HC Deb 28 July 1978 vol 954 cc2121-33

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House approves the Fifth Report from the Select Committee on House of Commons (Services) in the present session of Parliament (House of Commons Paper No. 483) on New Building for Parliament.—[Mr. Foot.]

3.53 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)

It is no secret that the vexatious subject of accommodation for Parliament has preoccupied the House since the last war. There have been constant Questions. The matter has erupted from time to time with debates in the House, the appointment of special committees and innumerable schemes.

Our thoughts today are not directed purely for the convenience of the legislators. They are outnumbered here by about four to one by the staff who serve us, often in appalling conditions. Indeed, the Acts that the House has passed to ensure decent working conditions cannot often be applied to the Palace. The Services Committee is almost continually in session to grapple with the day-to-day problems. I am told that the accommodation section of that Committee has sat formally 75 times in this Parliament. Never a day goes by without some new problem arising.

We have contrived to make the best use of what we have. Over the years we have infilled many of the courts of this Palace. We have then crammed far too many Members and other people into the small rooms that we have provided. Huts have grown up on every flat roof. Indeed, we can all see that we have blocked all the windows on the east side of the Chamber, and we have done worse in other places. We have pushed people out into a haphazard collection of outbuildings, and that is both an inefficient and a most costly process. I submit that we have now reached the end of the road.

It is true that in those days long ago—more than 21 years ago—when I came here, some of us managed with one-third of a secretary. The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) did even better. He did not have one at all. All of us had only a small cupboard in which to keep our papers. I believe that that was a relic of the days when Members had to have somewhere to put their silk hat and a couple of copies of Hansard, in Disraeli's time.

Mr. Russell Kerr (Feltham and Heston)

And their lunch.

Mr. Cooke

Possibly that, too.

Newer Members had to kneel on the floor outside the Whips' Office to get at the lower row of cupboards. Some can still be seen to do so—though there may be some other reason why they are kneeling on the floor outside the Whips' Office. I do not have the benefit of advice on that matter from my right hon. Friend the Opposition Chief Whip.

However, returning to the serious aspect of the matter, times have changed and the much increased staff who are so necessary here have to be housed. In an age in which the Government and their agencies touch every aspect of life, a Member of Parliament must have the resources with which to tackle the Government on equal terms. The people that Members need to help them cannot all be accommodated in this House.

We once thought that the completion of Barry's original scheme round New Palace Yard was the answer, but that—and a similar proposal in that style added on to the north end of the Palace—was condemned by almost all on aesthetic grounds, quite apart from the cost. Next came a scheme for building round the Courtyard in modern style. That, too, bit the dust without even a debate in the House.

Having probably wisely abandoned all those schemes, our attention was turned, and is now turned, to across the road. For many years we have owned what is known as the Bridge Street site. As part of the Whitehall plan, which hon. Members who have been in the House for some time will remember—this vast document which I am holding—which would have resulted in the wiping out of everything in Whitehall from Richmond Terrace to Parliament Square, a new parliamentary building competition produced the Spence and Webster proposal for a stark, modernistic, glass-covered block on Bridge Street. This had few friends outside the House and it, too, has passed into history.

There then arises the question what to do next. That is the subject of this report. I want straight away to read out just two very short paragraphs which are absolutely vital. The first concerns the guidelines which we have laid down for anything that we might do on Bridge Street. Paragraph 50 states: We recognise that Bridge Street is one of the most sensitive sites in London. Nothing should be built there which in any way detracts from or seeks to dominate the historic Palace of Westminster. No assertive, intrusive, monolithic slab can be contemplated. The materials to be used should be appropriate to the site and neighbouring buildings. There, fair and square, we state that the exterior of anything that we seek to do there is all-important.

Nor do we want anything that is done there for the House to blight or sterilise that neighbourhood. That was one of the chief criticisms of the Spence and Webster building. I quote paragraph 51 of the report: We are anxious that the restoration and replacement of buildings on the Bridge Street site should extend, improve and enrich the existing public amenities of the neighbourhood. Here is an opportunity to bring new life into a comparatively desolate part of Westminster. It is no part of our thoughts that Parliament should be isolated or insulated from the people.

The Committee believes that it is to the Bridge Street site that we should turn. Anything that we do there must be linked—

It being Four o'clock the debate stood adjourned.

Ordered, That the Motions relating to House of Commons (Services) may be proceeded with at this day's sitting, though opposed, until any hour. [Mr. Foot.]

