REDEVELOPMENT OF WHITEHALL

HL Deb 22 December 1965 vol 271 cc1062-74

3.24 p.m.

EARL JELLICOErose to call attention to the reports by Sir Leslie Martin and Mr. Colin Buchanan on the redevelopment of Whitehall; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, my purpose in moving this Motion this afternoon is very simple. We have all seen great changes in London since the war. We have seen some marvellous opportunities missed and some great monstrosities perpetrated. Now a major change is impeding for the whole Westminster area. These changes could further dignify and embellish some of the most precious acres in this country. Or they could irretrievably mar them. I am very glad that Sir Leslie Martin and Professor Buchanan were invited to report on this vital matter. No better men, I think, could have been chosen and they could not have produced a better Report. I recommend it to your Lordships as this year's best Christmas bargain, marvellously produced book, worth £2 10s.—for your Lordships, quite free.

Sir Leslie Martin rightly says in the Report: Final decisions and choices are ultimately for the Government and others". There are many others, including not least the Civic Trust who have already played a valuable part in focusing public attention on these Reports. But first among the "others" is Parliament, and especially your Lordships' House. We usually make quite a good fist of these things and, myself excluded, I am certain that we shall make a good fist of them to-day, not least because there are following me two planner-achitects of international reputation. So, very conscious of my lay status in these matters, I shall plunge straight in and concentrate my remarks on the first six recommendations of Sir Leslie Martin's Report, which are to be found on pages 5 and 6 of the Report. Perhaps I should remind those noble Lords who find this layman hard to follow that there is a model illustrating the scheme in the Royal Gallery now, by the kind arrangement of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison.

We are told in the first recommendation that we now have the chance to give this whole area of London a new and better environment. Clearly, we should try not to lose this chance. We have bungled far too many opportunities in London since the war. Just look at that tired straggle ofgamma-minusbuildings from Lambeth Bridge to Vauxhall Bridge across the river. Let us do what we now have to do in Whitehall and do it really well. Then there is the second and vital recommendation that we can create the right environment here only if we plan to draw off progressively all irrelevant traffic from Whitehall and more especially from Parliament Square. I hope we can all cordially agree that Parliament Square should be a place in which the student can stroll and the politician potter. We really ought not to have to court suicide underneath a 59A every time we try to cross New Palace Yard. But platonic agreement with Martin and Buchanan is one thing. Willing the means and the money is quite another.

We were told, I think last July, that the Greater London Council were being asked to have an urgent look at the two proposals which, when they were executed, could immediately draw off some 70 per cent. of the traffic through Parliament Square. The first of these proposals is for a riverside tunnel along the Embankment outside this Palace of Westminster. I know there are some, and they include some very distinguished people, who feel that the tunnel scheme could spoil the lovely view from the South Bank of this Palace of Westminster, rising, as it does, like Venus from the incestuous embrace of Father Thames. But can the noble Lord tell us how far this examination of the scheme is going? Is it feasible? Does it need possibly extending farther South? And if this is a good scheme—and I personally am inclined to think that it may be—should we not consider promoting it a little higher on the Martin batting order?

I also hope that the noble Lord can tell us about the Horseferry Road proposals. They are pretty big beer, as Professor Buchanan feels that a dual three-way highway may be needed in this area. Is this, in the Government's view, really a starter? Whilst I am on the question of the traffic implications of the Report, could I ask the noble Lord: are the Government happy about the interim proposal which would mean that there would be a lot more traffic surging around the South-East rim, the rim nearer the House, of St. James's Park? What about the more far-reaching traffic implications of the Buchanan Report?

The third clutch of recommendations are simpler; no competition for the Abbey and these Houses of Parliament from new tall buildings—cordially agreed, so far as I am concerned. No change in the outward appearance of this Palace of Westminster—agreed again. Finally, the preservation of almost all the finest buildings in Whitehall. I certainly do not quarrel with what is on the list, but I am worried about some of the omissions. I assume that poor, neglected Richmond Terrace is to go; and I shall have a little more to say about the Foreign Office building in a few moments. But I should like to put in a special plea for Gwydyr House. But, generally speaking, as one would expect from Sir Leslie Martin, I should feel that the preservation balance in Whitehall has been quite fairly struck.

