Examination of Witnesses (Questions 13640
- 13659)
13640. Chairman: A bit too mad and a
bit too rushed really. Can we get the CD for this week? The Committee
who are not here today will want to view that during the course
of this week's business.
13641. Ms Lieven: Absolutely, sir. We
have probably got it here now but if we have not we will get it
to your clerk.
13642. Chairman: If 4C could be added
to that.
13643. Ms Lieven: It may be that is on.
I will check and we will get it to you.
13644. Chairman: Mr Laurence, if we could
also get Mr Spencer's notes which we will circulate back to the
Promoters.
13645. Mr Laurence: What shall I do in
the minus three minutes that I have got left?
13646. Chairman: Actually not a lot really.
If you can wind up we can be here as long as we can listen to
you really.
13647. Mr Laurence: As long as what,
sir?
13648. Chairman: As long as we can listen
to you.
13649. Mr Laurence: Sir, it will not
surprise you to know that in the helter-skelter of the last few
days and weeks in particular, and trying to respond to events
as they have unfolded, I have not been able to prepare an orderly
closing address to you. Therefore, what I am about to say is very
much in the nature of an attempt to respond with intellectual
honesty to the issues as I see them having developed in front
of you in the course of today.
13650. The first issue is just to stand back
for a moment and for the Committee to remind itself what a long
distance we have come in the nearly six months since we appeared
before you in January, for the Committee just to remind itself
that at that time, with a confidence similar to that which Ms
Lieven has just shown in her closing address to you, it was being
submitted by Mr Elvin that this Committee could rest assured that
a do-nothing option was sufficient. That was for the simple and
basic reason that Crossrail made no difference. The argument that
was being put forward was why should Crossrail in those circumstances
shoulder the burden of dealing with a problem that was not Crossrail's
problem. The figures that you will remember my mentioning to Mr
Berryman were the figures that were being put forward and since
that time we have, as I say, come a long way. Instead of talking
about a scenario whereby there were 33,000 people in the morning
peak going in and out of the gateline without Crossrail and the
same number of people going in and out of the gateline in 2016
with Crossrail, the position we have now got is that the figure
is acknowledged to be 42,000 in the morning peak with Crossrail,
not 33,000, and, as I put to Mr Berryman, the without Crossrail
scenario in 2016 is some 4,000 less than that. It is against that
background that the Committee is now being invited by the Promoter
to say, "Alright, so something does after all have to be
done", but what can be done consists of the cheap and cheerful
solution that is embodied in option 3B.
13651. British Land and the Corporation of London
have no interest in any solution to the problem that they perceive
which makes it in any material degree less likely that Crossrail
will happen. They have a decided interest in seeing Crossrail
happen and, therefore, it is not in their interest to advance
any solution to the problem that they perceive which involves
disproportionate or unreasonable cost. If British Land and the
Corporation of London could have persuaded themselves that option
3B would address the problem that they perceive then they would
have been the first to come before this Committee and endorse
it, but for the reasons that Mr Spencer has explained to you,
albeit briefly but very cogently, and which I invite each and
every Member of the Committee who has not been here to read in
full, we remain totally unconvinced. When Sir Peter Soulsby, designing
the scheme, as I saw it, intelligently towards the close of proceedings
today, was making the suggestions that he was making, none of
what Sir Peter put forward deflected Mr Spencer from the basic
evidence that he was giving, which was that option 3B just will
not do.
13652. The way of testing this that has been
suggested to me—I do not know whether it is helpful to the
Committee or not—is if you go down Sir Peter's route, should
the Committee specify a minimum number of gates that would be
required to be achieved with this 3B option, say 25 or 26 gates.
If they can get that done without removing the vaults that might
be okay. We would need to be shown it and to comment on it and
for our views to be shown to the Committee. On the other hand,
if the removal of the vaults, or part of them, was necessary in
order to achieve that extra number of gates with 3B then in effect
in that sense we would be back into the territory we have been
discussing in urging option 4C on the Committee. Of course, there
is always the subject of the amount of space that 4C provides
that is unavailable with 3B. Speaking purely as an advocate without
having had a chance to take proper instructions on it or anything
of that sort, I am bound to say that in my respectful submission
Sir Peter's suggestions ought not to be allowed to influence the
Committee one way or another in making their final decision as
between 3B and 4C.
13653. The key decision, but there is another,
is plainly whether, having heard all the evidence, you are satisfied
that you cannot take the risk of allowing this great project to
go forward with a substandard station at Liverpool Street right
from the beginning. My respectful submission to you is that the
evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of saying that option 3B
should be rejected and something much more radical put in its
place.
13654. It is at this point, sir, that the procedure
becomes of the first importance. In saying that something more
radical be put in its place I mean to submit to the Committee,
but I will spell it out, that the rejection of option 3B involves
rejecting not only that 3B done now will be sufficient, that should
be rejected, but it involves rejecting also the proposition that
3B could be done now with something like 7 being done in 20 or
30 years' time.
13655. That is just a desperate attempt to rescue
the now discredited argument in favour of 3B. If 3B goes that
variant of it must also go. The question for the Committee at
that stage becomes what to do about the 4C versus 7 debate.
13656. The position on 4C, as Mr Spencer and
Mr Chapman said, is that the consideration of that option is far
in advance of the consideration that there has been time to give
to the option 7 route. Nobody denies that if option 7 could be
made to work properly, on the face of it, it has considerable
attractions. The question for the Committee is, having listened
to the evidence in favour of 4C, whether it is satisfied that
that is the solution which it ought now to require the Promoter
to adopt and incorporate into the necessary additional provision
over the summer so that there can be the further hearings relating
to that that may take place in the autumn.
13657. If the Committee takes that route, it
can be satisfied that a great deal of work has already been done
sufficient to enable the witnesses who have spoken in favour of
4C to say to the Committee that enough work has been done for
the Committee to be satisfied that that option can be taken. I
am not talking about that option in any finally defined sense.
I am talking about an option that involves massively enhancing
the capacity of ticket hall B.
13658. The additional provision will make provision
for any degree of enhancement that would accommodate 4C, version
1, version 2, version 23 in due course. That is the point and
we are urging the Committee to bite the bullet and say that should
be done and not to listen to Mr Berryman's tut-tutting about the
possible difficulties of building 4C and the risks associated
with that in other than a respectful way and then to say that
all complex building is something with which risks are associated.
That is the name of the game. Mr Berryman did not suggest it could
not be built. Nobody has suggested it could not be built. Mott
MacDonald have put it forward as a serious option. Mr Chapman
has endorsed it. It can be done at manageable cost, only about
12 million more than the option 3B scheme in the context of the
project as a whole. Given the stakes that we are talking about,
it is something that is surely manageable.
13659. Option 7, on the other hand, it is said
could cost less than 30 million. You have heard the evidence from
Mr Chapman indicating that it could cost a good deal more. The
Committee is not in a position to know which of these suggestions
is right. One of two possibilities procedurally faces you, sir.
The first is you accept what we say about 4C and direct the Promoter
to promote the necessary additional provision. The second, less
favourable to our position, is for the Committee to take the view
that it cannot at this stage decide between 4C and 7A; but that
one of those two should be done.
| 
