Lord Colgrain (Con)

My Lords, before I address the report, will noble Lords allow me to digress a little? My interest in this building and, subsequently, R&R came about when I was a member of your Lordships’ Finance Committee. There were two incidents while I was a member that made me realise: there are some fundamental issues that we are all going to have to overcome. The first was when we were looking at Big Ben and the very significant overrun on the budget. I forget the exact figures; I think that the original budget was £24 million and that we finished up at about £80 million. One of the questions we asked was: why are there such overruns on things such as the stonework? We thought that these were relatively straightforward matters to be investigated. Why had they not been using things such as cherry-pickers to look behind the stone to see whether water had ingressed and there was decay? We were told that cherry-pickers could not be used because of the peregrines nesting on the tower. When it was pointed out that peregrines nest for only three months of the year—so, what was wrong with the other nine months?—we did not get an answer. We realised that perhaps a little more work could be done in that regard. The second incident was to do with Westminster Hall. I was up on the roof talking to the workmen there. Noble Lords may recall that the cupola was damaged by a bomb during the Second World War. They were trying to extract it or work on it, and it became a much more complex issue than they had appreciated. They had to take gas bottles up on to the roof but, in order to comply with health and safety regulations, they had to take the gas bottles down off the roof at the end of every working day. This meant that, for a variety of reasons, the gas bottles were being used for only two hours during the eight-hour day. When we asked whether it was possible to have an exemption so that they could be kept up there, the answer was no. Again, I found myself thinking, “We’re going to need a certain amount of change in our working practice in the whole Palace”. This goes back to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, about Notre-Dame. I went there about 18 months ago, and was there at 10 pm. Behind the hoardings I could hear the noise of all the workmen, who were working 24 hours a day. When R&R came about, the suggestion was made by the Finance Committee that it might be possible to see whether we could have workmen on site here 24 hours a day, but that was pooh-poohed. It was out of the question; it was not going to happen. I wonder why. There is something generally wrong with our approach. Let me come back to Notre-Dame for a second. A senior military man was given that role because it was seen as a major logistical exercise. Again, there is probably a lesson there for us—I will come back to that in a second on the actual report. It is also heartening to know that the senior carpenter, who was using medieval tools to do the axe work on the central part of the spire, was an Englishman. That is rather gratifying. I am sorry for digressing too much.