Examination of Witnesses (Questions 36-39)
MR PETER
GRANT PETERKIN,
MR PAUL
MONAGHAN AND
MR GREG
UNWIN
25 APRIL 2006
Q36 Chairman: I am sorry to have kept
you waiting but I hope you found that useful. Welcome, Mr Unwin,
to your first select committee.
Mr Unwin: Thank you very much
indeed.
Q37 Chairman: We have got some written
evidence but I do not know if anyone wants to make some opening
comments before I open it up for questions.
Mr Grant Peterkin: Can I just
begin by saying thank you for allowing us to sit in on the accommodation
whips' evidence. It is, I hope, useful from your point of view
because it will avoid duplication. I think it highlights for me
that this is both a very difficult area where it is six of one
and half a dozen of the other, and it is an area where the accommodation
whips and the Serjeant's Department in particular have to work
absolutely hand in glove, particularly at a time of general elections
or other major changes of accommodation usage. If we look back
over the previous Services Committee inquiries into accommodation
in the 1980s and 1990s, the first of which produced 1 Parliament
Street and the second one Portcullis House, that overriding theme
of trying to provide more accommodation for Members near the Chamber
has been met, and all that we have done since the completion of
Portcullis House is provide (mainly through the good offices of
HOK) that up-to-date evidence in terms of those inquiries in 2002
and 2003 of what accommodation we had, going back to Mr Dobson's
observation, and both benchmarking reviews, and probably what
is going to become of real interest to you, the Occupancy Review
done in late 2003 as to who needs to be here most, as well as
(to answer Mr Donohoe's question) the evidence that we did in
the run-up to the general election and updated in January of this
year of exactly who has what in terms of office space. I accept
Mr Thurso's point that, of course, you can only provide the objective
evidence in square metreage; you cannot provide that all-important
subjective evidence of what is the quality that goes with those
offices because, as you have indicated to the accommodation whips,
again choices and priorities for Members are very, very different
in terms of where they want to be and how they want to work in
relation to their personal staff. For me, Chairman, I think that
a really good outcome from this inquiry will give officers of
the House some very clear guidance on the priorities of works
that your changes will necessitate and will also give us in a
dynamic world an updated set of priorities for both the furnishing
standards and the space standards that are appropriate to the
way in which Members work currently.
Chairman: Thank you very much for that.
I have got Pete Wishart first.
Q38 Pete Wishart: It is probably
a question for the Serjeant. I am trying desperately to understand
the relationship you have with the whips in terms of the allocation
of offices. Is it the case that the whips will decide who gets
what type of accommodation based on the criteria we have heard
from the whips, and you will try and find that accommodation,
or are you involved at all in the discussion of which Members
should get what type of accommodation?
Mr Grant Peterkin: We have regular
meetings between the Serjeant and the accommodation whips. I am
afraid I have only been here for one general election but in the
immediate run-up to the general election we identified exactly
what data the accommodation whips would want and need when we
came to return, in this case, in May. We then sat down in my office
and we went through the detailed data and we suggested to the
accommodation whips what was a fair allocation of offices in their
numerical allocation. Before then I did not umpire but we observed
the horse-trading that went on between Mr Ainsworth and Patrick
McLoughlin in particular.
Q39 Pete Wishart: My understanding
is that you service and facilitate the whips in getting the accommodation
to the Members. Would that be correct?
Mr Grant Peterkin: We provide
the detailed data that they need.
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