Schedule
12
Transfer
schemes
Stephen
Hammond:
I beg to move amendment No. 53,
in
schedule 12, page 196, line 40, leave
out ‘any person, including the Secretary of State’ and
insert
‘either the Secretary of State or the
nominated
undertaker’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to
discuss the following amendments: No. 54, in schedule
12, page 197, line 13, leave out ‘any person, including the
Secretary of State’ and insert
‘either
the Secretary of State or the nominated
undertaker’.
No.
55, in
schedule 12, page 197, line 22, leave
out ‘any person’ and insert ‘the nominated
undertaker’.
Stephen
Hammond:
The three amendments are identical in purpose.
They relate to schedule 12, which relates, as the Minister has just
said, to the transfer of property rights and liabilities from one party
to another. Their purpose is to ensure that the transfer is made to an
appropriate party.
It
is not necessary for the Secretary of State to make a transfer scheme
for anyone other than herself or the nominated undertaker. Throughout
the Bill, we have given those two people various rights and powers, but
the schedule appears unduly to extend that principle. I therefore look
forward to the Minister explaining the circumstances in which he
envisages property rights or liabilities will need to be transferred to
someone other than the Secretary of State or the
nominated undertaker for the purposes of the
schedule.
Mr.
Harris:
Schedule 12 sets out the Secretary of
State’s powers to make schemes for the
transfer of property rights and liabilities—known as transfer
schemes—from himself or certain other bodies to any person,
including the Secretary of State. If approved, the amendments would
remove the Secretary of State’s right to make a scheme for the
transfer of property rights and liabilities from himself to any person,
including the Secretary of State, and instead limit his powers of
transfer to
“either the
Secretary of State or the nominated undertaker”.
If approved, the amendments
would remove the Secretary of State’s right to make a scheme for
the purposes connected with Crossrail for the transfer of property
rights and liabilities from the Greater London authority, TfL, the
London Development Agency and their subsidiaries to any person,
including the Secretary of State, and instead constrain the Secretary
of State’s powers of transfer to
“either the Secretary of State or
the nominated
undertaker”.
Finally,
amendment No. 55 would, if approved, remove the Secretary of
State’s right to make a scheme for the purposes connected with
Crossrail for the transfer of property rights and liabilities from the
Secretary of State or a company wholly owned by him to any person, and
instead limit the Secretary of State’s powers of transfer to the
nominated undertaker.
Taking the
amendments collectively, the hon. Gentleman’s overall intention
appears to be to restrict the Secretary of State’s powers to
transfer property rights and liabilities from himself to any person,
which would not make much sense at this stage of the project. The
project is at a stage where the final ownership structure has not yet
been decided, so it is too early to say with absolute certainty who all
the players might be. It must therefore make sense to allow flexibility
in the making of transfer schemes to cater for all eventualities, so I
hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider withdrawing the
amendment.
Stephen
Hammond:
I understand the Minister’s clear
explanation, but I was seeking some examples of where these powers will
be necessary. I fully understand his desire not to limit flexibility,
but we none the less need an example of where the Secretary of State
might feel that these powers are necessary.
Mr.
Harris:
Network Rail, for example, might be subject to a
transfer of property to it from the Secretary of State in respect of
assets at a tunnel
interface.
Stephen
Hammond:
I am grateful for that. After that example and
the Minister’s full explanation I beg to ask leave to withdraw
the amendment.
Amendment, by leave,
withdrawn.
Schedule
12 agreed
to.
Clause
47
Holder
of functions of nominated
undertaker
Mr.
Hammond:
I beg to move amendment No. 56, in
clause 47, page 30, line 10, at
end add
‘, relevant London borough council leaders and chief
executives, and those officials with the same standing in relevant
borough councils and unitary authorities outside of
London.’.
Clause
47 is important. It relates to the appointment of the
nominated undertaker, the body that is to assume the task of building
Crossrail. Subsection (4) requires the Secretary of State to consult
the Mayor of London. Does the Minister think that it would be prudent
to consult not only the Mayor of London, whoever that might be, but
leaders of local authorities? The Secretary of State should look beyond
consultation just with the Mayor of London, and should be required to
consult representatives of local government when making the decision.
After all, Crossrail is certain to have ramifications in several London
boroughs in areas both east and west of the City.
