Examination of Witnesses (Questions 10780
- 10799)
10780. Ms Symes: I am sorry if I was
not as clear as I should have been and I really do apologise to
you. I tried to be very clear that I am not arguing against the
principle of Crossrail. I am not. What I am giving you some supporting
arguments on is my point that, in making the hard decisions, the
trade-offs between economic, environmental and engineering criteria,
these are not about the principle of Crossrail, but about the
hard choices to be made about a particular alignment east of Liverpool
Street Station, and the choices of that kind are the choices that
you are in a position to influence and those choices, those trade-offs,
that weighing up of the costs and benefits not just of the principle,
I am not talking about that, but of whether you go on the current
preferred alignment, whether you choose the southern route or
Woodseer 2, it means there are trade-offs involved there. There
are costs and benefits of different options and that is accepted
by the Promoter and it is accepted by the Promoter in his case.
10781. Chairman: Then, if I could ask
the question, if it is not to be the present alignment, what is
your suggested alignment? Mr Galloway yesterday said the river
alignment which has been discounted.
10782. Ms Symes: I am not making a suggestion
of an alignment because I think it is not possible to make a carefully
considered, properly justified suggestion on the basis of the
evidence that has been put before you to date. That is may point,
so I will move on from that.
10783. Mr Binley: Mr Chairman, might
I, through you, say that I am becoming not less confused, quite
frankly, but slightly more confused and I do not think that that
helps your case and I genuinely want to help your case. We have
found over some considerable time now that where we know what
we can do to alleviate or help with a problem, on sizeable numbers
of occasions that has been put to the Promoter and the Promoter
has tried very hard to come up with a response to that which is
positive and helpful. Therefore, what I want to do is ensure that
you have that opportunity and it would be helpful to us, I think,
if you said that you recognise the value of (a) the work, (b)
the building and the difficulties particularly of the place you
work in, and all of that background we recognise because we are
involved in that sort of argument every day of our working lives
as politicians, so we have great sympathy with you. What we would
like to do is to help you continue to do that work by your telling
us what you would like the Promoter to do. If you can genuinely
come to that, I, for one, would be very grateful.
10784. Ms Symes: I would like to do that.
I want to make some serious points about the quality of the information.
I will say quite clearly, and I am very grateful for what you
have said, that I do not think that the alignment which is currently
proposed is the best alignment. I think there are very serious
consequences which have not been properly considered. What I was
not doing, very carefully not doing, was saying that I am in a
position to say that my preferred alignment is this, this or this.
The reason I am not in a position to tell you my preferred alignment,
and my preferred alignment is very certainly not the currently
preferred option as I think that is a very bad, improperly and
not carefully assessed option and it is not the option—
10785. Chairman: We are grateful because
we have now got to a point where, in line with some earlier Petitioners
this week, the case is being put about a re-evaluation. Their
case is that the re-evaluation will have to be made to various
routes which have been discounted together with the present route.
We accept that and you have made that point along with others,
that re-evaluation perhaps should be made in the light of evidence
which has been given. Now, you have made that point, as I say,
and other Petitioners have already made those points, including
in part of the presentation yesterday of another Petitioner which
has been referred to, so now can we move on.
10786. Ms Symes: Yes, I am about five
to ten minutes at the most away from finishing completely. I think
these thorough evaluations and re-evaluations to which you refer
need to be very clearly appraised, they will need to be based
on assessments of the environmental and the economic impacts as
well as the operational and engineering, and they need also, and
this is my final point before I conclude, to be sensibly informed
by the equality impact assessment which is a Department for Transport
statutory requirement. Now, the race impact assessment and the
equality impact assessment are still under way. I accept, and
I welcome, that these should be ongoing processes, but what I
criticise on those assessments is that it looks as if the two
assessments really have to date been conducted in an inadequate
manner and, therefore, when re-evaluations of options are made,
careful appraisal, careful assessment and cost:benefit analyses
are made of a range of options in the future, then these need
also to be informed by, not determined by, properly conducted
equality impact and race impact assessments which I do not think
they have been to date, and those assessments need also to have
laid down for them principles of monitoring and evaluation of
the assessments themselves, and I think that is very important.
10787. I think it is very important in continuing
work on those race impact and equality assessments, because race
impact is only one element of an equality impact statement and
they include other things like gender and disability, and, as
the work continues and I think some urgent work needs to be done
to inform decisions about changes of options, the Promoter consults
not just more widely than the local community as I know that point
has been made, but with organisations other than the CRE which
has been mentioned a lot. There are organisations in the area
with expertise. On the proposed route itself, the Runnymede Trust,
the oldest institute for race relations in this country, I would
like to see them really actively involved in the further deliberations
under those headings.
10788. Looking at what has happened, and I very
much welcome that there has been a reassessment of the Pedley
Street waste removal option, it has demonstrated to me at least
that the work of this Committee and the consultations which have
happened have really had an impact. It demonstrates that supposedly
immovable obstacles have been overcome even after considerable
resistance and, therefore, it seems to me that if the Committee
in its work is well informed, as it deserves to be, by experts
and is resolute, then other supposedly intractable obstacles could
also go.
