Recommendation 5

The Sponsor Body has not made it clear how it will balance Parliament’s range of views on the Programme. The Sponsor Body will have to balance a wide variety of views from groups of Members within both the House of Commons and the House of Lords on what the Programme should deliver, how, at what cost and timeframe. While it is important to take account of as many perspectives from Members as possible, excessive political interference may muddy the waters of the Sponsor Body’s work and has the potential to make delivery of the Programme more difficult. The Sponsor Body is conscious of the need to establish a clear and structured process with Parliament to manage any suggestion of scope change and the need for a strong change-control process. Equally, both Houses must be disciplined to use the Act as intended in order to allow the Sponsor Body to get on and do its work. The Strategic Review has a challenge panel, which the Committee was told is used to test ideas and gather different views, however this has limited cross-party membership. It is to Parliament, rather than government, that the Sponsor Body reports and who will ultimately approve both what approach the Programme takes, and where Parliament will sit in the meantime. Our experience is that Parliament functions best when it works cross-party. 1 https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/348/house-of-commons-commission/news/119341/house-of- commons-commission-decisions-14-september-2020/ Restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster 7 Recommendation: The Sponsor Body should, within one month, publish details of what it considers are the main risks to building political consensus what is needed from the Programme and how it will mitigate these.