House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Apr 1996 (pt 26)

'to make provision about related works;'--[Mr. Watts.]

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Order for Third Reading read.--[Queen's consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.]

7.57 pm

Mr. Watts: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

This debate completes 16 months of scrutiny of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill by the House. Between February last year and February this year the Bill was considered by the Select Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Sir A. Durant). More than 1,000 petitions were received and the Committee's task was on a scale without precedent. It was carried out with great patience, care and balance, and tributes have been paid from both sides of the House to the work of the members of the Select Committee. The Committee has sought some substantial changes to the route and has rejected others. The Government accepted in full all the recommendations of the Select Committee.

We have given the Bill further careful scrutiny in Standing Committee and in the House today. Everyone is united in the desire to see the project proceed with the greatest speed and I can assist that process by drawing my remarks to a close and wishing the Bill a successful and speedy passage through another place.

7.59 pm

Mr. Jamie Cann (Ipswich): As a member of the Select Committee, I should like to say an odd word or two about the way in which the Bill's proceedings were conducted. I know that I speak for everybody who served on that Committee when I say that we are very grateful to the Government--I say this because I can see that there are no press around--for the way in which they listened to the Committee after its year and one month's worth of deliberations, took on board the proposals and suggestions made, and in a bipartisan manner produced plans which I think are a very good result. Let us hope that works on the ground come off just as well and that they are completed as quickly as possible.

I should also like to say how much I as an Opposition Member valued, as we all did, the way in which the hon. Member for Reading, West (Sir A. Durant) handled matters in the Select Committee. He dealt with every one of the more than 900 petitioners with patience, care and attention, even though many were apprehensive. What is more, one or two barristers the Committee left feeling more apprehensive than they had been when they arrived, which was also a good thing. The hon. Gentleman was ably assisted by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Sir I. Patnick).

By and large, it was a delightful Committee on which to serve. It did practical, good work, producing a rail link that, at the end of the day, was accepted by the Government. I think that the link is accepted by the people of the counties and boroughs through which it passes as well as it could possibly have been. Serving on the Select Committee was one of the better parts of my time so far in the House.

8 pm

Mr. Jacques Arnold: The House has been working on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill since Second Reading on 16 January last year. My constituents and I have been

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working on what was originally a threat and is now an opportunity since the autumn of 1988. Between those dates, a difference has been made by the appearance on the scene of London and Continental Railways. Since the announcement in late February, hon. Members who represent Kent and other Members who are affected have yet to meet the leaders of London and Continental Railways. I should not like to miss this opportunity to draw very much to their attention the fact that Members of Parliament who represent constituencies along the route are not to be ridden over roughshod; our concerns and those of our constituents should be listened to very carefully. I hope that meetings will shortly be held so that we may highlight matters.

Although I appreciate very much the attention that the Select Committee paid to the concerns of my constituents, I should like to highlight to the promoters and to the House a number of issues affecting Gravesham that have not been addressed. Perhaps the greatest environmental threat along the channel tunnel rail link remains that to Ashenbank wood and Cobham park in my constituency--issues that I raised on Second Reading which have not been addressed.

I remind the House that Ashenbank is ancient woodland, of significance for its wildlife habitat, and a site of special scientific interest. Cobham park and its ponds along the route are a fine example of a Repton landscape, which would be damaged by the link. Proposals provide for a wedge to be driven through the woodlands and a railway to be driven along the edge of Cobham park. The devastation would be considerable. Scientific analysis conducted subsequent to the proposal showed that the subsoil at Ashenbank wood is such that the cutting would need an even wider land take, which would be devastating to that ancient woodland. Scientists and engineers have developed proposals for tunnelling under the site and they should be addressed.

I should also like to draw to the attention of the promoters the proposal for crossing the A227 Wrotham road in my constituency on an elevated viaduct. It is highly inappropriate to the environment and we have not yet seen a design that gives us any confidence that blight from noise will not affect the considerable number of houses nearby.

It is proposed that the channel tunnel rail link will also pass underneath the A2 motor road in Northfleet in my constituency. That road carries extremely heavy traffic from north Kent to London, and very careful attention must be paid to mitigation work so as not to disrupt the traffic passing through during construction.

My constituents are delighted by the Ebbsfleet station proposal, which brings regeneration benefits to our area and the prospect of commuting to London in 19 minutes instead of the current 40 minutes. The Blue Circle properties company owns a large amount of land in that immediate area and has come up with magnificent development proposals. I hope that London and Continental Railways will negotiate effectively and constructively with Blue Circle so that the development of the station and the Blue Circle property areas are co-ordinated to the benefit of my constituents.

I should like also to refer to the Northfleet bypass. That town has on one side the Thames tunnel of the channel tunnel rail link, which is a major construction project in itself, and on the other the Ebbsfleet international station.

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The only connection between the two is the road that trundles right through the middle of that old town. We need a bypass, and the Select Committee said that the matter should be addressed. It is known as the south Thameside development route phase 4. Kent county council is being far too slow in acting on the matter, and there is talk of the planning application for the road being called in. I call on my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that if that scheme takes place, work will be extremely fast, since it would be very unfair to my constituents to have construction traffic for the channel tunnel rail link passing through the town.

