Examination of Witnesses (Questions 163
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 15 JANUARY 2003
MR RICHARD
SUMRAY, MR
TONY WINTERBOTTOM,
MR MICHAEL
WARD, MR
JAY WALDER
AND MR
BARRY BROE
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much
indeed for coming to see us this afternoon. We have got a very
attenuated timescale for this report and we are grateful to you
for co-operating in the timetable. Mr Wyatt?
Mr Wyatt
163. Good afternoon. We have had an interesting
day and a half so far. What concerns us most is transport. What
can you tell us that will put us out of our misery so we can give
a tick for this Olympic Games? We have been told three separate
stories on Crossrail. Can we just dismiss that? If you dismiss
it, are you confident the alternatives will be there? Given that
London comes to a halt every day somewhere, we do not want people
to miss their heats as they did in Atlanta.
(Mr Walder) On behalf of the GLA group let me welcome
the opportunity to appear before the Committee this afternoon.
We understand the issues of transport, we have looked at it carefully
in the initial stage. One of the great advantages here is the
siting of the games. The siting of the Games in the Thames Gateway
is both ideal from the interests of regeneration and transport,
it is obviously one of the most deprived areas of the country
and it has been highlighted in the London Plan as an opportunity
area for London. It is also a very sensible location from a transport
perspective. This area has good transport infrastructure and there
are improvements underway right now that will make that transport
infrastructure much better, such as a major increase in capacity
on the Jubilee Line as part of the PPP effort and the Channel
Tunnel Rail Link which are underway. What that says, along with
our review of this, is that with some additional infrastructure
and I think it is relatively modest in the scheme of things, and
importantly, service enhancements and demand management, we believe
that London's transport system can accommodate the Games. While
Crossrail is a critically important project for London and the
Mayor and TfL are very supportive of it and continue to plan the
project, we believe that a successful London Games can be delivered
without the Crossrail project. We believe that we can manage all
of the issues, the planning, the building and operation, in order
to be ready for the 2012 Olympic Games and we would urge to proceed
on that basis. So I think the transport issues for the most part
should not be a constraint within the overall scheme.
164. Let me come on to the management of big
projects. Wherever you look in London, the Eye did not open on
time, Portcullis overran by two years, the British Museum has
had its problems, the British Library took 17 years, the Dome
was on time, but, sadly, the Jubilee Line was only open two days
before when it should have been open two years before. Have we
really got the skill in management in this country to manage big
projects because there is not much evidence that we have?
(Mr Winterbottom) Most of the projects that you have
just referred to are projects in the public sector and a lot of
those projects were projects where there perhaps was not the final
definition which enabled a firm tight contract to be put together
and I do agree that recent history is littered with those. However,
there is also a number of projects in the country that are unsung
but actually run to time and are built budget. And certainly as
far as the London Development Agency is concerned, we have substantial
experience of much smaller projects—I grant you, they are
not as complex as the ones that you have just mentioned—where
we have been able, working with the private sector particularly
and making sure that we have really researched the project, to
bring projects in on time and to budget. The only confidence that
I can give you in relation to this project is perhaps the way
that we have approached it. Contrary to any other project that
I am aware of, when we first got involved with this project the
Mayor insisted that we actually looked and did a pre-feasibility
study as to whether or not this was something that we should go
for, which is the Arup Report and I think at least that has given
us a good baseline to look at the sort of complex issues that
we have to deliver. We think that delivering the Games will be
complex, will be difficult, but clearly it will need a very focused,
very firm and very clear line of delivery with people who understand
delivery and it needs to be time critical, but we do have quite
a lot of time.
165. Mark Bostock yesterday said kept saying
it was a specimen contract. Is the difference of opinion between
the Government and the Arup Report the fact that this is not fully
a costing of the actual Games, this is a sort of model of what
could be the Games? If it is actually the Games then why are they
called specimen costings?
(Mr Winterbottom) This is where I would like to go
into your first question also. It is very important we get the
stages of this bidding process correct. We have not spent a great
deal of money on the Arup Report, but what it has done is it gives
us that specimen, these are the issues that have to be tackled,
this is what we think those issues will cost. There is another
piece of work that needs to be done and that needs to be done
relatively quickly. If London and the Government decide that we
should bid for those Games then the important thing is that each
of those items need to be thoroughly investigated as part of the
bidding process so that we are very clear as we go forward that
we understand the issues, the costs, the difficulties, the challenges
and in each sub-component of that bid we understand what the end
date is, when we have to deliver it, what it is going to cost,
who is going to deliver it and who is going to be responsible.
That is the reason that we have gone down this route of getting
a pre-feasibility piece of work.
166. The Chancellor is looking at this. That
means that on the 30 January the Government is going to go okay,
we have the full figures, it looks like £5 billion, we do
not know but we will do it.
