Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20540
- 20550)
20540. Mr George: When I was addressing
the Committee in the summer I drew a parallel with the procedures
for obtaining planning permission for a major project, and, of
course, one of the aspects of this Bill is to confer planning
permissions, so imagine a major planning developer seeking planning
permission for a major project. Such a project will always have,
or almost always have, a number of aspects to it, some will be
more desirable than others. To take the matter to an extreme,
on the one hand, the building, on the other hand, the greenery
and the fencing. In the planning world you put in your planning
application and the competent authority, namely the local planning
authority or the Secretary of State, only grants planning permission
when it is satisfied that it secured a package, that is all the
development will take place. In my case of the green space and
the fences, the office building is not to be occupied until the
landscaping and the fencing have been completed to the satisfaction
of the local planning authority. Now look at what is happening
here: it is as if there was a sentence in Mr Elvin's instructions
from the Department which said, "Avoid getting yourself committed
to anything". For all I know, it may be in his instructions,
it very likely is, I have not been privy to see his instructions.
Because here is the position in AP3, in the clearest possible
language they bring forward a revised depot strategy of which
key elements are Crossrail goes to Old Oak Common, EWS moves across
the line and we provide them with equivalent facilities at North
Pole. Now what is the stance? The stance today is, "Oh, really?
We certainly want to acquire your land compulsorily and we certainly
want planning permission for our works there. So far as North
Pole, we would like to have a planning permission to do those
works which may be years before we decide whether we are going
to do those works. We may decide never to do those works at all".
Who suffers from it? The person who suffers from it is my clients
who have no certainty whatever for the future and it is a deliberate
reneging on the way in which the Environmental Statement and the
documents supporting AP3 were drafted. When I asked him questions,
Mr Berryman accepted that there was nothing in any of the supporting
material to suggest that North Pole was merely an add-on, an option,
a possibility, and this morning Mr Elvin opened that North Pole
was merely a possibility. We say that is unfair and unacceptable
and that the Committee should intervene.
20541. Today, you have heard a deliberate attempt
by the Department to suggest that in some way my clients are the
ones who are trying to pull the wool over the Committee's eyes.
First, you remember it was said, "Oh, when they bought the
site they well knew it was all safeguarded", and up went
the exhibit. When I intervened they accepted that was the wrong
exhibit. When we bought the site it was only a small part of the
site, the northern part, which was safeguarded and that, as Mr
Smith explained, the operations could have carried on perfectly
satisfactorily if that bit at the northern end of the site was
lost. There is absolutely nothing in that point. Then it said,
"Oh, well, look at the pie chart. The comparison of movements,
there are not terribly many movements into and out of this site,
it is not a busy site". In the first place, to measure it
by movements is a misleading comparison when one is looking at
a maintenance and repair depot and the nature of the charter fleet,
but, in the second place, we are not saying that we are such a
busy site that we should stay at Old Oak Common and Crossrail
should not displace us. That is not the argument, the argument
is that we carry out important and significant activities at Old
Oak Common, which Mr Berryman accepts, and that those activities
could be carried on across the railway in North Pole, as envisaged
in AP3 and as assessed in the Environmental Statement. To say
the site is not occupied, so to speak, every square foot of the
site, and that there are trains going in and out of it is nothing
near the point and advances the argument no further. Then it says,
we carried out some sort of fraudulent sale, we intended to sell
it. It is perfectly plain we would not be able to sell or dispose
of the sale at present, because when anyone makes inquiries, they
will come across the safeguarding and appreciate that they would
be mad to offer to buy an interest at Old Oak Common when the
site is about to be taken for Crossrail, they would not get a
planning permission because of the safeguarding and, in any event,
they would be mad to part with their money. So plainly this was
not an exercise to sell the site, it was an exercise to see if,
in a no-scheme world, that is a world without Crossrail, there
would be market interest. You do not have to have a completed
sale to be a relevant matter in later lands tribunal proceedings.
We have established that there was a considerable amount of interest.
Therefore, there is nothing fraudulent about that matter at all,
but then Mr Berryman has made a most unfortunate leap, he said
because that document showed only three sidings and a shed, therefore
it will be sufficient for EWS's core activities if we squeeze
three sidings and a shed into the Crossrail proposals for Old
Oak Common, but again that is a complete non sequitur and
there is no evidence. Mr Berryman accepted that, that the core
activities of EWS could be fitted into three sidings and a shed
and he admitted the only reason he had gone for three sidings
and a shed was because of that document which he had understood
to be a bona fide sale document. Therefore, the whole of
the Crossrail case begins to unroll.
