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Crossrail Bill

I was about to touch on that. It seems that Crossrail is an illustrative example of the infrastructural investment that is needed to the east side of the city to handle dramatic population movements into and within the city. It is needed also as a lever for other transport infrastructural links into the central spine that is thereby created. Business development and relocation, as well as the decanting of the population will result from the Olympic bid. I am part of the London riverside action group, which anticipates a great deal of business relocation as a result of the development of the Olympic site. All roads lead back to the transmission belt or the transport infrastructural network that is being developed across the east side of the city, the spine of which remains Crossrail. Because of population movements and the needs of the east side of town I was always in favour of Crossrail going through the royal docks, Barking, Dagenham and Rainham, rather than along the Shenfield line. That proposal disappeared a few years ago, but it is part of the joined-up strategy that we all seek. Returning to the dynamic of the housing market, growth is constrained across the economy because of the lower interest rate which, however, may ignite south-east house price inflation. As a result, a priority for the Government’s macro-economic strategy is surely house building in the south-east. That would allow for medium-term economic growth, everything else being equal, accompanied by a lower rate of interest. Similarly our prospective entry into the euro, if anyone is still interested in that, is conditioned by applying the brake on the housing market in the south-east. If we are seeking both macro-economic inhibitors on growth and the management of the population growth in the capital, all roads lead eastwards. Nationally and in the offices of the Mayor of London, Crossrail is seen as the key infrastructural project needed to support macro-economic strategy and managed population growth. It will help to rebalance growth by supporting house building and simultaneously offer London a route map to manage its population within the capital’s borders. For the Government and the Mayor the case for Crossrail rests on technical macro-economics and pan-London population issues. I look at the issue very differently, however, and regard Crossrail as offering a local case for infrastructure. The city’s dynamics far exceed the ability of public policy and national Government to keep track of it, let alone get ahead. London is growing dramatically, and the official, lagged statistics do not even begin to tell the real story. The state tends to operate within static models of resource distribution on the basis of outmoded population statistics. Those formal statistics do not begin to quantify the real patterns of immigration, on which we tacitly rely to underpin the growth of public services and the private service sector in the capital. Immigration also builds the labour market flexibility so desired by the business community, as reflected in recent comments by the Governor of the Bank of England. Yet we hide away from the debate about immigration and its macro-economic consequences. The development of the Thames Gateway often appears to be a technical abstract debate conducted by the regeneration professionals, but in reality it is occurring in communities like mine as we speak. It is not some future blueprint for 2015 but a method for understanding the day-to-day momentum of the capital. Because the state is ill-equipped to deal with that dynamic as a result of lagged decision making and an underestimate of the population, huge tensions have developed. In my own constituency, for example, the local community is experiencing rapid transformation. It is growing and changing rapidly to help accommodate movements into and within the city. That change is taking place against the backdrop of a long-term legacy of underinvestment in public services and infrastructure together with patterns of enduring poverty. Fundamental tensions result from those legacies, contemporary changes and the sustainability of future developments under the banner of the Thames Gateway.