Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-07-08
Topic: Housing
Robert Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I speak as a member of the Joint Committee that looked at the draft Bill and produced the report which is in front of your Lordships as background to this debate. The report had a number of practical recommendations for implementation, and I was very pleased indeed to hear from the Minister in her introduction the way in which many of those recommendations were adopted in the House of Commons, or will be subject to further refinement and, we hope, adoption in the House of Lords at a later stage We have had an excellent debate with many fine contributions. I hope the Minister will find the opportunity to respond to many of the points made, if not in this debate, at least subsequently, because many drew out the tensions between different, quite legitimate objectives in delivering restoration and renewal. One thing that will happen when we decant is that the decanted accommodation will be better than the accommodation we are in now, and it is completely unrealistic to expect us, in eight, 10 or 15 years’ time, to move back into a building with lower standards than the temporary accommodation. I mention that particularly in relation to deafness. I am sure we will be able to hear in every room in the temporary accommodation, which is certainly not true here—I speak as someone who is a serial complainer about that What is really important and valuable from this debate is that there is universal acceptance that doing nothing, or business as usual, is not possible. There is an unacceptably high risk and urgent action is essential. The disastrous Notre Dame fire has certainly spurred everybody into action. It may be that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, disagrees, but a 24-hour fire safety team is neither normal nor cheap—nor is it guaranteed to produce 100% success The Bill is very welcome: indeed, it is overdue. In fact, the timeline so far has already been dangerously extended, as a number of speakers in this debate have pointed out. It has been characterised by short outbreaks of action and then prolonged periods of frustrating delay. The cause of those delays has not been explained or explored, particularly in this debate, but, bearing in mind that each delay came at a time when the ball was in the Government’s court, one might surmise that it was something to do with reluctance at the highest level to commit to a project which, however essential and urgent, has very few friends outside this building and none at all in the print media It might be thought that a year’s delay at this stage is neither here nor there. It is going to take another 16 years anyway, so what is another few months at the beginning? Actually, it has not been without cost—the cost of carrying the risks of catastrophic failure forward for another 12 months while construction costs have also risen by 1% more than either RPI or CPI, depending on which of those indices the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, would like us to use Simply having that delay and looking at enhanced construction costs compared to rising tax revenue and so on has added £40 million to the cost of the £4 billion project. That is not even factoring in extending 24-hour fire cover costs for a further year. That is bad enough, but suppose that government uncertainty and reluctance had come during the actual construction period. For the purposes of illustration, a £4 billion project lasting eight years would need spending at £500 million a year. A year’s delay in decision-making would then cost the thick end of £300 million, arising from people standing around waiting for decisions and from paying overtime to catch up, not to mention extra plant hire, cranes and warehouse space We should certainly learn from Crossrail. Originally, we all said that this was going to be like the Olympics and Crossrail; we have stopped saying that and now only say it will be like the Olympics. Crossrail, once seen as a glowing example of success, is now an awful warning of costs and delay That brings me to one key area where the Joint Committee came to a different view from the Government about how this unique, massive and difficult project should be managed. The Bill is all about governance: not what should be done, how much should be done or even when it should be done, but by whom it should be commissioned and signed off. The Joint Committee considered the draft Bill very carefully in that respect. Our recommendations were framed to build a decision-making structure that would minimise delays and wasted effort. That is why we recommended that the new structure recognise reality and make transparent who exactly will decide if, when and how this project goes ahead That brings me to recommendation 11 in our report, which I think nobody else in the debate so far has mentioned: "Parliament has determined that the Treasury should be subordinate to Parliament … in accepting or rejecting the costs of the project … However, we do not consider that this on its own will provide sufficient political buy-in from the Treasury over the course of this long project" That seems pretty clear, and it is sad that the Government feel that they do not want to accept that recommendation. Whatever the value of all the different governance procedures—no doubt there will be much discussion of them in Parliament, as well as rows and inquiries—that rather misses the point that, before that can happen and any estimate can be laid by the estimates commission, it must, "have regard to any advice given by the Treasury" In Schedule 4 to the Bill, paragraphs 3(5)(a) and 3(5)(b) deal with phase one; paragraphs 6(5)(a) and 6(5)(b) deal with the transition year; paragraphs 8(5)(a) and 8(5)(b) deal with phase two. In a 15-clause Bill, three of the clauses are instructing everybody to have regard to any advice given by the Treasury.