(Mr Sumray) What all the parties were agreed to, and
this was a stakeholders group in which the Government and other
parties were involved, was to get this cost benefit work done
and in order to do that, as Arup expressed yesterday here, they
developed the specimen proposal. The specimen proposal is not
going to be exactly what the end result is and in fact if you
look at the history of bids the end result is never quite what
is even bid for. It is pretty well there or thereabouts and we
believe that what Arup has come up with is actually sustainable
and robust, but Arup have done this independently. The Government
have had an independent review of that and there are discussions
going on between Arup and the Government about this. That is right
and proper and it is right and proper that as much work as possible
can be done around costs. I think the other thing is that in our
knowledge and certainly I think this has also been expressed here,
no other event of this kind has ever had such detailed work done
on it before any announcement has been made about whether or not
to make a bid. We think that is absolutely right and proper given
the history we have had of some of the projects that have gone
wrong, but it will never be exact at this stage, it cannot be.
What you can get is a scenario, and I know the Government are
developing this, around the probability and risk and I think that
is what one has to go with in the end.
167. The thing about the World Athletics Championship
is nobody claimed it for London, no one owns it physically, no
one claimed "This is ours". People were attached to
it but nobody owned it. Manchester City worked for the Commonwealth
Games. Even if they got the figures wrong initially, they owned
it and bullied it and it won. Here we are being asked as a Government
to trust the GLA, a relatively new body, to work across four boroughs
that are stretched at the moment to run their boroughs. Do you
think that this should be run by a Minister being chairman of
this so that there is a Minister inside the Cabinet Office, do
you think it should be run in the Mayor's office with somebody
full time there? Do you think the BOA should be chairman of running
this from Wandsworth? What is your view of taking this forward?
(Mr Ward) First of all, it needs clear ministerial
ownership. In a sense the start point is that no national bid
can succeed without proper support from international government
and that does mean the ministerial champion. The World Athletics
Championship did not have an effective sponsor in London because
we were in the period of no London government at that time, we
relied on Government office and less formal structures. We now
have a wide range of structures. While the GLA is a new organisation,
Transport for London draws upon 70 years experience of London
transport as an organisation. The London Development Agency draws
upon the very substantial project management experience of English
Partnerships which in turn draws on the experience of London Docklands
Development Corporation as major players in East London. I took
my colleagues to talk to people in Manchester who had worked both
on the Commonwealth Games and on the Olympic bid earlier this
year. The Manchester experience is it needs to be very firmly
rooted in the local authority. There they had an organisation
to run the Commonwealth Games but the local authority itself procuring
the stadium as a capital project. We think, and there is more
work to do on the detail, you will need at least one special delivery
vehicle to do the Olympics and that will need to be sponsored
both by Government and by ourselves. You will probably need an
organisation to run and market the Games. You will certainly need
an organisation to build the stadium. Some of the international
experience suggests you need a dedicated authority with transport
and highways powers.
Chairman
168. Mr Ward, you have just offered a recipe
which if it had been followed in Manchester would have led to
a disastrous Commonwealth Games. Although Mr Wyatt is absolutely
right in saying that Manchester owned the Commonwealth Games,
Manchester City Council very wisely and readily accepted that
they had to be under a Minister and that the Minister had to create
the structure, control the structure and take responsibility for
it. This is not a question of Government support. In New South
Wales the Minister for Sport was in control both of organising
the Games and organising the transport. Anything else and we are
headed for, in my view, a catastrophe. A Minister in charge as
in Manchester is a huge success. In a moment I would like you
to respond to that, but I want to put a couple of other points
consequent upon what Mr Wyatt has been asking. Firstly, Mr Walder
said he is confident that the Jubilee Line will be able to cope.
I do not know if Mr Walder was on the Jubilee Line this morning—I
was. The Jubilee Line was practically inoperable. There were two
separate signal break downs in two separate places, hundreds of
people were fighting to get on the trains at every station when
these trains actually arrived. The argument is that after the
botch of the way in which the signalling system was originally
produced for the Jubilee Line Extension the whole signalling system
needs to be replaced. How after day after day experience when
I travel on the Jubilee Line Mr Walder can be confident that in
eight and a half years it will be ready, I fail to understand
and I would be grateful for clarification. Thirdly, I heard no
answer to the question put by Mr Wyatt about Crossrail. Transport
for London sends us in a document which says we are not factoring
in Crossrail. Okay, that creates problems about getting to the
new stadium, but nevertheless that is clear. The Secretary of
State yesterday says no factoring in of Crossrail. In a statement
published in the Evening Standard yesterday the Mayor says Crossrail
will be running by 2011 and will be a great boost to getting to
the Olympic Games stadium. Arup says the delivery date for Crossrail
is by 2016 but some of it should be in place in time for the Games.
