Examination of Witnesses (Questions 2760
- 2779)
2760. CHAIRMAN:I have spent the entire
weekend reading all the petitions from Spitalfields. I have tabulated
them. I know exactly what you are concerned with, all of you.
I entirely appreciate what these points are and I look forward
to hearing about that. At the moment, I am asking you about the
lack of material under the FOI.
2761. MR CARPENTER: There are four previous
revisions that we were asking for.
2762. CHAIRMAN: Are they all part of
the southerly route?
2763. MR CARPENTER: Yes, they show the
southerly routes.
2764. CHAIRMAN: The problem is going
to be that, as they do not conform to the route which has been
approved for the second reading of the Bill, they go against the
principle of the Bill.
2765. MR CARPENTER: Our view is that
they do not do that. The principle of the bill is that there is
a route and stations, is it not?
2766. CHAIRMAN: The deposited plans are
part of the Bill. The deposited plans, which are up on the board
at the moment, do not show a southerly route and, therefore, a
southerly route is not part of the principle of the Bill. This
is going to be your problem. If you want to spend a lot of your
time appealing to the Information Commissioner for more information
about southerly routes, that is a matter for you, but I do not
think we are going to be able to consider it.
2767. MR CARPENTER: I would like to carry
on with that because I feel that unless we have the full information
we are not able to respond. That is how we feel about it.
2768. CHAIRMAN: You must handle this
in any way that you think fit. We do not want to stop you doing
that. If it does not follow the track that has been laid down
in the Bill then it is not within the principle of the Bill and
it is not within our powers to do anything about it. That is the
problem. That is why I asked for the deposited plan to be put
up. You would like to depart substantially from it, would you
not?
2769. MR CARPENTER: We have been making
the argument that Crossrail studied three main alternatives from
Liverpool Street Station and in front of us here are the three
main alternatives.
2770. CHAIRMAN: As part of your petition
you say that the thing ought to go a different way, do you not?
2771. MR CARPENTER: To Whitechapel, yes.
That includes Whitechapel Station, so it includes the route to
Whitechapel and Whitechapel Station. It is not a complete departure
from the Bill.
2772. CHAIRMAN: As between the left-hand
side of the deposited plan and Whitechapel Station you are asking
us to recommend a route which does not follow the deposited plan
which is part of the Bill. Is that not right?
2773. MR CARPENTER: I presume that would
be correct, yes. The plan we were shown is the deposited plan,
yes. It is different from the benchmark scheme in this respect.
2774. CHAIRMAN: It is in your hands,
but, as you know, the Bill has been given a second reading in
the form it is, with the deposited plans, with the description
in the first schedule, and we cannot do anything about it—whatever
you say. If you want to go on searching for further information
which will produce routes that do not comply with the principle
of the Bill, we are not going to stop you, but I am afraid at
the end of it we are not going to be able to do anything to help
you either.
2775. MR CARPENTER: I was hoping that
you might be able to ask Crossrail for this information for us,
so that we could have that and therefore we would be able, after
we had looked at it, to present our case.
2776. CHAIRMAN: We cannot depart from
the principle of the Bill. This is a parliamentary proceeding.
It is one of the rules that a select committee, in so far as it
deals with the part of a Bill like this, is bound by the principle
of the Bill. The principle of the Bill includes the route, it
includes the works on the route, it includes the deposited plans
and it includes, for instance, the Hanbury Street shaft. We cannot
depart from that. We cannot make recommendations that it should
go a completely different way. Did you not know that?
2777. MR CARPENTER: I understand what
you are saying. I do not disagree with that. There have been modifications.
I know that the CTRL Committee also made modifications to the
route as part of the refining of the route. I do understand that
you cannot depart completely from the route. I am suggesting that
there is a case for refining the route. Just as with all aspects
of the scheme, when you look at it there is a possible refinement,
with purely the objective of ultimately improving the scheme and
taking into consideration the petitioners' concerns. If there
could be absolutely no change, the petitioning process therefore
would be completely invalid because we would not be able to make
any material changes to the benchmark scheme, in which case I
would say that we have no rights in which to object to this at
all.
2778. CHAIRMAN: You can say what you
like, but this is the parliamentary situation: at the moment,
the Bill is given a second reading, it contains in it some description
of the route, it also contains a reference to the deposited plans.
That is what is called the "principle of the Bill".
We cannot depart from that—whatever you say. This is why
I wanted to bring you on first, so that we could clarify this.
If you are going to take an enormous amount of trouble to go to
the Information Commissioner, to get a lot of drafts of other
routes, then if we are not able to take them into account because
they do not accord with the principle of the Bill you may not
think it worth your while proceeding with that. There are plenty
of other things to proceed with. I am sorry. It is a fact of life.
This is the way parliamentary procedure works. I will leave you
to think about it.
2779. MR CARPENTER: I would say that
we still would want these documents.
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