Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal
Debate between Michael Ellis and Robert Flello(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Robert Flello (in the Chair)
Order. With the greatest respect to the hon Lady, you really cannot come into a debate while the wind-ups are taking place and expect to take part.
Michael Ellis
We need to cover the issue that the ongoing maintenance cost the taxpayer £50 million last year. All told, some 40% of the mechanical and engineering systems will be at an unacceptably high risk of failure by 2020, and five years after that the figure will have risen to 50%. In other words, we are just eight years away from being in a situation in which half the Palace’s systems are so dilapidated that they could cause a major emergency that stops Parliament’s work and forces our evacuation without warning, perhaps overnight. For all those reasons, it is clear that we cannot pass the buck any longer.