I really would like to know which, if any, of these statements
is accurate.
(Mr Walder) If I can take each in turn. I shared the
use of the Jubilee Line this morning and I do use it on a regular
basis. You are correct to say that there are very serious signalling
difficulties on the Jubilee Line as it stands right now. You are
correct to say that the Jubilee Line needs an entirely new signalling
system on that line, I have no argument with either of those two
statements. The point I was making was that that is actually contracted
for now. In the contract that the Government let in December of
last year for the JNP portion of the PPP the specification includes
a complete new signal system on the Jubilee Line by 2009, so it
is fair to accept that the situation as it sits today would not
be adequate to do it, but I think the project is both funded and
moving forward and in place to be able to do it well before 2012.
That enhancement to the Jubilee Line is quite significant. In
terms of the trains, it would add a seventh carriage to the train
which is an increase of 15% on each train that goes through. In
addition, it would increase the peak capacity of the system from
about 22 trains an hour running currently to about 30 trains per
hour as it would run with the new signal system. In aggregate
you would get about a 45% increase in capacity on the Jubilee
Line which is the equivalent of a very major enhancement as a
result of that. In regard to Crossrail, the Crossrail project
is proceeding. It is the expectation, with Government support,
that Crossrail would come as part of a hybrid Bill before Parliament
later this year, but the most optimistic schedule for Crossrail
has the project being completed around the end of 2011. This is
a project of a magnitude greater than the projects that you identified
before. It is a project that at this point is only in the preliminary
design stage. We have not gone through achieving Parliamentary
powers, we have not gone through the process of bidding out and
structuring the project and completing that work. You would be
hard pressed as we sit here today to say that the largest public
works project that has been undertaken will be brought in spot
on from a schedule developed before preliminary design is completed.
It would be inappropriate to plan on that basis.
169. Could you or Mr Sumray explain why the
Mayor yesterday said it will be ready for use in time for the
Commonwealth Games in 2012?
(Mr Sumray) It is a question for the Mayor. I think
the point that Tessa Jowell made to you this morning to you is
right, that the Olympic Games can be delivered without Crossrail
being there and at this stage I think, as she put it, it is a
risk in relation to being completed in time. The key thing is,
and this was dealt with in the Arup Report, can it be delivered
without Crossrail. The Arup Report indicated and Transport for
London are in agreement that it can be delivered without Crossrail.
Even more to the point, talking about breakdowns, Sydney in its
Olympic Games relied upon one particular loop in the railway system
to get 70% of the spectators to it. Had that broken down during
the Olympic Games there would have been real problems and it did
break down when that system was first launched about 18 months
beforehand. It did not, but in fact in the London context here
we have many more routes into East London than Sydney actually
had so there is less risk with the London situation than there
was with the Sydney situation.
(Mr Walder) The other major significant infrastructure
investment that would be made on the transport side is the Channel
Tunnel Rail Link. That project is scheduled for completion by
2007. In both the case of the Jubilee Line and the case of CTRL
you are not putting yourself in a position where you are backed
up against the wall in terms of completing those projects on time
to be ready for the Olympic Games. The site that has been selected
benefits from four tube lines, two national rail lines and the
Docklands Light Railway. That is a very very significant transport
capacity. Overall, when you look at the entire system, the Olympic
Games would add about 1% to the daily transport flows that we
deal with in London, a range, as you point out this morning, that
the system has to accommodate on a fairly regular basis. The real
issue in terms of transport is not the delivery of these major
projects, the real issue is the concentration of activity in a
very small area. That will likely necessitate some improvements,
like station improvements at Stratford station, but that is nowhere
near the complexity of the other items that you have mentioned.
170. Okay. What you say, Mr Ward, is very persuasive,
but I would still like to hear from Mr Sumray, who is here as
the Mayor's representative, why the Mayor is quoted within quotation
marks in yesterday's Evening Standard as saying that Crossrail
should be running by 2011 and will be a great boost to transport
in time for the Olympic Games.
(Mr Sumray) That is the timetable that is there at
the moment. It is desirable, the Mayor has expressed it in this
way, for it to be completed in time.
171. He did not say desirable, he said it would
be there.
(Mr Sumray) That is the plan at the moment. If it
was there it would be a significant boost to the Games.
172. He did not say that, he did not hypothesise.
He said that provided Government approval is given, which he expects
shortly, Crossrail will be in operation by 2011 and will be a
great boost to the Olympic Games.
(Mr Sumray) The last part of that is absolutely right.
The first part is the Mayor working on the expectations under
the current plans that it would be, but the fact is that, as we
know with any of these really major projects, there are risks
and the point about this particular risk is that in relation to
the Olympic Games, it is not one that we should be taking about
its deliverability. We do not absolutely need Crossrail for the
Olympic Games. As the Arup Report put it and I am sure the Mayor
would agree with this, it would be a significant boost to the
Olympic Games but it is not an absolute necessity for it.
