London should provide ring-fenced funding to ensure each Overseas Territory’s legislature has a dedicated building to meet in, a conference of senior parliamentarians has said.

Dennis Lister, Speaker of the House of Assembly, attended the gathering in Anguilla this week representing Bermuda as the call for extra resources was made.

The Common and Overseas Territories Speakers’ Conference issued a statement calling on Britain to allocate special resources for legislative buildings to “ensure such funding is not postponed or cancelled in the face of competing priorities”.

A note to the statement said this was needed “particularly in the case of Montserrat, Anguilla and Saint Helena”.

A video of the communique being read can be found here

The comments come after it was confirmed this year that the $12.8 million restoration of Sessions House, which was mothballed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, remained on hold despite the health emergency being declared over in November.

The Speaker said in January that work was shut down on updating the historic but “unsafe” building when the coronavirus hit in 2020 so that the money budgeted for the project could be used to help deal with the effects of the disease.

The Government has been renting chambers since then in Veritas Place, in Hamilton — at a yearly fee of $184,000 — to enable MPs to continue meeting.

David Burt, the Premier, has said that renovations at Sessions House had been allocated a capital expenditure of $550,000 in February’s Budget.

So far, the only planned restoration work that has gone ahead has been the replacement of windows and repairs to the exterior structure of Sessions House, Mr Lister has said.

Revised estimates showed that $100,000 of the $12.8 million budget had been set aside for work in 2022-23.

Government figures state that by the end of 2021, $3.55 million had been spent on the refurbishment of the building.

Mr Lister had originally said that he expected the revamp to be completed in time for the 400th anniversary of Parliament in August 2020.

Sessions House, the traditional seat of Parliament and the courts, was erected in 1826.

Referring to the meeting in Anguilla, Mr Lister said: “It was an honour to represent Bermuda at the second annual Common and Overseas Territories Speakers’ Conference.

“With this year’s theme of deepening democracy, it was a pleasure to be joined by representatives of the British Overseas Territories Youth Summit, as their involvement is critical for creating the future of a stronger parliamentary democracy.”

The conference communique made several other statements as well, including:

• “To ensure the voices of the Overseas Territories are heard on issues that impact them but are decided by the UK Parliament, the UK House of Commons will explore opportunities for direct scrutiny by Territories within the committee mechanism.”

• A call for the British Government to provide impact assessments from any Bill laid before Parliament that will affect the Overseas Territories.

• That the UK House of Commons will explore providing facilities to support the aim of having BOT representation in the UK Parliament “if the territories wish to pursue this avenue”.

• A commitment by the British Government to provide “dedicated, transparent funding to replace funding for environmental purposes lost since the UK’s departure from the European Union”.

The conference was attended by representatives from Anguilla, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Saint Helena, Turks & Caicos Islands and Britain.