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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.

Palace of Westminster on Fire 1834, Oil painting by Unknown © UK Parliament, WOA 1978 heritagecollections.parliament.uk
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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.

“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.

Dame Meg Hillier MP

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.

The basement of the Houses of Parliament

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.”

The ceiling of St Stephen's Hall

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.

Restoration works have been taking place at the Houses of Parliament

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.”

Sir Edward Leigh

‘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.”

Houses of Parliament

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.

Houses of Parliament

‘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.”

Andrea Leadsom

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.”

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Several killed after vehicle drives into crowd at street festival, police in Vancouver say

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Several killed after vehicle drives into crowd at street festival, police in Vancouver say

A number of people have been killed and multiple others injured after a driver drove into a crowd at a street festival in Vancouver, police have said.

The driver has been taken into custody after the incident shortly after 8pm local time on Saturday, police added.

People were in the area near 41st Avenue and Fraser Street for the Lapu Lapu Day Block Party, named after a national hero of the Philippines.

Vancouver’s mayor Ken Sim said in a post on X: “I am shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific incident at today’s Lapu Lapu Day event.”

He added: “Our thoughts are with all those affected and with Vancouver’s Filipino community during this incredibly difficult time.”

Video posted on social media showed victims and debris strewn across a long stretch of road, with at least seven people lying immobile on the ground.

A black SUV with a crumpled front section could be seen in photos from the scene.

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Trump criticises Putin after potentially ‘historic’ meeting with Zelenskyy before Pope’s funeral

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Trump criticises Putin after potentially 'historic' meeting with Zelenskyy before Pope's funeral

Donald Trump has criticised Vladimir Putin and suggested a shift in his stance towards the Russian president after a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy before the Pope’s funeral.

The Ukrainian president said the one-on-one talks could prove to be “historic” after pictures showed him sitting opposite Mr Trump, around two feet apart, in the large marble hall inside St Peter’s Basilica.

The US president said he doubted his Russian counterpart’s willingness to end the war after leaving Rome after the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Follow live updates: 200,000 mourn at Vatican

In a post on his Truth Social platform, he said “there was no reason” for the Russian president “to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days”.

The two leaders held talks before attending the Pope's funeral
Image:
The two leaders held talks before attending the Pope’s funeral

He added: “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”

The meeting between the US and Ukrainian leaders was their first face-to-face encounter since a very public row in the Oval Office in February.

Mr Zelenskyy said he had a good meeting with Mr Trump in which they talked about the defence of the Ukrainian people, a full and unconditional ceasefire, and a durable and lasting peace that would prevent the war restarting.

Other images released by the Ukrainian president’s office show Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron were present for part of the talks, which were described as “positive” by the French presidency.

Mr Zelenskyy‘s spokesman said the meeting lasted for around 15 minutes and he and Mr Trump had agreed to hold further discussions later on Saturday.

The world leaders share a moment before the service
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The world leaders shared a moment before the service

Trump and Zelenskyy meet in the Basilica
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Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet in the Basilica

But the US president left Rome for Washington on Air Force One soon after the funeral without any other talks having taken place.

The Ukrainian president’s office said there was no second meeting in Rome because of the tight schedule of both leaders, although he had separate discussions with Mr Starmer and Mr Macron.

The French president said in a post on X “Ukraine is ready for an unconditional ceasefire” and that a so-called coalition of the willing, led by the UK and France, would continue working to achieve a lasting peace.

There was applause from some of the other world leaders in attendance at the Vatican when Mr Zelenskyy walked out of St Peter’s Basilica after stopping in front of the pontiff’s coffin to pay his respects.

U.S President Donald Trump attends the funeral Mass of Pope Francis, at the Vatican, April 26, 2025. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
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Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president met for the first time since their Oval Office row. Pic: Reuters

Sir Tony Brenton, the former British ambassador to Russia, said the event presents diplomatic opportunities, including the “biggest possible meeting” between Mr Trump and the Ukrainian leader.

He told Sky News it could mark “an important step” in starting the peace process between Russia and Ukraine.

Professor Father Francesco Giordano told Sky News the meeting is being called “Pope Francis’s miracle” by members of the clergy, adding: “There’s so many things that happened today – it was just overwhelming.”

The bilateral meeting comes after Mr Trump’s peace negotiator Steve Witkoff held talks with Mr Putin at the Kremlin.

They discussed “the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine”, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.

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Russia and Ukraine have not held direct talks since the early weeks of the war, which began in February 2022.

Mr Trump has claimed a deal to end the war is “very close” and has urged Mr Zelenskyy to “get it done” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

He has previously warned both sides his administration would walk away from its efforts to achieve a peace if the two sides do not agree a deal soon.

Meanwhile, the Polish armed forces said a Russian military helicopter violated its airspace over the Baltic Sea on Friday evening.

“The nature of the incident indicates that Russia is testing the readiness of our air defence systems,” they said in a post on X.

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What we learn from remarkable photos of Trump-Zelenskyy meeting

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What we learn from remarkable photos of Trump-Zelenskyy meeting

On an extraordinary day, remarkable pictures on the margins that capture what may be a turning point for the world.

In a corner of St Peter’s Basilica before the funeral of Pope Francis, the leaders of America and Ukraine sit facing each other in two solitary chairs.

They look like confessor and sinner except we cannot tell which one is which.

Leaning forward hands together in their laps, Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy stare at each other in one photo.

In another, the Ukrainian president seems to be remonstrating with the US president. This is their first encounter since their infamous bust-up in the Oval Office.

The two leaders held talks before attending the Pope's funeral
Image:
The two leaders held talks before attending the Pope’s funeral

Other pictures show the moment their French and British counterparts introduced the two men. There is a palpable sense of nervousness in the way the leaders engage.

We do not know what the two presidents said in their brief meeting.

But in the mind of the Ukrainian leader will be the knowledge President Trump has this week said America will reward Russia for its unprovoked brutal invasion of his country, under any peace deal.

Mr Trump has presented Ukraine and Russia with a proposal and ultimatum so one-sided it could have been written in the Kremlin.

Kyiv must surrender the land Russia has taken by force, Crimea forever, the rest at least for now. And it must submit to an act of extortion, a proposed deal that would hand over half its mineral wealth effectively to America.

The world leaders share a moment before the service
Image:
The world leaders shared a moment before the service

Afterwards, Zelenskyy said it had been a good meeting that could turn out to be historic “if we reach results together”.

They had talked, he said, about the defence of Ukraine, a full and unconditional ceasefire and a durable and lasting peace that will prevent a war restarting.

The Trump peace proposal includes only unspecified security guarantees for Ukraine from countries that do not include the US. It rules out any membership of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s allies are watching closely to see if Mr Trump will apply any pressure on Vladimir Putin, let alone punish him for recent bloody attacks on Ukraine.

Or will he simply walk away if the proposal fails, blaming Ukrainian intransigence, however outrageously, before moving onto a rapprochement with Moscow.

If he does, America’s role as guarantor of international security will be seen effectively as over.

This could be the week we see the world order as we have known it since the end of the Second World War buried, as well as a pope.

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