The next recommendation is that the Bridge Street site, to one's right as one comes over Westminster Bridge should be reserved for the new Parliamentary building and for proposed new Government offices, and that the Broad Sanctuary site, at the West end of Parliament Square, should be earmarked for a large new building for a number of purposes. The Bridge Street site is, I think, a pretty sorry mess at present, and I, for one, rather like the look of the new proposals for it. They have the special measure of consigning to a deserved limbo the Select Committee's neo-Gothic aberration. But since the other place do sometimes indulge in these flights of fancy, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to tell us this afternoon that this House will be given a proper opportunity of making its views known on the designs of the whole of this Bridge Street site, not only the Parliamentary building, but this important office building as well.

I am a good deal less happy about the Broad Sanctuary scheme. It would sweep away that charming building, the Middlesex Guildhall. Surely we should find some appropriate, and perhaps Parliamentary use for that building. It would also mean that two unborn buildings of great potential promise would never see the light of day. Instead we should get a large general-purpose building. One of the purposes of that building would be to provide a major international conference centre. We may need one, but I wonder whether it is wise to plonk it down just around the corner from Whitehall. And would the great, wide, windy new Parliament Square that we should thereby create be better than the two rather more intimate affairs that we have at present? I confess that this layman just does not know. But what I do know is that these particular proposals could well do with a considerable amount of further study.

The fifth set of recommendations are, in my view, the most debatable of all. I like the proposal to develop the whole area around and behind Central Hall. A good new scheme there could improve a rather scrappy area. But it will clearly need to be related to what is decided eventually about the Broad Sanctuary site. However, I must confess that at first sight, I am far from enamoured of the plan for a larger residential block of flats—some 450 bed-sitters for M.P.s —stretching between Great Peter Street and Great College Street right down to the river. I wonder whether the 450 M.P.s themselves would want to be herded together in this Parliamentary dormitory? This artificial fence across Millbank would close a good view of the entrance to Parliament Square. It would also lop off a large chunk of the enlarged Victoria Tower Gardens. Above all, I find it hard to see how it could be reconciled with the character of Lord North Street and of those other lovely Georgian enclaves to the North of it. I hope that the noble Lord can tell us that the Government are in no wise committed at the moment to this particular project.

This brings me to perhaps the most important and most debatable single proposal, the plan to build a vast Ziggurat of (I think they have been termed) Government offices on the sites now occupied by Scott's Palmerstonian Foreign Office and the Edwardian building next door—that empire on the corner of Great George Street over which Dame Evelyn Sharp, with a little help, or hindrance, from Mr. Crossman, now reigns. I am on a bit of a spot here, having had, against my better taste, to defend the last Government's decision to knock down the whole Foreign Office building. Having this weight of former guilt lying rather heavily on my shoulders, I cannot press this point as hard as I should like to. But even at this late hour, I hope the Government will at least pause before destroying one of the loveliest urban landscapes in the world, the view from St. James's Park towards the North-West facade of the Foreign Office building. Is there no possibility of preserving at least this North-West wing of the building?

Be that as it may, I am certain that I can press the Government not to commit themselves now, and without further inquiry, to the total scheme for this complex of Government offices at the South end of Whitehall. The two new buildings would together cover an area twice the size of Waterloo Station, and they would enclose nine Selfridges'. I wonder whether an architectural giant of this size would really lie down in architectural peace with this Palace and with the Abbey, which are of a quite different scale. We must remember, too, that this complex will be part and parcel of the new offices in Bridge Street, and linked to them by a bridge straddling and spanning the southern end of Whitehall. One would have thought that this umbilical cord hung over Whitehall must be bound to obstruct the views up and down it. Again, can the noble Lord give us the assurance that the Government are not yet committed to this bridging operation?

On purely æsthetic grounds, therefore, I would ask the Government to scratch their heads very hard indeed before they finally decide to pull down all of this great Victorian building, and this not unworthy Edwardian building. We rightly criticise our Victorian and Edwardian predecessors for the havoc they wrought to Georgian London. Before we, in our turn, destroy their better buildings, let us be absolutely certain that they will be replaced by something better.

There are also very serious planning problems involved here. The gravest problem, however, is the explosion of a vast population in Whitehall which this scheme would provoke. It would add another 10,000 or 12,000 to the 15,000 civil servants who already ply their pens in Whitehall. "That is quite all right", the Government seem to say. "We are only decanting civil servants into Whitehall from expensive outlying tenanted properties. We are not adding to the total number." But do the Government propose to stop other office workers moving into these vacated properties? If so, will the Government foot the resulting Bill for compensation? If not, would not this policy of deliberately provoking a dramatic increase of the office population at the heart of London be clean contrary to this Government's—and, indeed, the previous Government's—declared policy?

Finally, my Lords, there is the recommendation that a thorough study should be made of the Trafalgar Square area before we embark on radical changes at the North end of Whitehall. I am sure that this is absolutely right, and I trust that the noble Lord can tell us that the Government are commissioning such a study, preferably by this well-tried team of Martin and Buchanan. More plans are, I believe, incubating for Central London than at any other period in its history. Possibly the right answer might be to build, as Martin and Buchanan half suggest, a great northern extension of Whitehall, past Charing Cross, by Covent Garden, right as far as the British Museum, completely by-passing Trafalgar Square. It could be called, if it is started in the lifetime of the present Government, the "Boulevard Charles Pannell".

In any event, this area around the northern end of Whitehall has a key part to play in all these maturing plans. It could also, I believe, play a crucial part in the plans for the southern end of Whitehall. On both sides of Whitehall, near Trafalgar Square and in and around Northumberland Avenue, there is an absolute forest of fourth-rate architecture. Could we not take advantage of this if we decide to retain, say, a part of the Foreign Office building? If we hesitate to pull down the Great George Street building, if this site, therefore, becomes too small for Lord Gladwyn's new Ministry of External Affairs, might not the old ducal site of Northumberland House be the ideal place on which to build the newPalais Gladwyn?But, quite seriously, I trust that the Government will not proceed too far with their plans for this huge Government complex at the South end of Whitehall until we see whether part of it, at least, could be accommodated further to the North.

My Lords, much of what I have said may have sounded critical of these Reports. But that is not my intention. I believe that they will provide the general framework and discipline within which the shape of the new Whitehall will emerge. Yet this does not mean that the scheme, in all its particulars, should be regarded as immutable. What I would therefore urge is that we should now, at this moment, try to distinguish between what is indispensable and must be done straight away, and what is more debatable and longer-term. Let us, therefore, go ahead with the Bridge Street site scheme and, if it is sound, with the riverside tunnel scheme. But let the Government think very hard indeed before finally committing themselves, and all the rest of us, to the remainder of this great scheme at this stage.

In certain cases, we still need to know more facts. Do we really, for example, need to add a full division to the monstrous army of civil servants who already occupy Whitehall? In other instances, we may well need the fruits of further studies—for example, that on the possibilities around the northern pole of Whitehall. Moreover, where the Government are themselves the developers and the planning authority at one and the same time, we need to evolve some machinery by which the play of competing interests -—and there must be a great many competing interests and considerations involved here—can be resolved. Above all, we need to pool the best ideas and the best minds which can be brought to bear on this problem. To assist this cerebral process, I therefore believe—and I believe this very strongly—that the Government would be wise to hold a public inquiry, or a series of inquiries, preferably not of too judicial or too formal a character, into those aspects of this scheme which are debatable and longer-term. I hope that, with a little persuasion—I have seen some signs of it recently—the Government will come round to some such idea.

In conclusion, I can find no better text for what I have tried to say than some words from Professor Buchanan's Report,Traffic in TownsThis is what he said of Norwich; and I think it applies equally well to Whitehall: There is a great deal at stake; it is not a question of retaining a few old buildings, but of conserving, in the face of the onslaught of motor traffic, a major part of the heritage of the English-speaking world of which this country is the guardian.

My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.45 p.m.

