Lord Lisvane (CB)

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and her Amendment 9. With the then Clerk of the Parliaments, I commissioned the first ever condition and survey of the Palace in October 2011. That reported in March 2012; its principal conclusion was that doing nothing was not an option, and that was 13 years ago. I am deeply frustrated that nothing, or very little, has been done since then. If there is some catastrophic event of fire, structure, electricity or water supply, those years of indecision will be partly to blame. This amendment is based on the happy assumption that we finally get R&R going. But when we do, the last thing we need is for the construction of the memorial and learning centre to be a new obstacle to R&R. I will very briefly revisit a point I made in Committee. At the north end of Victoria Tower Gardens is the Parliamentary Education Centre, which the noble Baroness mentioned briefly. It has been hugely successful in introducing young people to Parliament. As the then corporate officer of the House of Commons, I was the applicant for the planning permission for the centre. That permission ran out on 22 August last year. It has been extended to 2030, but when it runs out and the Parliamentary Education Centre is demolished, that will be a major works project in itself, and it will happen at the very time when the Holocaust memorial and learning centre is being constructed. Whatever difficulties of safety, security and access may be presented by that project, they will be substantially increased by the demolition of the Parliamentary Education Centre and the heavy traffic involved. It is all the more important that the authorities of the two Houses—in practice probably the corporate officers—should be satisfied that R&R will not be impeded. This amendment would achieve that aim.