Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal — House of Lords, 2018-02-06
Topic: Housing
Michael Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, some of your Lordships may question by what right I challenge the strategy and work of an experienced team of consultants and those colleagues who have been mentioned on the Joint Committee. A little background may help My grandfather was a builder. My father was part of the Ministry of Works after the war as an architect and surveyor involved particularly in war damage claims and rehabilitation of some of the iconic buildings damaged during the war. I myself had the privilege of being chairman of the housing committee in Islington and leader in 1968. We changed the policy there from demolishing the beautiful squares in that part of London, some of which were demolished by the previous council, Union Square being the most relevant, to one whereby the buildings there, which had been there since early Victorian days, were refitted and kept I entered Parliament in 1974 and started the All-Party Building and Construction Group in 1975 with the late Michael Latham. Post Commons, when I lost my seat in 1997, I became a non-executive director of Mansell Ltd, probably the leading refit company operating in London and the home counties and particularly involved in refitting historic buildings. I just cite the example of the Natural History Museum, which carried on as normal while a large section of it was refitted I challenge the proposals on grounds of cost, timing and particularly the impact internally and externally. On cost, of course every contractor in the country will tell you that a cleared site is probably cheaper. I say probably because of the example of the Scottish Parliament: estimated cost in the first round, £40 million; finished cost, £414 million—from a cleared site. Refit is normally more expensive but need not necessarily be so I hesitate to do this, but the Lord Speaker has now left. He wrote an article in the House magazine about the Canadian Parliament. I got in contact with the High Commission of Canada and, as of yesterday, the information I received from it is that it is vacating the central part of its Parliament—I have been to that Parliament—but that: "It is expected to take 10 years to fully restore and modernize it inside and out" In those 10 years, both the Members of Parliament and Senators are, obviously, leaving the building, but they are very fortunate because they have a brand new building on the same site, which the MPs are going into, and a government conference centre adjacent to it. It is not exactly the same as what is proposed for this Parliament I also contrast the full decant situation with the case history of St Pancras and King’s Cross. A number of your Lordships will use those two stations regularly. There has been a major refit, particularly of St Pancras, which is a beautiful Gothic building primarily serving the lines to Nottingham and Bedford. King’s Cross is adjacent to it. Richard Brown CBE, who was at the time the chief executive of Eurostar—which some noble Lords will have used—said that: "Eurostar’s new central London home, St Pancras International, is everything and more than it promised to be. A fusion of restored 19th-century gothic splendour and 21st-century functionality … St Pancras International and High Speed 1 are huge achievements—built on time and on budget"— seven years, and close to £1 billion— "by London and Continental Railways" That does not mention the fact that the trains did not stop; they went through St Pancras and King’s Cross day and night. Thousands of people—far more than ever come into the Palace of Westminster—used both those stations while all this was going on. They did not all have to go somewhere else. It worked, and I have used King’s Cross every day since I was elected to one House and appointed to the other. When I was with Mansell, I visited terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport, which it had won the contract to refit. Material, some of it quite heavy, was taken in at 9 pm and taken out again at 6 am, so the project took quite a long time. However, it was done to time and to budget and was a good refit. It is not impossible to do that What about the complexity of this site? I had shot in the .22 shooting gallery, so I knew a little bit about the basement and when I had the privilege of being appointed Chairman of Ways and Means in 1992 I asked to be taken round, unofficially. It was pretty ghastly down there at that point. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House mentioned the opportunity to go round that all noble Lords were recently given. As she knows, I have taken an interest in this project for a little while, so I took the opportunity. It may not be completely up to scratch, but it is an awful lot better now than it was in 1992. What has changed in that time? The nature of the construction industry has. I do not want to bore your Lordships for much longer, but there is a thing called a cooling pod which some who know about the industry may have heard of. Part of the uniqueness of the St Pancras project was this pod, which cooled the generation planting facility servicing no fewer than 15 buildings in an area not much bigger than the Cross Benches in this Chamber. It is unbelievably good, efficient and modern Why can we not do the development in two or three phases? After the bombing in 1941, the Commons retired to Church House for a few months. It then came to your Lordships’ Chamber and your Lordships went into the Robing Room. In my view, we could easily go into the Royal Gallery. Either way, it was done on a phased basis, even without all the sophisticated machinery and new facilities that we now have. When the bombs landed on the Commons they did a pretty effective job of demolishing it. If we proceeded on a phased basis, as far as the British people were concerned, Parliament and our staff would still be working here. Frankly, this work is not going to take five or six years. If Canada’s work is going to take 10 years, we will be jolly lucky to achieve our restoration in 10. If it takes anywhere near that length of time, I ask noble Lords to reflect for a few moments on the impact on our staff and on what would happen to the QEII conference centre. That is a major convention centre in London. If that is taken out of service, that is the end of QEII as a conference centre. It will lose all its business. Is that what we want? I do not think that it is but others may disagree. Also, one of the values of having the Commons just across the corridor is the interaction between Members of the Commons and your Lordships. That will go if one House is in the Queen Elizabeth II Centre and the other is in the former Department of Health However, I have a deeper worry which noble Lords may or may not share. Having sat in a marginal seat, one is perhaps even more conscious of this. My deep worry is that there is in my view almost an ugly atmosphere in society at the moment. It was best described in a book by Jan Zielonka, professor of European politics at Oxford University, which was reviewed in the Financial Times. The article underlined his deep concern about the current order. It stated that, "liberal democracy and neo-liberal economics, migration and a multicultural society, historical ‘truths’ and political correctness, moderate political parties and mainstream media", are all under considerable pressure Finally—