Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
Ordered: that Counsel and Parties be called in.
1. CHAIRMAN: This is the first meeting
of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Crossrail
Bill. You will see that we have plaques to say who we are and
I am not going to go into details about our backgrounds because
you can look us up if you want to. All I can tell you is that
we have all been very carefully vetted to see that we have no
interests that would possibly conflict with our ability to make
a completely impartial decision on the matters that are going
to be raised in front of us. We of course have no constituencies
like you had with the Members in the other place.
Chairman's Opening Address
2. The purpose of these sessions will be to
listen to the Petitioners and their agents and make sure that
they have a full opportunity to present their case within the
scope of their legitimate interests. They have a right to be heard
and the Promoters are not going to object to any of them being
heard. If, however, Petitioners want to raise the same point as
was raised in Petitions in the House of Commons, we will want
to know what has happened since then because the Promoters, I
know, have been trying to negotiate agreements and settlements
with Petitioners who raised matters then and, if there is still
something wrong, we would like to know what it is.
3. This is a completely fresh set of proceedings
and we come to it totally fresh; it is a new hearing altogether.
However, there is perhaps one point, and you will have heard this
before in the House of Commons, and that is that this Bill has
now received a Second Reading in the House of Lords and in the
Bill, in one of the schedules, is a complete list of all the works
that will be authorised under it, the terminals, stations, the
shafts; a huge list of things. Those are the principles of the
Bill and, although we are not going to stop anybody from raising
other matters, I have to tell you that we are bound by the principles
of the Bill and we will not be able to do a great deal to help
you.
4. One of the issues that arose before was the
east and west terminals for Crossrail. It was suggested that perhaps
it should go to Reading and to Ebbsfleet. There is one development
about this which has happened fairly recently on 6 February, and
there is a copy of this document at the back of the room, as indeed
there are a lot of documents at the back of the room. At the second
reading, the Minister made it plain that this Bill was not going
to contain provisions to extend Crossrail either to Reading or
Ebbsfleet or anywhere else other than what is in the Bill. However,
on 6 February, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Transport made a written ministerial statement which may be of
interest to those who want to take this point. In relation to
the line between Maidenhead and Reading, the Government is safeguarding
a route. As for the destination of Ebbsfleet, they have not safeguarded
it yet, but they are in negotiations with all concerned, including
of course the local authorities, for an equal safeguarding arrangement.
I think you may be interested in seeing the text of this, and
it is available to you at the back.
5. It would not be done under this Bill, but
there is a piece of legislation called the Transport and Works
Act 1992 which enables railways and other infrastructural works
to be carried out under an order system with public inquiries
and, if the Government decided to extend Crossrail in either direction
or both, it would be done under that legislation and not in this
Bill.
6. I think the agenda is fairly well fixed.
If you are in any doubt about it or indeed if you are in any doubt
about anything else, will you please contact our clerks, who are
sitting on either side of me and they will be available throughout,
and they can always explain things to you. There is also a great
deal of paper on the table at the back of the room, and some of
it, I think, will be fairly familiar to you, but there is a pretty
large red binder which some of my colleagues have brought with
them today and that contains a great deal of information which
may assist you.
Promoter's Opening Address
7. Now, the sittings: today we are going to
finish listening to me and then I am going to ask the Promoters
to give a factual explanation of what is in the Bill. I do not
know whether that will be finished by lunchtime, maybe it will,
in which case this afternoon we will have the first of three presentations,
again factual presentations, to deal with major issues which have
arisen in the Commons' hearings. This afternoon we will have noise,
and you will have to be alert for that because it is not an easy
subject. Then tomorrow we will have compensation in the morning
and then ground settlement and subsidence after that. Then we
will start tomorrow afternoon with the first of our site visits.
We are going to Whitechapel and the Spitalfields area, especially
Hanbury Street, where we expect to meet some of the Petitioners,
and we will be glad to do so. On Thursday, we are doing another
site visit to the Isle of Dogs where the same applies. I did not
know until yesterday, but there is going to be a third site visit
a little bit later on where we are going to listen to the noise
of underground trains and that will, therefore, be another opportunity.
It is not necessarily the end of site visits because, if we need
to undertake more in order properly to appreciate what Petitioners
are saying, we will of course gladly do so. Anyway, the detail
of the programme is a provisional one at the moment and is at
the back of the room, so you can have a look at that. It will
give you an idea of when Petitioners are likely to be on and we
will try very hard to stick to it, although I cannot guarantee
that it will always be so. We are going to sit on Mondays from
2.30 to 4.30 and on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10.00
until 1.00 and from 2.30 until 4.30 and, as far as I know, it
will all be here because we have all the electronic equipment
and the papers. There is also a website. It is called www.parliament.co.uk
and this will contain a great amount of information, but also,
I am now told, you will be able to listen to the proceedings online,
so you may not even wish to come, but that would be a pity!
