Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission
Oral evidence: Parliamentary Works Grant Main Estimates 2026/27, HC 1729
Wednesday 29 April 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 29 April 2026.
Members present: Ms Nusrat Ghani (Chair); Lord Gardiner of Kimble; Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court; Nick Smith.
Questions 1-53
Witnesses
I: Tom Goldsmith, Clerk of the House of Commons; Chloe Mawson OBE, Clerk of the Parliaments; Russ MacMillan, Chief Executive, Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Delivery Authority; and Charlotte Simmonds, Managing Director, Restoration and Renewal Client Team.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Tom Goldsmith, Chloe Mawson, Russ MacMillan and Charlotte Simmonds.
Q1 Chair: Welcome to this afternoon’s session of the Parliamentary Works Estimates Commission. We are here to review the Delivery Authority’s estimate for 2026-27, which has already been approved by the R&R Client Board. Before we begin, I want to set out the Estimates Commission’s role in the budget approval process. Our powers under the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019 require us to review the Delivery Authority’s annual estimate and to have regard to any Treasury advice on it. Having considered both, we may make comments as we consider appropriate, but we can only reject an estimate if the phase 1 cost assessment exceeds the phase 1 expenditure limit. I want everyone to be clear about the limitations of our authority.
The last estimate will bring the total costs of phase 1 to £540 million by the end of this financial year. That is the same amount as the latest cost assessment provided to us; therefore, as was the case last year, we have no option other than to lay the estimate before us. It is important for us to register at the beginning that, regardless of any concerns we have, if the estimate is within the window, we have no option other than to lay the estimate before us.
We have had an item of correspondence today from the Treasury. I know you have not had a huge amount of time to review it, but we wrote to the Treasury because they had deviated from their normal tone and language, in particular when they said they believed the estimate to be “taut and realistic”. We were concerned by that, so we wrote back to the Treasury, and we had a response today. We will come to this question later, but I want to make it clear at the beginning that the letter has unsettled us, and we have some concerns with the language and tone the Treasury have used. My final question to you, Mr Goldsmith, will be about how you feel the Treasury responded to us, but we have a series of questions before that. The reality is that we rely on the Treasury for their confidence. We have some concerns, and we are unsettled by their distinct change of language and tone.
Last year, we said that in the absence of any definitive political decisions being taken on the programme, “we are concerned that the value for money of the R&R programme’s work to date would be jeopardised, which would be to the detriment of Parliament and taxpayers alike.” We emphasised again the urgency of taking decisions on the programme and proposals as soon as possible. We are here a year later, still awaiting the parliamentary debates. This will be the sixth annual estimate laid since the authority was established. While the costed proposals report is now published, we are again required to review an estimate without any certainty on the future of the R&R programme, without any parliamentary building works having begun and without any option other than to lay the estimate before us. I once again make clear the limitations of our authority.
That said, let us begin our evidence session. May I begin by welcoming Chloe to her new role as Clerk of the Parliaments and as a joint accounting officer for the R&R programme? I ask our witnesses to introduce themselves for the record, then we will begin questioning.
Charlotte Simmonds: Hello. I am Charlotte Simmonds, the managing director of the R&R Client Team, so I am the senior responsible owner for R&R.
Chloe Mawson: I am Chloe Mawson. As the Chair just said, I am the new Clerk of the Parliaments, having started in post at the beginning of this month, and I am therefore the accounting officer for the House of Lords.
Tom Goldsmith: I am Tom Goldsmith, Clerk of the House of Commons.
Russ MacMillan: I am Russ MacMillan, chief executive of the Delivery Authority and accounting officer to the Delivery Authority.
Q2 Chair: My first question is to the Clerks. In this Commission’s comments following last year’s main estimate, we said that it was “imperative” that a decision on the way forward was made during 2025-26. That has not happened. What information can you tell us about when the debate on the costed proposals will be held? Can you make clear the financial and operational impact of delaying it? Shall I go to Ms Mawson first or Mr Goldsmith?
Chloe Mawson: Do you want to talk about debates, Tom, and then I can talk about impact?
Tom Goldsmith: Perfect. In terms of when the debates happen, unfortunately that is not in our gift; it is up to the Government. The Leader of the House of Commons has certainly talked about the need for the debates—I know it is very much on his radar. We would very much like to have them sooner rather than later, and especially before the summer recess, because if we have a delay beyond the summer recess, that is when we really start having an impact on the programme. At that point, I will pass over to Chloe.
Chloe Mawson: The schedule set out in the costed proposals report remains deliverable if the debates are before the summer recess, but if they slip to the September sitting or after the conference recess, that will have impacts on the programme schedule. Obviously, the later the debates, the higher that impact will be. In terms of House of Lords temporary accommodation, if the debates do not take place until after the conference recess, that really does have quite a significant impact on our temporary accommodation schedule. We plan to start the initial procurement in the autumn, but we cannot do that if the debates have not taken place, so there is a real material impact there. I know that the DA is planning its procurement launch, but Russ can speak more about that.
The costed proposals report sets out the cost impacts of delay. They are quite stark: £70 million per year at current prices, and an additional £250 million to £350 million in inflationary impact. Any delay has costs associated with it.
Chair: So you are saying that the financial cost of delay is £70 million.
Chloe Mawson: At current prices.
Chair: At current prices, and then £250 million to £230 million with inflation. Is that correct?
Chloe Mawson: The inflationary impact is £250 million to £350 million.
Q3 Chair: Mr MacMillan, do you have anything to add?
Russ MacMillan: Chloe has already talked through the key interface, which is our ability to launch our procurement. We clearly need some clarity from Parliament about what it wants the programme to deliver before we can run that procurement or be ready to go this side of the summer. If the vote comes late, we would have to delay that activity, with the consequential knock-ons that Chloe talked about.
Chair: Are there any more questions from the group? No. I will go to Nick Smith for the next question.
Q4 Nick Smith: My first question is to the Clerks, on phase 1 and the statutory limitations. The costed proposals set out potential areas where the 2019 Act could be revisited, but there appears to be no urgency to amend it. Do you think this limits the work that can be done in phase 1?
Tom Goldsmith: The short answer is no. The Act says that in phase 1 we can do only preparatory works—for example, design works and works that do not affect the continuing functioning of the Palace for the purposes of either House. The sorts of works we are talking about in this initial seven-year phase fall into that category. We have taken legal advice on that. We are confident that the work, set out in the costed proposals report, that would be done in that period—such as preparing to refurb Cloister Court, starting on the work underground and building the jetty so that we can have deliveries there—can all be done within the Act.
Q5 Nick Smith: My second question is about the dependency on Strategic Estates and its programmes. It is a chunky question, and it has three bits to it, so bear with me. Given that a growing amount of urgent and essential work is being delivered by the Strategic Estates division due to the delays to Restoration and Renewal, how do you think this will affect the eventual scale, scope and cost of the R&R programme?
