Plans to spend more than £10bn refurbishing the Palace of Westminster could end in financial disaster, senior parliamentarians have warned, amid growing concern over the use of public money at the world heritage site.
MPs will be asked before the end of the year to approve a vast restoration programme at Westminster, despite evidence that smaller schemes at the palace are already subject to vast cost overruns and blunders.
Peers were last month informed that £9.6mn has been spent on a new entrance to the House of Lords, which does not work properly — people in wheelchairs have become trapped and it needs a security officer to push a button to operate it.
Meanwhile, parliamentary authorities will spend £80,000 on a project to relocate a pair of peregrine falcons from their nest in the Victoria Tower, which is about to be restored, officials told the Financial Times.
A separate recent project to renovate the Elizabeth Tower — commonly known as Big Ben — cost about £80mn compared with the original estimate of £29mn, while the atrium at Portcullis House, opened in 2001, is now covered in netting in case glass panels fall on to people below.
A separate programme to enhance security at the palace’s main entrance at New Palace Yard, which was the scene of a deadly terrorist attack in 2017, began in 2020 and is not expected to finish until later this year.
Authorities have declined to confirm the cost of this work — which was reported as £75mn by the Mail on Sunday — saying that the figure was secret because detailing the cost could reveal “the vulnerabilities which they were intended to mitigate”.
Senior parliamentarians fear that these myriad schemes, often mired in bureaucracy, secrecy and the complexity of working in an ancient palace, are a worrying portent of what could happen if MPs back a major programme of “restoration and renewal” at Westminster.
Work is badly needed to update the site’s fire safety and improve the working conditions of the thousands of people employed on the estate.
Steve Barclay, former Conservative cabinet minister and chair of the Commons finance committee, sounded the alarm as MPs departed for the summer, drawing comparisons with the spiralling costs of the catastrophic HS2 rail project, which has been partially axed.
Barclay bemoaned “the lack of debate or any meaningful transparency” in the preparation of estimates for different options for carrying out the restoration programme, which will be presented to MPs before the end of the year.
He said the governance of the scheme was “opaque” and there needed to be a public debate about the trade-offs involved in improving security and access for people with disabilities in a world heritage site with value for money.
The most recent estimates for the restoration project, intended to modernise the crumbling Palace of Westminster, alleviate the risk of fire and flood and improve security and access, were laid out in 2022 and ranged from £8.6bn to £13.8bn. One person briefed on the latest estimates said: “I’ve not seen anything costing below £10bn.”
The episode of the House of Lords’ non-functioning entrance — dubbed by Tory peer Lord Michael Forsyth as “one of the most expensive front doors in the world” — has been seen as a warning sign of what could go wrong.
Work on the new entrance began in 2023 with an estimated cost of £6.1mn; that cost has risen to £9.6mn with Lord John Gardiner, deputy Lords Speaker, admitting that it is “unacceptable that the Peers’ Entrance does not operate as it should”.
Lord Robert Hayward, a Tory peer, has tried to establish what additional costs are being incurred by the need to provide staff to open the security doors, not least to stop being trapped inside them. “There’s a very strong sense that the management here clearly can’t control costs,” he said.
Lord Michael Dobbs, author of House of Cards, told the FT: “It’s a humiliation. You see people in wheelchairs getting stuck. It has not been planned, administered or implemented properly.
“We have to ask if we can do this R&R project without massive cost overruns that bring the mother of parliaments into disrepute. There has to be a balance between security, practicality and budget.”
The case of the peregrine falcons in the Victoria Tower is a reminder of the wider costs incurred in Britain — to the irritation of chancellor Rachel Reeves — of protecting wildlife from the impact of building work.
A House of Lords spokesperson said relocating the pair of birds has so far cost £49,000 “with total costs estimated to be over £80,000 over eight years”.
The spokesperson added: “Without relocating the peregrines, work to Victoria Tower near their nest would not be permitted and would need to stop during their six-month breeding season.”
The Victoria Tower project, a £253mn scheme to refurbish and secure the crumbling edifice built in 1860, was delayed after the parliamentary authorities botched the initial tender process.
Dame Meg Hillier, the then chair of the Commons public accounts committee, described the episode as “a comedy of errors” that would lead to delays and higher costs.
The series of embarrassing episodes has shaken the confidence of parliament’s leaders. Lord John McFall, House of Lords Speaker, has asked Lord Amyas Morse, former head of the National Audit Office, to look at the lessons of the non-opening door debacle.
“The problems that have arisen around the delivery of the new entrance pose larger questions about effective programme delivery, including capability within parliamentary departments,” McFall told Morse in a letter on June 19.
It is against this backdrop that MPs will be asked later this year to consider three separate options for refurbishing the entire Palace of Westminster, the cheapest of which would involve a “full decant” of the building while work took place.
Others would involve a phased restoration during which the Commons would continue to meet at Westminster but the Lords might be moved out and a rolling programme of “enhanced maintenance” likely to span decades.
However, people briefed on the plan believe MPs could also be asked to consider a fourth option: a programme of “no regret” works to improve the fabric of the building, short of backing a full restoration scheme. “It would be kicking the can down the road,” said one person briefed on the talks.
A parliamentary spokesman said: “We remain on track to bring costed proposals for the restoration of the Palace of Westminster to both Houses this year detailing costs, timescales, risks and benefits of three delivery options, all of which represent a significant multi-billion pound investment in the Palace.”
Asked about the fourth “no regret” option, the spokesperson said work was “already happening across the parliamentary estate” including roof repairs and fire safety work to ensure the safety of people working in and visiting the building.