On balance, I welcome the Bill, because it means improved transport and thousands more jobs for my constituency. However, I ask the House and particularly the other place not to lose sight of the environmental impact on Kent, which badly affects my constituency. There are still problems that need to be addressed.

8.6 pm

Mr. Brooke: The length of time that the Bill has been in gestation has been testified to by others. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Cann) was very generous in his comments on how the Select Committee was conducted. I should like to take advantage of the presence in the Chamber of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) to record one of my favourite pieces of British film comedy dialogue.

In the early stages of the "Titfield Thunderbolt", when the vicar of Titfield is confronted with the news that the line is already closed between Whitstable and Canterbury, he says:

"Perhaps there were not men of sufficient faith in Canterbury."

That faith has been deployed in the passage of the Bill, to the pleasure of all of us.

As the tail light of the departing Bill moves into the penumbra towards the other House, I should like to recount briefly my involvement in the very early stages of the tunnel that gave rise to the Bill. I was a Treasury Minister and we were negotiating a treaty with France. A problem arose about what we should do, since French customs officers carry guns; if they were on the train when it entered the tunnel, they would still have the guns on them when they came out of the tunnel at this end, and British customs officers do not carry guns.

The preferred solution of myself and the officials working with me was that French customs officers should be allowed to carry guns, but if in the event of their arrival on British soil they wished to use them, they would have to apply in writing to the chief constable of Kent. I am delighted to say that the preferred solution was acceptable to both Governments who were negotiating the treaty, and I think that it is established in writ.

I hope that solutions of similar ingenuity are deployed in the face of any other difficulties that the Bill meets before it completes its journey and when it is subsequently implemented.

8.8 pm

Sir John Stanley: I cannot resist a brief rejoinder to the comments on Report of the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) and other Opposition Members on the subject of delay. Their sense of history was curtailed at about 1988. I remind them that the biggest single cause

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of delay was the 15 to 20-year delay occasioned by the cancellation of the previous channel tunnel project in 1975. It was fitting that the last amendment on which the Labour party chose to divide the House was a wrecking amendment that would have set the project back another three or four years.

The delay has been of huge benefit to Kent and south-east London, though possibly not to Essex. It greatly benefited my constituents because the result of the delays is a route that, environmentally and in engineering terms, is a vast improvement on the original scheme. All the key improvements were made by Ministers, often against the opposition of British Rail.

The project began back in 1989 when British Rail produced its so-called three alternative routes. That was a desperately ill-conceived scheme in engineering terms and catastrophic environmentally. It resulted in tens of thousands of people suffering blight needlessly. Successive ministerial interventions brought about this much better scheme.

My right hon. and noble Friend Lord Parkinson was responsible for scrubbing the awful route 3 through the heart of Kent--some of the most beautiful countryside in the county and, I believe, the whole country. It was a devastating proposal. We in that part of Kent will always be indebted to him for taking steps to dispose of that route.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Rifkind) also decided to say no to the route that British Rail then preferred and chose instead the private sector alternative brought forward by Ove Arup. It is poetic justice that it is a small shareholder in London and Continental because its scheme, devised off its own bat, provides the basis of the present one.

My constituency owes an enormous debt to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk(Mr. MacGregor). When he was Secretary of State for Transport, he listened closely to the representations that I and others in the Medway gap area of my constituency made and decided to put the line past the north downs and across the Medway gap in tunnel instead of, as previously intended, overland. As a result, we have what some of my constituents are kind enough to refer to as the Stanley tunnel. On 1994 prices, I fear that it added another£70 million to the cost of the scheme, but my constituents in Aylesford, Eccles, Burham and Wouldham are eternally grateful for the Government's good decision to put that section of the route in tunnel.

Having said that, it may sound carping to end with a limited but important note of criticism about one matter. I make no apology for that because I have a small handful of constituents, six home owners, who are now above the line of the so-called Stanley tunnel on the top of Bluebell hill, whose treatment has been totally indefensible. At the beginning of 1994 a letter from Union Railways dropped through their letter boxes. It was a formal, Dear Sir/Madam letter headed, "Announcement by Government on Channel Tunnel Rail Link". I will read out its first three sentences. I hope that hon. Members will consider the implications for the saleability of their homes, had they received it. It states:

"I am writing to let you know that the Secretary of State for Transport has announced the Government's decision on the route to be safeguarded for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. This has been developed by Union Railways for the Department of Transport.

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The route selected is proposed to be in tunnel at this point and may affect the subsoil to the property described above."

In each of the six cases, the property described above was the address of my constituent's home. All hon. Members will reach the conclusion that if such a letter had descended on their doormats, it would have had a devastating affect on their ability to sell their houses. That group is wholly blighted. I must tell my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport that it is morally unacceptable that they should be left in that position. The basis for buying them out is entirely compatible with the three compensation criteria that my hon. Friend the Minister for Railways and Roads read out in response to the amendment moved on Report by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe).