Understanding the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster : an analysis of institutional change in the UK Parliament

Legislative buildings matter. They affect the behaviour within and act as symbols of the institution. Decisions about parliamentary buildings are informed - implicitly or explicitly - by dominant views of the role of the legislature and its relationship with citizens. Understanding such policy decisions thus helps us understand the institution. In 2018 the House of Commons and House of Lords approved a significant policy change for the UK Parliament - a major refurbishment of the dilapidated Palace of Westminster - representing both a major shift away from centuries of patch-and-mend management of the Palace and also continuity through the decision to return to the Palace as its permanent home. This thesis provides the first comprehensive academic analysis of this policy change, the Restoration and Renewal (R&R) programme. It draws on 35 semi-structured elite interviews with MPs, Peers and parliamentary officials and extensive textual analysis to argue that we can understand R&R by examining the institutional context at Westminster and combining this with a public policy theory, the Multiple Streams Framework. It sheds light on an understudied area - the governance of the UK Parliament - while also providing a new perspective on reform and institutional identity within Parliament, and locating these findings within broader debates about institutional change, democratic renewal and the politics of megaprojects. The R&R of the Palace of Westminster is therefore not just the refurbishment of a crumbling building on the banks of the Thames but about the future of UK politics. Understanding R&R can help us make sense of this future.