Local councils will have to
deal with several issues arising as a direct result of Crossrail, and I
sense that they may be better minded to co-operate if they feel
that they have been included in decision-making
processes relating to the project from the outset. I have no doubt that
some of the boroughs in question have already made representations to
the Select Committees, and I am sure that those representations were
taken very seriously. None the less, the amendment is
non-controversial. Local government has a role to play in the success
of the project. It would be a mistake to exclude it from the
Bill.
My amendment
is designed to ensure that the appropriate local government
representatives—the amendment specifies them as the borough
council leaders and chief executives, and officials of the same
standing in borough councils outside Greater London—would be
consulted on the appointment of the nominated undertaker, who will,
after all, become such a presence in their area. I hope that the
Minister will feel minded to accept the
amendment.
Mr.
Harris:
Clause 47 empowers the Secretary of State to
specify by order one or more nominated undertakers, for the purposes of
the Bill. The clause requires the Secretary of State, before making
such a nomination order, to consult the Mayor of London—who
will, I am sure, be Ken Livingstone. It also allows the Secretary of
State, by agreement with the Mayor of London and whoever it is proposed
to name in the nomination order, to fetter his discretion as to the
exercise of the power granted in subsection (1). That power is
necessary to enable the Secretary of State to make
contractual arrangements prior to the nomination of a person or body as
the nominated undertaker.
The amendment would require the
Secretary of State to consult leaders and chief
executives of local authorities along the route before making a
nomination order and before entering into agreements with the proposed
nominated undertaker. The crucial part of my opposition to the
amendment is that clause 47 requires the Secretary of State to consult
the Mayor before taking either of the actions specified. As the hon.
Member for Wimbledon knows, the Mayor is co-sponsor of Crossrail; that
is why he is given the relevant power. It is intended that the Mayor
will be responsible for delivering the project through Cross London
Rail Links Ltd. I expect to say more about how it is intended to manage
the project when the relevant amendments are considered.
For the purpose of the current
debate the simple point is that it is right that the Mayor, as
co-sponsor of
Crossrail, should be consulted when the Secretary of
State contemplates making a nomination order or entering into an
agreement with any nominated undertaker. The chief executives to whom
the amendment refers are not co-sponsors of Crossrail, and it would not
be appropriate for there to be an obligation to consult local
authorities along the route about the matters before us. There will be
a good deal of discussion and consultation with key stakeholders, such
as local authorities, because they will have a key role to play in the
detailed delivery of the project, but it does not seem appropriate at
this stage to consult them about the identity of a nominated undertaker
or the terms under which a nominated undertaker will be commissioned to
carry out the work. Such matters are properly for the project’s
sponsors, so I trust that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the
amendment. 12.15
pm
Stephen
Hammond:
I have listened to the Minister’s
explanation, although I certainly do not share his certainty about who
will be Mayor of London at any given time—indeed, he and I are
completely at variance on that
point.
I recognise the
fact that the Mayor is the co-sponsor, but local government needs to be
a key stakeholder, and the Minister has said that it will be involved
in the consultation process. I therefore fail to understand the
Government’s reluctance to refer in the Bill to the fact that
they will consult key stakeholders. Although I am happy to take the
Minister’s reassurance on that, we do not know whether we will
have a different Minister, a different Mayor and a different view at
some stage, so it is odd that the Government will not include any
reassurance in the Bill.
It is disappointing that the
Minister will not accept a number of our points about consultation, but
given that the amendment deals with the co-sponsors and the nominated
undertaker, I am prepared to ask the Committee’s leave to
withdraw it. However, I will table several other amendments about
consultation to test the will of the Committee. However, with your
permission, Lady Winterton, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Susan
Kramer:
I beg to move amendment No. 2, in
clause 47, page 30, line 20, at
end insert—
‘( ) An order
made under subsection (1) shall set out all information that the
Secretary of State considers necessary relating
to—
(a) the sources of
funding for the relevant provisions of this Act,
and
(b) the uses to which it is
proposed that funding should be
put.’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment No. 3, in clause 47, page 30, line 22, at end
insert—
‘( ) An order under
subsection (1) shall not be made unless a draft has been laid before
and approved by a resolution of each House of
Parliament.’.
Susan
Kramer:
Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 obviously go together and
are designed to ensure that Parliament would not have to sign a blank
cheque. The issue has been tackled to an extent, given the
Government’s willingness yesterday to put the heads of terms in
the House of Commons Library in both summary and slightly more expanded
form. There is some editing, which is always frustrating, to protect
commercial confidentiality, but we are assured that it has been kept to
a minimum.
