Contribution
I extend my thanks to the Senior Deputy Speaker and his office for the time they spent with me following my Question for Written Answer on this subject; I worded my Question loosely but they were most helpful in ensuring that I was provided with all the information I sought.
I congratulate all concerned on the annual progress report before us today. It is clearly presented and provides most of the details likely to be asked about by Members of both Houses, including a layman such as me. There are three particular questions that I would like to ask. The first relates to funds expended, which have been mentioned many times already this afternoon. I hugely appreciate and applaud the work undertaken over many years by the four Peers sitting in front of me.
The subject of R&R has been discussed in one guise or another since 2016, when substantial costs started being incurred. When I submitted a Written Question in July 2022, I was told that the costs paid for by the Lords since 2014 were then £58 million, made up of staff costs of £7 million and contractors’ costs of £51 million. I was also told that the then Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body and the then restoration and renewal delivery authority had run up costs of £212 million for the two years between 2020 and 2022, which included £33 million in salary costs and £151 million in contractors’ costs. I have now been told, in a Written Answer dated 8 January, that the investment to date in the R&R programme totals £377 million, with a further £91 million authorised for the current financial year. To date, therefore, Parliament—or, rather, the taxpayer—has incurred actual forecast costs of approximately £450 million, a sum of money that is almost impossible to comprehend.
What do we have to show for this? Under “Key Milestones” on page 28 of the report, we are told that R&R surveys are ongoing, as are early and enabling works design and decant plans. All these were in train when your Lordships previously voted for and agreed to a full decant. We are also told that the strategic plan is published again, and the budget is approved again. Since the Palace design options are ongoing and neither costed proposals nor an invitation to tender for the works has been initiated, does it not seem that the budget is optimistic, it being so located in the report without a very heavy qualification?
Unless the Executive in the Commons commit to initiating the plan, we are going around in circles, albeit ever-deceasing ones. Given the current Government’s self-imposed budget restraints, is there a realistic possibility of this initiation happening? I and many others had hoped that the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris would have prompted the then Government into action, since we know that this building is a fire hazard and that if it was any other building in the country, it would be closed as being unsafe. If authority for R&R is agreed, does the current composition of the management team and its structure lend itself to a senior industrialist at its head? That is what would be needed for there to be any chance of R&R being executed on time or on budget, unless we follow the French example.
Would, for example, Sir Alastair Morton, favoured by Margaret Thatcher on Eurotunnel and later John Prescott on Railtrack, consider that he could work with the delivery board’s expenditure, scrutinised by R&R client teams, House finance teams, the delivery authority board, the R&R programme board, the R&R client board and the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission? Can the Senior Deputy Speaker indicate how this structure can be made sufficiently commercial such that the plan can be enacted when a positive vote for full R&R comes about?