Parliament is falling down

“If you see someone running” in the Palace of Westminster, “don’t stop to find out why they’re running; just follow them”. That’s Tory peer Michael Dobbs’ advice to anyone visiting the crumbling building that houses our Parliament.

Masonry is falling, toilets are exploding, asbestos is exposed, water is leaking and regular small fires presage a bigger inferno. The House of Commons’ and House of Lords’ joint Restoration and Renewal Client Board has laid out price-tagged options for repair, restoration and overhaul. But so far, MPs seem unable to commit to a clear plan for keeping one of London’s most iconic landmarks standing.

‘Notre Dame inferno in the making’

Our Parliament building has long had “neither proper sanitation nor adequate access”, said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. Known hazards in the parliamentary estate include “lingering asbestos”, failing sewerage systems, water leaks, as well as “regular fires”, said the BBC. The House of Commons “could burn down at any time”, Labour peer Peter Hain told the broadcaster. It’s “a Notre Dame inferno in the making”.

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As far back as 2016, the Restoration and Renewal committee warned that the Palace of Westminster “faces an impending crisis which we cannot responsibly ignore” and could soon “become uninhabitable”. But issues date back even further, said Simon Heffer in The Telegraph. I first worked in the Houses of Parliament almost 40 years ago and metaphorical “sticking plasters” were “being applied even then”. The heart of the problem is that it’s both a “place of work” and a “vital national monument”, and these “two functions do not easily go together”.

A few “radical voices” have suggested that we build “an entirely new Parliament” somewhere else and turn “the existing place into some sort of museum” but we can “almost certainly” rule that out because “the cost of the land alone, never mind the construction, would be astronomical”.

‘Depressing new-build chamber’

Parliamentarians then have two broad options, according to the Restoration and Renewal Client Board report.

The first is a “full decant”, in which MPs and Lords would be moved elsewhere for 12 to 24 years, allowing builders and specialists to “bring this mostly 19th-century edifice into the 21st century”, said Heffer. The House of Commons previously voted for this option in 2018 but nothing has happened since then.

The second choice would be to “decant” the House of Lords for 8 to 13 years, and move the Commons into the Lords’ chamber for up to two of those years. Works would continue during this time, and afterwards, for a possible total of 60 years.

The estimated cost of a full decant is between £7 billion and £13 billion, while the partial decant is estimated to raise costs to £18.5 billion. MPs won’t “want to vote for anything that’s seen to cost billions of pounds” when “families are struggling with the cost of living” and “public services are cash-strapped”, said The Spectator‘s Hardman. But inaction does not come cheap, either: “even a managed decline could cost £70 million a year”.

Fears that vacating the Palace of Westminster could land them in some “depressing new-build circular chamber” for decades is making many MPs hesitate over a full decant. But “they might find themselves in one anyway if the building burns down”.