There is
also a letter from the Mayor outlining how he intends to proceed with
the element of finance that is the responsibility of London. That is a
significant improvement on the situation that we faced when the Bill
was first presented and we first tabled our amendments. However, I am
still left with a number of questions for the
Minister.
First, as
the Minister will be aware from looking at the heads of terms, they in
no way represent a legally binding obligation, and no such obligations
will be entered into until after the legislation receives Royal Assent.
Will he therefore let us know how he intends to keep the House informed
of the final bill, so that we are not constantly having to sign a blank
cheque? Will he also let us know whether there is any mechanism he
would accept that allowed the House to express its verdict once the
final structure for financing Crossrail and its related obligations was
agreed?
As the
Minister will be aware, it is often in the final months of negotiation
that a deal, and particularly its financing, loses any relationship to
the structure that was previously discussed. As the
various financial institutions become involved, suddenly the
fundamental nature of risk allocation and of who is to pay what and
where essentially changes. Therefore, what mechanism does he think
would allow the House some appropriate understanding, which would not
be possible prior to Royal Assent, according to the timetable before
us?
Secondly,
will the Minister help us on some understanding of a key element that
seems barely to be discussed within the heads of terms? The heads of
terms lay out various sources of financing, coming up to the total of
£15.9 billion. The uses of funds is a one-line item only, and I
understand why the Minister has presented only a one-line item for
that. He presumably wishes to protect from general public knowledge the
size of the contingency that is built into the uses of funds. That is
sometimes a rational thing to do, because the various bidders on the
contract, if they were to know the size of the contingency, would be
likely to raise their prices to absorb it. He will be aware that the
rumour mill, which is very active within this particular industry, has
suggested that that contingency is an exceedingly large
figure.
We always
talk about projects coming in on budget and suggest that that is a good
thing, but when there is a large contingency, one would expect a
project to come in under budget. Having looked at the heads of terms, I
am not clear who is the beneficiary of any such savings and underspend.
There is only a one-line reference in those
documents.
I looked at
the heads of terms that are presented as part of the sources and uses
statement that I requested in relation to the amendment. With regard to
the timing within which funds are applied from the various sources, it
shows that the funds for the two last years,
2016 and 2017, are underwritten by TfL and the Greater
London authority, which makes one suppose—correctly, I
hope—that at least the first element of the contingency will be
clawed back to TfL and the GLA, although I do not think that that is
made clear anywhere in the
document. If the
contingency were to be, for example, almost the same size as the
Department’s contribution, it would be important to know whether
the Department anticipated reclaiming all its contribution, leaving the
project to be funded solely by Londoners, through either the fare box
and TfL or the supplementary business rate. We need clarification on
who is to be the beneficiary of those savings and who, in a sense, is
carrying that element of the
risk.
I make a strong
plea that London fare payers should be the first to benefit from any
underspend and the London business community should be the second,
rather than the taxpayer being first out. That
clarification and an expansion on the outline sources and uses that
have been provided would be extremely
helpful.
On overspend,
which is obviously an ongoing worry and a reason for having an accurate
sources and uses statement, I am somewhat confused by the details that
have been laid out under the heads of terms. That might be in part
because I have not had long to work my way through the document.
However, there seem to be two intervention prices. Will the Minister at
least provide us with clarity as to whether those fall under the total
£15.9 billion? In other words, when a hard line is more
appropriate and is non-contingency related, what uses number is
developed? Do those cover the ground between that and the £15.9
billion, or are they in excess of it?
Indeed, within the document
there is a description of a put option that is to be debt free. That is
the ability of TfL ultimately to put the project back
to the Department. Does that mean that, under these proposals,
Londoners will be left carrying a substantial debt? They will lose
control of the asset and any revenues generated by it if it is passed
back to the Government. If that is a risk that Londoners are taking, it
ought to be
explicit.
The sources
of fund statement indicates that section 106 money will be applied back
into the project. Surely London’s many boroughs have the right
to expect that section 106 money will be available to them to deal with
the offsetting of the many problems that the construction of Crossrail
will cause them. Will the Minister take us through the logic of
allowing that money to be funded back into the project itself, rather
than dealing with the mitigation of the impact on the affected
communities?