Mr Flook
173. It is now not much more than about a year
since the fiasco of the bid for the World Athletics Championship.
Do you each in turn believe the Government will back this bid
when they look at it at the end of this month?
(Mr Sumray) I do not know whether the Government will
back it at the moment and indeed the Secretary of State—
174. Mr Winterbottom?
(Mr Sumray) Just to say, if the Government do back
it, I think the point that others have made which we need to reiterate
is that there has to be wholehearted and absolute support from
all government departments to make sure that it works, it requires
that, otherwise there is no point in bidding. All the stakeholders
say it has to have full and unequivocal support. It cannot work
with half-hearted support and we saw that in the sense of what
happened at Picketts Lock. It has to have full support from the
Government in order to make it work.
175. Mr Sumray, you may not have had the chance
yet to read the transcript of Tessa Jowell's words in the House
of Commons yesterday, but did you get the sense that there was
that full backing from what she was saying?
(Mr Sumray) I was there yesterday so I heard the speech.
What I think that she was doing, which is what she said this morning,
was creating a balance sheet and that balance sheet was to say
this is actually what is required in order to make a bid. We have
to understand what the costs are. I think there has been a little
bit too much concentration on the costs and potentially not enough
concentration on some of the benefits that accrue in making a
bid. I think the benefits as far as regeneration is concerned,
the benefits for the local community, the legacy done properly,
all of those things are huge benefits plus the factors which cannot
be costed, the feel good factors and all of those things are significant
benefits. It is also not just about costs and benefits, it is
also about a range of other things which in a way cannot be costed.
What I got from her yesterday was the need, an understandable
need, from the Treasury and other government departments to try
and provide what the worst-case scenario is. I hope at the end
of the day that she and other ministers will support it. We cannot
be sure that obviously will be the case.
(Mr Winterbottom) I think we will bid.
(Mr Ward) I think we should, but they must take the
proper decision on all the facts and the investigations they are
doing, what any government must do.
176. Do you think the Treasury are doing their
own analysis in the way that Arup have done it?
(Mr Ward) They must do, they must do, and I think
that most of what we see in the papers are different versions
of different documents which are circulating in government departments,
some giving an upside, some giving a downside, and that must be
part of the process of taking a decision.
(Mr Walder) I believe the Government will bid, I hope
the Government does bid. One point I would make about it is that
we are talking about it as a London bid and if it is a bid here,
if it is a London bid, that is a UK bid and it has to be thought
of as a UK bid.
(Mr Broe) I think the Government should bid.
177. The reason for asking all that is that
losing the IAAF Games really meant no athletics stadium. What
will not happen if we do not bid? If there is no bid, what will
not happen in the way that you all want it to happen?
(Mr Sumray) The opportunity for very significant developments,
regeneration opportunities, particularly for the people of that
part of East London, but actually opportunities for the country
as a whole, and I agree wholeheartedly with the point being made
that it is the country that will benefit as a whole, not just
London and not just that part of London. The boroughs described
yesterday, and I think absolutely appropriately, what the nature
is of that population of that part of East London. It is a very
young population with a high ethnic minority proportion there,
very deprived, and there will be real opportunities missed to
support that population, to get them involved, to get them engaged
and really to get them engaged in sport and other things and to
improve people's health. All of those sorts of issues are things
which would be missed if the Games was not bid for, and the speeded-up
regeneration of that part of London is very important. Legacy
in sport is again something which would not happen in the same
way. I have figures here about swimming pools and it was raised
yesterday where Amsterdam has three 50-metre swimming pools, Barcelona
six, Berlin 19, Paris 18—
178. To save you reading the report, there are
more in the basin of Paris than there are in the whole of the
United Kingdom.
(Mr Sumray) Precisely, and I think here we have opportunities
which quite frankly would not occur if we did not have the bid.
179. What will happen transport-wise or what
would not happen?
(Mr Walder) Transport is actually interesting in this
regard. For the most part, we are not relying on new infrastructure
to be able to accommodate the Games, so you are not able to point
to a piece of infrastructure, for the most part, which would not
be there. On the other hand, I think there is experience from
similar situations that residents change their travel behaviour
during times of major events for a large part because demand management
measures have to be put in place because people see it as no choice,
but it also exposes them to other travel patterns than the ones
they have been accustomed to. Interestingly, some of the experience
is that when people are actually exposed to different travel patterns,
they sometimes retain those travel patterns. The use of public
transportation rises, people who use public transportation move
to walking, cycling, other modes of travel, and that actually
is a legacy benefit that you do not often think of from games
of this nature. It gives an opportunity to try things in terms
of demand management regarding our streets and the like that perhaps
the day-to-day experience in London does not provide. That is
really an opportunity.
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