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Crossrail Bill

I understand that the Superlink project is privately funded and I have met representatives. I do not necessarily share my hon. Friend’s unbridled enthusiasm for the project, but it is important for the Select Committee to consider all the issues in our instruction, with its broader remit—as opposed to the narrow, blinkered approach recommended to the Committee by the Secretary of State and his colleagues. Crossrail has been spending £1 million a week for the last three years, and now it wants even more money so that it can do the same for the next three years. Yet we do not know whether digging will ever begin on either of the two tunnels, or whether a single piece of track will ever be laid. There is still no clarity, there is still no business plan, there is still no well-defined vehicle for investment, and there is still no certainty about the budget. Perhaps it is the Treasury’s doubts about the scheme that threaten to undermine it. Those doubts will surely grow in the light of the successful Olympic bid. We will vote with the Government tonight because—like the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas), the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire and most other Members who have spoken—we believe that an east-west link for London is vital to Londoners’ quality of life and the economy of London. Londoners, however, deserve better than the mixture of muddle and delay that has characterised the Government’s approach to this project—and throughout that time, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been spent. I suspect that under the present Government Crossrail will remain a ghost train on a phantom line.