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Mr. Chidgey: I listened to the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) with great interest. There is considerable public concern about the details of this transaction, and to some extent I share that concern. I refer hon. Members back to the amendment and to the implications that it might have for the contractual arrangements that the Government may or may not have entered into for the channel tunnel rail link. I hope to get some clarification on this from the Minister.
The key question is: under the terms of the contract that has been struck with London and Continental, what assurance do the public have that there is no escape clause allowing the contractor to abandon the project before its completion? I am most concerned to ensure that there is no opportunity in the contract for London and Continental to decide that the project is no longer a valid financial proposition or that it cannot possibly complete the project without further access to, or drain on, public funds.
I am anxious to see the project go ahead. It is many years late, as been most eloquently stated by many hon. Members. One could argue long and hard about the money that has been lost because of the delays. I want to see the project completed because it is most important to the transport strategy of this country. I also want an assurance that there is no way, having struck this deal, that the contractor can walk away from the project and leave the public holding the purse strings and shelling out more cash to make it viable and complete.
Ms Glenda Jackson:
My hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) gave an almost depressingly graphic elucidation of just what the Government have stolen from the people of this country in handing over the building of the channel tunnel rail link to the designated undertaker. All hon. Members will welcome the fact that, at long last, a designated undertaker has been selected, and that there is a possibility that a high-speed rail link will be entered into.
Over the past few years, we have watched the travesty of the Government changing their mind on which route the link should take and how it should be financed. That vacillation impacted disastrously on all those who live on the previously proposed routes--in Kent, in east London and in north-west London.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) said, this vital link for the nation could have been the nation's property years ago for a fraction of what
it will cost us now, in both cash and kind. I will not repeat just how much the Government have stolen from the public purse. I wish to refer to the enormous amount of national assets--in both cash and kind--that are being handed over to the designated undertaker, and, as far as I know, we still have no absolute guarantee that the line will be built.
We welcome the line--we have argued for it for long time. The nation is in desperate need of such a line. During the debate on the previous two amendments, we heard of the requirement that the designated undertaker must acknowledge that the channel tunnel rail link is not for the exclusive benefit of London and the south-east--it is of vital importance to the nation. The Minister, in his response to my hon. Friends in relation to those amendments, made no mention of the fact that profits--if they are made by the designated undertaker over the running of the channel tunnel rail link--should be invested in improving the lines that are north of what will be the channel tunnel rail link.
The Minister mentioned the station at Gobowen--a station that I know well from my childhood--as having something to do with the creation of a rail network fit for the 21st century, which the channel tunnel rail link surely must be. That would have been almost laughable--if it had not been so sad.
The ease with which we are supposed to accept the possibility that mere marketing techniques and improvement in selling tickets could open up the rest of the country, its people, its products, its business and its facilities to the channel tunnel rail link is patently absurd. The only thing that will open up the rest of the country to the facilities of the channel tunnel rail link is modernising the west coast main line--and there should be a requirement on London and Continental to assist in the vital investment to improve that line so that the country can be opened up.
In Committee, we said that it was almost impossible to define the cost--not only financially, but emotionally--of the delays, the vacillations and the changes of mind that have sat over this project year after year. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North referred to this on the previous amendment.
Hon. Members have referred to the King's Cross lands. A previous scheme for the building of the channel tunnel rail link said that the London terminus should be at King's Cross. While that project was still in that curious limbo that Conservative Governments call planning, there was a scheme between the London borough of Camden, British Rail and other owners of the lands at the time to enter into a scheme to regenerate the area--it is in desperate need of regeneration.
The work that had been engaged in by British Rail, by Camden and by other local authorities in the area for the regeneration of the King's Cross land was thrown out of the window overnight. Links that had been made with interested businesses, with financial houses and with architects as to how the land could be regenerated were scrapped and dustbinned. It would be possible to work out how much that waste of a scheme cost--and it became meaningless overnight.
There is still a great need for regeneration in that area of London--regrettably, there is a great need for regeneration over the whole United Kingdom after17 years of Conservative misrule. National treasures such
as St. Pancras station and St. Pancras chambers--which was recently refurbished at a public cost of, I believe,£8 million; it now glows like a glorious rose on Euston road--could have played a vital and intrinsic role in the regeneration of this part of London, where it is desperately needed. They should not be handed over to London and Continental.
Unemployment in certain wards in that part of London is between 35 and 85 per cent. There is a vast preponderance of children under the age of five. Illness is infinitely higher in certain wards in that part of north-west London than in others.
If--as we are told--public money must be attracted, why should an investor be attracted to this project, to help in the regeneration of those parts of the King's Cross lands, when the Government have set the model that all one has to do is to wait? The Government have created the expectation that, because they cannot decide on a continuous plan, they will in effect decide to wash their hands of something that has become inordinately difficult--like a properly integrated public transport system and the construction of a channel tunnel rail link--and will declare, "Take it away from us. We can't handle this problem any more. Take all this money, take all these assets and tell us that you will, possibly, probably, hopefully, build us a line."
When the Secretary of State announced to the House that a designated undertaker had at last been selected, I asked him what guarantees there were that the British taxpayer was getting a good deal, and he replied--I paraphrase his response--that there would be an explanatory memorandum of the contracts with London and Continental. I understand that no one in the House is privileged to see the contracts in any detail or to discuss them, on grounds of commercial confidentiality. It is a curious commercial enterprise that is clouded in mystery in one direction.
It has been accepted, has it not, that the sharing of risk is essential in projects of so large a scale and so extraordinary a nature. We should surely look to a Government to protect the taxpayer from risk, so that--as has been said--should London and Continental not succeed in attracting the funds it claims it can to make the line a reality, not a dream, we do not suddenly find that the public purse is expected to fill up any possible hole.
There is an interesting definition of sharing of risks in the explanatory memorandum of the contract with London and Continental Railways. Paragraph 13 says:
It is an interesting possibility, is it not, that London and Continental would appear, by that sentence, to be given fiscal powers. I should have thought that changes in law or taxation were the responsibility of Government--indeed, of the House--but apparently there is a sharing of responsibility.
Other possible events to which the sharing of responsibility is to apply are "war, rebellion and revolution". It is unlikely that London and Continental would be responsible for war, rebellion and revolution; regrettably, those are far too often the responsibility of Governments. As we know, the female former leader of
the Conservative party was responsible for taking this country to war twice. I would hardly have called that a genuine shared responsibility.
We are asked to believe that the vast amounts of public assets being handed to London and Continental are necessary to get the line built, which may be the case--I do not know how well or how toughly London and Continental argued its case--but that the handing over of those assets will guarantee for us, as a nation, that the line will be built.
"The possible events to which the sharing of responsibility is to apply include the following:
changes in law or taxation which discriminate . . . against London and Continental Railways".
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