The chair of the Public Accounts Committee has told Sky News she “could weep for the five years” lost by the decision to abolish the organisation set up to managed the long-term renovation of parliament.
Dame Meg Hillier MP says there is an “unacceptable cloak of secrecy” around the restoration programme which she says was effectively sent back to the drawing board after the estimated bill rose to between £7 and £22 billion.
But every week the work isn’t done costs £2.5m maintenance – and former leader of the house Dame Andrea Leadsom says she’s worried the Palace of Westminster could be Britain’s Notre Dame.
After decades of debate, MPs are still intensely divided about the cost of the work, whether they have to move out of parliament, and where their temporary home might be if so.
When the Palace of Westminster burnt to the ground in 1834 the flames were so high they could be seen from 20 miles away.
Image: Palace of Westminster on Fire 1834. Pic: UK Parliament
Politicians of the day had spent many years beforehand arguing about the need to renovate the old parliament.
Now, nearly 200 years later, many fear that without large-scale restoration work a similar disaster could befall its successor.
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But after decades of debate, the organisation set up by parliament in 2018 to manage the huge renovation project has been scrapped.
“I could weep for the five years we’ve lost,” says Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee. “There was a real issue here about shooting the messenger.
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“It feels very much like we are back to square one. Now we have no sponsor body, no plans to carry out the work, and there’s still argument about whether we should stay in the building while the work is done or not.
“This is not about us as MPs. This is about a building that belongs to the country – yes, it will cost a lot of money, but you can’t dodge it.”
A recent report from the committee concluded any likely start date “has been pushed back by many years because of repeated attempts to revisit the basis of the programme”.
“We do not want it to take another catastrophic incident to finally galvanise action,” it reads.
What work is actually taking place?
Ongoing repair work to strengthen the roof and Victorian masonry is constantly under way and work has recently been carried out to restore the ceiling of St Stephen’s Hall, for example (on the site of the original Commons Chamber, which burnt down), as well as the renovation of the Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben.
But the real challenge is in the vast, labyrinthine basement with gas and dripping water pipes jumbled together alongside a morass of electric wiring, telephone cables, and even a working steam engine which is part of the Victorian sewage system.
Dr Alexandra Meakin, a politics lecturer at the University of Leeds, is an expert on the restoration programme. She says the mess in the basement is a disaster waiting to happen.
“With gas and steam pipes running alongside each other, even a tiny leak, there is a huge fire risk – it’s only allowed to stay open at all if there are fire wardens patrolling 24 hours a day.
“The risk is real, it’s not just cosmetic work. And it’s not just about the MPs and peers, but about the staff who work there – the thousands of people in catering and cleaning who shouldn’t have to work in a death trap, not to mention all the millions of visitors, including school children.”
The palace is also riddled with asbestos – last year it emerged a leak during building work meant up to 117 contractors and staff had potentially been exposed.
“If you try to do major work in the palace, it’s going to be difficult to work around it,” says Dr Meakin. “Asbestos runs the whole length of the building.”
Concerns over costs, timescales and governance
In January 2018, parliament voted to move forward with plans to vacate the building – known as a ‘decant’ – and carry out a full renovation, setting up an independent sponsor body (a team of some 55 staff and experts as well as parliamentarians) to lead and manage the project along the lines of the London Olympics.
Last January they published provisional cost and schedule estimates which predicted that the essential works alone would cost between £7bn and £13bn – and take 19 to 28 years.
If MPs and peers insisted on staying put, they warned the project could end up lasting as long as 76 years, and cost as much as £22bn.
For some, this was just too much to accept.
In March, the Commissions of the House of Commons and Lords (made up of the speakers, clerks and other senior parliamentarians) said they had concerns over the project’s costs, timescales and governance.
They recommended scrapping the sponsor body altogether and bringing the vast project in house.
MPs and Lords voted that through in the summer, and the decision passed into law just before Christmas.
Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh is sceptical of what he describes as the “ridiculous” estimates drawn up by the sponsor body.
“There are ways of doing it that mean you don’t have to move everybody out at vast expense,” he claims.
“We can’t have a very expensive gold-plated plan, especially when the economy is in tatters – the public would look askance at parliament spending £20bn on itself.”
‘We just need to get on with it’
Last month the Shadow Leader of the House, Thangam Debbonaire MP, accused some MPs of “undermining” the work of the sponsor body and “wrangling with the experts”.
Sir Edward denies this is the case, and says it’s right for MPs and Lords to take back control of the project.
“We just need to get on with it and make it safe,” he says.
Dame Meg Hillier by contrast describes the commission’s intervention as “grubby”.
“If they did this to any other piece of legislation, there would be uproar,” she says. “I’m incredibly concerned.
“We’ve seen huge problems in the past – costs nearly tripled during the renovation of the Elizabeth Tower, and the memory of what happened with Portcullis House [which ended up substantially over budget and schedule when built to house MPs’ offices in the 1990s] still haunts people here.”
Where would staff move to?
Another complication is the lack of consensus on where the occupants of the Palace of Westminster would move to, even if agreement is reached on the need for them to do so.
While long-established plans had been developed to decant the Lords to the nearby Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, then-prime minister Boris Johnson later asked the programme to explore the option of sending them to York instead.
In May 2022 Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove also intervened, saying he would rather see them moving to Stoke.