That is a big umbrella question, and now I have three separate sections. Are there any R&R programme workflow dependencies that Strategic Estates is responsible for, and how are these being managed? Secondly, how confident are you that these will be delivered on time? They are chunky bits of work, as you know. The phase 1 early works are a broadbrush estimate; when will we see a clearer breakdown of the schedule? There is a lot going on in that question.
Tom Goldsmith: I will start, and please let me know if I miss anything. I think you know about our R&R test for any work we do in the Palace at the moment, led by Strategic Estates. We look at what work might be needed and try to consider whether it would be good VFM to do it now, or whether it can wait and be done as part of the R&R programme. If it is the latter, then we do not do it now, but we get on and start working on some things sooner rather than later, particularly things that relate to health and safety, works relating to fire and so on. For example, I think we are now on our third programme to do with mechanical and electrical fire safety.
At this stage, we are confident about the costs set out in the costed proposals report for the R&R programme. This relates to the earlier question in a way; if we were to have a delay, the scale of the work we would need to undertake in Strategic Estates would be greater. That is, there would be more work such that, if we apply the R&R test to it, we would say we had to get on with it now, if it was not clear that R&R was coming down the track soon and would do it. We will end up having more work done in-house by Strategic Estates if we do not get a decision on R&R, but there will be a limit to that work. We have had external independent assurance to say that we cannot really get to the underlying safety issues in this place in particular without a programme on the scale of R&R.
The biggest dependency is the work to provide for a temporary House of Commons Chamber and related offices on the northern estate. As you know, that is being taken forward by our Strategic Estates as part of what we call the CBIP programme—the Commons Building and Infrastructure Portfolio. That is an ambitious, very big piece of work in itself. Even if we were not doing R&R, that is a significantly complex and difficult piece of work.
The timescales on that, over the period I have been involved with this programme, have slipped. There are still complexities and some unknown factors relating to that, but I think we now have a good plan to move forward on it. The key there is getting really good interaction between the R&R programme, Strategic Estates and the CBIP programme, so that everyone knows what is going on and that they are working together effectively. We are trying to make that happen. For example, Charlotte sits on the board for CBIP. She may want to say something more about timescales.
The final limb of your question was on the phase 1 works being broadbrush. The report sets out fairly clearly what phase 1 will deliver. Our external assurance work said that there was enough in what has become the costed proposals report for the Houses to take a decision. Of course we need to do much more work on it, and more detail will go to the Programme Board each month, and through them to the Client Board, but it would not be good practice to try to settle every detail of that work now and to give some spuriously precise cost that was likely to change as we do more work on it. What we can say with confidence is that that work will have a £3 billion cap and—my view is the same as that of our external experts—that there is enough there for the Houses to take a decision.
Q6 Nick Smith: Does anybody want to complement what Tom said?
Chloe Mawson: I agree with everything that Tom just said. There are quite a lot of examples. I can give you an example at the Lords end of the estate, where we are doing work on the outside of Victoria Tower because of falling masonry. A value-for-money decision was taken to add to that work—we already had the scaffolding up, due to the falling masonry—and complete all the exterior works for Victoria Tower. That would have been in the scope of the R&R programme, but it could not wait because we had the falling masonry. Discrete pieces of work do impact R&R, but because of the really close working that we encourage between the teams, we design those works as much as we can to be complementary, to deliver value for money and to be capable of being transferred over to R&R over the long term.
Russ MacMillan: If I may add, Mr Smith, on the definition of the phase 1 works, it is important to be clear that underpinning the phase 1 activity are two incredibly detailed schedules for both the full decant option and the EMI+ option, which have been developed to the level of maturity that you would expect them to be at for this sort of decision. When we bring those together under phase 1, and the work that needs to happen now to converge them, we end up with the definition of phase 1 works as we set out in the costed proposals report. But to be clear, underneath that are two incredibly detailed, well assured programmes.
Q7 Chair: You said, Mr MacMillan and Ms Mawson, that these were well costed, value-for-money programmes. I know that that has come under challenge—I also serve on the Finance Committee, and that language has come under challenge—and we are also anxious about the letter from the Treasury. I want you to explain your confidence that these are absolutely value-for-money projects, to give us more confidence that that is the view, collectively, of you all.
Tom Goldsmith: I am happy to start. I saw the letter just as we were waiting outside, so I have not spent a great deal of time thinking about it. The letter is saying that it is not for the Treasury to say that the estimate is taut and realistic, but for us as accounting officers to assure ourselves. I am happy that I am so assured. This budget is built up through quite a detailed system of scrutiny and assurance, which we could talk you through if that would be helpful. It is interesting that the letter is not saying that there are particular concerns about it not being taut or realistic, as far as I can see.
Chair: That could be an interpretation of what you think the letter says.
Tom Goldsmith: I cannot see a part in it that queries how it is not taut and realistic. It does recognise that the expenditure will reflect the decisions taken in both Houses, which must be the case. I am assured that the DA has taken really great steps under Russ’s leadership to significantly reduce the expenditure on its backroom functions, which is really important.
I am confident that Charlotte’s Client Team in particular work very closely with the DA. For example, on a monthly basis they look at its expenditure and performance, as do our finance directors—every three months they do a deep dive into that. The DA has its own audit committee and board that ask questions that you would expect in this area. The Programme Board, which meets on a monthly basis, has some expert externals on it who ask tough questions about how the DA spends its money and what it spends it on.
There are all sorts of figures that Russ could give you about benchmarking, where I think the DA holds up very creditably. There are lots of myths floating around about this programme’s expense compared with other programmes. I am assured to the extent that I feel I need to be as accounting officer that this is a realistic budget and that will do what it needs to do.
Q8 Lord Gardiner: If I could take that further, the letter from the Treasury has a different tone to the ones we have had in previous years. I want to tease out the extent of the dialogue with Treasury officials a little bit more. From my point of view, the Estimates Commission has hitherto, as part of our consideration, relied on the description from the Treasury to be an extra layer of assurance. I would like to feel somewhat more confident that there is dialogue with the Treasury officials and that it is productive.
Charlotte Simmonds: I am happy to come in on that. We have a monthly meeting with Government officials from the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. That would include the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, which is now part of the Treasury. I meet with them monthly, but much more frequently in between that four-weekly cycle. We have contact on a weekly basis in a more regular, day-to-day sense, but we meet on a monthly basis, although still informally. There is ongoing dialogue. The majority of that is focused on the big number: what R&R costs overall, as opposed to the annual budget. We have been very busy answering questions from the Treasury in the build-up to the costed proposal report and after it was published. The relationship with them is quite extensive and it is very positive and productive.
Chair: Nick, you may continue your questions.
