromise so that we do not need that period of time to replicate this Chamber exactly. Yes, of course we need to have a debating chamber, and yes, of course it should be consistent with the way that this Chamber works, but it does not have to be like for like—inch for inch, foot for foot identical to here. The Division Lobbies do not have to have exactly the same relationship to the Chamber. We have learned in the past few weeks that we can do things differently, and I buy that argument. We cannot just spend money willy-nilly because it keeps the environment in which we are going to be working close to what we have here now. If it changes a bit, it does not matter.

We cannot keep delaying this decision. I am frustrated that it is now 2020 and I co-chaired the Committee back in 2015—five years ago. This building is five years older. The systems are five years older. We have looked at all these options before. We looked at whether we could move the Commons to the Lords end. Actually, I am not convinced that the lords would vote for that if they had to leave and we got to stay. But then there are fundamental issues about the services. There is one sewer that services the whole building. So fine, we move to the Lords end, the work is happening down here, and then something goes wrong—the electricity fails or the sewer fails. If the electricity fails, it is going to take the devil’s own job of a time to try to work out what is wrong and how to fix it, and we stop working in the interim. If the sewer breaks, that makes the whole building unusable. It is really very difficult operationally, in a building that was designed as one with the services flowing from one end to the other, to simply say, “We’ll put something down the middle; that end’s fine and this end isn’t.”

We looked at using Westminster Hall, but there are historical reasons why that is difficult. Perhaps more than any other part of this building, we have a duty to protect Westminster Hall. It is the heart of the building which, back in 1834, the fire brigade chose to protect. In the second world war, when the bomb was dropped, the fire brigade chose to protect Westminster Hall. We cannot abuse Westminster Hall because it gives us a chance to stay a bit closer to this building while the works are happening. We looked at that exhaustively and came to the conclusion that it was not possible.

I think that anyone who looks through these issues carefully and in detail will reach the same conclusion that we all did five years ago. I commend the work of the Sponsor Body and the work that is to come from the Delivery Body. We chose to recommend that those were set up because we felt that that was the right way forward —to learn the lessons of the London Olympics, to follow a single approach to doing it, and to learn from how similar bodies made that project work effectively. My request to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and all those who are on the Sponsor Body is: please let us get on with this. With every month and every year that goes by, the risk gets greater. I do not want us, as a generation of politicians, to wake up one morning to find that we were the people who did not act in time, the building is no more, and the taxpayer now faces a much, much bigger bill to restore a landmark, as the French do with Notre-Dame. Please, I say to the Leader of the House and to all colleagues, let us get on with this as quickly as we can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

This debate has often falsely been portrayed as a debate between pragmatic modernisers such as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who by the way I cannot help liking and respecting—I do not know why, but I do—and traditionalists who are putting their own comfort first. Actually, the arguments are far more complex. I have spent quite a lot of time over the past few years talking to architects and mechanical and electrical engineers, and I personally believe that compared with the present plans, there are greener, cheaper, faster and better solutions.

May I burnish my credentials with those who say that we have to get on with this work by saying that 25% of the space in the Palace is currently taken up by unseen historical ventilation systems? I went round some of them yesterday. There are 24-hour fire checks in many roof and basement areas. There were four fires in 2019, eight fires in 2018 and even a small fire in the basement last month. We all accept that the work has to be got on with as quickly as possible.

My contention is that if we follow the present plans, we will face years of delay and public inquiries, because when the original Joint Committee met, it was told that it could fit a temporary Chamber into one of the courtyards of Richmond House. It was given the wrong measurements and that is how we started the whole genesis of knocking down all of Richmond House.

[Mark Tami]

It was not so much that the Joint Committee was given the wrong measurements; actually, the plans were different from the structure that was built, and the basement turned out to be 10% smaller. I do not know whether the builder, whoever it was, had fiddled the system, but that was the reason.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am grateful. That points out some of the problems.

