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Crossrail Bill

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. In the lych-gate of the Anglican church at Caerwent in Gwent, where my late grandfather was a vicar at the outbreak of the last war, there is a memorial to the leader of the tunnellers of the Severn Tunnel from his colleagues. Notwithstanding the words uttered by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that seems a good Welsh omen for this evening’s business. ““Underground”” is one of those rare words that end with the same three letters as they begin. My former constituency of the Cities of London and Westminster was the very nexus of the London Underground system, with 26 stations within its boundaries. It is no surprise, therefore, that Crossrail, the subject of this Bill, will run straight through it. I am not an enthusiast for the word ““stakeholder””, but I am delighted that the Corporation of London, which contributed to the original funding of the Underground in the 1860s, is also contributing handsomely to the funding of Crossrail, both directly and indirectly, which I presume makes it not just a stakeholder but a fully paid-up stakeholder. In this Bill, London history is repeating itself, as so often. The City as the country’s financial and trading centre had a long start over Westminster as the country’s centre of government, but neither has ever been challenged since in its respective role. They are, and have always been, inextricably linked by their very closeness. It is not an accident that the last battle in London prior to the Blitz in 1940 was fought, in the reign of Bloody Mary, on the very line of route and communication between Westminster, which was not then yet a city, and the City of London. I therefore suspect that, subject to some of the things that were said earlier in the debate, there is not much disagreement in your Lordships’ House this evening about the principle of the Bill and its seeking to improve east-west transport links in central London and beyond, although I have to qualify that remark by drawing attention to the need for answers to the financial questions raised by my noble friends Lord Hanningfield and Lord Jenkin of Roding. The Bill has had its gestation problems, to which others have alluded, with at least one false pregnancy. However, provided that all goes well, including with the queries of my noble friend Lord Jenkin, progress on this project in the next decade promises to be much swifter than the evolution of previous centuries. That is essentially due to the sheer scale of the enterprise. The present intended budget exceeds the combined current budgets of the 2012 Olympics and Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, and falls not far short of the combination of the envisaged cost of the Olympics and the actual cost of the 31-mile Channel Tunnel. Its intended budget, again subject to the exploration of my noble friend Lord Jenkin, is recorded in as many digits as a London BT telephone number, even when the numbers of billions of pounds have reached double figures. Agreement on it through this Bill would be, in the words of 1066 and All That, ““a Good Thing””, as earlier speeches in part have demonstrated. The big bang in the City in 1987 launched the process by which London’s pace of economic growth began for the first time in the recent era to exceed that in the rest of the country. That momentum now has a truly international significance. My speech is therefore not on the principle. There are, I acknowledge, things that are different from what happened in the past. I had a constituent in Covent Garden who, from a private sector career in the exploitation of international transportation, became a professional, self-funding witness at any number of transport inquiries or consultations. His private interest was military history and his pursuit of that subject afforded him many opportunities to inspect international transport arrangements across the world. It was he who pointed out to me that there is a global trend, at least in the northern hemisphere, arising from climatic characteristics, which I do not see climate change as altering, towards universality in placing really major airports to the west of the cities that they primarily serve. Thus, in the 21st century, Heathrow is a new central factor in London’s importance and, therefore, in that respect, Crossrail is a potential a fortiori major infrastructure asset and facility, subject to the practical considerations that other noble Lords have raised. However, if the principle of the Bill is common ground, there will remain under the hybrid Bill procedures details to be resolved in securing success for the enterprise. In that sense, I echo other noble Lords who have spoken. I realise that a hybrid Bill is not precisely the same as a private Bill, but the Select Committee element is the same. I had experience of participation, at least behind the scenes in your Lordships’ House, in a recent private Bill, the London Local Authorities Bill. The chairman of the Select Committee on that Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, said that there were issues in it that were of concern to the committee but that the committee could deal only with those issues brought before it. The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, speaks to that point. Between the Select Committee and Third Reading in your Lordships’ House, the promoters of that Bill, in an action that I understand was unprecedented, withdrew the whole of Part 4 on the ground that the Government’s attitude to it had changed in not one but several departments. I do not suggest for a moment that that will be repeated with this Bill, but the narrative that I have recounted implies some inattention to the implications and details of the Bill during its earlier consideration by a series of government departments. The central principle of this Bill will be better served if the Government recall the adage that for a ha’p’orth of tar the ship was lost or, even worse in the eyes of my former constituent, that for the loss of a nail an empire was lost. My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding gave an example of a commitment given by the Secretary of State for Transport that was not fulfilled in the engine room of government. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made reference to a key assurance on rail freight that was omitted from the Select Committee report. I shall give a tiny example of my own. Between pages 104 and 128 of the Bill, which encompass Schedule 6, five numbered plots of land, scheduled for compulsory purchase—one of them twice—in the basement of Smithfield Market and the ramp to it, still appear in the legislation, even though agreement has been reached in all five cases to take them out because they are no longer needed. Momentum to create Smithfield Market did not occur until the 1360s, when butchery in the City was banned from residential areas, but people there have still had six centuries or more to get used to the ways of the world. One of the hazards, however, of major projects is blight, one of the causes of which is uncertainty. It would therefore be helpful if the Minister indicated how these cruces, where agreements have been made but have not yet been reflected in the Bill, will be handled and tidied up legislatively. Provided that the financial uncertainties to which my noble friend Lord Jenkin referred and the questions that have been raised in relation to the hinterland to the west of Paddington are resolved, my attitude in the ultimate analysis is optimistic. I once asked my former constituent whose private interest was military history—I mentioned him before—how he selected the campaigns or battles across the world that he went to examine on the ground. ““That’s quite simple,”” he said. ““I invariably choose British disasters. They are much more interesting than British victories””. My confidence that we shall not have on our hands in engineering terms the sort of mishap that took my friend across the world is based not only on the qualities that caused the new Jubilee line stations to win the prize for the relevant year’s best new buildings but, most particularly, on the extraordinary achievement very close to your Lordships’ House, when over a significant period Transport for London kept Westminster Underground station running normally for District and Circle line tube trains while, at the same time, in one direction Portcullis House was being built over their heads and deep in the other direction, at various levels, the infrastructure for the Jubilee line at Westminster was being constructed. That was a feat of Victorian proportions and an excellent omen for the great project to which we are seeking to give a further push in this Bill tonight.