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Parliament Square

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on a fascinating and interesting introduction to a very serious problem. He has done a lot of research on this and has put it in the context of Parliament Square as a world heritage site. About 10 years ago many of us who were here were shown plans of the world heritage site stretching from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square. We were told that Trafalgar Square was the first part of it. Trafalgar Square was then a mass of gyratory traffic. Getting across from the outside to the middle, or even getting across the side road, was extremely difficult. Now that they have stopped traffic flowing beside the National Gallery and, let us say, tamed it in the other places with good traffic-light sequencing, it is a very nice place to go to. I cycle across it many days. It is quite safe there, and the traffic is less obtrusive than it was. However, the people in there are having a wonderful time with open-air opera screens, concerts and other things. It is a joy to walk through it; but no more of a joy than most central areas of other major capital cities which have had a bit of vision to complete this. We then look down to this end of Whitehall and see the mess; it is a mess. We have had quite a lot of rain recently. I do not know whether any of your Lordships have tried to walk from our entrance up towards Parliament Square, but the drain is always blocked at the security point, and drivers of cars and trucks who do not like us much try to spray us with 20 feet of water as we walk by. You see hordes of tourists coming along, crammed on to the pavement, and I wonder what they are thinking. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, this is the centre of our heritage, and you get showered from top to bottom when a car goes by because nobody can even be bothered to clean the drains out. I shall come back to the other problem of security. The present square is a disgrace to London as a world heritage site. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, the only solution must be to remove most of the traffic from the south and east sides so that pedestrians are free to roam. I would go one step further, and suggest that MPs can go into their present entrance quite easily, while most of us could come in from the Embankment end—that would not be much more difficult; it would be all right. Then we would have a wonderful pedestrianised area between here, the Commons and the centre of Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey, rightly set out as a showcase of London. I do not see it as a traffic problem. I know that there was a problem last summer when we were replacing the barriers to make them slightly less dangerous. There is a problem in Great Smith Street, and it is quite reasonable for the residents to be concerned, but most of the heavy traffic, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, comes from the embankment and goes down the Albert Embankment. It would not take much to suggest that they went across Westminster Bridge and came back over Lambeth Bridge. There is not much residential property between Lambeth Bridge and Westminster Bridge on the south side by the back of St Thomas’s Hospital. If the route was signposted properly and Great Smith Street was confined to buses and light vehicles, the effects on the residents would not be that great. The usual theory in London is that a traffic jam occurs for some reason, whether it be the digging of roads, which is currently happening everywhere, the permanent changes in Trafalgar Square or whatever. However, traffic finds another way around. If drivers perceive that they cannot get through Westminster because it has been blocked off, most will find another way around because they do not like sitting in a traffic jam. Even in Whitehall, mess though it is, when the traffic jam comes back to the Cenotaph, people usually try to turn right and go a different way. That is how traffic works. There is a way around which would make it perfectly acceptable for the residents of Great Smith Street, Horseferry Road and other places around there. Buses need to go there, but they go up that road anyway. Cars could as well. The other thing they would need to do is re-sequence the traffic lights slightly. It is not a problem. It is important that this is done for the sake of the centre of Britain and everything else. There is also a security problem. These big barriers are highly unsightly. I am told that they are placed where they are because the protection of the building goes up at the rate of the cube of the distance. Clearly the best thing would be to not have them there at all, and not to have any vehicles there so that there would be no need for security against them. That would kill two birds with one stone, and make the place look much better. I hope that the opportunity will be taken to remove some of the barriers and make more of Old Palace Yard available to the public. I warned the Chairman of Committees that I would briefly raise the idea that when those black temporary security buildings in Old Palace Yard are finally removed it would be nice to have a few square feet for visitors who come by bike, possibly as a small contribution to encouraging people to cycle here. Giving them somewhere to chain up a bike could not really be seen as a security risk; perhaps some small corner of a foreign field might be available for bikes in the future. My concern is who is in charge. The mayor may say that he is, but we have been hearing for the past five years that Westminster City Council has been blocking the project. Well, they both come from the same party, so maybe they will agree; maybe the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will be able to tell us that in his winding-up speech, and that the mayor is really very keen to see this and would like the whole of Parliament Square to be closed. Or he may not. Parliament is also involved. Old Palace Yard is part of our Estate, and we spent £2 million putting down those nice paving slabs so that they could then be ripped up by heavy lorries going by. There is a security consideration. I hope that the Chairman of Committees will be able not only to respond to some of my and other noble Lords’ comments, but to tell us who is in charge, what the process for going forward is, and how we can put a bit of pressure on people to get moving.