Simon Jenkins: Notre-Dame was rebuilt in five years under budget by donors free to walk away

Paris restored Notre-Dame in five years, under budget, for well under €1 billion of donors' money. The repair of the Palace of Westminster, by the latest parliamentary commission's account, will cost up to £40 billion and run as long as 61 years. Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, locates the difference not in the stonework.

The difference is who can refuse to pay. Notre-Dame was rebuilt by a private foundation, funded by donors who could stop giving the moment the work disappointed them; somebody therefore owned the schedule and the cost. At Westminster the people who commission the repairs also vote through the budget and go on living in the building, and Jenkins notes that this arrangement has yet to produce a deadline.

The estimates have only ever moved one way. In the 2000s the palace basement was reported to hold piping and wiring so decayed they would fail within five to ten years. Deloitte, invited to survey the estate, published its findings in 2014: the palace should become a construction site for six to 32 years, at £3.5 billion to £5.7 billion, the spread depending on how far and for how long the two Houses would relocate. The parliamentary commission now prices the job at up to £40 billion and 11 to 61 years. Big Ben has already been restored, at £80 million, and the palace re-roofed for another £80 million. A linked piece by Rupa Huq lists what the rest of the fabric contains: asbestos and mice.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the public accounts committee, is urging MPs to vote at last on phase one, and warns of a possible Notre Dame situation if they do not — which, as Notre-Dame demonstrated, is roughly what it takes to get a five-year restoration. Even with that vote, the decision on phase two, the construction and delivery itself, will not come before 2030. Jenkins, for his part, doubts the building is worth the reverence: the Commons chamber fills barely three days a week and is crowded only for prime minister's questions, and every party leader who has tried to restage the Wednesday theatre has backed off, because it is the one thing that fills the room. Every government has arrived promising to reform the House of Lords; the hereditary peers have gone, the bishops remain.

The basement wiring was certified to be five to ten years from failure in the 2000s. The vote on beginning the work is scheduled for 2030.