As for MPs, under a previous phase of the project, £70m was spent preparing plans to rebuild Richmond House, the old Department of Health building in Westminster.
But that idea has now been dropped as being too expensive; and while some hope that the remote working technology used during COVID-19 could help provide a solution, reaching consensus on this aspect of the programme alone is clearly fraught with disagreement.
‘One of the most famous buildings in the world’
As former leader of the house, Dame Andrea Leadsom MP shepherded the 2018 legislation through parliament.
She says the decision to undo much of it “seems a means to kick the situation into the long grass – it’s disastrous.
“I get that it’s a huge bill, and I’m sympathetic to the need to get value for taxpayers’ money – but this is one of the most famous buildings in the world.
“There have been something like 50 fire incidents in the recent decade, any one of them could have resulted in a kind of Notre Dame style absolute burning down of the palace.
“There’s a huge amount of money being spent already just to patch and mend… we just need to crack on and do it rather than circling back round all the time and changing the decisions about how we’re going to do it.”
When will the next vote take place?
MPs are now expected to vote on a new strategy by the end of next year.
In a statement, parliament said: “In July 2022 members of both Houses agreed a more integrated approach to future restoration, prioritising safety critical work. We are getting on with work across the parliamentary estate to ensure the safety of those who work and visit here, and to support the continued business of parliament.
“This includes planning for the large and complex restoration of the Palace of Westminster to preserve it for future generations.
“More than 2,000 areas of the palace have been investigated this year to give a better understanding of the building’s condition. These surveys will inform a wide set of options for delivery of the restoration work, including the level of ambition during these challenging economic times.”
Worldwide stock markets have plummeted for the second day running as the fallout from Donald Trump’s global tariffs continues.
While European and Asian markets suffered notable falls, American indexes were the worst hit, with Wall Street closing to a sea of red on Friday following Thursday’s rout – the worst day in US markets since the COVID-19 pandemic.
All three of the US’s major indexes were down by more than 5% at market close; The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 5.5%, the S&P 500 was 5.97% lower, and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 5.82%.
The Nasdaq was also 22% below its record-high set in December, which indicates a bear market.
Ever since the US president announced the tariffs on Wednesday evening, analysts estimate that around $4.9trn (£3.8trn) has been wiped off the value of the global stock market.
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Mr Trump has remained unapologetic as the markets struggle, posting in all-caps on Truth Social before the markets closed that “only the weak will fail”.
The UK’s leading stock market, the FTSE 100, also suffered its worst daily drop in more than five years, closing 4.95% down, a level not seen since March 2020.
And the Japanese exchange Nikkei 225 dropped by 2.75% at end of trading, down 20% from its recent peak in July last year.
Image: US indexes had the worst day of trading since the COVID-19 pandemic. Pic: Reuters
Trump holds trade deal talks – reports
It comes as a source told CNN that Mr Trump has been in discussions with Vietnamese, Indianand Israelirepresentatives to negotiate bespoke trade deals that could alleviate proposed tariffs on those countries before a deadline next week.
The source told the US broadcaster the talks were being held in advance of the reciprocal levies going into effect next week.
Vietnam faced one of the highest reciprocal tariffs announced by the US president this week, with 46% rates on imports. Israeli imports face a 17% rate, and Indian goods will be subject to 26% tariffs.
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China – hit with 34% tariffs on imported goods – has also announced it will issue its own levy of the same rate on US imports.
Mr Trump said China “played it wrong” and “panicked – the one thing they cannot afford to do” in another all-caps Truth Social post earlier on Friday.
Later, on Air Force One, the US president told reporters that “the beauty” of the tariffs is that they allow for negotiations, referencing talks with Chinese company ByteDance on the sale of social media app TikTok.
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6:50
Tariffs: Xi hits back at Trump
He said: “We have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say, ‘We’ll approve a deal, but will you do something on the tariffs?’
“The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have.”
Global financial markets gave a clear vote of no-confidence in President Trump’s economic policy.
The damage it will do is obvious: costs for companies will rise, hitting their earnings.
The consequences will ripple throughout the global economy, with economists now raising their expectations for a recession, not only in the US, but across the world.
The court ruled to uphold the impeachment saying the conservative leader “violated his duty as commander-in-chief by mobilising troops” when he declared martial law.
The president was also said to have taken actions “beyond the powers provided in the constitution”.
Image: Demonstrators stayed overnight near the constitutional court. Pic: AP
Supporters and opponents of the president gathered in their thousands in central Seoul as they awaited the ruling.
The 64-year-old shocked MPs, the public and international allies in early December when he declared martial law, meaning all existing laws regarding civilians were suspended in place of military law.
Image: The court was under heavy police security guard ahead of the announcement. Pic: AP
After suddenly declaring martial law, Mr Yoon sent hundreds of soldiers and police officers to the National Assembly.
He has argued that he sought to maintain order, but some senior military and police officers sent there have told hearings and investigators that Mr Yoon ordered them to drag out politicians to prevent an assembly vote on his decree.
His presidential powers were suspended when the opposition-dominated assembly voted to impeach him on 14 December, accusing him of rebellion.
The unanimous verdict to uphold parliament’s impeachment and remove Mr Yoon from office required the support of at least six of the court’s eight justices.
South Korea must hold a national election within two months to find a new leader.
Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main liberal opposition Democratic Party, is the early favourite to become the country’s next president, according to surveys.