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Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill

I was about to point out that no one has yet mentioned the relevance of the amendments to the Bill, which deals with the channel tunnel rail link and not with Waterloo or any other Network Rail mainline station. Clause 1 confirms that the power under section 6 of the Railways Act 2005 permitting the Secretary of State to provide financial assistance for railway purposes applies to the rail link and the train services running on it. Clause 1 does not give a new power; it simply clarifies, for the avoidance of doubt, that the power will apply to High Speed 1, as it applies to the rest of the rail network. The rail link that the clause refers to is HS1, the railway between St. Pancras and the mouth of the channel tunnel. Waterloo station is not part of the rail link and is not subject to the provisions of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act 1996, which gave rise to the uncertainty. It is also worth noting that ownership of Waterloo international terminal is to be transferred to the Department for Transport in March this year, as the hon. Member for Wimbledon said, and it will not be among the assets sold as part of the HS1 business. There is not considered to be any ambiguity about the application of section 6 funding powers to Waterloo. The transfer of Waterloo does not form part of the restructuring with which the Bill is concerned. As a result, amendment No. 7 is unnecessary and irrelevant. Turning to amendment No. 4, I congratulate the hon. Member for Wimbledon on his intellectual acrobatics in attempting to justify its logic and crowbar it into a short Bill concerned primarily—I would say exclusively—with the channel tunnel rail link. He started by describing his amendment as more subtle than that of his hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope). If subtle is the definition of a brick, I suppose I agree. Amendment No. 4 would ensure that domestic services could use the platforms at Waterloo international. Assurances that that will be possible have already been given on numerous occasions. As far back as October 2005, my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South-West (Mr. Darling)—now the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but then the Secretary of State for Transport—announced that the platforms at Waterloo International would be retained for domestic passenger use. We debated the issue again in March 2007, when I described our plans for Waterloo in some detail. In case hon. Members wish to consult the record, I should tell them that the debate was on 14 March in Westminster Hall. My officials have been assessing the scope and benefits of altering the platforms at Waterloo station for domestic services for some time; the process did not begin recently. A feasibility study completed in 2006 concluded that running South West Trains services to those platforms would deliver short-term performance benefits, and that long-term development options required further consideration. After the transfer of ownership of Waterloo, work to convert platform 20 for domestic services will start, and that capacity should be available from December 2008. That is our short-term plan.