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Crossrail Bill

My Lords, this has been a very stimulating debate. I recognise, from having listened carefully to almost every word that was spoken, how broad the debate was and how interesting the contributions were. At the outset of the debate, I was grateful to see below the Bar of your Lordships’ House the Rail Minister. He sent me a very kind note. He also stayed to listen to the first couple of contributions. I am grateful, especially, as having listened to everything that everyone else has said, I shall now have an interesting conversation with the Rail Minister to reflect further on those contributions. In broad terms, the House has welcomed the Bill. One greatly appreciates and understands why that is the case. We have waited a long time—some say too long—for this Bill to come along. However, during the debate, there were times when I had some Monty Python moments and I was reminded of the sketch that asks, ““What have the Romans ever done for us?””. It made me think more about what was said. The issues fell into a number of convenient packages: funding and guarantees; the disruption to existing services, powerfully argued over by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and others; the timeliness of the project, about which sceptical observations were made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and others; and pleas to extend the line from my noble friend Lord Faulkner, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, who said he was in an apoplectic state about where the line finished or started, depending on one’s view. We had a very passionate plea for the project made by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, because of her absolute belief in and commitment to ensuring that we have a continuous process of economic regeneration. I believe that to be one of the most important reasons for this important Bill. Others, including the noble Lords, Lord Luke and Lord Brougham and Vaux, reflected on that. Others expressed their good will and confidence in the Bill itself and in the project as a whole, but they had points of criticism and critique. Great concern was expressed about freight and the way in which it will fit into the overall package, and I shall deal with that. The noble Lord, Lord Luke, stressed the importance of Crossrail for tourism and, like most of us, regretted that Crossrail would not be here in 2012. There is a wide range of issues for me to deal with in conclusion. I shall try to deal with as many points as I can and some in greater depth than others. I shall start with the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, who, as ever, is a great defender of and advocate for his patch and his brief. He asked about disruption to the Great Eastern route during construction, a subject that had a recurrent theme during the debate, with other noble Lords being concerned about impact on particular parts of the country. Works on the existing Great Eastern line are relatively minor and similar in scope and impact to the normal run of maintenance and renewal that Network Rail routinely undertakes. CLRL and Network Rail have recently written to the noble Lord on that point and I hope that those reassurances have been well received. We do not believe that there will be undue impact on Great Eastern services. The noble Lord also asked about capacity and whether sufficient thought had been given to the impact on Liverpool Street. I thought that I had demonstrated one of the aspects of that earlier. Services and station layout have of course been the subject of extensive passenger modelling, including assessments of the ability of the network to handle much higher loads than are currently forecast, and we are confident that that can be achieved. The noble Lord also asked whether petitioners would have an appropriate opportunity to be heard on Crossrail extensions. If there were to be an extension to Crossrail it would proceed under the normal procedure, which would give all the appropriate opportunities for those affected to be heard. There will not be procedural shortcuts as a consequence of the Bill.