UK Parliament Is Falling Down. Doing Nothing Is Not an Option.

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Amid all the pressures on Britain’s public finances, fixing the crumbling, mouse-infested, fake-gothic palace that hosts the nation’s politicians isn’t high on the priority list.

Yet as the Houses of Parliament literally fall down around them, MPs will soon be asked to approve a restoration package likely to run into tens of billions of pounds. Even as they wince at the prospect of looming tax rises and painful cuts to welfare and overseas aid, MPs must finally take a decision about shoring up their decrepit workplace. It almost doesn’t matter how they decide to do it. After years of procrastination in which they’ve been bogged down in technicalities, more inaction is a bad choice. They must take the political hit and commit to starting this much-needed work as soon as possible.

The options are moving out into nearby buildings while the work is carried out (the Commons would go to the old Department of Health, the Lords to the Queen Elizabeth II conference center); a partial “decant,” where the Commons stays but the Lords depart and MPs use the upper chamber when theirs is being worked on; and a series of rolling repairs that allows everyone to stay. The latter is the least disruptive but most expensive and time-consuming.

In 2022, costs were estimated at between £7 billion ($9.41 billion) and £13 billion and to take between 19 and 28 years. Up-to-date estimates will be presented to MPs in the fall, and thanks to the delays that mean the palace is now in a worse state, plus the impact of inflation, they are likely to be far higher. Doing nothing, the route MPs have taken for at least a decade, means it’s now costing £2 million a year just to patch the building up as pipes break, wires fry and bits of masonry crash to the ground. It’s a wonder no one’s been killed. Experts warn the whole place could go up in flames at any minute, a la Notre Dame Cathedral.

The problem is that while no MP wants conflagration on their watch, they can’t quite face moving out either. I get it: Parliament is a world heritage site and a national treasure. Peer up at the rafters of Westminster Hall, the genuinely medieval part of the palace, and you can almost spot the tennis ball Henry VIII is said to have lobbed there; sip from a champagne flute on the terrace overlooking the Thames between votes, lounge on the green benches where Winston Churchill made his wartime speeches, stand on the spot Charles I was condemned to death — everywhere you look is history and tradition and splendor.

Imagine being an MP, with all the long hours and opprobrium they face, and not experiencing any of these perks. And that’s before you consider the challenge of persuading voters, tired of being told the money isn’t there to fix their dilapidated schools and hospitals while their bills and taxes rise, that a multibillion-pound repair job on parliament is necessary.

The constant delays to the restoration project are emblematic of wider issues facing the British state where, particularly since the 2008 financial crash, governments put off decisions until they reach crisis point. The problem for this Labour government is that in so many areas, the music has stopped, delay is no longer feasible, and the bill is vast.

Compensation for victims of the infected blood and post office scandals will run to well over £20 billion; the NHS, welfare and social care systems are all in desperate need of reform as are the waterways; the myriad delays and cancellations to the HS2 rail program are a joke; the courts are at breaking point. No wonder MPs balk at signing yet another check to fix their own home. One I spoke to recently felt the costs were indefensible, that parliament was no longer worth the trouble, and should be bulldozed and replaced with a modern air-conditioned block.

That would be a shame.  It’s true that its gothic spires are a bit of a fake. Most of Parliament dates back to 1834, after a fire burned down the original medieval palace the year before. But it’s still one of the wonders of the world and the beating heart of British democracy.

The great architect Charles Barry won a competition to design the replacement to the original palace, and enlisted another future master in the field, the-23-year-old Augustus Pugin, who carried out much of the work alongside Barry’s son Edward. Inside are 1,180 rooms, 126 staircases and two miles of corridors. The fabric of the building is formed from thousands of sandy limestone, which gives its pleasing honey hue but proved vulnerable to London pollution, particularly before the Clean Air Acts brought to an end the choking smog known as pea soupers.

A couple of months ago, engineers drilled a bore hole deeper than the Channel Tunnel to check what lay beneath the site and encountered what would previously have been the Thames wall running underneath what is now the main A3212 road in front of the Houses of Parliament. The “new” buildings sit atop a concrete structure, laboriously hand-poured by the Victorians.

Inside, not much has changed. With only one route in and out of the basements, laying and repairing the pipes, wires and fiber-optic cables needed to power a modern democracy is a tricky job. To save time and energy, workers have simply added new services on top of the redundant old stuff. That means there are now 14 miles of pipework and an estimated 250 miles of cables across the estate, much of it no longer functional. The building is riddled with asbestos; the heating is steam powered, which explains why the offices are always freezing.  

Then there are the sewers: Parliament’s waste collection was created just before the legendary civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette installed London’s vast underground sewers and unfortunately lie a meter or two below it. Ever ingenious, the Victorians invented a workaround by which waste was moved upwards into the main sewage works using gas pump propulsion. These days the pump is electric, but the waste is still literally shot up into London’s bowels. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Or, perhaps, inspiration. If repairing parliament is allowed to remain in the too-difficult box, it will be a damning indictment of Britain’s capacity to resolve problems. Like the Victorians, today’s MPs should show courage, gumption and ingenuity — and get on and fix the place before it really is too late.  

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Rosa Prince is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering UK politics and policy. She was formerly an editor and writer at Politico and the Daily Telegraph, and is the author of ‘Comrade Corbyn’ and ‘Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister.’

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