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3 Dec 2009 : Column 158WH—continued
There have been many changes, and Members who have spoken touched on some of them, such as the opening of the new visitor reception building, which now seems to work very well. However, I want to touch on a few of the many essential services provided on the parliamentary estate. The catering staff provide excellent services and continue to adapt to the needs of Members and their staff. The Tea Room is a vital support to Members' work, particularly during long debates. I particularly single out Noelleen Delaney and her staff, who work efficiently and well. When we feel a bit down
and fed up and that we would like to go home at nine o'clock in the evening, they can really lift our spirits, which is important.
As someone with a restricted diet, I make a plea for better labelling of ingredients and for more wheat-free food options. For some reason, the 2005 intake seems to include a few people with eating problems, and some are coeliacs. When I was buying my wheat-free sandwich in the Terrace cafeteria at lunch time, one of the staff told me that she was also a coeliac. So Members and staff have this issue, and labelling is vital for them, because they have to be careful not to eat gluten or wheat, and that can be a minefield. It is important to say that this is not a question of dietary preferences-of not liking something-but of becoming ill if we eat the wrong thing, so the issue is important.
On maintenance, work has begun to replace the 160-year-old cast-iron roof, starting with the roof in the Speaker's Court area. Furthermore, the Department of Facilities has worked hard to put together a detailed feasibility study exploring different options for modernising the mechanical and electrical primary services. There is much debate when such large-scale maintenance or refurbishment is needed, and there needs to be, because it is important that all options are considered.
Obviously, the mood of the House is to start looking at when we are sitting and when we should be sitting, and maintenance will have to interleave with us. I mentioned that my career started in information technology at IBM. To start with, people could take over the IT systems, run with them for a couple of hours and tell the users to go home at eight o'clock. Over the years, however, that has become unacceptable, because people expect to have access 24/7, so we increasingly have to find ways of keeping this building open and having maintenance work around us if we can.
As a supporter of the 10:10 campaign, I add my voice to those of Members who have touched on concerns about energy consumption. I hope that we can do more: I think that we should, because we shall otherwise be very much pressed to do so by our constituents.
I want to thank all the staff of the House who work so hard to make this place run smoothly. We still sit late on Mondays and Tuesdays and staff should know how much their support to keep us going during those long hours is appreciated. During the snow in February, which could have disrupted things here, staff managed to get into work to enable the House to carry on. We should remember the effort that people made, which even meant that my predecessor, who is now Minister for Europe, was able to lead a debate in the evening. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend thought that that was a good or a bad thing, but everything went as it should.
The advice and services that enable the House and its Committees to conduct their business effectively are all highly valued by Members. Other hon. Members have touched on a few of those services already, and I want briefly to highlight some. We have already talked about the Public and Private Bill Offices, which made important preparations to support the Regional Grand Committees. We have heard, too, about the Library, which does remarkable work. It produced a comprehensive research paper in time for every major Government Bill and for the private Member's Bills of the first seven Members in
the ballot. The Library dealt with 18 per cent. more inquiries than in the previous year and had contact with 97 per cent. of Members.
The Vote Office successfully operated a no-fail policy in providing papers to support the work of the House, which meant that the correct documents were available all the time. I think that we take such things for granted, and we should not, because it is a remarkable thing that everything works like clockwork, so close to 100 per cent. of the time. I, too, want to thank the Table Office for its handling of the tabling of questions. It is not in the scope of the debate to discuss ministerial answers to parliamentary questions, but the Office of the Leader of the House is working hard to ensure that there is an improvement, and that will continue to receive our attention.
My own favourite support service is the Hansard staff, and the shadow Deputy Leader of the House has already touched on its work. Not only do they record what Members say in questions and debates in a way that achieves greater clarity-perhaps they do not have such a hard job now as they used to-but they do so with remarkable accuracy. Last year, they recorded almost 19,000 columns of debate. It is a remarkable service, of which we should be proud.
In looking back at the successes for the House of 2008-09, we know that the subsequent year, 2009-10, has been a terrible year for Parliament and for its standing with the public. I know, and other hon. Members all know, how we feel about that, but it affects the staff of the House, too, and we have to change. By this time next year, changes that are now being implemented will have had time to mature and necessary work will have had time to develop. The establishment of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is a major step forward, and it will bring about vital independent regulation and administration first of allowances and then of pay and pensions. As the hon. Member for North Devon has said, that affects the staff of the House, who will see it as a cause for concern. I had meetings with unions representing staff in the Department of Resources. I could do no more than listen to their concerns about the development of the authority, but it was important to do that. Their concerns are of course listened to, and are being taken forward.
