Restoration and Renewal — House of Lords, 2022-07-13
Topic: Mixed Topics
Robert George Alexander Balchin (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I remind your Lordships of my registered charitable interest as chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education, which has some national responsibilities for vocational education and apprenticeships, and I shall return to apprenticeship in one moment. I was delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, has mentioned this aspect of R&R With other noble Lords, I believe we must accept these proposals for restoration and renewal. I have much to do in my life with the repair and restoration of historic places, and the one thing that we know about working on heritage buildings is that the unexpected happens. What look to be straightforward and relatively swift tasks very soon turn out to be complicated, slow and delayed ones, and it is rare that the opposite happens. I think, as my noble friend Lady Evans has said, we must have processes which anticipate and adapt as we go along I have two, brief observations: one of them cautionary, the other a request. Annexe A of the joint report says that it will be essential to ensure that, "lessons from previous project activity are embedded in future project activity" I think that is what noble Lords have been asking for throughout the afternoon. There is one particular reason that I want to outline for that, and that is that the number of men and women in the country who are skilled and experienced in the leadership, management and delivery of great projects, such as this one, is not infinite. During the coming decade, there will be large number of huge infrastructure programmes in the United Kingdom, many of them connected with the supply of energy, both conventional and green, and which current world conditions will demand of us. They will require exactly the kind of people that the restoration and renewal of Parliament will need. It is sad that we now have, out there, a reputation for vacillation, and that may not make us attractive employers. As page 27 of the report suggests, "confidence within Parliament has been lost to … an extent" If that is so, it will certainly be lost outside Westminster and we must now regain it by clear, unambiguous plans for the future, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, made clear to us in his speech Secondly, in the last few years—and I hope the noble Lords will find this rather more encouraging than some of the issues we have discussed this afternoon—I have been in discussions with the delivery authority staff, and I want to pay tribute to them for all their professionalism and hard work, in difficult circumstances during the last few years. We have been designing, in embryo, what has now been called the Palace of Westminster apprenticeship scheme. Briefly, it suggests that restoration and renewal should provide a superb opportunity to showcase apprenticeships of every kind. As well as heritage crafts, which have already been mentioned and are in danger of disappearing, there are many which will lead to permanent, important employment opportunities for such as architects, surveyors, builders, electricians, safety engineers, plumbers, stonemasons, carvers, painters and those engaged in a host of other skills. I am delighted to say that the delivery authority’s contracts over a certain sum will now require firms to employ an appropriate number of apprentices on or off-site. The scheme will offer employers the opportunity to register young people at the start of their apprenticeships and to report when they have successfully completed them. They will then receive a small medal, based on a Victorian example showing the Palace from the Thames, to remind them of their work on this historic site, which we want them to be proud of and remember. There are likely to be around 50 or 80 of these young people every year, and we hope that some of your Lordships will meet them This House knows that there is a serious skills gap in this country. Whereas large national businesses are good at training the young, small and medium-sized firms often find it difficult to do so. The incentives are too few and the bureaucracy complicated. Alas, the numbers of trained and up-to-date lecturers in vocational colleges are falling each year. If this country is to be competitive, then things must improve. This scheme, in a small but visible way, will help, and I commend it to your Lordships for approval.