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Crossrail Bill (Carry Over)

I beg to move,"That further proceedings on the Crossrail Bill shall be suspended from the day on which this Session of Parliament ends until the next Session of Parliament;""That if a Bill is presented in the next Session in the same terms as those in which the Crossrail Bill stood when proceedings on it were suspended in this Session—""(a) the Bill shall be ordered to be printed and shall be deemed to have been read the first and second time;""(b) the Bill shall stand committed to a Select Committee of the same Members as the members of the Committee when proceedings on the Bill were suspended in this Session;""(c) the Instruction of the House to the Committee [19 July 2005] shall be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill in the next Session;""(d) all Petitions presented in this Session which stand referred to the Committee and which have not been withdrawn shall stand referred to the Committee in the next Session;""(e) any Minutes of Evidence taken and any papers laid before the Committee in this Session shall stand referred to the Committee in the next Session;""(f) only those Petitions mentioned in paragraph (d) above, and any Petition which may be presented by being deposited in the Private Bill Office and in which the Petitioners complain of any proposed additional provision or of any matter which has arisen during the progress of the Bill before the Committee in the next Session, shall stand referred to the Committee;""(g) any Petitioner whose Petition stands referred to the Committee in the next Session shall, subject to the rules and Orders of the House and to the Prayer of his Petition, be entitled to be heard by himself, his Counsel or Agents upon Orders of the House, and the Member in charge of the Bill shall be entitled to be heard by his Counsel or Agents in favour of the Bill against that Petition;""(h) the Committee shall have power to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place, and to report from day to day Minutes of Evidence taken before it;""(i) three shall be the Quorum of the Committee;""(j) any person registered in this Session as a parliamentary agent entitled to practice as such in opposing Bills only who, at the time when proceedings on the Bill were suspended in this Session, was employed in opposing the Bill shall be deemed to have been registered as such a parliamentary agent in the next Session;""(k) the Standing Orders and practice of the House applicable to the Bill, so far as complied with or dispensed with in this Session or in the Session 2004-05, shall be deemed to have been complied with or (as the case may be) dispensed with in the next Session;""That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House." Of the two motions before the House, one allows the Select Committee to consider petitions against the additional provisions to the Crossrail Bill that the Government intend to bring forward, and the other allows the Crossrail Bill to be carried over into the new Parliament. Explanatory memorandums on both motions are available in the Vote Office. I am conscious of the fact that, in addition to the motions, several issues have arisen as a result of the Select Committee’s deliberations that have given rise to questions of procedure, specifically on the affordability of Woolwich station. The House will be aware that the Crossrail Bill Committee produced a special report on Woolwich last night. I propose to address all those issues in this debate and I shall begin by setting out briefly the purpose of the Bill. I shall then discuss the procedures that have been followed on Crossrail to date and address the issue of the affordability of Woolwich station, before turning finally to the detail of the two motions. It may assist the House if I rehearse the purpose of the Bill and the procedures that have been followed so far. The Second Reading, on 19 July 2005, agreed the principle of the Bill, which is to construct Crossrail—a railway that will run between the termini at Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east and Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west. The main new intermediate stations will be at Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel, the Isle of Dogs and Custom House. The Bill enables Crossrail to be constructed and puts in place the necessary powers to allow the Crossrail services to run. I remind the House that this is a hybrid Bill—a form used for projects of national importance—in which the Government take the lead in strategic development, but crucially, because the Bill affects specific private interests, it is dealt with differently in both Houses of Parliament. Hybrid Bills are rare; the last one concerned the channel tunnel rail link a decade ago. The Bill has aspects of both a public and a private Bill. It is brought forward by Government and, like any other public Bill, contains provisions that affect everyone or particular classes of people. However, the Bill also contains provisions that have an impact on particular individuals, notably in relation to the powers to acquire particular land. That is why the House requires such a Bill to incorporate an extra Select Committee stage in each House. Within the process of the hybrid Bill, it is open to the Select Committee, after listening to petitions and representations, to make recommendations. However, it is equally clear that only the Government, as promoter, can reach decisions about affordability, as my predecessor as Secretary of State for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, made clear in the previous instructions debate on 12 January. When we get the Select Committee’s report, the Government will have to take a view about how much we can accommodate. Only the House can grant an instruction.