Mr. Cooke

Anything that is done on that site must be linked, as it can be, by modern means underground and by lifts at each end of an underground link, so that there is no real physical or psychological barrier between it and this Palace. If the accommodation over there is to succeed, we must avoid the feeling of such a barrier.

There are a number of listed buildings on the site. The House can take considerable credit for occupying Norman Shaw North and giving it a permanent use. Now we are also occupying the south block, although in somewhat modest circumstances.

Norman Shaw South and the Whitehall Club—formerly the Welsh Office—are the two principal listed buildings. We believe that they should be retained for certain—as well as such other buildings, some of which are listed, as can be incorporated in new work. The Parliament Street houses are well worth considering here, although it is not for the Committee to make a judgment at this stage and we should wish to be guided by our architectural experts.

We believe that this site should be considered as a whole and that a scheme should be drawn up for consideration by the House and with the benefit of public opinion, as indeed has already been the case with this report, which was launched at a much-advertised press conference and has been followed by a visit of representatives of all the national amenity societies to the buildings on the site.

The scheme that we envisage is the rebuilding, by stages but to a coherent plan, of the Bridge Street site for parliamentary purposes. The work could proceed by stages as required with such internal arrangements as were then required, but all would be behind a coherent exterior, which, when completed, would complement and not dominate this Palace and the rest of Parliament Square.

To achieve that, we need the assistance of the best possible architectural advice. The Committee, for the reasons set out most fully in paragraph 53 onwards, unhesitatingly recommends the present president of the Royal Academy, Sir Hugh Casson, to undertake this work. He will have, of course, the benefit of years of study of the site by the Department of the Environment and he will also be in direct contact with the client, the House of Commons, through the Services Committee. We believe that this partnership can develop plans to meet Parliament's changing needs.

Apart from Sir Hugh's proposed professional relationship with the Department of the Environment, it is proposed that he should also be appointed a special adviser to the Select Committee. Hence the second motion on the Order Paper.

We believe that these proposals will avoid the fatal pitfall of all previous attempts—that is, designs produced on an increasingly out-of-date brief, in isolation from the client's changing needs.

Today we are asking the House to give us approval to go away and work out proposals to be submitted to the House—and here I might say that all suggestions would be most welcome. We have a number of hon. Members who take a most personal interest in these matters. Indeed, I see the Leader of the House sitting opposite me. He and many of his colleagues have given us considerable interest and encouragement. But no Select Committee can do a job on its own, and any hon. Member who has a bright idea should certainly send it to us as soon as possible so that it can be thought about with a view to incorporation in the scheme to be worked out.

If the House approves our report today, I can undertake that within a month the first preliminary meeting will take place between the consultant architect, the architect from the Department of the Environment and a representative of the Select Committee, and that no effort will be spared to produce the answers to Parliament's urgent need. We believe that a successful rebuild of most of the Bridge Street site can bring untold benefits to Parliament, and we must not forget that it will result in the rehabilitation and enhancement of this overcrowded Palace.

Your Committee, with the willing help and support of the Department of the Environment, has, I believe, already had some success in restoring the more important rooms and public areas in the Commons part of the Palace to something of their proper character, but we have always been frustrated by immense pressures of overcrowding. A successful rebuild of Bridge Street can bring the greatest benefit to Parliament, to all those hundreds who serve it, and indirectly to all those millions we seek to serve. Fine buildings do not guarantee good government, but we are not in any case proposing a palace—far from it. We seek only to provide the basic essentials.

I hope that, even perhaps on this very last Friday of what may be the end of this Parliament, we are capable of looking into the future, even if it is an uncertain future in which some of us may not be called to play a part. At least it will not be said by our successors that we stood idly by and did nothing.

4.8 p.m.

Mr. Paul Hawkins (Norfolk, South-West)

I have had the honour to serve on the Select Committee since its inception in November 1974. It is another Committee of which one's constituents have little knowledge nor know how much work it does. The press knows little about it either.

I congratulate the Leader of the House on the way he presides over our meetings. He does it with great charm. I have never known anyone despatch business with such speed, at least recently. I must also add my congratulations, which I think will be echoed by hon. Members opposite, to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke), Chairman of the Accommodation Sub-Committee, with whom I have had the great pleasure of serving, on the immense amount of work that he has done for the whole House. Without exception, his drive, initiative and leadership have produced much very worthwhile improvement. The decorations and atmosphere really have been done with great care and have produced something very different from the House I entered in 1964.

Perhaps I may add a brief reminiscence about those days. The only accommodation I had for the first six months for my papers was one of those small lockers. Mine was strategically placed outside the door of the Dining Room. As I was kneeling there one day trying to put some things inside—I think I had only a bowler hat and some papers—one of the waitresses came along and, not seeing my feet, went clean over with a whole tray of soup and goodness knows what.

