Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
100. I should note that the details of the scheme,
of course, are still in the course of being developed. The next
stage of design is currently under way and will continue beyond
Royal Assent. As the approval of design and construction details
comes forward consent will be sought under the planning regime
which Mr Mould has already indicated is set out in the planning
provisions of the Bill. Therefore, there will be changes in terms
of impact in some locations and in matters of detail, and while
we are giving an undertaking as to the level of any particular
impact (which I will come to in a moment) such as lorry movements,
we will make that entirely clear in our evidence.
101. Turning, on that note, to the mitigation
of construction impacts, dealing with the matters generally, the
need to mitigate environmental impacts, of course, as your Lordships
will expect, has been a key consideration throughout the design
of the project and has further been considered during the passage
of the Bill.[33]
The means of mitigating impacts arising from construction and
operation of Crossrail has been developed as part of a "mitigation
hierarchy". That comprises, really, of three elements: firstly,
impacts have sought to be avoided or to be reduced at source wherever
possible. This has involved designing the project so that the
impact is avoided (for example, by appropriate track design).
102. The second feature is that mitigation measures
have been included in the project to reduce the adverse impacts
where it has not been practicable to avoid or reduce that impact
at source. An example of this approach includes the provision
of noise barriers for sections of the operational railway. The
third element of the hierarchy is that for those adverse impacts
that remain significant after the application of the first two
aspects of the mitigation hierarchy, additional measures are taken
to avoid the potential impact or, if not practicable, to compensate
for it by some other method.
103. The following mechanisms will control changes
to project design and working practices: firstly, as your Lordships
have heard, there are arrangements within the Bill for approving
detailed design and construction arrangements. Secondly, there
are policy commitments and undertakings entered into outside of
the Bill, and, thirdly, existing legislation applies, of course,
unless expressly or impliedly disapplied or modified by this Bill.
Further, the planning permission for non-scheduled works is restricted
by clause 10(2) of the Bill to those works which have been environmentally
assessed and, thus, have been the subject of consultation.
104. Therefore we come, importantly, to the
Secretary of State's statement of intent.[34]
The Secretary of State has given a statement of intent to carry
out the project so that its impact will be as assessed in the
Environmental Statement. (I should say that by "the Environmental
Statement" I mean the suite of documents that together comprise
the Environmental Statement, including the supplementary and additional
documents.) It is not intended that there should be any departure
from the assumptions made in the Environmental Statement, except
in cases where any additional impacts either, firstly, result
from a change in circumstances, which was not likely at the time
of writing the Environmental Statement, or, that they were not
likely to be significant, or they result from a change or extension
to the project where such a change or extension does not require
an assessment, either under the provisions of Annex 1, paragraph
22, or paragraph 13 of Annex 2, to the EU Environmental Impact
Assessment Directive, or they would arise following a separate
consent process and, therefore, a process of requiring further
environmental assessment if required by that process.
105. My Lords, what this approach means is that
it ensures that where there is a legal requirement for environmental
impact assessment works will not take place unless they have been
assessed already as part of the Crossrail Environmental Statement,
or are subject to further environmental impact procedures and
a further consent process or, indeed, they would not give rise
to significant effects.
106. Turning, briefly, to controls outside the
Bill, the scheme includes a suite of documents referred to collectively
as the Environmental Minimum Requirements (which I mentioned at
the beginning—EMRs) which provide for control of environmental
impacts.[35]
These documents are being developed in consultation with local
authorities and other relevant bodies and are now at an advanced
stage of development. They will be finalised by the time of Royal
Assent. The nominated undertaker will be contractually bound to
comply with the controls set out in the EMR. The documents include
a series of memoranda on planning, heritage, property, excavated
material and the environment, but, perhaps most significantly,
they include what is referred to as the Construction Code.
107. The Construction Code (which is set out
as part of Information Paper D1, which has been revised several
times, and the latest version is November of last year) sets out
a series of objectives and measures to protect the environment
and limit disturbance from construction activities as far as is
reasonably practicable. The topics covered by the Code include
working hours, traffic management, noise and vibration, air quality,
waste management, recycling, ecology, archaeology and settlement.
The Code is being developed to ensure it meets the current requirements
of all relevant statutory legislation, appropriate codes of practice
and industry standards in consultation with all the local authorities
affected by Crossrail.
108. The controls set out above apply in addition
to securing the statutory consents from the relevant local authority
under the Control of Pollution Act 1974.
109. So far as compliance with the EMRs is concerned,
I ask your Lordships to note that the Secretary of State gave
important undertakings to Parliament in relation to the enforcement
of the EMRs.[36]
On the first day of the Select Committee in 2006, I gave the undertaking
set out on the screen and in your notes to the House of Commons
Select Committee that insofar as Environmental Minimum Requirements
were not directly enforceable against any person appointed as
a nominated undertaker, or to whom the powers of the Bill are
devolved under what is now clause 60 of the Bill, the Secretary
of State will take such steps as he considers reasonable and necessary
to secure compliance with those requirements. That was the form
of the undertaking that was given on the first day of the House
of Commons Select Committee process and, indeed, it was repeated
in a slightly amended format on Day 82, paragraph 21686 of the
transcript.
