‘Save a few billion on sprucing up Parliament? What a frightful idea!’ writes QUENTIN LETTS

As with high-speed trains, you don’t have to wait long for another multi-billion pound costings horror to come bowling down the line. The public accounts committee questioned four executives running the ‘restoration and renewal’ of the Palace of Westminster. No one was vulgar enough to mention the likely cost but two years ago it was being put at £13billion, so we can probably quadruple that.

Did the quartet on parade yesterday inspire confidence? Hardly. They used much of the same modern management-speak we heard for years about HS2, jawing on about ‘base budgets’ and ‘strategic sustenance teams’ and even, without irony, about ‘nugatory costs’. This was done with emphatic nods and an eau de cologned smoothness that brooked no ribaldry. We heard about ‘counterfactuals’ and ‘the business case’ for a range of increasingly bespoke options. There was a shudder of disapproval at the idea that the cheapest of those options might be chosen.

Save a few billion? Good grief, frightful idea. You’ll never become Construction Magazine’s Person Of The Year in the year 2050 if you cut budgets.

The public accounts committee, supposedly a flinty-eyed defender of the public purse, was chaired by Dame Meg Hillier (Lab, Hackney South & Shoreditch). I have met a few misers in my time – bank managers, landlords, Fleet Street managing editors – and am pretty good at sniffing out a pinchpenny. Dame Meg does not strike me as such a creature. Not liverish enough. A bit too blousy.

The public accounts committee questioned four executives running the ‘restoration and renewal’ of the Palace of Westminster

The public accounts committee, supposedly a flinty-eyed defender of the public purse, was chaired by Dame Meg Hillier (Lab, Hackney South & Shoreditch)

She wanted the houses of parliament to be more opulently appointed. You could walk down corridors and find carpets and floors with holes in them, she exclaimed. She had even seen buckets catching raindrops. ‘It is noticeable how many fewer women wears heels nowadays’, she exclaimed. With Eddie Izzard hoping to become a Labour MP, things are plainly reaching a critical stage.

Dame Meg’s committee, which struggled to get in much of a word once she had finished, heard that the restoration and renewal project is now on to its second ‘delivery authority’, the last one having been dismantled after spending £200million of taxpayers’ money. Fret not. The new delivery authority has ‘expert panels’ and there are to be ‘external safety assurers’ and a ‘programme board’ and an executive cadre soon to comprise 40 well-remunerated aces. The chief executive, David Goldstone, is on £311,000 a year and recently pocketed a £168,000 bonus. Mr Goldstone, suave as peanut butter, was among yesterday’s witnesses. He recalled his work at the London 2012 Olympics, which were a success. I did not hear him mention his time as chief operating officer at the Ministry of Defence, which has rarely, if ever, finished a project on time or budget.

Alongside him sat the ‘chief operating officer of the House of Lords’ and the ‘interim managing director of the restoration and renewal client team’ (my, they do love a title), as well as the new clerk of the Commons. The clerk, Tom Goldsmith, was a rather tremulous fellow, prone to flapping his little white hands. It is not impossible Mr Goldstone already has him running little circles.

Dame Meg was keen for MPs to abandon the premises for a decade or more so that Mr Goldstone and his contractors can work undisturbed. Contractors attended a Commons outreach session only this week, vast pound signs in their eyes. One hears rumours of ambitious proposals for making the historic palace Net Zero compliant. What a feast for all those building firms denied the HS2 teat.

Dame Meg, steering the committee like a dinghy in a high wind, badgered the inexperienced Mr Goldsmith to agree with her that a ‘full decant’ of MPs was essential. He looked brow-beaten. If MPs vacate the premises, will they ever return?

This was an important ‘national infrastructure project’ the committee was told. That old chestnut! Also, ‘the Treasury is sighted on this’. Just what any chancellor needs: a project costing billions, all so that Dame Meg can wear her Louboutins.

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