Q9 Nick Smith: I want to stick to this important sidetrack. Mr Goldsmith, you talked about a range of internal checks and balances around finance development, and about scrutiny and internal challenge, which all sounded good. In the earlier letter of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—the letter before this one—he talked about the value of independent oversight from the NAO and internally from the Public Accounts Committee. As a former member of the PAC, I have every confidence in those two organisations; I know that a lot of us will. Given that we have been given a further challenge on this from the Chief Secretary, do you think there is a need for more firepower to support the work that is already taking place, or do you just want to consider it more?
Tom Goldsmith: I am up for any amount of firepower. As far as I am concerned as an accounting officer, the more scrutiny this gets, the better because it gives me confidence. I would say that I think that this is quite a well-scrutinised programme for the reasons I set out. The NAO look at the DA accounts every year but, very unusually for Parliament, it also has the power to do VFM inquiries into the R&R programme. It is doing its third of those at the moment. That is important.
Mr Smith, you are the last person in the world who I need to tell that the programme is subject to parliamentary questions from your colleagues in the Chamber every five weeks—oral questions and any amount of written questions. I am not aware of any other single programme conducted anywhere in the public service that is subject to that particular kind of scrutiny, although Members can obviously ask questions of programmes through departmental questions. The more scrutiny the better, as far as I am concerned, but the programme is pretty well scrutinised already.
Chair: Unless, Mr Smith, you want to spend more time in the Chamber answering questions on this?
Q10 Nick Smith: It is one of my duties. The final question from me in this section is on governance structure. This question is to our Clerks and Charlotte. Do you think that the current R&R governance structure is effective? What do you think are its weaknesses? Where could controls be improved?
Chloe Mawson: Obviously I am coming into this new, so in a minute I will hand over to people who have been embroiled in the governance structure for years. It is a really complex governance structure, but it is a complex and unique programme involving two different Houses. The governance structure has been looked at by the Independent Advice and Assurance Panel, which said that on the whole it was working well—that was some good assurance. It is a strength that Members are totally embedded in the decision-making process. We have the two Member-led R&R boards, which are really a testament to that.
However, the Independent Advice and Assurance Panel did say that we should look at evolution and streamlining of governance. That must be right, as we move forward. In my first month in the job it has struck me how much time there is, in my diary alone, going to different parts of the governance of R&R, so there is scope to streamline it in the future. That is key. In doing that, we must not lose the bicameral governance and the embedding of Members in governance.
Charlotte Simmonds: The original design, after the 2019 Act was put in place, tried to insulate the programme from Members. In hindsight that is a very difficult thing to do when we are in the strategic decision-making stage and the Act itself said that Members have to decide on the full scope and funding envelope for this piece of work. The 2022 reset that brought the sponsor function—my function—in-house, which resulted in internal governance being much closer to Members, has been really effective. As Chloe said, the Independent Advice and Assurance Panel confirmed that view.
From the Client Board side, we have brought together the two Commissions as a bicameral entity to give us direction and provide recommendations to the Houses. At the Programme Board level, we mix Members’ experience with the externals, who provide a huge amount of experience and expertise in construction, public sector finance, health and safety, heritage, and all the things that we need to make sure that we have a well-rounded value-for-money programme.
I absolutely agree that it needs evolution, but governance needs to evolve across the life cycle of any programme. This is the right time as we hopefully move into the next phase, if we get the debates and decisions that we are looking for. I agree with Chloe: we must maintain the bicameral nature. This new phase is a blend, really—it is hybrid. We are going to move into delivery, but we are also going to retain—if what is in the costed proposals report is agreed—a level of strategic decision making. We need to make sure that continues to be close to Members.
We also, as we move into delivery, need to make sure that underlying that, we have a pace for decision making at the official level. A governance review is in place, and we are in discussion with the Programme Board and the Client Board to work out how we do that. We will not make any changes until we understand what comes out of the debates, but we have plans in place and we are starting to discuss that.
Tom Goldsmith: I agree with all of that. I will just put my own twist on it, if I may. The governance here will always be really difficult. Governance of a project of this size and complexity, and with these risks, will always be difficult. We are doing it in the most politically contested environment in the country, where the key decision makers, when they take decisions, are taking account of a whole load of factors that are not always just based on factors that other decision makers might take into account in other organisations, when they are deciding whether to undertake programmes.
The corporate officers inherited duties that were originally the duties of the Sponsor Body. When the Act was done away with, those responsibilities moved to the two Clerks. The first two duties are “to determine the strategic objectives of the Parliamentary building works” and “to make strategic decisions” relating to those works. I understand why it is there, because somebody has to have that legal responsibility, but it is a bit of a statutory fiction that Chloe and I can sit before the Committee now and say, “Here are the strategic objectives and here are the big strategic decisions about how we are going to deliver R&R.”
The same Act itself says that the decision of whether to go ahead with actually getting on with it needs to be a decision of both Houses. Underneath that, you have all the different governance bodies we have mentioned, because this is an inherently political institution. Politicians need to feel control and be taking the big decisions over this, otherwise it will never work.
That is always going to be the main tension in governance on this. It is about how you manage to get relatively timely, clear decisions, and decisions that are stuck to, where you do not chop and change them all the time. It is how you manage that alongside the fact that you need a political consensus and political buy-in, when we work in an environment where politics means that sometimes differences are for all sorts of reasons and that the key players change, because that is the nature of politics. The governance of this will always be complex.
Q11 Nick Smith: Ms Simmonds, you talked about improved governance that helps with pace. I would like to prod you a bit more on that and how you think that could be helped.
Charlotte Simmonds: As part of the governance review, we asked the Independent Advice and Assurance Panel to think about this, which we have done previously as well. They are a really good sounding board. They recommended what we have termed a technical board. They called it a programme board, but we already have a Programme Board. To avoid confusion, we are going to call that a technical board, if that is what the boards agree to go along with. That is an official-level board, so I would chair it as the senior responsible owner with clear delegation for the level of decision making we can take.
As we move forward—Russ can talk to the detail of this—we will have a huge amount of design changes coming along. Some of them will be minor. Some of them we might think are minor, such as what the carpets look like, but that might be something that Members take a great interest in. We will have to work through that, and work through that with Members, but ultimately, for this programme to succeed, we will need clear delegations at an official level to be able to take decisions.
It is my responsibility to make sure that, with that delegated authority, I am working through the Clerks and up to Members to understand that we are not overstepping the boundary and not taking decisions where Members really do want to get involved. That is a bit of an art rather than a science in this House. Do you want to add anything on the decision making required, Russ?
Russ MacMillan: Most of the points that I would have raised have already been raised. The only point that I would add is the importance of stability in decision making as we move forward. As the amount of money that we are spending increases rapidly moving into phase 1, whatever decisions Parliament decides to take, it is really important that they are stable ones, because the cost of going back and changing them as the programme progresses will only ever increase. That would be the other attribute I would pull out alongside the need for effective and timely decisions.