The
supplementary business rates are to be set, according to the
Mayor’s letter, on any property that is in excess of
£50,000 of rateable value. Will the Minister give his estimate
of how many businesses will be affected? The media speculation that it
will be between 100 and 150 businesses sounds rather peculiar, but
considering something of that size certainly changes the character of
the deal, compared to something that extends to many more companies
across
London.
There
seems to be real confusion over what will happen with the retail
industry. It is unclear how various retail branches will be
treated—whether collectively or separately.
TfL is expected to produce some
of its early contributions under a sources and uses statement from
prudential borrowing. I am unclear whether that is expected to absorb
all TfL’s prudential borrowing capacity. While TfL has used
prudential borrowing on only a limited basis, it has been an essential
part of a wide range of new projects that have been brought on stream.
The East London line, Thameslink and a series of other projects will
come into play in roughly the same period, so I am concerned to
understand what the implications are if all the prudential borrowing is
absorbed within the Crossrail
project.
Lastly,
within the heads of terms, despite the fact that they have been
mentioned over and over again, there is not one single word dealing
with the issue of freight and freight access. It seems extraordinary
that those matters are not even included in the contractual regime
proposed by these various documents. Is the Minister willing to address
that
issue?
Mr.
Field:
I should first salute the hon. Lady for her great
optimism that somehow this project will not have a great cost overrun.
All experience suggests that a budget of £16 billion is likely
to be exceeded, not least because we were discussing only £10
billion to £13 billion three or four years ago when debate on
Crossrail became more common in the
House.
I fundamentally
disagree with the hon. Lady’s view that it should be the fare
box that gets first advantage of any underspend. The London council tax
payer should get first advantage. Some people who are likely to use
Crossrail will come from outside London and from abroad, but a
significant number of Londoners will also do so. A
large number of infrastructure projects are in part being funded by
London council tax. In my own city of Westminster, this year, for the
first time, more than half the council tax that any resident pays is
now down to the mayoral precept. One can only imagine that, having
underwritten the Olympic games and elements of this project, that
statistic will become worse
still.
A
Mayor who does not empty a single refuse bin, sweep a single street or
run a single school or social services department will none the less
take an enormous proportion of the council tax spend from Westminster
residents. I appreciate that the same will increasingly apply to other
parts of
London.
12.30
pm
There is a
difficulty with what the hon. Lady said about section 106 agreements. I
agree with her that much of the money should be used to mitigate the
localised loss of amenity because of disruption, but the reality is
that the parcel was lost during previous debates on Crossrail and on
the Greater London Authority Bill. It is clear that the Mayor is keen
to have a central pot of section 106 moneys to utilise for purposes
other than local mitigation, so I have some concerns along the line
that the hon. Lady put forward. I would be interested to hear what the
Minister has to say, but I make a strong plea for the London council
tax payer. If the project comes in within budget and money is to be
given back, he or she should be first and foremost, rather than
giving it back through the fare box.
Indeed, the business community
is also involved in a fairly unprecedented way—Canary Wharf with
£400 million, and the City of London with £250 million
and rising because of other connections—but I suspect that that
will become much more common for large-scale infrastructure projects in
the decades ahead. The business community will be rather concerned, and
it may become much more difficult to include it in future projects, if
there is to be a massive underspend when there has been a reliance on
its money.
I suspect
that this is probably wishful thinking, given the likely situation in
respect of expenditure on this project, but I hope that I am wrong on
that. It is important that the London council tax payer, who is much
beleaguered by contributions to a range of national projects, should be
the first beneficiary of any
underspend.
Mr.
Binley:
I am beginning to get the impression that there is
a general view that the project is purely about London, but of course
it is not. It impacts sizeably on the rest of our community in many
ways, but I fear that that is not taken into account in the amendment.
The people of Northampton and Northamptonshire
generally are concerned about Crossrail because it does not help their
transport problems one iota, yet it will cost them, through the
Exchequer, a considerable amount of money. The whole question of
transparency in respect of Crossrail is vital not only to London but to
the rest of the country, which will be affected by it but which will
not get quite the benefits that many Londoners hope it will
bring.
