My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Morse, who set out the scene wisely on how we manage a future that will undoubtedly change.
I thank the committee, the staff and the contractors for their work on this marathon of marathons. I also thank ParliAble for advocating for disabled staff and parliamentarians. I am particularly grateful for the meeting that I and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, had with an architect and some of the staff to discuss disability access in the proposed committee rooms and Lords Chamber. I will return to disability access as my principal point in a minute.
First, though, I was for a decade senior bursar of first one and then a second Cambridge college, both of which had listed buildings. Partial decants or, worse, the “muddling through” option, are financially irresponsible and utterly impractical—I have tried them. We are finding the current works difficult, but that is nothing to these two options. So, frankly, for both the public purse and the smooth running of both Houses of Parliament, option 1, the full decant, is the only sensible option.
The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was right to say that costs should be annualised. Cambridge college bursars discussed this matter regularly in my day. The older colleges thought that 100 years minimum was probably quite a wise move. Indeed, when we were discussing chapel repairs, the kinsman of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, George Reid, senior bursar of St John’s, turned to the bursar of Emmanuel, founded merely in the 17th century, and said, “You modern post-Reformation colleges”. This period of time that we are considering is absolutely vital for us. We are not building for the next 50 years—indeed, if we go for the “muddling through” option, it will not be done in 50 years—but perhaps we are following Barry and doing it for the next 200 years.
Turning to accessibility, I want to start with the bullet point on accessibility on page 13, which the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, referred to. It mentions
“an average enhancement from the current 12% step free access to circa 60% across the Palace and greater coverage in public areas”.
The improvements to the visitor routes are really helpful, because the public have found it very difficult. But I am concerned that only 60% step-free access—the detail of what that means is unspecified—will still mean that parts of the Palace will be no-go areas or that there will be equally bad alternative routes. I use these daily, as do my other colleagues in wheelchairs, and they are long, slow and sometimes reliant on other people’s intervention. For example, when I wish to go into one of the W committee rooms off Westminster Hall, I have to go to the stair lift and find a member of staff, who has to ring the member of staff with the key, who then has to come back, unlock the stair lift and turn it on for me. I have to repeat the same when the meeting I am attending has finished. On one occasion, it took half an hour to find someone, so effectively I missed the meeting. I know that in theory that should not happen, but it does.
The ministerial corridors immediately behind the Speaker’s end of the House of Commons are also inaccessible because the lift is behind a stone arch and you cannot get a wheelchair through it. If you go the long way around, because of the way the stairs work, you have to leave your wheelchair on a landing from the wheelchair-accessible lift and go upstairs, which is fine for those who can do it. I understand from the 60% figure that some of these things will not be dealt with, and that concerns me.
As I have already mentioned, we hope that the fully restored Palace will last 200 years, and it is absolutely vital that the vast majority of the Palace is accessible—fully accessible, including step-free. I have already mentioned the tourist route being more accessible, but why, oh why, are the two lifts by the Commons cafeteria linked when one of them is too small for wheelchairs? By the way, the same is true in Portcullis House: the only way to get to the lower ground if you are coming from the top floor is to get into the next lift, go down to the ground floor, get out and then call the lift to go to the lower ground floor. That sort of practicality is something that gets lost in mechanical design because it is convenient to have two lifts side by side that operate together. The problem is that, when I am going from Portcullis House back into this building to vote, I can miss the vote. So, I am really grateful that the House still allows me to vote remotely, because otherwise it would be hit and miss. I cannot use the escalator; I get completely stuck. I am making this point, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, would make similar, or perhaps different, points about wheelchair users. We cannot use the building as it stands now in the same way as everybody else, and most people are not aware of those issues, which is completely understandable.
Security now means that heavy doors are shut when tourists are going through. Normally, in any other building, you would hold them back with electric magnets, or you would have a pass reader and they would open automatically. I am told that that will not happen, partly for heritage reasons and partly for security reasons. Because of my condition, I cannot open the heavy doors. I have had to ask permission to have the doors just outside here from Peers’ Lobby into this corridor held open for 10 minutes after the House rises because otherwise I literally cannot get out without somebody opening those doors. I really hope that the committee will look at the disability issues in the day-to-day life of different people. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would have many points about how he and his guide dog have to navigate the building.
I move to committee rooms and the Chambers, including this Moses Room, in the future. This space and the space opposite are the only places that wheelchairs can fit in this Room. We cannot get into the back row, we cannot get down to the top end, so if we were Ministers or shadow Ministers, we could not participate, we cannot get out at the back and once we are in place, we block everybody because they cannot get past the wheelchairs. I know that work on the Moses Room is planned, and I am really grateful, but it is the mindset for the design of the future that I am most concerned about.
I am particularly concerned about the Lords Chamber. I thank the Lord Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and Black Rod for listening to my concerns and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I am really grateful; it was much appreciated. Politicians want to sit with their groups. Even Cross-Benchers would describe themselves as politicians, although they are not in a political party. It is good that, unlike the Commons, our House has what my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester describes as the “mobility Bench”—the nobility on the mobility Bench.
However, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said in the Chamber the other day that she found it very difficult sitting beside me when I was being a Front-Bencher because people immediately assumed that she was in the same party as me. The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, and I sit beside each other the whole time, and we quite often have to sit beside each other and argue completely different points. That changes the dynamic of how the politics work. It is not like the European Parliament or other modern ones where you may even be seated alphabetically. In our House, it really matters.
I was very disappointed that when the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I met the people to look at the plans no disabled politicians had been talked to before they were drawn up. In the plans that we saw, we could not get our wheelchairs around the new committee rooms planned on the main committee room corridor. There is no facility for a Minister or shadow Minister from the main opposition party to speak at the Dispatch Box because you cannot get a wheelchair in there. There will be some tip-up seats, which is good, but that will still mean that some people who are not in the main parties will not be able to sit with their colleagues. I do not believe that this matter is yet being addressed.
As the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, said, we are now reaching the key decision-making point. Nearly 200 years ago, Peers and MPs would have been carried upstairs, in or out of their bath chairs, to get into the Chamber. Today, many disabled Peers and staff still find the Palace seriously problematic to navigate and participate in, including not being able to fulfil their roles politically. To put it at its simplest, do we really want a disabled parliamentarian in 150 years’ time to face not being able to speak from the Dispatch Box? I hope these issues can be readdressed.