Q12 Chair: Mr Goldsmith, you were so diplomatic with your answer, but my interpretation is that there are 650 MPs you have to try to manage, and they all have their own views. Then anybody can come along—politically minded, with a passion about this project—and send it off on a course that ends up taking a huge amount of time and money. How do we hold those people to account who do occasionally send this project on a different course?
Tom Goldsmith: I am not sure we can. No Parliament can bind its successor. Even if you de-personalise it, one of the great risks that will hang over this programme from beginning to end—we have already had it—is that Parliament can take a decision about how things will go forward and then, a few years later, take a different decision.
Q13 Chair: But regardless, Mr Goldsmith, there is an added extra: every time politics gets in the way, we are costing the taxpayer millions and millions of pounds.
Tom Goldsmith: Absolutely—
Chair: It is not about the final vote; it is about every minor decision that is taken where you are sent off to explore other avenues. Taxpayers’ money is being spent and, one could argue, wasted to deliver people’s pet passion ideas. How do we allow those individuals to be accountable—to understand the weight of the choices they make when they send you off to do items of work that may not necessarily garner the outcomes that we need, but cost millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money?
Tom Goldsmith: When we are at this stage and still in the process of gathering information to inform the Houses so that they can take very big decisions, it is completely appropriate that we look into alternative ways of doing things, to tell a good story that we have thought through all the sensible ways we could deliver this programme. It is actually a good thing if Members engage and say, “Have you thought about doing x?”, and we can say, “Yes, we have.”
I would amplify the point that Russ makes: when we get to the future stage of actually getting on and delivering this, it is at that point, if we are asked to reverse or do something very different, that the costs will start to go crazy and you will see really serious nugatory expenditure.
In terms of accountability, fundamentally politicians will have to call out other politicians on all that. But, as officials, we can ensure that we present all the information as fairly, comprehensively and consistently as possible. As accounting officers, we have an absolute duty to point out the consequences of some of those decisions. It might be for others to take the decisions, but we can point out the consequences of taking them.
Q14 Chair: Do you have any power to stop those decisions being made if you know that they are not value for money?
Tom Goldsmith: We both have at least two different hats that we wear. One is accounting officer. We do not quite have the same system that permanent secretaries in a Government Department have, which Lord Macpherson would be very familiar with, whereby permanent secretaries can put on record if they have a problem with a political decision that is being made. However, we have mechanisms. If, for example, the House of Commons Commission were going to take a decision that I thought was really poor VFM and difficult to defend, I have various ways of ensuring that I say that to the Commission and, if it persists, making that view public.
Q15 Chair: We have already spoken about the different layers of boards and governance, which are making it very difficult to understand who, what, where and when. Then, Ms Simmonds, you talked about the technical board. By introducing yet another board, are you diluting accountability even further and just creating another space for other decisions to be taken?
Charlotte Simmonds: Undoubtedly it is another level, and part of the governance review is to look at how we can streamline the whole governance approach. But it is an additional valuable level. As officials, we need to have a functioning board so that, certainly, I as SRO can scrutinise the performance of the Delivery Authority and obviously look across all the dependencies as well, and the integrated schedule that we have, and make sure that we can process the changes that are coming through that we have the delegated authority for. It is another layer, but I think it is a really essential layer. Above that sits the Member-level governance, which is also very important. We need both, but we have to have some official-level board and governance in this place. That would be typical for any programme, major or not.
Tom Goldsmith: I am sorry to come in again, but I realise that I did not give you the second half of my answer. I said that we wear at least two hats. One is accounting officer, and I said what I would do as accounting officer. One of the other hats we wear is corporate officer, where we have responsibilities, among other things, for the health and safety of people on the estate, and there are things I can do there to absolutely say no. If I got to the point of thinking that this building was not safe for my staff to come into, I would say that they could not come into it.
Q16 Chair: But what if it is unsafe for MPs? Who makes the decision then?
Tom Goldsmith: Constitutionally, I cannot stop Members coming into this place. If there were no House of Commons staff coming in here, it would be quite difficult to run the place. I do not think we will ever get there—I hope we will not ever get there—but I give that as an extreme example of how, as corporate officer even more so than accounting officer, I feel that I have the authority to say no to some things.
Lord Gardiner: Can I perhaps tease out a bit more detail about cost controls? I wonder how satisfied the Clerks in particular are that effective control mechanisms are in place, particularly if there was concern about programme costs getting out of control or moving to the very considerable sums that we are seeing in total. As a rider to that, we have seen as the Estimates Commission that the Client Board has increased the phase 1 expenditure limit each year since the programme’s inception. I note that we have not been able to reach a joint agreement on a preferred option.
I also want to tease out your feelings about the oversight that we have, and indeed—what I think is imperative—the assurance to the taxpayer that their money is being effectively protected. I want to tease out a bit more about your thoughts as Clerks—accounting officers—on effective control mechanisms, and whether you think there is more we can do. There is always more we can do, but I wonder whether there is something of substance you would like to say on that.
Chloe Mawson: At the moment we have the Client Team working with the Delivery Authority to develop a controls framework for the phase 1 works, and that is really important. This is a majorly significant mega-programme for Parliament, and we need to get that controls framework right, but we have not seen it yet. I think it will come to the R&R Programme Board before the summer—
Charlotte Simmonds: It should come before the summer.
Chloe Mawson: Yes. We cannot say we are satisfied with it, because we have not seen it, but we are really satisfied that that work is being done properly. Talking about other assurance for the public, the NAO report is expected within the next few weeks, and there will be PAC activity around that.
Tom Goldsmith: What Chloe said is right, and I will not repeat what I said earlier about the various levels of assurance and scrutiny that we have of the budget.
Q17 Lord Gardiner: Even before this recent work—obviously we all have duties—but your duty as accounting officers is to ensure the scrutiny of costs all up the line, particularly as we are seeing very significant sums of money accumulating and then perhaps a further first phase. One of the imperatives for Parliament is that we can give the public confidence that everything is well accounted for and well spent, and that we are not duplicating. I present again the satisfaction with what we had before in terms of that controls mechanism.
I think you are suggesting that we are redoubling efforts to ensure that it will become increasingly apparent, from all the scrutiny that has been described, that we will be able to look as a parliamentary community at the public and say, “Money going forward is being well spent, and we have a good story to tell on the money that we have already spent”. I have some concerns about that, particularly in terms of the past.
Chloe Mawson: I will not comment on the past, because I am brand new in post. However, just on your last point about being able to look the public in the eye, yes, but then we have also just talked about the known cost of delay, about which it is hard to look anyone in the eye and say, “Delay is justifiable, given we know the costs.”
Lord Gardiner: I am glad that is being reaffirmed, because I have felt that the more this is delayed, the more difficult it is to present to the public that we are grasping this in one way or another.
May I—?
Q18 Chair: Just before you go on, Lord Gardiner, we need to hear some assurances, Mr Goldsmith. You have heard that Lord Gardiner is concerned; we just need to hear some assurances from you.
