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Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill

I am delighted that amendment No. 7 has been grouped with amendment No. 4, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), who sits on the Front Bench. This is an important issue relating to the railway assets at Waterloo international terminal. Most of my constituents who commute into Waterloo had assumed that, by the time the international terminal there was closed, a clear plan would be in place for its re-utilisation. It has now emerged that that is far from being the case. The decision to move the terminal from Waterloo international to St. Pancras was first taken in 1994. The Government have therefore had about 13 years' planning time in which to work out what would happen to the Waterloo international terminal when it was vacated by London and Continental Railways and the Eurostar services. Rather late in the day, back in February 2005, the Strategic Rail Authority, as it then was, invited tenders for consultants to look at all the options for future use of the Waterloo international terminal. Ove Arup, the partnership that won the tender, produced a voluminous and, I thought, very helpful report, dated July 2005. It set out a series of options. One of the options, mothballing, was considered and rejected because it was accepted that that was an expensive option. Even then, it was estimated that it would cost more than £500,000 a year. Obviously, it was also considered by many to be a shameful waste of valuable railway assets, particularly at a time when, as everyone who uses Waterloo station knows, the station is under tremendous pressure, with not enough platforms for all the services and passenger numbers close to the station's capacity. Amendments could be made to the structure of railway assets at Waterloo and nearby that would release the five platforms at the Waterloo international terminal for domestic services use.