---

Crossrail Bill

My Lords, I am extraordinarily grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, for tabling this amendment. It enables me to reiterate one or two arguments that we rehearsed at an earlier stage of the Bill. It also gives me the opportunity to thank him and his colleagues—and colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches—for the spirit of co-operation and support that the Government have enjoyed throughout the deliberations on the Bill in your Lordships’ House. It has been a model. Since the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, is here, I thank him for his very helpful engagement with the Bill during the special Select Committee procedure. I have no doubt that it resolved many problems and difficulties that people encountered with the Bill, and discussions were conducted in a spirit of constructive amity—that is perhaps the nicest way to put it. My heartfelt thanks go to him and to all colleagues who have been involved in this. It has been a very useful process. Amendment No. 1 is moved with good spirit. Clause 23 would require the Office of Rail Regulation to produce a report on what it has done or proposes to do to meet its new Crossrail construction-related objective, as provided by new Clause 22, and on how it has exercised or proposes to exercise any of its functions in relation to the operation of Crossrail services. The ORR must do this from time to time, when it considers it to be appropriate. I assume that the noble Lord’s amendment is intended to require the ORR to produce reports no less frequently than annually. However, the amendment as I read it would not achieve this. It says that it must, "““publish every 12 months or from time to time””." My guess is that the rail regulator could carry on producing reports from time to time. It would not have to do so within a 12-month period, so the amendment is defective in its intent. Whether that was deliberate on the noble Lord’s part, I do not know, but I might give him the benefit of the doubt, particularly as I am in a generous mood. The purpose of the clause is to make transparent how the ORR exercises its functions in relation to Crossrail. Clearly, reports need to be sufficiently frequent to fulfil this purpose. The frequency may sensibly vary depending on the stage of the project to reflect the peaks and troughs in decisions that the ORR needs to take. As I said in Grand Committee, I doubt whether a report produced less frequently than annually would be satisfactory, at least until the Crossrail services are running at the required frequency and, importantly, punctuality. The clause already contains the safeguard that the Secretary of State can at any time require the ORR to produce a report. She might exercise this, for example, if there was a particular issue on which she wished to ensure that the ORR will publish a timely report. However, she could equally well use the power if she felt that the frequency chosen by the ORR was inadequate, and she could proactively ensure a particular frequency of reports. Therefore the clause provides the necessary flexibility to ensure that the timing of reports can be tailored to what is most useful for the particular stage of the project; yet it has the necessary safeguard against the frequency dropping too low. I share the wish of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, to see sufficiently timely reports from the ORR, but the clause will achieve this objective. We, like him, want to see timely information in the right place at the right time. It should be produced in a form that people can understand and to a specification that is transparent, so that people are well advised and understand the nature of the project and its progress, and the right elements of financial accounting and audit are properly in place. We think that we achieve that in the legislation. Although I think the noble Lord shares that aspiration, I rather suspect that his amendment does not achieve it.