No. 1 Millbank (Hansard, 13 March 1989)

§ 60. Mr. Thurnham
To ask the right hon. Member for Selby, as representing the Church Commissioners, if he will make a statement about the progress of the building work at No. 1 Millbank.

§ Mr. Alison
Work is progressing well, and the new accommodation for commercial letting is expected to be complete by the beginning of 1990. The commissioners have recently accepted an offer for the tenancy of that accommodation and it is hoped that the Church of England pension board will take up its new accommodation in the Millbank complex in May this year.

§ Mr. Thurnham
Will my right hon. Friend give further consideration to my previous question about moving Church Commissioners' offices to areas of high unemployment? Will he ask those responsible for security whether No. 1 Millbank would be of use as secure accommodation for Members of Parliament with fears about security?

§ Mr. Alison
My hon. Friend will understand that the leaders of the Church of England, whether lay or ordained, clerical or episcopal, need to be relatively close to the centre of state power. It is, after all, an established Church. My hon. Friend might start a systematic programme of questions to see whether we might relocate Parliament and Whitehall, but until he succeeds in that respect we must leave the Church Commissioners where they are.

§ Mr. Frank Field
Might not the Government take the Church more seriously on the need to rebuild the inner cities if it moved its headquarters to such a site?

§ Mr. Alison
No. 1 Millbank could be entirely rebuilt if it were possible to evacuate both the pensions board and the Church Commissioners to a location such as Church House, but Church House as at present constructed is not large enough to accommodate the General Synod as well as the pensions board and the Commissioners. For that reason, it would be difficult to find a building into which to decant the present occupants while No. 1 Millbank was reconstructed. That is the basic problem.