20542. What we say to the Committee is that
you have heard the evidence of Mr Smith about the valuable activities
carried out on the site. You have every reason to suppose that
site is going to be even more valuable as a freight facility in
the future, not least because Temple Mills has just been removed
from EWS for another passenger rail project, namely Eurostar to
St Pancras. The site is likely to be more used and you have also
heard there are a number of passenger franchises which are looking
for sites to maintain their vehicles, the North London Line and
Virgin have been mentioned and so forth, these are all matters
which could be carried at this site and there is not a jot of
evidence that there are other sites which are as conveniently
located to carry out these functions or, indeed, which exist at
all. The Committee knows that there is an easy solution because,
miraculously, North Pole is about to become vacant. Eurostar no
longer want it, you are not going to be able to get a train to
Waterloo, so it is spare, it is a redundant site, it is absolutely
perfect for transferring our activities to it. It is not as good
for us as Old Oak but it will do very nicely and it is just a
question of committing the Department to this and it is not as
though we are asking for anything radical, we are simply asking
them to honour what was in the Environmental Statement. My friend
simply cannot get out of the Environmental Statement point because
actually it is a killer. At present there is not an environmental
statement which deals with the position if EWS are not relocated
to North Pole. For Mr Berryman to say, "Oh, well, there are
lots of other sites around", and EWS's activities could readily
go there and there would not be any environmental impact is, with
respect, a nonsense. He is unable and he has not identified any
of these sites and admits that none of them has so far been assessed.
You have got a real dilemma as a Committee, because you could
either do what is the straightforward thing and say, "Well,
let us go with that which has been environmentally appraised",
and that is that we go to North Pole, or you call a halt now and
draw stumps until you get a revised environmental appraisal which
(a) shows the result of us not being at North Pole but (b) shows
the results of wherever it is that the Department proposes we
go and it is simply not for the Department to say, "Oh, well,
there are places they can go, that is their problem. It is not
our problem, it is their problem", and it is the duty of
this Committee to grapple with it. I come back to what I said
in opening, at that stage the Secretary of State said this scheme,
Crossrail, was not to go ahead at the expense of other users of
the line, including freight. Here you have a very simple matter,
the Department should be bound by what they said when they deposited
AP3; alternatively, they say they go away and come back with an
alternative home for us. They will not go away and come back with
an alternative home for us because we do not believe there is
an alternative home for us. It is not that easy, it is extremely
difficult to find another site where you can put that sort of
turntable or another site where you can store a large fleet of
passenger trains. These are not sites which readily exist, and
the fact that they have not been identified by Mr Berryman today
means that they, Crossrail, have not a clue where these sites
are going to be. That is unsatisfactory. Sir, all we ask is what
is in our amended undertaking.
20543. Now I come to certainty. You, as a Committee,
will study the Department's proposed undertaking with care and
you will see that it offers us no certainty at all. Looking at
it, it makes it wholly unclear what is to happen to us. Are we
to have some of our activities at Old Oak Common and others elsewhere?
If the others are elsewhere, where? When will we be moved? How
much consultation will there be? Above all, the matter is driven
by costs, as the undertaking says, but the final solution will,
in any case, be the cheapest one to the Department. So there is
absolutely no certainty there. How can Mr Smith and his company
trade and bid for business when they are saying: "You have
got a splendid site at Old Oak Common; it is under-used"
(that is the Department's evidence) "there is room for expansion
of activities but there is a Compulsory Purchase Order, and we
are going to be displaced" and the Department say they have
not a clue where we are going. That is thoroughly unfair and it
is fundamentally against the European Convention's defence of
human rights—the right of property. Here, you should not
be deprived of your property in circumstances where there is a
ready alternative. A "ready alternative" here is to
make available the land on the other side as set out in all the
documentation.
20544. If the Department are concerned as regards
costs, they have only themselves to blame. They drew up the estimate
and Mr Berryman, the witness who is here giving evidence day-by-day,
signed the estimate and that was the estimate. Parliament was
told that is the proposal. We have worked extremely hard in the
last month. We have actually got that £70 million down to
the £50 million for the construction costs by saying that
we are prepared to accept a less well-serviced site than the Department
originally thought reasonable. However, the Department forgot
about rates. It seems to us it should have been obvious to everyone
there would be some factor X to add to the 70 million, but we
have worked very hard to get those costs down, which is why, at
the end, we are able to come up with the £83 million. The
£83 million is still massively less than the saving on the
original Depot Strategy and will still leave the Department with
a saving of almost £100 million on the revised Depot Strategy.
It appears to be the Department's policy (and at least they are
overt and honest about it) to say: "Whatever we have said
in the past we keep this matter endlessly under review and we
grind everyone down and we go for the cheapest, cheapest solution
on the very last possible date. If you go out of business or if
you lose business and so forth, well, that is tough. The public
interest" (they say) "requires the cheapest solution."
20545. I simply say to the Committee that is
a wholly improper way of looking at it, and I ask the Committee
to require of the Promoters an undertaking of a modified sort,
which we are suggesting, which caps their liability, which means
that we will be prepared to say that the estimates which have
been done are right and if there is any extra expenditure then
we cannot get it out of the Department. So we call their bluff,
and we ask you to uphold the revised Depot Strategy in AP3 and
the Environmental Statement. Those are my submissions.
20546. Chairman: That concludes today's
examinations. Mr Elvin?
20547. Mr Elvin: Sir, I think it concludes
this week's business.
20548. Chairman: I was going to make
a couple of statements about that.
20549. Mr Elvin: I do apologise.
20550. Chairman: The Committee will now
go into private session for the remainder of the week and we may
be making an announcement on the revised Depot Strategy on Thursday,
but this will be Thursday morning. That is it for this week.
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