Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)

My Lords, it is an accepted tradition that we do not disclose security information and the costs. Costs on this have been available to Members on the relevant committees, so they were available—and I will probably be sacked later for giving the costs anyway. Given that there was this degree of suspicion about the costs—some of the figures were inflated—and because the door has not been working, it was the view of the commission yesterday that it was important that the costs were made available to Members, so that they have accurate information. When we spend that much money on something that does not work, the key thing is that it is resolved, and that is what I am focused on. On the new joint department, it is really important going forward that we have the right expertise and the right knowledge. There are things that went wrong here that should be used to inform further decisions, and engaging Members on all these decisions is really important. However, when we engage Members, there are, dare I say it, two Members and three opinions, and a wide spread of views around the House, and sometimes we have to say no to Members because we cannot say yes to everybody. There is a danger that we try to please everybody and end up pleasing nobody. The words “lessons learned” are currently banned from my office, but there are some points here that we can take away and use to resolve these issues, so that we do not have the same problems in the future. The important thing is to get this joint department up and running, with the proper oversight, and to ensure we have proper and workable security arrangements that protect all of those who work in the Palace and that do the job they are supposed to do.