Tom Goldsmith: I am assured that, focusing on the estimate we are looking at for this year, it is not an overly generous or extravagant estimate. I hope that we will be moving into a critical year for the R&R programme. I am very impressed by the work that Russ has done to really bear down on costs within the DA, and I am assured by the degree of scrutiny the estimate has gone through that it is an effective estimate.
If I may just add an extra point to Chloe’s point, I think there is a very important point around transparency as well. We publish lots of information. Lord Gardiner was talking about how the public, as well as parliamentarians, can be assured that we are spending money in a sensible way. A key part of that is transparency. We publish a lot of information about what we are spending already. I think that is something that we need to focus on further.
Q19 Lord Gardiner: I would like to move not to a dissimilar area but to responsibilities—fiduciary responsibilities. This question is for the Clerks and Russ MacMillan. It is about your confidence in raising concerns, either by formal means or informal means, in your capacities as accounting officers, regarding decision making, or I might even say a delay in decision making, on the programme, and how that ties in with—obviously—the responsibilities you have as accounting officers.
It is a variation on the same theme, in a sense, that I would want the confidence that, both through formal means and informal means, you have the confidence to say what you feel about the situation in terms of, as I say, the responsibilities that we have placed on you following the changes, and that you have as accounting officers. I just wondered if you could articulate in further details whether you have felt you needed to raise concerns, and if you have, perhaps you could expand on that.
Tom Goldsmith: I am very happy to, thank you. Yes, I do feel confident about raising concerns like that, certainly informally in meetings with officials, but also in the Programme Board and the Client Board I play a full part in those discussions, and I come to them as accounting officer.
I think that it was last November that Chloe’s predecessor and I put on the record at the Programme Board our concerns as accounting officers about any delays to the publication of the costed proposals report, because we were worried about the impact of delay that we have been talking about. Our predecessors, for example, put on the record their concerns about any proposal to do R&R in a way that did not properly take account of safety. So, those were quite formal interventions.
Less formally, I feel very confident to say what I think about this programme. I think I was three sitting days into my job when I appeared before PAC, and I think I was very clear about the need for the programme, and about the pros and cons of the different ways in which it might be delivered.
Q20 Lord Gardiner: Mr MacMillan, do you feel that you are able to raise concerns about areas within your responsibility? Is there a listening mode if there are concerns?
Russ MacMillan: Similarly to Tom, I am comfortable that I have appropriate opportunities to provide advice, and I can take my own view, as an accounting officer, about the things for which I am responsible. Tom has already touched on the consequences and cost of delay.
The other area that it would be worth expanding on briefly is the consequences of not down-selecting to a single option. I have a very narrow perspective—I am a programme delivery individual—and you would expect me to say from that perspective that it would be better and simpler were we to down-select an option now. That said, I completely respect the fact that Members have a much wider range of considerations. They need to weigh that narrow programme perspective against those wider considerations and form legitimate views in doing so.
In terms of how I have been able to lay out that advice, we have communicated that very clearly to Charlotte and the team. That has been clearly communicated to the Client Board, so it is part of their consideration in making the decisions that they have reached. It has been summarised in the costed proposals report too, so I am comfortable that we have been able to give that assessment and communicate the advice.
Clearly, it presents value-for-money risks. The other thing that an accounting officer needs to do is assure themselves that, in a binary way, you can meet the four tests set out. We have done a piece of analysis on that too. I don’t think it would be welcome to come in at the very tail end of the process, after Parliament had formed a view, and cry foul at that point. We are comfortable with the way that the Green Book requires you to do those assessments. You can make an argument that you would meet the tests too in that regard. To tackle your question head on, I am comfortable that we have appropriate mechanisms.
Q21 Lord Gardiner: The other one is probably for the Clerks. If phase 1 works are agreed, is the intention to set a phase 1 estimates limit for the entire phase 1 period? Again, I am thinking of costs, avoiding escalation and some sort of limit that we can work upon and scrutinise. What is the intention with that? Obviously, it is eventually going to be a very considerable sum.
Tom Goldsmith: It is for the Commissions to decide that, obviously. There will be a cap on that expenditure, because the Houses will be invited to agree work, which will be up to £3 billion. That is the overall cap. Within that, I think I am right in saying that it is not a decision that the Commissions have yet considered. Whether they set one global figure or carry on doing what they have done so far and set annual figures, the need for constant scrutiny of it will be the same in either case.
Q22 Lord Gardiner: I want to drill down into one area. Obviously, we are talking about considerable sums of money. This is again for the Clerks, but I would welcome any other comments. On digital infrastructure, 21% of the total DA costs—£115 million—has been spent on digital infrastructure and ongoing running costs of over £8 million a year. That is clearly a very large sum of money. The project has obviously not yet been approved, but I would welcome your assessment of the extent to which £115 million reflects value for money. Was it all necessary?
In my consideration of this, I go back to the fact that these large sums of money are quite difficult for people like me, who are lay in this area, to understand. We think, “Gosh, that’s such a huge sum of money. Has it had the appropriate level of scrutiny? Did we really need to spend that sum of money, and is it going to bear fruit in the future?” With these sorts of figures, I would be constantly wanting to assess whether they are justified. Is the narrative that this has set us up well? Could I tease that out, because £115 million is a lot of money to me?
Tom Goldsmith: It is a lot of money. I have already referred to the fact that I think the DA has changed its approach for the better in terms of how it spends its money.
I might ask Russ to say something about that expenditure and what it has been spent on.
Russ MacMillan: Absolutely. There are two important points of context that it would be worth starting with. The first is that when the DA was set up in 2019, it was set up to deliver a programme very rapidly. Full decant of both Houses was originally planned for 2025 or 2026. On that basis, it made the decision to invest very early and very quickly in a set of digital infrastructure, ready to have already decanted the Palace by now.
The second point of context is exactly that kind of start-up context—in setting up a programme, there are lots of things that you need to do to get ready for that programme. It is important to emphasise that we are not just talking here about the provision of desktop services to office-based users. We are also talking about things like the creation of a building information model, the input of data into that model, and those kinds of things that become fundamental to the way that we want to run the programme.
Notwithstanding all of that, I do accept that costs were high. I have been here a year. It is an area that I have focused on very significantly. As Tom mentioned, we have seen a very significant reduction—about 75%, roughly, in the costs from the 2021-22 period to where we are now. That has come down an awful lot. We have done quite a lot of work particularly around this year’s estimate to benchmark our spend against comparator organisations. I would be very happy to give you some of those statistics if that is helpful, which I think you would find reassuring.
Lord Gardiner: Thank you very much. As I say, they are significant sums of money. The recognition, or the confirmation, that with this investment we are in a very strong position in terms of whatever the Houses decide, and that we have an infrastructure that will be fit for purpose to use, whatever the decisions are, and this is not nugatory spend—I appreciate the difficulties and complexities of this, but one of the things is making sure that there is no nugatory spend. Thank you for that.