8. There used to be an arrangement whereby all
Petitioners had to put in an appearance on the first day of the
Committee's session. That has been waived and it does not matter
if you are not here today, Petitioners. As long as you turn up
on the day that you are indicated to appear, that will be fine
and, when your turn comes, you can have your agent, your counsel
or you can do it yourselves, but we would like you please to announce
loud and clear who you are and what the point is, what the Petition
is about.
9. I am afraid, if you want to refer to documents,
you will have to produce rather a lot of them, 16 copies please,
not only because we all need them on the Committee, but so do
the shorthandwriters, so do our clerks of course and so do the
people who are running the visual display and, therefore, I am
afraid it is rather a lot. If you can possibly get them to us
before it is your turn, so much the better because we will all
then be able to look at them.
10. Now, these are in fact formal proceedings,
they are the equivalent to a court and, as one of our attendants
has been saying this morning, no mobile phones please.
11. Hybrid bills, which is what this is technically
called, are now extremely rare; I think the last one was the Channel
Tunnel Rail Link. We want to hear your cases, Petitioners and
Promoters. You have, I am afraid, as I have said, to stick to
the principle of the Bill if you wish us to do anything about
it. That is what the procedure is designed to deal with. There
is going to be no challenge to the right of Petitioners to appear
and, therefore, as I think is a useful customary arrangement,
the Promoters will produce, before the Petition is heard, a response
document which will give their provisional answer to what it is
that the Petition puts forward.
12. In a moment, I am going to ask Mr Elvin,
on behalf of the Promoters, to give us a purely factual outline
of what is in the Bill. He may be going to use the screens for
all I know, I expect he will. Later on, when we come to the Petitions,
I think the arrangement is that, although technically the Petitioners
are entitled to start, it might be more convenient if the Promoters
made a short statement of their position before the Petitioner
begins. The Petitioner will then present his or her case, the
Promoters will produce their evidence and the Petitioner has the
final speech. We will not be giving immediate decisions on each
Petition because some of them may interact and have to be considered
jointly with others, and we will of course produce a report at
the end of the proceedings.
13. I think that is all I need now to say, subject
to being corrected, and I will, therefore, ask Mr Elvin, on behalf
of the Promoters, to give us a factual description. It might be
helpful, Mr Elvin, if you just introduce your colleagues because
I know you are going to share the work out and we would like to
know who you all are, so I will hand over to you.
14. MR ELVIN: My Lords and Lady, thank
you for that. My Lords, I will introduce the team first. To my
left are my learned friends, Ms Natalie Lieven and Mr Timothy
Mould, and behind me is Mr Reuben Taylor and Mr Gwion Lewis. My
Lords, we will be dividing the work up between us during the course
of hearing the Petitions. I will be dealing broadly with environmental
issues, issues arising with regards to railways industry, the
Spitalfields area and to the extent that we need to deal with
anything regarding alternative routes. My learned friends, Ms
Lieven and Mr Mould, will deal broadly with the other Petitions
and, indeed, they are going to share these opening remarks in
due course. Mr Taylor and Mr Lewis are providing general support
to the three of us.
15. My Lords, this opening aims to introduce
you to the project in very broad terms. We will explain individual
aspects in more detail when we deal with issues raised by Petitioners
and we are proposing to present in conjunction with our Powerpoint
slides, which your Lordships should also have in hard copy should
you want to take them away and there are hard copies available
for anyone else who may want them.
16. Crossrail is a major new cross-London rail
link to serve London and the South East. It will support and maintain
the status of London as a world city by providing a world-class
transport system.[1]
It will allow people to travel from their homes straight into
central London without having to change at rail termini and it
will allow people to get more quickly to their destinations and
to relieve congestion, both at termini and on the underground
system.
17. You will see this is a general route map
of Crossrail and it is probably easier to see in the paper copies
than it is on the screen, but you will note the termini in the
East and the West and in the South, South East.[2]
You will also see a station on there which I will draw your attention
to because, for reasons which I do not understand, it has been
omitted from some of the later maps. You will see the Maryland
Station there which, whilst it is shown on this map and it has
been shown on the remaining maps, has not been named but it is
meant to be there.
18. My Lords, the Bill has widespread support
which we will refer to a little later and the almost universal
view at Second Reading was that Crossrail is a top priority now
and should go ahead as soon as possible.
19. Turning briefly to the Bill process, of
course this is a hybrid Bill, the first since CTRL over ten years
ago.[3]
As your Lordships will know, a hybrid Bill is one which has features
of both public and private Bills. There is no requirement for
the Promoter to establish the need for the Bill in Committee as
this has been done on the floor of the House. As your Lordship
has already mentioned, the principle of the Bill cannot be questioned
in Committee. Clearly the Committee is to consider Petitions by
those whose interests are particularly affected by the Bill.
1 Crossrail Ref: P1, The Route (LINEWD-OPN1-002) Back
2
Crossrail Ref: P1, General Route Map (LINEWD-OPN1-003) Back
3
Crossrail Ref: P1, The Bill Process (LINEWD-OPN1-004) Back
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