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Crossrail Bill (Carry Over)

Crossrail’s impact on London—and the costs of the disruption that it will cause, too—have not been properly taken into account, but now is not the time to do so. I imagine that debate on those issues will flow later, on Report and Third Reading. I return to the point about the cost of the station at Woolwich. We were told that the cost was prohibitive, at £350 million. Indeed, we were told that that was too much. Nevertheless, at that stage we felt that the benefits a station would bring to Woolwich far outweighed those costs, and we produced an interim report announcing some of the provisional decisions, including the addition of a new station at Woolwich. We were surprised—I think that that is a good enough word—when the promoters came back and said that they would not accept our proposal. Surprised? No, we were amazed, because we felt it was not the responsibility of the promoters to come back to us at that time. It is interesting to note what the promoters said in their response to us. They said:"““The Promoter recognises that a strong case has been made for a station at Woolwich. In the light of the Committee’s decision, the Promoter has looked over the summer at the design of the station to explore ways of reducing its very high cost.””" Indeed, they came up with a new cost of £200 million. I must say that those sort of figures in this sort of exercise suggest, to a business man, that we have not seen the sort of thinking that we would usually expect, particularly when a project of such importance is ruled out on the basis of cost. It simply is not good enough to say £350 million one minute and then the next minute to come up with £200 million. I hear from the Minister tonight that it has now gone down to £186 million. The truth of the matter is that the costings for Woolwich station do not make any sense at all, so I am delighted that the Minister has decided to have another look at the issue. If we accept the £200 million figure—I believe that it will come down, as it has in the past—we note that it equates to just over 1 per cent. of the total cost of the project as it stands. Many people might argue that the overall costs of the project will rise, yet the promoters argued that affordability was a key issue and that, presumably on the basis that affordability would be threatened, they could not accept the Committee’s decision. I am a business man—or I was before I came to the House—and I can say that if any project put before my board was not viable on the basis of 1 per cent. of its total overall cost, I would not even consider it. I would throw the project out, because it clearly could not wipe its own face.