LORD HOLFORD

My Lords, I had never intended to weary your Lordships with lengthy comments on this plan, and the timing of the Royal Commission at 4 o'clock fits in exactly with my own wish to be brief. I should therefore like to begin by saying that I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, not only for raising this Motion, but also for allowing me ample time for my few comments before the Royal Commission.

Your Lordships will, I think, understand me when I say that it is natural that I should have followed with very close interest the making of the Report on the preservation and change in Whitehall by Sir Leslie Martin and Professor Buchanan, and also that, knowing and respecting them both, I should welcome it now that it is made. I think this is the first time in nearly a century that the framework of a plan has been created for Parliament and for the headquarters of the Civil Service, for it was three years ago that the Minister of Public Building and Works in the last Government asked me to make what would be called, in the current jargon of the day, a feasibility study of the Bridge Street site, that is, the site immediately to our North. This site is bounded by Bridge Street on the South and by Richmond Terrace on the North side, and on the other two sides of the quadrilateral by Parliament Street and the Embankment.

He wanted to know, first, whether it was practicable, without damaging the views up and down Whitehall, or of the Houses of Parliament, or in fact of the riverside, to build there a moderate extension of the accommodation for Members of the House of Commons, and also a new building which in those days was intended for the Home Office; and to do this while retaining the buildings then occupied by Scotland Yard, and also rebuilding Cannon Row Police Station and some other police buildings, and some shops and service buildings. Secondly, the Minister wanted to know whether it was physically possible to augment the car parking in New Palace Yard by connecting it with an underground annex on the North side of Bridge Street. Those of your Lordships who can picture in your mind's eye the convolutions of the Metropolitan Line and other services, realise that this was not an easy matter to establish.

Finally, the Minister wanted to make certain that there was a case for acquiring certain property in private ownership in the Bridge Street site, on the assumption that a comprehensive rebuilding scheme for that site would be approved. And, of course, he wanted to know the order of cost of the whole project. I think I may say that I satisfied the Minister on these points. But, while I was undertaking a general survey of the site, I was making in fact a technical exercise, and certainly not an architectural design. However, when the Report was debated in another place, it was, I fear, treated as a design, although no designs had in fact ever been made. It was found inadequate on two counts in particular: first, it did not provide enough expansion space for Members of Parliament and, secondly, the scheme was not grand enough.

It was pointed out this was the last opportunity this century for an extension to the Palace of Westminster, and there was even a flirtation (as the noble Earl has commented) with the idea that this extension should be in the Gothic style. This flirtation was not followed by any formal engagement. I was personally, however, very relieved when the Minister decided that neither the extension of Parliament nor the redevelopment of the Bridge Street site should be considered, as it were, in isolation, but should be considered as an integral part of the centre of Government as a whole.

It was then that Sir Leslie Martin and Professor Buchanan were appointed. Now, at least, we have a plan, a plan for the whole of the Whitehall area. To me, this plan appears as a set of inter-connected ideas. First, there is the idea for circulation of traffic. I am not going to say, in view of the circulation of traffic problems of other parts of London and other cities in this country, whether this particular scheme should have the resources or the priorities that its authors are seeking for it. That is one of the questions of policy to which I shall come in a moment, but there is an idea here, and a very good one, for the circulation of traffic within Whitehall. Secondly, there is an idea for accommodation, or perhaps I should describe it as a system of accommodation, for Government offices. Thirdly, there is an idea for relating buildings and open spaces in the City of Westminster as a whole—a piece of urban scenery, if you like to call it so, preserving and enhancing the views and equipping the area to face the very strident demands of the 20th century.

I repeat that this is a plan; it is not a specification. The plan does not say that all the 40,000 civil servants working in Westminster shall be concentrated in Whitehall. It does show, however, how space for, at present 15,000 or so civil servants working in Whitehall itself could be increased for 26,000; in other words, how two-fifths of the total of civil servants in Westminster could be turned into three-fifths. Should that be the decision that the Government eventually take? There is a case, I submit, for a certain amount of concentration. In spite of what the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, has said about its being formidable, it is not really a very large increase and this is, after all, the centre of Government and the one place in the country where one would expect to find the highest and most efficient concentration of Government offices.

