PUBLIC BUILDINGS EXPENSES BILL. (Hansard, 7 August 1913)

§ THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (EARL BEAUCHAMP)
My Lords, this is a small Departmental Bill to deal with the surplus which we have under the Finance Act of 1908. We were exceptionally and quite unexpectedly fortunate in being able to get the building, which many of your Lordships will have seen is now being put up in Great George-street completing the Local Government Board building, erected for a much lower tender than we expected we should get it done for. The consequence is that we have a surplus, and we are desirous of spending that surplus upon the three buildings mentioned in the Schedule to the present Bill. First there is the Home Office Industrial Museum, where we shall show safety appliances for use in mines and factories. These will be used for the instruction of workpeople and employers, and also factory inspectors. Secondly there is the Admiralty extension, in connection with which we shall be able to pull down two rather disreputable buildings in 1729 Whitehall. Lastly there is the College of Art, which at present is housed in particularly unsuitable buildings at South Kensington. We shall be able to re-erect the new College of Art on a triangular site, also probably familiar to your Lordships, of freehold empty houses just opposite the further end of the South Kensington Museum, which we have bought. There we shall find accommodation for a School of Art, a students' common room, and other accommodation.

§ VISCOUNT ST. ALDWYN
My Lords, I think that this requires a little more explanation than the noble Earl has been good enough to give us, because of the sum involved. There was an estimate of £600,000 for these new buildings, which, as he has said, are now being erected. It seems that that estimate was so far from accurate that they secured a contract for the erection of the buildings for £145,000 less than was estimated. One can understand a favourable contract being made for something less than an estimate, but has anybody ever heard of such a difference as that? The estimate must have been entirely wrong. I should like to know who made it, and on what grounds it was accepted, because the result is that Parliament has been induced, on what I must call something like a false estimate, to vote £600,000 when only about £450,000 was really required.

§ EARL BEAUCHAMP
The estimate was the best that could be done in the Office of Works at the time of which I am speaking, which was a good many years ago now, and it was only natural that those responsible at that time should do their best to make every possible allowance so that there should be no over-spending in the end. I think that it is usual in circumstances of that kind that people should rather err on the side of making too large than too small an estimate. That will no doubt be especially the case in years where there is a sufficiency of money in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer which may be used for such a purpose. One should also remember that at that moment there were these new methods of construction just coming into view, as to which people were not quite certain what the total cost would be. 1730 We were in considerable difficulty with regard to that point in the construction which is now going on, but I am glad to say we think that we see our way out of the difficulty with which at one time we were threatened. Beyond saving that it was an excess in the estimate at the beginning I do not know that I am able to give the noble Viscount any further satisfaction.