I am sure that I speak for Members of all parties when I say that we are dedicated to overcoming the issues in question and making the necessary changes, so that all the work of Parliament can return to being something of which we can be proud.
3.23 pm
Nick Harvey: By leave of the House, I shall reply to the debate. I welcome the fact that the three party spokesmen have made so many positive remarks about the House service and the work of staff. I thank them also for their positive remarks about the Members Centre, the improved visitor arrangements, the visitor reception building outside and the work of other parts of the House service, such as the Library, Hansard, the Table Office, the Public Bill Office and many others. It is clear that there is a lot for us to be pleased with and grateful to our staff for.
I shall touch for a moment on some of the questions and challenges raised by hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath)
raised questions about the website. He described himself as old-fashioned, and although I think that the website is much improved, I fear that I may suffer the same tendencies, because the intranet seems to me to be somewhat counter-intuitive at various points. I dearly wish, when I am struggling to find my way around it and trying to use the search facility, that it would search the intranet and tell me what is on it, instead of searching the parliamentary information management system and telling me what might have been discussed on the topic some years earlier. However, that is a minor point, and the website itself is considerably improved.
My hon. Friend referred to the early-day motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson). The House has responded to the great majority of what she has been campaigning for. There is, I think, one relatively minor issue that in her mind remains unresolved; but there is a tension, because if the House agrees to what is being demanded, there is every chance that other production houses will ride roughshod over the continuing and lingering controls over how the Chamber is televised. However, that will continue to be under review.
My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome asked about major works, as did the hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara), the shadow Deputy Leader of the House. I, too, think that the 11-week summer recess will need to become a thing of the past, but the House must understand that there is a tension between not having that long period for maintenance work and the necessity of holding the Government to account.
My hon. Friend said that he could think of no other building-no stately home or other office-that would carry on in the way that the House does, but with respect, that is because the users of those buildings would not insist, in what is frankly an irrational and unreasonable way, that all maintenance must go on when they are not there. If we are to sit in September-I hope that we are, because it is a perfect excuse not to go to party conference, for one thing-we shall have to accept some maintenance going on around us as we work. It is unique that we expect everything to be done out of sight and sound. We shall just have to get into the real world and accept an element of such activity going on around us.
On the potential for the big decamp that the hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire asked about, it is impossible to say with any certainty how long it would take, how much it would cost or when it would be done, but all those things are being teased apart at the moment. When it is possible to put information into Members' hands to enable them to understand the issues, we shall certainly do so. However, the longer that we postpone dealing with the huge mechanical and engineering project in question, the greater the risk that something fundamental will break down in a way that cannot easily be repaired. That is a huge, looming project, which cannot be dodged altogether. We must tackle it, and decisions will have to be made.
Mr. Vara:
For clarity, would it not help in doing the work that needs to be done, and is being done at the moment, if we knew whether we were going to do just
patchwork, or eventually have a move? For example, if some pipework needs to be dealt with, would it not be helpful to the people doing that work if they knew they needed only to do a good job that would last 10 years, because there would be no point in a Rolls-Royce job, as it would have to be done again? Alternatively, it might help them if they knew at this stage that they needed to do a Rolls-Royce patchwork job, which would have to last a long time. The work that is being done at the moment would be assisted by some certainty.
Nick Harvey: I understand the point exactly, but although the sort of work that takes place now on the mechanical and engineering infrastructure is of the kind that the hon. Gentleman would call patchwork, there is no chance of patchwork-even aggressive patchwork-ultimately resolving the problem. There will have to be what could be called the Rolls-Royce option of a complete and fundamental replacement of the infrastructure. The question is, when? If the work is done only over summer recesses, it will cost a great deal more and take a great deal longer, increasing the risk of the whole thing fundamentally conking out. That is why the study we commissioned concludes unequivocally that decant and addressing the project in one go is the best option. What that would mean, when it would occur and how long it would take all need more work. Even the proposal that the House of Commons use the House of Lords Chamber, if the Lords could be persuaded to agree to that and to operate somewhere else for a time, would itself produce a quagmire of diplomacy between the Houses. These things are not imminent, but they cannot be dodged indefinitely.
