Parliament refurb chair defends potential £40bn costs

The chairman of the body in charge of refurbishing the Houses of Parliament has defended a plan that could see almost £40bn spent on the project, after the Conservatives raised concerns about potential costs.

Dr Simon Thurley, chair of the Restoration and Renewal Programme's delivery authority, told the BBC the estimated cost did not seem like a "completely ridiculous figure" to him.

He said the projected costs of different options varied, and pointed out £150m a year was already being spent on "trying to keep the thing standing".

MPs and peers have been presented with proposals to refurbish the ailing Palace of Westminster and will decide what to do, in votes that are yet to be scheduled.

The project team has warned that delaying the restoration of the historic building, which costs £1.5m a week to maintain, would lead to "an expensive managed decline of the Palace".

But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said Parliament's restoration was "out of control" and had "turned into a basket case white elephant project".

Thurley said the delivery authority, which is led by industry experts and senior officials, had considered 36 different options and whittled those down to two.

One option would involve moving both MPs and peers out of the site for up to 24 years from 2032, under a refurbishment plan that could cost up to £15.6bn.

A second, more expensive option involves moving only the House of Lords out of the building while works that could take 61 years and cost £39bn are carried out.

Thurley said the building "isn't fit for purpose now, which is why the conversation is happening".

"We're dealing with a building that's hundreds of years old that has not really had the attention that it deserves and that it needs for the last 50 years," Thurley said in an interview for BBC Radio 4's Today in Parliament.

When asked if £40bn was a price worth paying to refurbish the building, Thurley said: "It's always very easy to choose the biggest number that's been mentioned because that makes for a good headline.

"But the numbers vary, from £10bn to £40bn."

He added: "We're already spending £150m a year trying to keep the thing standing. So it doesn't seem to me to be a completely ridiculous figure."

The two renovation options were endorsed last month by a committee of MPs, peers and external members known as the R&R Client Board.

The costed options were signed off by the board in December. Minutes of its meetings show Conservative MP Jesse Norman, a member of the board and shadow leader of the House of Commons, objected to the proposals.

Speaking to the BBC, Norman said: "The idea that that project should be on the scale of HS2, that is to say a twenty to forty billion pound project, is wildly unrealistic, both in terms of what it demands of the public purse and what it requires of political sentiment.

"I cannot imagine what people up and down this country will be thinking when they hear that the Palace of Westminster would cost an amount of money that at its outer limit would pay for 50 new hospitals."

He said the Conservatives are calling for the project to be paused, and refocused on a set of "scaled-backed" proposals that are "more realistic in scope and in cost".

Norman added that as it stands, the Conservatives will vote against the plans.

Labour peer Lord Roe said he would like to see the UK government taking a firm view on the proposals, and steering parliamentarians towards a favoured option.

He added: "But I would like it to be done in a non-political way".

The peer, a former commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, said there was a "really good safety case" for moving everyone out of the building during works, whatever form they take.

"As London fire commissioner, I used to frequently look across this building and think we are on the edge of safety here," Lord Roe said.

"The reality is that the scale of risk inside this building in terms of its combustible nature, its complex layout, ageing systems, and possible places where a fire could start is incredible."

A government spokesperson said the work "must be done in a way that maximises value for money for the taxpayer".

The spokesperson said the government would consider the report's findings and schedule a debate in both houses of Parliament in "due course".

You can hear more about the Restoration and Renewal Programme on the BBC's Today in Parliament programme on BBC Sounds at 23:30 on Friday 6 March