10789. So that is what I want. I want you to
be well informed, as you deserve to be, and as we, the taxpayers,
deserve to be. I want you to be resolute and firm. I want a fundamental
back-to-basics reconsideration of the route east from Liverpool
Street Station. There are much better alignments and you have
already seen some evidence on two of them. You have seen a couple
of them, not just Woodseer 2, but there is the southern alignment
as well. There are better alignments.
10790. This is not an argument about compensation,
I am not making a point about compensation, but we want the most
basic of agreements from the Promoter and that is for the Promoter
to pay for Listed buildings, such as our own, to instruct their
own experts, surveyors and engineers to complete condition surveys
to inform these Listed building assessments and environmental
impact assessments to make the comparisons.
10791. We want the Promoter to agree to very
basic arbitration agreements so that, were there to be disagreements
between ourselves and other buildings affected, were there to
be disagreements about conditions or about the necessary preventative
and protective works, I would like to see the same approach taken
that is taken on the ordinary domestic party wall arrangements,
that the Promoter will agree to pay for those experts and will
agree to arbitration in the case of disagreements, and I also
want the Promoter to cover the costs of the necessary interventions
and protective works in advance of the tunnelling.
10792. All of that feeds into what I feel is
the most important thing of all and that is the good public policy-making,
that you should have before you really significantly revised assessments
that compare the options against very clear criteria, operational,
engineering, environmental and economic, and that you are right
to insist upon properly conducted, fundamentally revised and thorough
assessment. That is what your work deserves and that is what all
our communities deserve.
10793. Chairman: Thank you very much.
Can I just say one thing to you before I call Mr Mould. Ultimately
the arbitrators are here and following from the floor of the House
and any subsequent debate which occurs and amendments which are
laid, there is already in existence a mechanism for negotiation.
If that fails, we are always open to asking, as a Committee, for
correspondence with the Petitioners for their ongoing views about
the situation. I do not want you to come back to elaborate, but
we will do that after Mr Mould has made his contribution. I am
just saying that there is a mechanism there where this Committee
remains always open to any contact, but ultimately when we make
our decision, it will be from the evidence which we have got from
hearings like this, but also the written work which has been put
forward in either the Petitions themselves or in correspondence
which has been kept up between the parties, but be assured that
we will take all of these things into account. Mr Mould?
10794. Mr Mould: Thank you, sir. I am
also mindful of the Committee's request that we should avoid unnecessary
repetition and many of the general points which have been made
by the Petitioner have been addressed in evidence and in what
we have said so far in relation to Petitioners in the Spitalfields
area, and Mr Elvin will be presenting a closing submission to
you later on today, all being well, in which he will draw together
the threads of our response to those points, so I am not going
to dwell on those now. I am going to come in a moment to say something
about the specific concerns in relation to 19 Princelet Street
which is the Listed building that the Petitioner owns and occupies
and in relation to which her particular concerns are directed.
10795. Perhaps I might firstly say this: that
she mentioned the need for the ongoing consultative processes
that are the equality impact assessment and the racial impact
assessment to be properly informed by targeted consultation, that
is to say, targeted at those organisations who are best placed
from their experience and their interests to inform that process.
There is nothing between us on that at all and I can tell you
by way of example that she mentioned one organisation, that of
the Runnymede Trust. The Runnymede Trust has been part of that
process and will continue to be so, so we are targeting precisely
the organisation that she suggests.
10796. The other point is this: that the consultation
process on those matters is ongoing, as she says, and part of
the consultation process involves us welcoming views from people
who read these documents and want to respond on whether the consultation
itself ought to be targeted in a different way, whether other
organisations who have not been targeted thus far should be included
within it. That is as much part of the consultation process as
commenting on the material that is put out for consultation. If
this Petitioner has views about that, then we would welcome her
response on consultation in relation to matters of that kind.
That is all I want to say about that. That is one of the things
it is there for. That is all I want to say in general and I will
turn now to the specifics and a few, very short points.
10797. This building, as you have heard, is
a Grade II* Listed building. Its architectural and historic value
to the nation is indisputable on that basis. You have also heard
about the cultural value that is placed upon it and the uses to
which it is put and you have heard that explained in great detail
by the Petitioner. There is no issue about those matters whatsoever.
The building is one which merits appropriate and most careful
consideration in the context of the proposed construction of the
Crossrail railway which passes beneath it to ensure that the building
is safeguarded and protected, that appropriate measures are taken
to assess it, to monitor it and to save it from harm during the
construction of the railway. That is precisely what the Crossrail
ground settlement process as it applies specifically to Listed
buildings is designed to achieve. Now, one can argue about the
fine details of that process and as to whether it needs to be
adjusted on the basis of experience to take account of certain
factors or not, but let there be no doubt that, insofar as that
fundamental objective is concerned, there is absolutely nothing
between the Petitioner and the Promoter.
10798. Chairman: Therefore, Mr Mould,
let me ask you a question. We had an earlier hearing about Stepney
Church and I was just wondering whether you could make an offer
similar to the one that was made there where one of the Petitioner's
requests was that when an engineering impact assessment was done,
it was agreed in terms of Stepney Church that that would be carried
out by Crossrail because of the importance of that particular
building. I wonder if you could give the same in relation to this.
10799. Mr Mould: Yes, one of the ironies
of that case was that the impression was given perhaps that we
were offering something more than we had previously undertaken
to do. The irony of that is that we were simply saying that we
would apply our policy to that building. We will apply our policy
to this building.
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