‘A £300m insult’
MPs BLAST LEADSOM’S PLAN TO BULLDOZE THIS £100m DEPARTMENT... ...AND REPLACE IT WITH A £200m REPLICA HOUSE OF COMMONS
A PLAN to bulldoze a £100million Whitehall department built 30 years ago to make way for a palatial ‘replica Commons’ in case the existing one is blown up has been condemned as ‘barking’ mad.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom wants to demolish Richmond House, currently Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s NHS HQ, as part of a refurbishment of Parliament costing up to £5.7billion.
The Grade II listed Richmond House cost £44million when it was opened in 1987 – equal to more than £100million today.
Under Mrs Leadsom’s plan, it would be knocked down and replaced by a permanent ‘replica Commons’, complete with debating chamber and offices, at an estimated cost of more than £200million.
It is over double the cost of the previous £85 million plan to build a wooden temporary debating chamber inside Richmond House while the nearby Palace of Westminster gets a long-overdue renovation. That refurbishment could take 11 years.
The plan for a ‘permanent contingency (debating) chamber on the site of Richmond House’ is revealed in a leaked letter written by Mrs Leadsom. Insiders said it could be used both while Parliament is repaired and in the event of a fire or terror attack.
The plan follows a security review carried out after a knifeman gained access to Parliament and murdered PC Keith Palmer earlier this year.
But Tory MP Sir Edward Leigh denounced the idea as ‘barking’. He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The public will be outraged that while we are still trying to find new homes for the Grenfell victims, MPs are to waste hundreds of millions on a second House of Commons built of glass and marble. I was shocked when Mrs Leadsom told me that Richmond House is to be flattened to achieve this.
‘I told her there is no replica US Congress in Washington and we don’t need one here.’
Sir Edward was backed by former Minister Shailesh Vara, whose call to slash the £5billion repair bill by staying in the Commons while repairs are carried out has been supported by 100 MPs on all sides of the House.
Mr Vara said: ‘Of course we must plan for an emergency but there is no justification for knocking down an entire stateof-the-art Whitehall office block to make way for a vastly expensive alternative Commons. It leaves us wide open to claims of
‘The public will be outraged by this’
double standards.’ Sir Edward added that Mrs Leadsom should be stripped of control of the parliamentary refurbishment.
‘We need someone like Mr Vara to take control and restore common sense and prudence,’ he said.
Designed by Sir William Whitfield, Richmond House was opened in 1987 when Margaret Thatcher was in No10.
Its neoclassical striped brick facade earned it listed status and would be the only part of the building to survive if Mrs Leadsom’s proposal went ahead.
Mrs Leadsom declined to comment last night. But sources close to her insisted any decision would be for the House of Commons Commission, not for Mrs Leadsom alone.