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Crossrail Bill

I repeat what I said earlier. While I sort of understand why the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, might have used slightly extreme language in the circumstances, we have always said that it is our stated intention to work within normal industry processes as far as possible with the Crossrail project. All the parliamentary processes have been aligned with the intent of securing Crossrail in a reasonable timeframe, at a reasonable price and by agreement. Credit should be given to Crossrail promoters; an awful amount of work has gone into this and a fantastic degree of consensus has so far been archived. The hybrid Bill process has enabled many issues that had seemed deeply contentious to be resolved in terms that seem reasonable to all parties. So our track record to date is pretty good. It is not our intention to depart from that but there may be some circumstances in which the Crossrail project is frustrated by an unknown provision in a PPP that had not been anticipated or did not in itself anticipate Crossrail. In those peculiar circumstances, this fallback provision—and that is what it is, as we have made clear—may well be necessary. Although I can understand the noble Viscount’s description, it is not appropriate in terms of a power that is designed to ensure the successful completion of the project. That is not an unfair observation on our part. I appreciate the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, can see that we have attempted to offset and mitigate that with our amendment. I ask him to take that as a fairly solid expression of good faith on our part, to recognise that there is, in extremis, potential for some abuse to be delivered by the provision—but that is not our intention. It is really only to be used as a term of last resort. All that I can observe about Chris Bolt is that he is the arbiter for London Underground PPPs. He is not a regulator in any sense parallel to the Railways Act; that must be properly understood. I do not accept the noble Lord’s point on that. I invite the Committee to support our amendments as they are a practical way in which to deal with and meet the objections raised, while giving us the reserve provision to be used only in circumstances which many of us at this stage cannot even envisage.