Always assuming that there is a decision to do so, and presumably to evacuate some of the outworn and more outlying offices in Westminster at present occupied, if that is taken as a decision of policy it seems to me that the next step is to get down to actual figures; and this is where Sir Leslie Martin's last recommendation regarding the area of Whitehall, including the old War Office site, should obviously be scrutinised in great detail. It would be ironical if, after the passing of the Control of Office and Industrial Development Act, we should have in fact the vacated offices of Government reoccupied, at possibly even a higher density than before.

Secondly, to give one other example, the plan does not say that the Foreign Office must be totally demolished forthwith. Instead it follows the brief which was provided by the Government, which was quite clear and told Sir Leslie Martin that the building should be regarded as eventually obsolete and eventually expendable. That was in his brief; it was not for him to say whether or not it should be demolished, but the plan did show how a new and much more rational system of Government office building could be started on the Bridge Street site, and if it were found to be a better system than that of the rather monumental Victorian buildings which it was replacing, that system could be extended across to the western side of Whitehall, or it could be modified, or in fact it could be superseded by an even better system in ten, twelve or fifteen years' time. In this regard, I think the plan is suggesting methods and systems based on a far more rational concept of how to house civil servants, how to work Government Departments, how to place conference rooms, than anything that we have had before because the last big survey of Whitehall really considered buildings with monumental outsides, with a few very important rooms inside, but the general average run of office and service accommodation was hardly considered at all.

In short, then, the plan is a framework that hangs together, and so long as it hangs together it can provide what I think is most badly needed—namely, something to guide decisions and choices. When we have seen the first development on the Bridge Street site we shall have a far more logical and clear idea of whether it is worth while to pull down the whole of the Foreign Office, to pull down part of it, or in fact to adapt it in certain parts to other uses; and I should like to corroborate what the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said about the particular value of the buildings facing St. James's Park. Meanwhile, it seems that a good deal of research and development is required, and I think it would be interesting if the noble Lord who is replying to this debate could indicate the manner in which the detailed briefs are to be considered and this research and development in fact begun.

There are many details in the plan which I think are open to question, as the noble Earl has just said. I myself find it difficult to see why we should preserve the Houses of Parliament with their riverside setting and then deprive them of an integral part of that setting, namely the River Thames—the reflections in the water, the privacy of the terrace and the feeling that the Palace stands open to the public on one side, but in partial retreat on the other. This is a valuable characteristic, which has been copied in other countries, and it seems to me a pity to take a public road across at ground level. If, however, it is taken in a tunnel, which is quite within the possibilities envisaged by the plan, obviously there must be a great deal of work done as to the level at which it will come out. It will possibly be much nearer the Tate Gallery than Lambeth Bridge, but this is an illustration of the kind of work that has to be done.

I conclude by suggesting that, although a general statement has already been made and could not be improved by a vast public inquiry at which all the ideas would be thrown into the air and it would be very difficult to reach a decision, it is nevertheless essential to have some means by which the individual parts of this scheme could in fact be considered in detail and carried forward. May I just say that I do not consider the scale of these proposals in Sir Leslie Martin's plan to be so vast. They are no more vast than the scale, for example, of Carlton House Terrace or Chester Terrace in Regent's Park; two Regency terraces, each 1,000 feet long; and if you take Sir Leslie's proposal, the whole length along the South side is precisely 1,000 feet. None of the buildings is proposed to be higher than 80 feet, and although personally I think we can do without the bridge over Whitehall, I am not in the least appalled about the scale of the proposition.

What does worry me is that during these last few years over 3 million square feet have been provided in commercial accommodation along Victoria Street and 1,900,000 square feet are to come, so 5 million square feet of new accommodation is being provided piecemeal, without relation to any great design and without in fact contributing at all to the grandeur and mystery and the homeliness of this wonderful City of Westminster. We certainly should not allow the provision of that kind of accommodation to be repeated over the next twenty or thirty years in the Westminster precincts itself, and therefore I hope noble Lord will give a welcome to the framework and the principles of the plan, and reserve their situation on the manner in which some of the detailed proposals have to be further studied.

House adjourned during pleasure.

House resumed.