I know the work you have been undertaking since your appointment and I am grateful for it. It has been very successful.
Q23 Chair: Lord Gardiner, like Mr Goldsmith, is incredibly diplomatic. £115 million is a hell of a lot of money. How did we ever get to that stage, Mr MacMillan?
Russ MacMillan: All I can repeat is the point that when we benchmark our costs against comparative organisations, we are not a particular outlier. Had the DA known what it now knows about the rate at which the programme had developed, and the fact that we are now talking about a programme that is roughly speaking 10 years behind the programme that it was set up to deliver, we wouldn’t have ramped our rate of spend on digital infrastructure in the way that we did. I absolutely accept that.
All I can really say is that now we are in full command of the facts and have a much greater understanding of what is going to happen next on the programme, in a forward-looking sense, we have borne down on our data and digital spend. We have benchmarked it against other organisations—indeed, in many of the things you would look at, we actually sit underneath comparative benchmarks. That is a philosophy that I intend to continue to progress under my leadership moving forwards.
Q24 Chair: That is what gives us the anxiety—that previously decisions have been taken and the amount of money that has been spent, I would argue, would not necessarily easily benchmark with similar types of projects. Nothing compares to the project here, but to have 21% of the total Delivery Authority’s costs to be digital—that is a huge amount of money.
I accept that you weren’t responsible at the time, but the anxiety we have is that decisions have been taken and may be taken again that are not good value for money. That is what gives us concern. There are not enough levels of scrutiny or levers in place to prevent poor decisions being taken.
Tom Goldsmith: There are two parts to the question. One is the spend previously and whether there are levers in place now. I think you can take some heart from the fact that, over the last two years, corporate costs—that is probably the right way to put it—have reduced very significantly.
Russ MacMillan: By 46%.
Tom Goldsmith: By 46%. That reflects the approach that Russ is taking with our full support. The other point to make is that, as Russ said, the DA has done quite a lot of benchmarking, and at this stage in the project—the pre-construction phase—we compare favourably with, for example, Crossrail and the Olympics. It is a lot of money. One of the things I found when I became Clerk is that almost every business case that came to me on everything, not just R&R, seemed to have one more zero than I would have expected. But I think you can take some reassurance, given that benchmarking and the direction of travel of spend on corporate functions.
Q25 Chair: Decisions were taken, to use your language, Mr MacMillan, when people did not have full command of the facts. We do not want to be back here in a year’s time. We do not want people not having full command of the facts to be a get-out clause for having spent 21% of the Delivery Authority’s costs on digital. That is the point I would like to make.
Tom Goldsmith: Chair, I completely agree if we are saying the same thing. I think when Russ was talking about full command of the facts, that related to the fact that the pace of delivery did not match what was expected when the DA was set up. That was not because of officials dragging their feet, but because of changes in political direction. If you are saying that it would be very good to have a political decision on how we go forward and for that decision to be stuck to, I could not agree more.
Q26 Chair: I think we all agree on that. Mr Goldsmith, in your response to Mr Gardiner earlier, you said that we have had the costed proposal report yet still face two options, which must be significantly adding to the costs. You must have concerns about that. If you do have concerns, who do you raise them with?
Tom Goldsmith: Sorry?
Chair: I am just reflecting on some of the answers you gave to Mr Gardiner. We have the costed proposal report. We have two options in play, and they are adding significant costs to the programme because you are running two—
Tom Goldsmith: Yes, sorry. I think Russ said that, but I agree with it.
Q27 Chair: You must have concerns that there are two options in play, which costs a lot of money. No doubt you have concerns—you are nodding. Who are you raising those concerns with?
Tom Goldsmith: Sorry—to be clear, what I was nodding at is the fact that having two options in play adds to the costs; it absolutely does. I am not concerned, because I think it is appropriate for us to get a decision from the Houses that will be stuck to. It is probably premature to ask the Houses to get behind one of those options at the moment, and, perhaps more importantly, others closer to the politics of this than I am also thought that.
What we have is a really pragmatic way forward to start doing the preparatory work that allows us to get on with the programme, and we can take a decision at a later stage when we have more information and certainty about costs. Not dashing in to decide everything at this stage is not out of kilter with best practice on very big projects and programmes.
Q28 Chair: When you do have concerns about costs, I just want to understand who you take them up with.
Tom Goldsmith: With the DA. We have talked before about the fact that Charlotte is very much involved with the work of the DA, as are our finance directors. One of the members on the DA board is appointed by the two Clerks, which gives us a direct input into that board. I have talked already about what I can do as accounting officer if I think a decision is going to be taken that very significantly adds to costs for no apparent benefit. I am happy that I have the required grasp on this, and the voice to say if I think there is a problem.
Q29 Lord Macpherson: Mr MacMillan, I am going to ask you a few detailed questions about the costs. I will try to be brief.
First, this is the first time that the Delivery Authority is including capitalisation in its budget for the design costs on the temporary accommodation. Given that the acquisition of the QEII conference centre by the House of Lords has yet to be agreed, would it not be more prudent at this stage to set the budget as resource rather than capital?
Russ MacMillan: The entire programme that we have built for the next year assumes that a decision—a debate—will happen during the course of the year. On that basis, to make sure that our cost and our plans all match up, we believe that it would be appropriate to capitalise the design and surveying costs for the House of Lords temporary accommodation. Clearly, that is an assumption that may or may not prove to be true. It is a discussion that we have had with the NAO and throughout all our different governance fora, if you like.
If it becomes apparent during the course of the year that we will not get the decision when we expect it, we will then use the supplementary estimates process to move the money back from the capital budget into the resource budget. But, as a working assumption, we are still of the view that the most likely scenario is a decision happening during the course of the year. On that basis, building a budget that capitalises it is an appropriate place to start.
Q30 Lord Macpherson: My recollection is that it is far easier to vire from resource to capital than from capital to resource.
Russ MacMillan: I think that would be true in a Government context. I think the arrangements here are slightly different.
Q31 Lord Macpherson: Corporate costs remain high, at 16% of total expenditure. How confident are you that all feasible efficiencies have been designed and implemented? Are there further options that you could explore to bear down on corporate costs?
Russ MacMillan: With respect, I do not think I would characterise our corporate costs as high, looking ahead to next year. As both Tom and I touched on earlier, we went through a very significant organisational review. In doing that, we have taken 46% out of our corporate cost base in the last two years and have actually delivered on those savings, which I think in a public sector context is quite unusual.
Having done that first big move, we have then held our corporate costs flat on a cash basis for the year ahead, which is effectively a further reduction. At the same time, we are significantly increasing the activity of the Delivery Authority overall, so as a proportion of the overall cost base, they are continuing to decline quite significantly. As we mentioned earlier, we have done some quite significant benchmarking against other comparative organisations at this stage in their life cycle. We believe that we benchmark very well on that basis.