Let
us talk about transparency, particularly in respect of money. It seems
that the scheme has gone from £6 billion to £16 billion
in two short years. The costs need to be totally transparent but have
not been in the past. We do not understand why that massive leap has
taken place. I have seen some of the ways that Crossrail has been
costed, and, frankly, as a business man, I have been horrified. The
question of Woolwich station itself was enough to frighten the taxpayer
to death. It went from £350 million down to about £120
million. I know that that is not for the whole station, but the methods
applied to costing were most
disturbing.
Let us
talk about another aspect that will affect the rest of the country: why
we need transparency and why I do not think that the amendment covers
that need. I am concerned, as are many of my constituents, about the
amount of money that London is taking for infrastructure projects. The
Olympics will take a great deal of money, Crossrail is £16
billion and Heathrow will take a lot of money, too. Such projects draw
resources from other parts of the country. They will certainly affect
the ability to provide massive civil engineering infrastructure
projects. I need to know how they will impact on other areas,
particularly those that have sustainable community projects. They, too,
have an immensely sizeable claim for infrastructure.
Transparency is vital.
We talk about underspend. Quite
frankly, I think that the rest of the country has a right to
question the probability of overspend on Government projects.
Indeed, it has been suggested to me that we could—I emphasise
“could”—end up with a £25 billion or
£30 billion project on our hands. We have seen many Government
projects increase threefold in cost, so the
record is not very good, and we need reassurance. Transparency is the
only way to achieve that, and it is needed not only in relation to
existing figures—we need ongoing reports too. The amendment does
not address that
need. I am immensely
concerned about the impact on the rest of the country, so I want the
Minister to tell us how we can be fair and transparent for the nation
in terms of costing, focus and the drawing of resources by Crossrail
from other projects that are worthy, that are needed elsewhere in the
country, and that might be affected by Crossrail or other projects in
and around London. How will the Minister reassure us in that
respect?
Mr.
Harris:
I appreciate the opportunity to take part
in a wide-ranging debate on financing, and I
congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park, who in the carry-over
debate was clearly disappointed when I mentioned that Crossrail finance
would not be included in the Bill. She has contrived a fairly ingenious
method of ensuring that the Committee has an opportunity to discuss
financing arrangements.
I shall
preface my remarks by pointing out that, given some of the problems
that the hon. Lady has identified, there are certain areas of the
financing agreement that will not be debated in detail in Committee.
However, I can assure her that the Government are committed to complete
transparency on funding arrangements. An example of that was the
lodging of the heads of terms in the Library yesterday.
In the carry-over debate on 23
October, I made an offer to the hon. Member for
Wimbledon, and to the hon. Lady’s hon. Friend, the hon. Member
for Carshalton and Wallington, to give them an off-the-record Chatham
House rule briefing. They took up that offer, which has been helpful to
the Committee’s deliberations. If I cannot give detailed answers
to certain of her questions, I hope that she will nevertheless accept
that the Government are committed to transparency. I understand and
accept the concerns that exist, particularly in the wider financial
community.
The work
that has been done on assessing the final true cost of Crossrail has
resulted in a more robust position than in almost any other major civil
engineering project of this type. I take issue with the suggestion by
the hon. Member for Northampton, South that the estimated cost of
Crossrail had risen from £6 billion to £16 billion in two
years—I think the record will show that that is what he said. On
the Bill’s Second Reading in 2005, the then Secretary of State
for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh,
South-West (Mr. Darling) pointed out that, at 2002 prices,
the cost of Crossrail would be £10 billion, which equates almost
exactly, I believe, with a cash amount of £15 billion to
£16 billion in today’s terms by the end of the
project.
Mr.
Binley:
The Minister will understand that many figures
have been bandied about in the past three or four years in relation to
Crossrail, including in the Select Committee on which we worked. I do
not doubt his word, but it is good at last to have some clearer idea of
what will happen. Does he accept that there has been confusion in the
past and that that is why transparency is needed in
future?
Mr.
Harris:
I do not accept that there has been confusion in
Government or with Cross London Rail Links. I accept that confusion has
many avenues and many sources, but I do not think that the Government
are responsible for all of it. On Second Reading, the estimated cost
was £10.2 billion. Out-turn cost by the end of Crossrail
construction is estimated to be between £15 billion and
£16
billion.
