Relocation, relocation, relocation: What to do while the parliamentary estate is repaired?

The Palace of Westminster is falling down and needs major works. The most economical way of doing it is to move out, either as a whole or in shifts. The Commons is thus looking for a new chamber, pending refurbishment, and the most obvious and convenient substitute is the House of Lords. Where then to put the Lords?

Michael Gove used to fancy himself a bit of a comedian, which may lie behind his mischievous suggestion that the House of Lords “decants” to one of those places usually discussed in terms of being “left behind” and requiring investment and “levelling up”.

The idea, perhaps not entirely sincere or thought through, is to bring decision-making closer to communities. Yet if that was the case, surely the more powerful body, where the most momentous decisions are taken, the House of Commons, should be picked up and plonked down far away from the bubble of the metropolitan elite. Conservative MPs haven’t exactly shown much sign of being “in touch” over the cost of living crisis recently.

But for now, the Lords is alone in being selected for punitive exile and to do its bit for levelling up. Why not? What better way, it might be argued, to level up such places as Stoke-on-Trent, Burnley, Sunderland or Wolverhampton than an influx of peers of the realm.

Obviously, the suggestion was met with outrage and indignation by some in the upper house, which presumably was the desired effect on the part of the secretary of state for levelling (and winding) up. As if to prove that their noble selves have at least the measure of Gove, former lord speaker Baroness Hayman called Gove’s idea “bonkeroony”. Lord (Patrick) Cormack, the very embodiment of the courteous but firm resistance being mounted by the Lords, dismissed Gove’s reform as “another freelance exercise by another intellectual flibbertigibbet".

The Lords have made themselves unpopular with ministers by delaying and amending some of their more absurd bills, ie doing their job as a revising chamber with a self-awarded, if unlikely, remit of defending lower-income families and guarding human rights and the constitution. Rather less amusingly, Gove was surely also gently taking the mickey out of “attractive Stoke” and similar unfavoured places.

At any rate, the voting peerage’s shop steward, the lord speaker, a fine ex-Labour statesman by the name of Baron McFall of Alcluith (his friends call him John), has sent a circular to his peers. He declares that the location of their lordships’ house “whether on a permanent or temporary basis, is ultimately a matter for the house itself”.

The main problem with Gove’s playful proposal is that it wouldn’t work (and would be absurdly expensive even if it did). How would joint committees work? How would they interact? Where will the Lords live? Will they qualify for a relocation allowance? How will the state opening work? What happens when the time comes to move back to London? If they move permanently, what becomes of the empty Lords chamber and offices?

The costs and inconveniences of a travelling circus of a parliament are amply shown by the European parliament, based in Strasbourg and Brussels, a custom universally resented. Having mostly elderly peers trying to take important decisions while commuting cross-country and quite out of touch with their Commons colleagues is absurd. It might make them more cussedly determined to hold the executive to account.

It’s hard to see what was wrong with the Lords’ original suggestion, to move into the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre. Alternatively, they might use Church House, as they did after the Commons was bombed out in 1941, or the eminently suitable Methodist Central Hall, also nearby in Westminster. Or they could become a much more virtual legislature, using Zoom and meeting physically less frequently.

A more radical proposal still would be to relocate parliament in its entirety to, say, the Midlands, leaving some government departments in Whitehall and others across the UK, from Cornwall to Dundee. Many countries, such as the United States, Australia, Brazil and Switzerland have a political capital far from the main centre of commerce; South Africa has its parliament in Cape Town and its executive in Johannesburg. With Zoom and other modern telecommunications, it should be possible for the UK to have the most dispersed state in the world. If only the Commons and Gove could be persuaded to make a fresh start…