Lord Macpherson: You do not need to read it out now, but as background it would be useful to see that benchmarking information.
Russ MacMillan: Absolutely.
Q32 Chair: Do you have the documents with you today?
Russ MacMillan: I have it in my notes, but we can certainly provide those.
Chair: Maybe you could get it done before the end of the week, so that we can have them circulated maybe tonight or tomorrow.
Russ MacMillan: Yes.
Chair: Wonderful. Thank you.
Q33 Lord Macpherson: On a different question, why are you continuing to survey the Palace when designs have reached the requisite stage?
Russ MacMillan: It is important to talk briefly about the context of surveys overall. What we would call discovery risk is one of the most significant risks underpinning the programme. With a building like this, you can look behind one panel and then get a very different result from looking behind another panel.
It is important to distinguish between the different types of survey that happen at different points in the programme. The surveys that we are doing now are what you might call sampling surveys: we pick particular points in the Palace, we have a look and we extrapolate. That helps us to cost and price the programme and get an understanding of the risk.
We will continue to do surveys. We will do many more surveys when we get into the construction programme proper and we take a zone apart and have a proper look. The reason why we want to continue to do a modest programme of surveys next year is that those risks have not gone away. The more we can do to make the best use of the access that we have during recess periods, the better.
We will have a very significant backlog of survey work that we want to get into when the programme is agreed. We have an opportunity during the summer recess this year and next year. We think that there is a modest set of surveys that will increase our understanding of the risk. If it would be helpful, I can talk to you about exactly what surveys they are, but we think that it is a pragmatic response to what is one of the biggest risks on the programme.
Q34 Lord Macpherson: I am persuaded. Can we move on to contractor procurement, which is one of the areas where the extra noughts continue to surprise us? Last year, the Delivery Authority budget for contractor procurement was £5.5 million. This year, it is going up to £8 million. What is driving that increase? Can you explain why contractor procurement always runs into millions?
Russ MacMillan: The simplest answer is that we are moving from planning our procurement into delivering our procurement. Clearly, that is subject to Parliament resolving the biggest decisions on the programme to enable us to run the procurement, but we have assumed that in making our plans for the next year.
It is a very large procurement. In fact, there are multiple procurements. There is the procurement of the House of Lords temporary accommodation, the design and build contractor and up to three different procurements for the Palace. They are among the largest construction contracts you would see in a UK setting.
We want to get it right, and we want to mitigate another very significant risk to the programme, which is the risk of a procurement challenge. To do that, we have decided not only to build an in-house team that brings particular capabilities to bear, but to buy in some specialist resource and rely on external legal advice. When you take those three components together, you get to £8 million. Again, that would not be an atypical number for the procurements of—
Q35 Lord Macpherson: So some of the £8 million is in-house staff.
Russ MacMillan: Yes. It is a mix of in-house staff, specialist procurement capability that we are buying in on a contingent labour basis and external legal support.
Lord Macpherson: Interesting.
Q36 Lord Gardiner: Can I ask, as a rider, whether that is in-house to the Delivery Authority or within the House more generally?
Russ MacMillan: It is in-house to the Delivery Authority.
Q37 Chair: Just for clarity, Mr MacMillan, if it is in-house staff, is this not HR spend? It is personnel—it is people.
Russ MacMillan: Yes.
Q38 Chair: So it is not even the contract; it is just the cost of procuring the contracts.
Russ MacMillan: Yes. This is the cost of our procurement team, plus the cost of the specialist procurement resource, plus the cost of external legal support, on what is a very significant and complex procurement.
Q39 Chair: So it has gone up by 45%, and you are comfortable with that.
Russ MacMillan: Yes, because last year we were planning the procurement. Subject to when the Houses take a decision on the programme, this year we will be running a procurement, we will be launching it into the marketplace, we will be assessing bidders, we will be shortlisting bidders and we will be negotiating contracts.
Q40 Lord Macpherson: In very broad terms, if you were to break down the £8 million, what proportion is in-house people, what proportion is external specialist consultants and what proportion is legal?
Russ MacMillan: If you give me a moment, I will see whether I have that piece of information in front of me. I do not think I have the exact breakdown to hand, but I would be very happy to follow up with that when we provide the benchmarking information.
Lord Macpherson: That would be very helpful. It is not that I am trying to catch you out; I am just trying to get a sense of what the cost drivers are. Inevitably, in a project like this, you have to spend a lot on external consultants and so on. I just want to understand where the costs lie.
Q41 Chair: Mr MacMillan, will you tell us in the same correspondence about the corporate costs?
Russ MacMillan: Yes.
Q42 Lord Macpherson: Finally, can I move on to recruitment? The Delivery Authority estimate includes provision for the recruitment of 11 new full-time equivalents. Given the uncertainty around the timing of the vote on the costed proposal, is there scope for deferring recruitment activity until the outcome of the vote is known?
Russ MacMillan: Forgive me for repeating myself, but we are assuming that we will get a vote at some point during the year, and we want to be ready to hit the ground running. On that basis, we have assumed a gradual ramp up in our resource. If the vote goes late, we will clearly revisit those assumptions. However, the majority of those additional resources are focused on House of Lords temporary accommodation. That sits on the critical path, and it is the first thing we need to do. We do not want to slow down on that, because if we do, the whole programme slows down at the very significant cost of delay we talked about earlier.
Q43 Lord Macpherson: I suspect the answer to this question is all about the uncertainties of the process, but only two years ago the DA made 49 people redundant and paid out £1 million in exit packages. Here we are recruiting again. Can you assure me that, taking these things in the round, the taxpayer has got a good deal?
Russ MacMillan: Yes, because the types of capability we are now building up are not necessarily correlated with the types of capability that we decided to reduce our resourcing against.
Q44 Lord Macpherson: We really have not made anybody redundant in areas where we are now recruiting again?
Russ MacMillan: I do not believe so, because the area that we are now rebuilding is the House of Lords temporary accommodation project, which is a new activity.
Q45 Chair: Mr MacMillan, just for the record, do you believe that, of all the redundancies that cost the taxpayer £1 million, you have not re-recruited for them in any way, shape or form?
Russ MacMillan: Not to my understanding, no.
Q46 Chair: Can you give us some confidence that the new recruitments you are making—especially when it comes to the £8 million involving in-house staff—are contracts that can be closed quickly without a cost to the taxpayer through redundancy payouts?
Russ MacMillan: The people we are recruiting, we would be recruiting on a normal full-time basis. However, we will be continually reviewing what is happening with parliamentary decision making, particularly towards the back end of the year, and will be modifying our plans if our assumptions need to change. I would not foresee a scenario where we incur lots of additional cost if Parliament delays its decision making and then we need to make a lot of redundancies as a result—if that is the question.