That leads me
on to another point made by the hon. Member for Northampton, South. He
started off, quite rightly, by pointing out that Crossrail is a project
of national significance; it is not just a London project, but one that
will have significant value for the rest of the United Kingdom, and I
agreed with him. He then went on to complain about the cost of
Crossrail having an impact on infrastructure projects in the rest of
the country. Frankly, you cannot have it both ways. It is a national
project that is being paid for, in part, by taxpayers throughout the
United Kingdom, which is correct because it is a project of UK
significance.
Mr.
Binley:
I did not complain. I said that there was a fear
that it could draw from other national projects and that that created a
need for transparency. Does the Minister accept that that is the
case?
Mr.
Harris:
I accept that the hon. Gentleman is frightened,
but I assure him that there is no need to be. The very fact of
Crossrail’s construction and operation will, it is estimated,
add £20 billion to the GDP of the whole country. So, as well as
being an important infrastructure project for London—the
benefits to London will be obvious—it will have a knock-on
benefit for the rest of the United Kingdom
economy.
The hon.
Member for Cities of London and Westminster expressed some concern
about the effect on council-tax payers in London and hoped that any
underspend would directly benefit them. I am more than happy to stand
corrected, but I understand that council tax is not intended as a
source of funding for Crossrail; domestic council tax will not be
top-sliced in order to pay for any part of the project. So, he can
reassure his constituents, unless, of course, they own a business with
a rateable value of over £50,000, which many of them will, I am
sure. But council tax is not intended to be a source of
funding.
The purpose
of the first amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park is
to require the provision of information about how the project will be
funded. Of course, as I have said, I am happy to support the case for
transparency, but not through the means suggested. The
Government’s approach to transparency was demonstrated yesterday
when we published the heads of terms that have been agreed by the
Secretary of State for Transport and Transport for London. Some
details, as the hon. Lady has already said, have had to be redacted to
protect commercial confidentiality, but the key terms of the deal
between the co-sponsors of the project are now in the public
domain.
We and
Transport for London now need to progress the detailed arrangements
that would support the heads of terms. That will include a large number
of documents which we expect will take several months to finalise. Our
presumption is that those documents will
be made public, again, subject suitably to protecting commercial
interests. On that basis, it would seem nugatory to require in the Bill
for a nomination order to contain information that will be set out
elsewhere and in more detail. Although, as I have
said, I pay tribute to the ingenuity that the hon. Lady has exercised
in securing a debate on finance in the
Committee. A
nomination order is not, in any case, an appropriate place to provide
the sort of detailed contractual information that the hon. Lady wishes
to see. Furthermore, a practical point is that there may be more than
one nomination order and, if that were the case, the supporting
financial information relating to any one nomination order would tell
us only part of the whole story. That would confuse and, even,
frighten, rather than
enlighten.
The
other feature of the hon. Lady’s amendment is that any
nomination order, by implication, the additional financial information
that she is arguing should be included, should be subject to a positive
decision of Parliament. The degree of parliamentary scrutiny afforded
to secondary legislation is, quite rightly, of great interest to hon.
Members. I would simply point out that our predecessors saw fit to
accept that nomination orders made under the Channel Tunnel Rail Link
Act 1996 should be subject to the negative resolution procedure, and
that is what we have provided for in the Bill. I believe that that is a
reasonable
approach.
Committee
members understandably wish to know how the project is to be funded and
managed. I would emphasise that we have started to provide that
information already by publishing the heads of terms; we intend to make
more information available in due course. Indeed, the heads of terms
explicitly state that information about the project should be provided
in order to provide a higher level of transparency about the project.
That is key to securing widespread support for the
project.
The
hon. Lady’s amendments are designed to produce the same answer
but, as I have sought to explain, her suggested approach would not
deliver the transparency that she wants. I therefore ask her, and ask
her nicely, to withdraw her
amendments.
12.45
pm
Susan
Kramer:
The Minister is exactly right to say that my
objective is to secure transparency. I believe that, because of the
size and significance of the project, transparency is absolutely
necessary if it is to have support and respect, both of which are
critical. I take the Minister’s decision to release the heads of
terms yesterday as a very important—I was going to use the word
“gesture”, but it is probably a little stronger than
that—evidence of willingness to provide information in a
detailed and relevant way. I am grateful for that. The other assurance
that he provided, which is that such information will be available on
an ongoing basis—I hope that that will be with the clarity
established in the first document—gives me a great deal of
comfort. I am glad that we managed to find a mechanism to ensure that
this discussion was part of the ongoing process of the Bill. I beg to
ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Clause
47 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause 48
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
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