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Crossrail Bill (Carry Over)

Of course I accept that point. The only thing I would object to is being called an accountant—but never mind. I will forgive my hon. Friend. Yes, I accept the point, but I am saying that we do not have a genuine cost basis that we can feel confident about if 1 per cent. undermines the affordability of the project. In any case, the Committee rejected the promoters’ objections to our recommendation and we thought that that was the end of the matter. Much to our surprise, the Minister intervened. The Committee was therefore disappointed—I think that that is a fair word—that its opinion was not reflected in the action of the Secretary of State. Indeed, he flatly refused the proposal at the time. That left us not only disappointed but confused. I echo the comments of the Select Committee Chairman, who said that he was astonished by the Secretary of State’s decision to dismiss for a second time the Committee’s view after many days of taking evidence. The Chairman described that as ““unprecedented””. I examined our debate on Second Reading on 19 July 2005. I want to quote the words of the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, South-West (Mr. Darling). He said that"““the House knows that the Select Committees that we set up have a fair amount of latitude… I do not think that the Government or the House can tell the Committee, ‘Thou shalt not consider anything else’—for example, matters relating to any one of the stations along the route. It is open to the Committee to say that a station is in the wrong place, or that there ought to be a station somewhere else… I repeat… that if someone came along and said that the stations or the termini should be different, the Select Committee may well want to consider that. It would be up to the Committee.””" He left the Committee in no doubt about its autonomy. He said of Select Committees:"““Indeed, successive Governments have got into awful trouble by being over-prescriptive””.—[Official Report, 19 July 2005; Vol. 436, c. 1125-6.]"