110. I turn then to another important element,
that is to say undertakings.[37]
During the passage of the Bill the Secretary of State has entered
into a large number of undertakings and assurances concerning
the Crossrail project. These undertakings and assurances are recorded
in an official register held by the Department for Transport,
two drafts of which have already been published.
111. Undertakings and assurances will be made
legally binding upon any nominated undertaker. A further draft
of the register will be compiled and produced after the end of
your Lordships' Committee stage, with the final version to be
published after Royal Assent. Undertakings will range from those
which are generic to the whole project, including the one that
I mentioned which I gave to the Select Committee in the other
Place, and they will descend, of course, in appropriate cases,
to site-specific undertakings as well. If we give undertakings
to your Lordships' Committee we shall make this clear.
112. This is the usual practice for hybrid Bills
and has worked well in the past. Trying to deal with all the issues
which arise by Bill amendments instead is simply not practicable
because of the number and nature of the undertakings and assurances,
as I am sure your Lordships will understand.
113. I then turn to the issue of Environmental
Impact Assessment, and I turn to this because it is an issue that
has been raised in a number of Petitions and a number of Petitioners
have raised the adequacy of the Environmental Impact Assessment
which has been carried out on behalf of the Secretary of the State.[38]
Of course, we will deal with their specific criticisms when they
come to make their Petitions.
114. The purpose of Environmental Impact Assessment,
my Lords, is for the Promoter of a development project to carry
out an assessment of the likely significant environmental effects
of the project and to present that assessment alongside matters
such as the description of the project, such alternatives as have
been studied and the measures put forward to mitigate the adverse
environmental effects which are likely. That information is compiled
into an Environmental Statement with a non-technical summary to
assist the public in digesting and understanding the Environmental
Statement and it is made available for comment by concerned bodies
and the public at large.
115. The overall process, that is to say the
Environmental Statement taken together with the consultation responses
from the public and other consultation bodies, together forms
the Environmental Impact Assessment which informs the decision-making
process, though it does not dictate the outcome. Of necessity,
the exercise is dependent on the judgments reached by the experts
carrying it out and there is a range of possible approaches to
both the form and content of an Environmental Statement. It does
not represent a consensus view by the community, but the basis
on which the community may itself comment by way of criticism,
agreement or by supplementing the information. An Environmental
Impact Assessment is meant, as a prominent member of the Court
of Appeal has remarked, to assist, not to provide an obstacle
course to, the decision-making process.
116. In a large and evolving project, such as
Crossrail, it is common to find the Environmental Statement being
supplemented as the consent process advances, and here there has
been, in addition to the main Environmental Statement and its
addendum, various supplementary Environmental Statements, and
I have listed them on the screen, as your Lordships will see,
and there have been Environmental Statements for the four sets
of additional provisions introduced in the other place. Each of
the supplementaries and the Additional Provision Environmental
Statements has its own non-technical summary.
117. The Environmental Statement contains a
package of measures designed to mitigate both the impacts of construction
and the operation of Crossrail. There was an extended consultation
period provided for the main Environmental Statement and its addendum
published in February 2005 and further consultation periods provided
for each of the supplementary and Additional Provision Environmental
Statements. The consultation responses on the initial Environmental
Statements were published by the Department for Transport as a
command paper on 10 July 2005 and the consultation responses to
the later Environmental Statement consultation material were provided
as Command 7249 before the Members of the House of Commons debated
the Bill at Third Reading.
118. A statement of reasons to meet the requirements
of the law on environmental assessment was published, as I mentioned
earlier, my Lords, in Command 7250, `Government Overview of the
Case for Crossrail and its Environmental Impacts', and it was
commended to the House of Commons by the Minister for its endorsement
at Third Reading.
119. I would just highlight the issue of the
adequacy of the Environmental Statement again just to give your
Lordships the background to issues which will arise later on.[39]
It is inevitable of course that some do not like the conclusions
reached in Environmental Statements or may wish to challenge the
approach to a particular issue. Such disagreements are entirely
usual and do not invalidate the Environmental Statement. The adequacy
of the Environmental Statement is a broad question for the decision-maker,
in this case of course Parliament, and it is well established
that the mere fact that there is a difference of view on an approach,
analysis or conclusion does not of itself render the Environmental
Statement invalid or unfit for its purpose. Indeed, part of the
reason for consultation, as I have already mentioned, is to enable
those who have differing views on a project, as analysed in the
Environmental Statement, to express their own views, whether in
agreement or disagreement.
33 Crossrail Ref: P1, Mitigation of Construction Impacts
(LINEWD-OPN1-030) Back
34
Crossrail Ref: P1, Secretary of State's statement of intention
(LINEWD-OPN1-031) Back
35
Crossrail Ref: P1, Controls Outside the Bill (LINEWD-OPN1-032) Back
36
Crossrail Ref: P1, Compliance with EMRs (LINEWD-OPN1-033) Back
37
Crossrail Ref: P1, Undertakings (LINEWD-OPN1-034) Back
38
Crossrail Ref: P1, Environmental Impact Assessment (LINEWD-OPN1-035) Back
39
Crossrail Ref: P1, Adequacy of Environment Assessment (LINEWD-OPN1-036) Back
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