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Mr. Lee Scott (Ilford, North) (Con):
I also want to support the extension of Crossrail to Ilford. Previously, I was the cabinet member responsible for the regeneration of Ilford town centre. Although Crossrail does not run through my constituency, I do not believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) was suggesting that it should
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necessarily stop at Liverpool Street or Stratford and not go to Ilford. I am sure that it will benefit my constituents, and it should go to Ilford.
Mr. Darling: Let me remind the hon. Gentleman of what I said a few moments ago. Crossrail is a huge project and hugely expensive, it will be a massive engineering enterprise, and we must have a deliverable proposition. Future generations will look back and regard this as the one and only opportunity for both Houses of Parliament to get it right. It is of huge economic value to the east end of London in particular, to London as a whole, and to the wider country, as I said.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con) rose—
Mr. Darling: I will give way to the two hon. Gentlemen and then come to a conclusion, as this is a two-hour debate.
Mr. Field: The Secretary of State will be glad to know that I am not going to say anything about Ilford. The third instruction, however, involves the relocation and change in methodology of the crossover under the Barbican—now also a listed building—in my constituency allowing for the deployment of a different construction method. There are great concerns in my constituency, as in many other built-up constituencies, about the disruption and noise, and there are some sensible suggestions in the third instruction, although I appreciate that it is a bit of a mish-mash. In particular, the changes will remove the need for a work site in Aldersgate street, which would have been extremely disruptive to Barbican residents as well as causing a great a deal of noise and traffic disruption for many commuters coming into the City of London daily. The change in the method of construction of the cavern in which the crossover is located is also intended to reduce noise, which is greatly to be welcomed.
I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your indulgence in allowing me to make a longer than normal intervention—as the Secretary of State rightly said, we have a two-hour debate, and very few Members will be able to make speeches.
Mr. Darling: I think that the hon. Gentleman is saying that he has now made his speech, and will not seek to catch your eye later, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Andrew Rosindell:
The Secretary of State has pointed out that if Crossrail were to stop at Liverpool Street, it would not be economically viable. A consensus seems to be building in the House, and we are all agreed that it should go to Ilford, but perhaps that is where it should stop. The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) is enthusiastic for the Crossrail project to go ahead, and I hope that the Secretary of State will consider placing the huge depot not in Romford but in Ilford, South, and that he will have the privilege of that, too.
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Mr. Darling: The hon. Gentleman has expressed his views on the placing of the depot at Romford, and the Select Committee will no doubt hear petitions on that, too.
Mike Gapes: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Darling: I will do so once more, and that is it.
Mike Gapes: I want to inform the Secretary of State that last week the all-party Crossrail group visited the channel tunnel rail link works at St. Pancras and saw the effective protection and sound-proofing of the yard at Bedford. It was a great pity that the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) was not able to see that, as it might change his mind about having a depot in Romford to help all of London and Essex and Crossrail as a whole.
Mr. Darling: My hon. Friend has made his speech, too, so we are making progress. I am quite sure that those matters will be considered, and I am glad that the all-party group went to St. Pancras, which is an excellent example of the Government's commitment to improving Britain's railways. When it opens in just under a couple of years, it will make a big difference to people's ability to travel to the continent.
Let us not lose sight of the fact that this project is essential not just for the future development of London but, as I said, for the wider UK economy. There will be many difficult decisions to take, and I envy neither the Select Committee nor my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield—who is sitting in his place reflecting on what awaits him—their tasks. The Government will have to table amendments such as those that have just been mentioned, because we want to do everything possible to get the project going and to see that Crossrail is built. On that basis, I hope that the House will give its support to the three instructions.
1.29 pm
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con): I am not sure whether I need to keep my remarks short because it is a short debate, or longer because most Members have already made their speeches in interventions on the Secretary of State. As he said, however, the debate is about instructions to the Select Committee. I slightly differ from his interpretation, however, that today's debate is about the instructions that will be given to the Committee—of course, they are a revision to the instructions that will be given to the Select Committee, because there was an extensive debate last summer about those instructions. There probably remains some confusion, despite the Secretary of State's attempts to clarify the position today.
We have three motions to consider today, the first of which, as he says, represents a series of technical matters that have emerged since Second Reading. Some will undoubtedly argue that they should have been anticipated in the original drafting. I should be interested to hear from the Minister what will happen if the Bill proceeds to its later stages. If further technical issues emerge, how will they be handled? We realise, though, that in the case of such complex projects some things can slip through the net, and the motion is not
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controversial. As the Secretary of State explained, the third motion deals with a minor matter, and there should be no problem with it in the right circumstances.
The Secretary of State rightly said that the crux of the debate lies in the second motion. It highlights the somewhat chaotic approach that I believe the Government have taken to the project—and that is the view only of those who subscribe to the cock-up rather than the conspiracy theory. We all understand, of course, that taking a hybrid Bill through the House is a more complex process than dealing with a conventional Bill. Most Secretaries of State probably deal with only one hybrid Bill during their tenure, and this represents a learning curve for this Secretary of State as well as for Members throughout the House.
I think that the kindest possible interpretation of the second motion is that the Government are all over the place. I shall give some of the reasons for the confusion in a moment, but we ought to bear in mind the original importance of the measure to the Government's plans. Their blueprint for "Transport: a ten year plan" stated:
"For our modelling of the implementation of Plan measures we assumed that by 2010 the following projects had been implemented (in addition to those in the baseline)".
It referred to the inaptly named Thameslink 2000, and to
"An eastwest rail link, such as CrossRail, will be the crucial element in providing crowding relief to eastwest Underground lines (Central, Jubilee, District, Circle, Metropolitan). Our modelling suggests that, without it, most eastwest lines on the Underground would be more crowded than today, despite other improvements."
As passengers who use those lines know full well, they are pretty crowded today.
The issues that we are debating are at the heart of one of the Government's flagship transport projects, by their own admission, and any changes of this kind should deserve close and careful examination. We are, or should be, debating an important development in a project that is central to the Government's strategy to deliver its 10-year plan for transport—but, as we know, that is not what today's debate is about.
We are debating changes that will not benefit the British travelling public by the year 2010, as we were originally promised. In a humorous aside to the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), the Secretary of State said that he and she would be lucky to see Crossrail 1 open in their lifetimes, and given the current rate of progress he is probably not far off the mark. The 2010 promise has long since been quietly abandoned, along with many of the other promises made by the Secretary of State's Department over the past eight years.
The motion is also a complete U-turn on the Government's position a few months ago. It represents either chaos in the Department's planning or a slightly disingenuous attempt to keep people in Maidenhead and the Ebbsfleet area happy. Those locations are in the Labour party's focus, as they contain a number of key marginal seats.
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