After that, I handed my key to the Serjeant at Arms and began even more vociferously to demand a filing cabinet. Then came the great occasion when I was allocated a filing cabinet, but it was in the gentlemen's cloakroom and the Serjeant at Arms—not the present Serjeant of Arms, of course—did not permit me to allow my secretary to go in there to file my papers.

From that moment onwards I began to take an interest in the services of the House, and I must say that the improvements that have been carried out by all Governments and members of the Services Committee since that day have resulted in far more easy working conditions such as we badly need in this place.

But now we have crammed as much as we can into this building. What we want is to be able to work as close to the Chamber and to this building as possible, and also we want to have our necessary services, our secretaries and other services, close at hand. I believe that this plan, after all those other plans, for utilising the area on the other side of Bridge Street will prove thoroughly worth while. We shall have the service of one of the most sympathetic, delightful and excellent architects that we could ever have the luck to work with, and I am sure that a plan will be produced to serve us and those who follow us here in the years ahead, enabling them to carry on their business in a far better and more convenient way than so many hon. Members have been able to manage in the past.

I end by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West for the way in which he introduced his report and for the immense amount of hard work which went into it. I sincerely hope that we shall see the plan come to fruition before long.

4.13 p.m.

Mr. Roger Sims (Chislehurst)

I served on the Services Committee and its Accommodation Sub-Committee from November 1974 until March this year, at which time that Sub-Committee was beginning its inquiries which have led to the present report. Therefore, although I have not been involved in the report itself, I may well appreciate more than most other hon. Members do the great deal of work which went into its preparation. I congratulate all responsible for it.

The need for additional accommodation is well summed up in paragraph 35, which points out that much of the accommodation which we now have is sub-standard, either because of the nature of the historic building which cannot be altered or because too many people are trying to work too closely together. That is absolutely true, and the need for Members to have proper accommodation in which to work is just as important as the question of remuneration which we discussed earlier today.

This is an imaginative report with some first-class ideas in it. I am attracted by the proposal for new facilities at street level referred to in paragraph 51— A Public House and more extensive places of refreshment than exist at present will be needed". I make no comment on the present catering facilities in this building when I say that I am sure most hon. Members would welcome the opportunity to have some alternative facilities reasonably near at hand.

I endorse what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) and I wish to express on behalf of Back Benchers and Front Benchers on both sides, I am sure, our thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke), for all the fine effort he has put into the work of the Committee and the production of the report. The House has been particularly fortunate in having my hon. Friend handling these matters. He has applied his appreciation, his knowledge, his energy and his enthusiasm to this Palace not only for the benefit of us who are its users now but for the benefit also of future generations for whom it will be, as it is indeed for us, part of our heritage.

I know better than do most hon. Members the enormous amount of time, work and energy that my hon. Friend has devoted to our interests, not only in the meetings of the Accommodation Sub-Committee that take place virtually every Wednesday morning when the House is sitting but in the many hours of the day and night that he has spent in and around the building working on our behalf to improve the facilities and the building. I should like to put on record on behalf of us all our thanks and to express the hope that he will continue, in some capacity, to be able to contribute to the preservation and improvement of our heritage in future.

4.15 p.m.

Mr. Victor Goodhew (St. Albans)

Having served for the shortest time of any hon. Member of the Sub-Committee, I shall speak for the shortest time in the debate. I can claim no credit for what is in the report, but I endorse every word in it and I also endorse the remarks of my hon. Friends about the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke), who led the Sub-Committee with great aplomb. Much credit is due to him for the fact that the Services Committee has produced a report that will serve the House well for many years. I thank him for his work and congratulate the other members of the Sub-Committee who worked so hard under his leadership.

4.16 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot)

I join other hon. Members in their tributes to the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke). I do not believe that the House has any idea of the enormous amount of work he has done as Chairman of the Accommodation Sub-Committee to assist hon. Members in all parts of the House and to improve the facilities provided for them. I pay tribute not only to the work he has done as Chairman of the Sub-Committee but to the work he projects for the future by the report which he presented to the Services Committee and which carries the full backing of that Committee.

Thanks to the way that the hon. Gentleman has approached the matter, we now have a better approach than anything we have had before, and I express my personal gratitude to him for the way in which he has conducted all that work. The whole House and, therefore, the country owe him a great debt.