All Members who spoke rightly mentioned the House's environmental performance, which has been going in the wrong direction and is unsatisfactory, but I reassure Members that both the director general of facilities and the whole Management Board take the issue seriously. Nearly a year ago we appointed someone to the new post of head of environment, charged with tackling the issue. A detailed environmental assessment is being carried out and early next year I expect to see significant recommendations on how we will tackle those issues, including some challenging changes that we will have to make.
However, it was not possible to sign up to the 10:10 campaign and state that we could achieve a 10 per cent. improvement during 2010. The Commission considered it and representations were made to us, but we unanimously arrived at the view that we could not sign up to the campaign in all conscience and in good faith because we could not guarantee that we would achieve its targets.
Barbara Keeley: That is the initial feeling when we look at the 10:10 campaign, but could we not actually just do best efforts? In fact, the campaign is not a commitment to achieve 10 per cent. by 2010, but to do our best towards that. It behoves us to say that we would do the best we can towards that. That is the simple point.
Nick Harvey:
With respect, although the 10:10 campaign included 10 per cent. as an aspiration, as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome called it, by signing up to it we had to guarantee to achieve 3 per cent., and we did not feel that we could categorically
guarantee even that. Our hope is that we will achieve a great deal more than 10 per cent., but in all conscience we could not anticipate that we would do that in 2010. It is no good saying that those targets are simply aspirational, they contained solid commitments and having considered them, we were not in a position to sign up.
There have been criticisms of PICT and IT equipment. PICT has made great strides, and there have been huge improvements in our IT support, and a great deal more is under way. By the end of next year the network will be on a completely new server and all the equipment will go through a refresh programme so that new Members coming in after the election will get brand-new equipment, and returning Members will have new equipment by next autumn.
Several comments suggested that the equipment is not as new as it might be. IT equipment currently goes through a refresh once a Parliament. As the Minister will know only too well, coming from the world of IT, by the time a desktop or laptop computer is five years old it is probably not as good as those one can buy even in Tesco. We could certainly replace them more frequently if we wanted to, but that would obviously produce a greater drain on the public purse, and we must consider what is reasonable when using public resources.
The Minister said that in some constituency offices the equipment in use dates back to 2001. That might be so, but it is not PICT property. It is equipment Members bought in 2001 and have either chosen not to replace, or not been in a position to replace. No PICT equipment dates back further than 2005. Clearly, we could replace things more frequently, but there would be a cost implication in doing so. I am the first to acknowledge that the provision of personal digital assistants-PDAs-is still short of where Members want it to be. I have quietly been a vocal lobbyist of PICT and a critic of some aspects of IT provision. I understand that completely new solutions on mobile computing are on the way and I hope that the offer to new Members arriving after the election will be a significant improvement. It will also be available to returning Members, so progress is being made.
My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome wanted more audit information made available to Members. There would be absolutely no problem with that, but judging by the level of interest even in the amount of information we have put to the House this afternoon, I am not entirely convinced there would be a huge appetite for it. I will certainly draw his remarks to the attention of the Audit Committee and see what arrangements could sensibly be made to put the specific audits to which he referred on the Committee's website or at least make them available to Members in one way or another.
The shadow Deputy Leader of the House mentioned security. Security is not predominantly a matter for the Commission, but one for Mr. Speaker. We need to be alert to the increasing security challenges, and Mr. Speaker, the Serjeant at Arms and everyone else involved needs a lot of support in that.
Good points were made about the time of day for school visits. Primary school pupils in my constituency, like those in the Minister's constituency, would have to start out at 4 o'clock in the morning and would still arrive rather breathless to try to make the deadlines for visits. I will do what I can to draw that to the attention of the relevant officials and see whether the time slots could be allocated according to the distance travelled.
My final point is about food labelling. I nearly did not make the debate this afternoon, having tucked into a tasty lunch and discovered half way through that there was something I was allergic to lingering in the food, which had not been mentioned in the description. The Minister's points about labelling are absolutely right, and I will draw them to the attention of the catering department.
If there are any loose ends that I have not covered, I will write to hon. Members about them. I thank all Members present for their comments and constructive criticisms, which I will draw to the attention of the relevant officials. Once again, on behalf of all Members, I thank all staff of the House for the support they give us.
3.38 pm
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