I come to the present proposal to knock down Richmond House, which is, of course, a listed building. I never thought that I would defend a building younger than myself, but I am. It was listed for a purpose—to preserve it. It is an award-winning building. The best way to be carbon neutral, actually, is not to knock down an existing building, so even if people are in favour of full decant—I do not want to repeat all the arguments—we do not need to knock down Richmond House. I have been working with SAVE, the architectural heritage association, and it is perfectly possible to build a temporary Chamber in the courtyard. If it is temporary, it may be a tiny bit uncomfortable. There will be less of a tendency, once we leave this building, for the works to drag on for five or 10 years—and it will be five or 10 years. We have seen with modern voting systems that we can vote electronically. We do not need two wide Division Lobbies, and all the rest.

I am looking now to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I think that we can very quickly probably come to a kind of consensus—that we do not need to go to the super-gold-plated option of knocking down Richmond House and exactly replicating this space, with the Division Lobbies. They have even made the Division Lobbies wide enough to have the oriel windows, but we do not need those in any temporary future Chamber.

There is a better, cheaper, faster alternative, however, and I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). I have been working with Anthony Delarue, a well-respected architect, who has a long history of working with historic buildings. It is perfectly possible to have a line of route through Westminster Hall, St Stephen’s Hall and Central Lobby into the House of Lords Chamber, which could be used by the House of Commons, as it was in the second world war, perhaps with the House of Lords put in the Royal Gallery. It would be perfectly possible, according to expert opinion, to have the services taken from outside—from services in Abingdon gardens or Victoria Tower gardens—and we could start getting on with this work now.

Contrary to the horror stories that we have been told, it is possible to get on with this work, make considerable progress with the ventilation systems, the heating systems, the electrical and mechanical systems and the asbestos systems while we continue to work in this Palace, which is the iconic home of British democracy. As we have heard, it has 1 million visitors every year. Do we really want to close this building down? I think that it will be 10 years—I do not think it will be five years once we lose control of this process. Do we want to lose 1 million people a year times 10? That is a lot of schoolchildren who will never visit this place. At least if we can keep Westminster Hall and Central Lobby open, and if we can have visitors coming to witness our debates in the House of Lords Chamber and visiting the House of Lords in the Royal Gallery, we would be doing a service to our constituents.

I repeat this vital point. We are told again and again that it is impossible to split up the services. I have been around in the past week with a mechanical and electrical engineer and he says that that is simply not true. After all, we create, in days, pop concerts for hundreds of thousands of people, but we are told, “No, we can’t do that. We can’t take services from outside. It’s all too difficult. We have to surrender control of the process.” I simply do not buy into that. I think that it is groupthink and, frankly, that we have been bamboozled in the past four or five years. There are alternative, costed, expert opinions saying that there are cheaper, greener and better ways to do this. If there is a real fire risk, and I think there is a real fire risk, why delay this whole process for years while we seek to demolish Richmond House, while we have a public inquiry and while we build a permanent replica Chamber?

By the way, what will we actually use that Chamber for? When visitors come here in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time, do they want to be visiting a replica? They will want to see this Chamber, where Winston Churchill spoke or Jacob Rees-Mogg—that great orator of the early 21st century. They do not want to be going to see a replica. It will be the most glorious white elephant.

And do we really want to move the House of Lords to QEII, with all the security implications and losing the rent that the Government gain from it? The plans for QEII are wildly extravagant: those involved want to create a roof-top terrace, and they want to demolish the existing conference hall so that the height of the temporary House of Lords Chamber is the same as the existing House of Lords Chamber. The fact is that this has become out of control.

I see the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), in her place, and we are the guardians of the public purse. Of course we have to put safety first and of course we have to do the work properly, but we do not need to have a feeding feast over 10 years or 15 years, costing between £10 billion and £20 billion, with this gold-plated option of demolishing Richmond House, moving out completely and stripping everything out of this building while we are evicted.

I end on this point: there is a compromise, and I wish my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) well. The debate has moved on, even in small things or not so small things. We were told even quite recently—I was told this by the present Leader of the House—that we had to knock down Richmond House because we needed more office space. That is a strange and quite a circular sort of argument: we need to knock down an office building to get more office workers. We do not need them. The entire civil service is now working virtually and the entire civil service will almost certainly go on to a three-day week. We have proven that we do not need an emergency Chamber in case of a disaster; we can work virtually for a few weeks or, indeed, a few months. The whole debate has moved on and we need to think again, but we do not need to delay. We can get on with the work around us now, and that is what we should do.