The recent history of the way we have attempted to deal with this question has not been a fortunate one. At least five schemes for major additions to parliamentary accommodation adjoining the Palace of Westminster have been abandoned during the past 25 years. Despite the remarkable ingenuity that has been shown in successive schemes for infilling, we are well aware of the continuing unsatisfactory nature of the accommodation for hon. Members and the staff of the House. The report before us marks a good first step towards the use of the Bridge Street site in a way that is worthy of the situation. This will be a significant contribution towards meeting the developing needs of the House and the supporting services we require.

I emphasise, so that no one should be under any misapprehension, that at this stage approval of the motions would commit the House only to the drawing up of a plan for the development of the Bridge Street site for parliamentary purposes. By proceeding by this method, we are learning from what happened or did not happen in the past.

I am sure that I express the gratitude of the House as a whole when I thank Sir Hugh Casson for the indication of his willingness to assist the House in this matter. I have no doubt that he would proceed with the utmost practicable speed and with the energy and enthusiasm to which reference is made in the report. We would be entrusting to him a formidable task, and it is bound to take some time.

If the House agrees to the motion, it will be only when Sir Hugh's plans have been drawn up and are known to hon. Members that we shall need to come to a decision whether to approve them and whether a start should be made. I emphasise that at this stage we are concerned only with the proposal to put in hand the preparation for a general scheme which will need the approval of the House before building starts.

Before this debate, I turned up the previous debate on the subject, to which I refer briefly. It should be a lesson to us all. There was a debate on the new parliamentary building on 25th June 1973. Some hon. Members may recall it. The House, in its alleged wisdom, decided to proceed with the approval of the scheme which had been drawn up by the architects to whom the hon. Gentleman has referred. I cast no reflection upon the architects. I know that that is a very dangerous game, even in the privacy and with the privilege of the House of Commons.

I recall the occasion because some of us, led in particular by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heifer), who as a practical builder knew what he was talking about, sought to warn the House about what was proposed. If that plan had gone ahead, we would have committed an outrage on one of the most famous sites in the centre of London. We would have have perpetrated some of the same things that have happened, alas, in other parts of this great city. We learnt from that. That scheme was adopted with a thumping majority in 1973. I am glad to boast that I was in the minority then. It shows how things change and how, if the minority sticks to its arguments, eventually it may finish by proposing something better, because that is what we are doing.

We are proposing to deal with this site over the months and years ahead in a much more sensitive manner. In my opinion, all good architecture should have the quality of good manners. When a new building is to intrude in an area such as Parliament Square, it should do so with some decency and delicacy. I do not believe that that applied to the proposition which we were considering in 1973 and which the House hailed as a great step forward. We stopped that great step forward, and what we are proposing now is that we should proceed in a much more intelligent way.

I believe that we have the chance of providing on Bridge Street buildings worthy of the site and buildings which can assist Members of Parliament in doing their job. We shall need those buildings whatever happens. I have always taken the simple view that the best way to deal with the accommodation problems we have in this House would be to take over the House of Lords. It is just an additional reason for doing so. Many of our problems could be swiftly solved if we did that. I cannot expect to carry that motion at the end of this Session. We do not have the time to get it through. The proposal of the hon. Member for Bristol, West and this recommendation from the Services Committee do not in any way exclude the other possibility of dealing with our accommodation problems, and a few other subsidiary political problems, by taking over the other place.

Mr. Robert Cooke

I do not like to destroy the unanimity which seems to have broken out all over the Chamber, but the last remark by the Lord President calls for a brief intervention. In the report, to which he is a signatory, it is made absolutely clear that an attack on the other end of the building would not solve our problems. To have hon. Members sitting at small tables in the Royal Gallery or the Prince's Chamber or the Robing Room and such places would not help us very much. Even if the Chamber of the House of Lords was turned into a meeting room for party committees, I believe that hon. Members would feel rather uncomfortable and over-awed by it. Although the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to make his playful remarks, the serious aspect is that even if we did take over the other end of the building it would not solve our problems.

Mr. Foot

That is why I was so careful in my remarks to say that these two schemes were not exclusive. One does not exclude the other. I have emphasised that we need to do this in any case. That does not alter the fact that, even with this scheme, our ambitions would not be exhausted. I wanted to make that clear.

I conclude on a note of unanimity by once again thanking the hon. Member for Bristol, West for the great contribution that he has made to ensuring that we shall provide proper facilities for all the people who work in this place, whether Members of Parliament or the staff who serve us.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House approves the Fifth Report from the Select Committee on House of Commons (Services) in the present session of Parliament (House of Commons Paper No. 483) on New Buildings for Parliament.