Examination of Witnesses (Questions 3180
- 3199)
3180. MR WHEELER: That is all there is,
other than what I am presenting today.
3181. CHAIRMAN: Right, but you now want
to talk about structural engineering.
3182. MR WHEELER: I do not think I am
going to get as technical as, maybe, you fear.
3183. CHAIRMAN: I am not fearing anything;
I simply want to be able to follow what you say. We all do.
3184. MR WHEELER: Okay, then I will leave
out the bit about analytical models because I have to admit that
I do not fully understand it myself. I am passing on concerns
raised by engineers who have worked on some of the buildings in
these streets that belong to the Petitioners I represent. This
is one of the: "Ask them this, if you would, please, Mr Wheeler".
As I say, I do not understand analytical models. I doubt anyone
else (other than Mr Berryman) in the room would understand it
either. I am happy to leave that point. I have offered to leave
this text with your recorder, once I have finished with it, to
help with some of these technical expressions.
3185. CHAIRMAN: If you are going to read
it out, is it capable of being put up on the screen?
3186. MR WHEELER: That is a good idea;
yes, we could do that.
3187. CHAIRMAN: Page by page, so the
Committee can follow what you are saying.
3188. MR WHEELER: Okay. I have a second
copy.
3189. MR MOULD: My Lord, I wonder if
I might suggest that it would help all of us if, at a convenient
moment, we had copies made of Mr Wheeler's speech, which he has
in front of him, if he is happy for that to happen, because your
Lordships would then, obviously, have that in front of them and
be able to refer to it in detail. Also, the specific questions
that he has raised and which I anticipate, so far as we are able
to do so, your Lordships would welcome assistance from us upon,
we would then have those in front of us and we can deal with that.
I do not promise we will deal with it straightaway, depending
on the technicality of it, but we can certainly take them away
and provide an answer as soon as possible.
3190. CHAIRMAN: You have never seen them
before?
3191. MR MOULD: No. This is one of the
difficulties that we have; everything that you have been hearing,
really, relates to detailed questions and concerns about aspects
of the settlement assessment that has been carried out to date.
It is much easier if these matters are shared with us and then
we can look at them and see whether there is anything we need
to do in response to them. To hear them, essentially, for the
first time in an oral presentation to your Lordships' House this
morning is, perhaps, not the most effective way of taking things
forward. There it is. What I will do, when I have this document,
is do our best to provide the answers we can as soon as we can
to the specific points raised.
3192. CHAIRMAN: This is the point of
providing copies of the documents in advance, which I mentioned
yesterday.
3193. MR MOULD: Quite.
3194. CHAIRMAN: I am not trying to be
difficult about this. We need to follow what you say.
3195. MR WHEELER: I have a copy that
you can see here, but can I mention one very pertinent point?
What I am about to read—this whole page, in fact—is
exactly the same presentation to the Commons Select Committee
whenever it was, last June.
3196. CHAIRMAN: It may well be, but this
is a different Committee in a different House.
3197. MR WHEELER: Yes, the point I am
making is that it has been available in exactly this form to Crossrail
for the last year-and-a-half.
3198. CHAIRMAN: That may be so, but it
is not available to us.
3199. MR WHEELER: I appreciate that,
and on that basis I would be happy to put this up on the screen.
Thank you for your forbearance.
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