Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 30
30
Accepted
Clerks face challenges balancing programme accountabilities with Corporate Officer responsibilities.
Conclusion
When we last reported on restoration and renewal in June 2022, we were concerned that the Clerks may have felt constrained in sharing their professional views, as accounting officers, on what the restoration and renewal programme could deliver.74 In addition, the Clerks will need to balance their accountabilities to the programme alongside those they hold as Corporate Officers to the Houses. These responsibilities include protecting the personal safety of those working in and using the Palace, which the Clerk of the Parliaments described as ‘working on a building site.’75
Government Response Summary
The Clerks acknowledge their legal and statutory responsibilities, including fire safety, and state they would formally record disagreements or object to proposed actions on grounds of propriety, value for money, or feasibility, ensuring their professional views are not constrained.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The Clerk of the House and Clerk of the Parliaments agree with this recommendation. The Corporate Officers acknowledge that the legal responsibility for decisions relating to the Parliamentary building works is theirs under the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019, subject to the requirements set out in the Act to consult with Members and others. They also have other statutory responsibilities, such as the responsibility for fire safety in the Palace. The House of Commons already has a limited process equivalent to a ministerial direction, which applies only in the context of a disagreement with the Speaker or other Members about procedure. In that situation, the Clerk of the House would place a note in the Library recording the disagreement. The House of Lords has an agreed Lords governance framework which states that “Where the Accounting Officer objects to a proposed course of action by the Commission on grounds of propriety, regularity, value for money or feasibility such that they are bound by their statutory duties to reject that course of action, they shall present a memorandum to that effect to the Commission which will be minuted.” In this context, an equivalent of a ministerial direction would be of very limited value, as there is no-one with the authority to “direct” the Corporate Officers in relation to the building works. Therefore, in the event of a significant disagreement on appropriate schemes for the Restoration and Renewal works, the Corporate Officers would instead record their disagreement in formal Board minutes and through correspondence (which could be laid in the Libraries of both Houses). The Corporate Officers have already put on record at the R&R Programme Board on 5 June that they would be unable to support a construction scenario for the works if they felt that it presented an extraordinary level of unmitigated risk to anyone on the Estate, including staff, contractors and visitors.3 In other statutory contexts, similar mechanisms would be used to record the Corporate Officers’ disagreement with a decision taken by either House.