Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
MONDAY 30 JUNE 2003
MR RICHARD
ADAMS AND
MR DAVID
SMITH
Q40 Chairman: As far as Defra is
concerned, you have not written back to them and said, "Look,
if we are to put forward a solution that might involve us being
involved in the running of New Covent Garden Market, we need you,
oh Defra, to clear out and give us free rein over the assets so
that we can sort the job out"?
Mr Adams: Yes, we have had those
discussions. I suspect we would not be here today if we had not
had a little enthusiasm from that approach in the first place,
we would have stopped talking. We would have been wasting our
time if the person who owns the site said, "I am not interested,
go away". We have been upset by other people.
Q41 Chairman: You have received no
comfort, to counterbalance what my colleagues have said that this
is a recipe for doing nothing, that Defra would, if there was
a decent plan, first of all get out of owning the site and, secondly,
remove some of the inflexibilities that have so beset its activities
to date?
Mr Adams: You will have to speak
Defra. I know you are going to. All I can say is I had reason
to believe that we were the only person who was likely to take
it and we were offering a way forward. If Defra really thought
there was not another way forward then I think the discussions
would have taken on a more serious line.
Q42 Mr Curry: I am just trying to
get a feel for things. The feeling I get is that here we are in
this sort of tripartite situation, there is the Corporation of
London, there is Covent Garden and there is Defra, and two of
those three parties basically do not mind at all if nothing happens.
Covent Garden is in a bit of a bind, it has got a bit of problem,
but if this had not been brought to you there is no circumstance
in which the Corporation of London would have decided to look
at it by itself or commissioned a report by itself. Defra's response
is to say, "We will call you, do not call us", that
is the basic extent of the Government's response to the Saphir
Report. The impression I get is really you think we are niggling
away at a problem which does not exist as far as you are concerned.
Mr Adams: I think if nothing is
done at Covent Garden, Covent Garden will disappear.
Q43 Mr Curry: With respect, Covent
Garden is not really your problem.
Mr Adams: No, that is why we—
Q44 Mr Curry: The proposition I am
putting to you is if this issue had not been generated by the
Select Committee and by Saphir you would not have generated it.
Mr Adams: No.
Q45 Mr Curry: You were quite happy
with the status quo, as it were, the situation as it was. In a
sense, you have been dragged reluctantly into this debate and
by and large as soon we all pack up and we go home the better,
is that right?
Mr Adams: No, because as I said
last time we are not just in it for the money. We have seen that
as a result of what was said last time and as a result of the
Saphir Report it does say that it would be a brighter future if
there was a composite market and so on. We have gone along with
that.
Q46 Mr Curry: The point I am making
is it would not have crossed your horizon to commission a report
like Saphir.
Mr Adams: No.
Q47 Mr Curry: You had no sense of
disquiet or concern about the situation that existed and if Covent
Garden had folded, as you say that would have been no skin off
your nose really. In that sense you are here as a somewhat reluctant
participant at this feast.
Mr Adams: In some ways, yes.
Q48 Mr Curry: You are interested
in the sorbet but not the main course.
Mr Adams: It was something about
Banquo at the last meeting. The position is that we would not
have commissioned a report to discuss the future of somebody else's
market, which is what it would have amounted to.
Q49 Mr Mitchell: You have changed
your mind on Covent Garden because you told us in the first round
of this inquiry that you did not particularly want to take it
over because it would interfere with the running of the other
three. Then your response to Saphir was that you should take it
over.
Mr Adams: Yes.
Q50 Mr Mitchell: In that situation,
you are the logical level or controlling authority, dynamic button
presser as Paddy says, to reform the whole business. That would
put you in a position of power to do some kind of rationalisation,
to do what is sensible for London.
Mr Adams: Yes.
Q51 Mr Mitchell: What would you do
if you controlled all four?
Mr Adams: We would aim for a composite
market over what will now have to be slightly longer term because
of the financial implications, but in the meantime we can encourage
Covent Garden to assume a better position where it is, a better
position and start to have a real purpose in life, which we think
it has not got as it stands.
Q52 Mr Mitchell: And you would keep
the other three?
Mr Adams: Ticking over for the
moment, yes.
Q53 Mr Mitchell: Going as they are?
Mr Adams: I say "ticking
over", we have spent fortunes on them. We have now got the
situation that we are two years closer to very significant restrictions
being imposed on us at Billingsgate where large sums of money
have to be spent there. Once we start spending that sort of money
there then the chance of having money for a composite market unfortunately
goes further away.
Q54 Mr Mitchell: If that happened,
a new role for Covent Garden and keeping the other three going,
that would obviate the need for a big out of town market, apart
from Western?
Mr Adams: It does not obviate
the need, it makes it more difficult to achieve.
Q55 Mr Mitchell: But it also reduces
the need.
Mr Adams: No.
Q56 Mr Mitchell: Because the present
status quo would be more effective then.
Mr Adams: No, not if these hygiene
requirements at Billingsgate would be just to allow the existing
market to continue.
Q57 Mr Mitchell: Am I right in saying
that if that happened, if you took control of all four, the main
barrier between rationalisation and reconstruction and renovation
would then be money?
Mr Adams: Yes.
Q58 Mr Mitchell: Your difficulty
in raising money rather than anything else?
Mr Adams: Yes.
Q59 Chairman: Just to go back to
what you said about the need for further expenditure, if I have
understood if correctly, in terms of Billingsgate, it looks like
you are stuck whichever way you go here in terms of investing
in your existing market. If all of this discussion that we are
having leads to yet another two or three years of utter, total
inactivity, no decisions being made and everybody firing away
like battleships across the horizon, what are you going to do
about the problems that are now mounting up with your existing
markets?
Mr Adams: We will concentrate
on the other three.
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