Q47 Chair: Perhaps not a lot of redundancies, but we would have to make some—and 49 redundancies equated to £1 million. Why would you recruit people on full-time contracts if those jobs may come to an end once the decision has been made at the end of the year? Why would you not recruit them on a short-term contract that does not require them to have a redundancy payout?
Russ MacMillan: Because, subject to the decisions of the House to progress the programme, these are jobs that we would need on a long-term basis. The spend towards the back end of the year will be contingent on getting a decision from Parliament. If we do not get a decision from Parliament, we will not be progressing our procurements and we will not be expanding our resources in the way that we have anticipated. There is that existing feedback loop, and we would use the supplementary estimate process to reflect that back. However, at the moment, we have been given a clear assumption about how to build and plan our programme—and that is the best we can do, I am afraid.
Q48 Chair: Depending on the decision taken, have you calculated the level of redundancies you may have to make once the decision is taken, potentially by the end of the year?
Russ MacMillan: I do not believe that we have done that piece of analysis. Our assumption is that, at some point, Parliament will decide to progress the programme. If it does not, there are clearly much more fundamental questions about the role of the DA that we would then have to look at.
Q49 Chair: How much of the Delivery Authority’s work this year is dependent on the vote on the costed proposal, which we have touched on, and will not go ahead until the vote takes place? I wonder if you have numbers around it that we could explore.
Russ MacMillan: I do not think I have specific numbers, because there are so many different permutations of what could happen—both in terms of timing of the debate and also its outcomes. As Tom touched on earlier, we are already seeing some impacts of the timing of the debate kicking in, and they become much more significant after the summer. There are two big activities that would get paused at that point. One would be our procurement activity, which we will be ready to launch in and around the summer. Ideally, we would come back from the summer break and press go on that and move as quickly as possible to appoint our partners. We clearly would not do that if Parliament had not made a decision on the programme by that point.
The second thing is the House of Lords temporary accommodation. We are progressing that and maintaining momentum on that programme. Clearly, at some point, Parliament needs to make a firm decision that it intends to acquire the building and instruct us to go ahead with making the conversion. Again, you would scale back that work in the absence of a parliamentary decision.
Chair: Many sleepless nights for you, Mr MacMillan, no doubt.
Russ MacMillan: I guess that is what we are here to offer advice on.
Q50 Chair: Mr Goldsmith, turning to the letter we received today from the Treasury—I know you have already spoken to it. I know you only saw the letter today and have had to respond to it in real time. You have said on the record that you think the estimate for the budget is taut and realistic. That is the level of confidence we were hoping to get out of the Treasury, and we did not get it. It was our second attempt to get that confidence out of the Treasury. We are unsettled by the fact that they could not commit in the way they have in previous years, and we believe that is a distinct change in their tone and language. Do you have no reservations at all? You still think the budget is taut and realistic, but the Treasury do not. Does that not give you any concerns or reservations?
Tom Goldsmith: I observe that it is a different Chief Secretary, and I think that is worth taking note of. Different Ministers, when signing off letters, take different approaches to issues. I do not know any of the background, but I make that observation. Charlotte spoke before about the very detailed work that has gone on between her team and Treasury officials, and the many questions they have asked that Charlotte’s team have answered. If, in that long process, any of those answers had given the Treasury real cause for concern, I would expect that to be reflected in the letter. I cannot see any of that in there.
Q51 Chair: Maybe we did not ask the right questions, Mr Goldsmith. We can write back and ask them to give us more detail.
Tom Goldsmith: Well, you could. I read the letter literally, as the Chief Secretary saying that he does not think this is something the Treasury should be saying, regardless of the fact that his predecessors have. It is something that the accounting officers have to assure themselves of, and I have assured myself of that.
Q52 Chair: I will push back on that a little, Mr Goldsmith. Considering everything we have heard today—and we are so grateful to you all for giving evidence—about the level of corporate costs and the cost increases within the contracts of procurement. While it is not at all within your gift, we have also heard about the delays that are caused by parliamentary decision making. I would argue that this is why the Treasury is no longer prepared to back the estimate as taut and realistic. Give me some confidence again, on the record, because what we are hearing gives us huge concerns. We hear that they are hearing the same, and they do not want to give us assurances that they did previously. Ministers may change; officials do not change.
Tom Goldsmith: You mentioned corporate expenditure. As we said, that has gone down by 46%. The DA has made real savings there. You mentioned the cost of delay, and that is absolutely the aspect of costs that worries me most. If a decision had been taken five or six years ago to get on and do this programme, it would have been delivered much more cheaply than it will be whenever the Houses take the decision, which I hope will be before the summer. If a decision is taken in three years’ time, again, it will be much more expensive than that. I share your concern on that front.
Q53 Chair: I have the final question, which is to Mr Goldsmith. It is just you and I in the room together; no one else is watching. As you step back as Clerk of the House, are there any reflections that you would like to share on your experience of Restoration and Renewal, and on the direction you think the programme should take in the future? It is just between us.
Tom Goldsmith: I am even more convinced now than I was when I started this job that we need a programme of the scale of R&R. One of the main reasons I say that is the piece of work that, with Chloe’s predecessor, I commissioned from external experts to ask just that question. These were safety and fire experts, and they concluded that the root causes of significant legacy issues that affect safety in the Palace are only ever likely to be fully resolved by projects of the scale envisaged by R&R. I completely agree with that. We do a huge amount of work in the Palace every year to keep it safe. I am confident the place is safe at the moment. Otherwise, I and my colleagues in the House Administration would not be here. Equally, there will come a time when a successor of mine will not be able to say that without a programme of the scale of R&R. That is my main conclusion: that we need a programme of this scale.
There are three things we really need to focus on now, as an R&R team. The first is governance in the next phase—the issue that we talked about of how to get the balance right, especially between moving on with the programme at pace, but having proper political oversight. The second thing, which we have not touched on today, because it is not the DA delivering it and we have not talked about it much, is making sure that the decant options work.
The third thing is cost. Whichever way you cut this programme, it is going to cost an eye-watering amount of money. There is a big onus on all of us involved to bear down continually on costs. That is why scrutiny from this Commission and others is really valuable. The one thing I am absolutely clear about is that the building will not miraculously heal itself. The problems and safety risks will get worse, and the risk of disruption to parliamentary business from services breaking will get worse.
If we do not want terrible safety incidents to occur, and if we do not want parliamentary business to be disrupted, we need to get on with this. The other thing we are really clear about is that it will get more and more expensive the longer we delay a decision to get on with it.
Chair: Thank you, Mr Goldsmith. Thank you all so much for coming. I want to put on record our thanks to Lord Gardiner for his service to the Commission since 2021. Lord Gardiner’s term as Senior Deputy Speaker in the Lords is now ending, so he will be stepping down from the Commission. We are very grateful for his contribution and commitment to the Commission’s work. The Estimates Commission will now deliberate in private.