Plan to hire £500k-a-year fat cat fuels revolt over Parliament revamp
CONTROVERSIAL plans to force MPs out of the crumbling Parliament suffered another blow last night after it emerged a quango ‘fat cat’ is in line to be paid £500,000 a year to run the project.
The salary, more than three times Theresa May’s pay, will be offered to the head of a new ‘Parliament Delivery Authority’. The disclosure has fuelled a backlash against the £4billion restoration project, with MPs having to move out of Parliament for six years from 2022.
Well-placed sources said a firm of headhunters would recruit a high-powered building expert on a £500,000 salary – worth £3 million over the six years – to restore Parliament.
But the prospect of a U-turn moved closer yesterday after it was revealed the powerful Treasury Select Committee will carry out a six-month review of the costings used to justify the ‘decamping’.
It paves the way for a Commons vote, scheduled for this month, on putting off the move. The revolt surfaced last week at a meeting of MPs with the Minister in charge of the project, Commons Leader David Lidington.
One MP present said: ‘Virtually no one supported Lidington. We told him that once we are thrown out, we will never get back in.
‘We should grin and bear it, living cheek by jowl with builders just like people do when they repair their houses.’
The change of heart comes after reports that the Prime Minister fears leaving Parliament will ‘send the wrong signal to the world’ and undermine her claim that it is ‘business as usual’ as Britain approaches Brexit.
She received an additional boost after former Cabinet Minister Michael Gove threw his weight behind the campaign to stop the plans to quit Parliament.
Former Tory Minister Shailesh Vara, who is leading calls for the MPs’ move to be ditched, said: ‘More and more MPs are realising it makes no sense for us to get out.’
A Commons spokesman said the restoration project had undergone ‘rigorous scrutiny’ and the search for someone to run it had not yet started formally.