Ally Pally call for 180-year-old parliament

● Labour peer says Westminster should be ditched for new Alexandra Palace site

Work to rebuild it after a fire began 180 years ago. Now a leading Scottish peer has said the Palace of Westminster is no longer fit for purpose and suggests parliament could be moved to the site of Alexandra Palace - current home of the PDC World Darts Championship.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock said the £4 billion cost of refurbishing Westminster was too high, and called for a new, larger parliament to be built instead.

But as peers rounded on suggestions that the House of Lords could be moved to York, the former MSP suggested leafy north London as a compromise solution, with sufficient space for both houses in a modern building that would include electronic voting systems.

After years of debate, MPS finally approved legislation last year allowing work to begin on the badly-needed refurbishment of the parliamentary estate within the next decade. Outdated fittings and electrical systems mean the 19th century gothic palace is considered to be at high risk of fire, and there is a long list of complaints about accessibility, office space and facilities for parliamentary staff. Work is expected to take a decade and won’t begin until the middle of the decade at the earliest.

The preferred plan is to decant both houses of parliament during work to save time and money. The Commons would move to the former Department of Health building on Whitehall, while the House of Lords would use the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre.

However, the huge price tag has put off successive governments from actually getting started. In a submission to a fresh consultation, Lord Foulkes said it was “beyond time to come to the inevitable conclusion that the present Palace of Westminster is not, and never can be, fit for purpose as a Parliament for the 21st Century and beyond.

“It is like an adventure course for disabled people, proper security is almost impossible, there are too few offices and other facilities for Members and staff and it perpetuates out of date procedures and proceedings.”

Lord Foulkes goes on: “The only sensible solution is a new purpose-built Parliament within the Greater London area on a site such as Alexandra Palace, with improved public transport access to Central London and to elsewhere in the United Kingdom. However attractive politically, sites outside London would have too many objectors to be able to get quick agreement.”

Opened in 1875 - one year before Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin’s new parliament - Alexandra Palace was the site of the first BBC television broadcasts in the 1930s, and currently serves as a multi-events entertainment space, hosting concerts and sporting events like the darts and the Masters Snooker. Following suggestions from government sources over the weekend, a debate yesterday saw peers attack the idea of moving the second chamber to York.

Crossbencher Baroness Deech claimed the Queen would be forced to travel up and down the country for the State Opening of Parliament.