Examination of Witnesses (Questions 4020
- 4039)
4020. CHAIRMAN: They go between Liverpool
Street and Whitechapel in any event.
4021. MR ELVIN: Yes. No one is suggesting
that it should not go between Liverpool Street and Whitechapel
.
4022. CHAIRMAN: Yes, I think they are,
but never mind.
4023. MR ELVIN: They have not said that
expressly. It may be that Whitechapel should perhaps move to the
middle of the road or under the hospital but there certainly seems
to be an acceptance that there should be some form of station
at Whitechapel. Mr Horton is agreeing.
4024. So does your Lordship see that our view
of the main alternatives, we would suggest, is a perfectly rational
one; it is looking at the whole of the route and we have divided
the consideration of alternatives which were studied into the
three segments—western, central and eastern. We have given
an account in chapter 6, which is there for your Lordships and
my Lady to read, and there is of course plenty of text to go with
it and we say that that amply fulfils the duties of the Directive.
4025. We have in fact gone a step further because
we did actually in response to discussions in the other place
give some further information in some of the supplementary Environmental
Statements. If your Lordships recall I gave your Lordships a note
of my opening remarks on Monday, which I supplied to Mr Horton
in the break. If we can put up the last page you will see listed
at paragraph 55 firstly main ES chapter 6.[14]
SES chapter 1.6 deals with the localised issue of different alternatives
for shaft locations at Hanbury Street, which we said we would
look at when Tower Hamlets appeared in the Commons.
4026. Thirdly, SES 3 which in fact does refer
to the southern alignment as well as alternative shaft options.
This is SES 3, section 3.5, and you will see at 3.5.10 that the
very broad issue of southern alignments is referred to and the
very point is made about the issue of potential conflict with
modern buildings with deep foundations, which is the very reason
why each of the southern options was rejected.[15]
So we do not say that we have to go that far but the Environmental
Statement does contain, albeit briefly, a discussion of the reasons
why the southern alignments were regarded as unacceptable, and
that entirely chimes in with what you are being shown in the report
with regard to alignment B.
4027. CHAIRMAN: So the Environmental
Statement Environmental Impact Assessment deals with the scheme
as a whole?
4028. MR ELVIN: It deals with the scheme
as a whole, but it—
4029. CHAIRMAN: Although you have presented
it in three chunks?
4030. MR ELVIN: It is divided into the
three different areas and it is then divided into route windows.
To make it easily digestible by members of the public, who have
to consult it, you will appreciate the difficulties of presenting
material over such a huge project to the public, but what we did
was to divide each of the elements of the route into a route window.
The Whitechapel segment that we are dealing with this week is
window C8, and the information is tabulated by and large in the
various documents by reference to route windows, so that can all
be identified.
4031. CHAIRMAN: But any flaw in the EIA
process would relate to the totality of the scheme.
4032. MR ELVIN: Yes.
4033. CHAIRMAN: And not to small individual
chunks of it, is that right?
4034. MR ELVIN: That is absolutely right.
So, your Lordship has the point exactly that what is being complained
about, even if my learned friend was right, is one flaw in one
piece of information regarding one element of a massive scheme.
4035. CHAIRMAN: Even then you may have
done it because it is in 3.5.10.
4036. MR ELVIN: Even if your Lordships
were not to regard my submissions on main alternatives, chapter
6, as being sufficient, we have covered it, albeit briefly—but
we are not required to go into it in any great length but just
to give a brief account. Let me just remind your Lordships of
the way that one assesses these matters. As I said to your Lordships
on Monday, it is a matter for the decision-maker—that is
Parliament, no doubt with your advice and the advice of the Commons'
Select Committee—to judge the adequacy of the Environmental
Statement. You have seen the robust terms in which Mr Justice
Ouseley considered this in the Arsenal football stadium case.
4037. CHAIRMAN: And Lord Justice Carnwath.
4038. MR ELVIN: And indeed Lord Justice
Carnwath. Can we look at the footnote of page 9 of the submissions
I gave to you on Monday and Mr Justice Sullivan—this is
not the lone voice of Mr Justice Ouseley shouting in the wilderness—in
the Blewett case said that: "There will be cases where the
document purporting to be an Environmental Statement is so deficient
it could not reasonably be described as an Environmental Statement
but they are likely to be few and far between". He says that
he has dealt with it in some detail " ... because it does
illustrate a tendency on the part of claimants opposed to the
grant of planning permission to focus upon deficiencies in Environmental
Statements, as revealed by the consultation process ... and to
contend that because the document did not contain all the information
required by Schedule 4 it was therefore not an Environmental Statement
and the local planning authority had no power to grant planning
permission. Unless it can be said that the deficiencies are so
serious that the document cannot be described as, in substance,
an Environmental Statement for the purpose of the Regulations,
such an approach is in my judgment misconceived. It is important
that decisions on EIA applications are made on the basis of `full
information', but the Regulations are not based on the premise
that the Environmental Statement will necessarily contain the
full information. The process is designed to identify any deficiencies
in the Environmental Statement so that the planning authority
has the full picture, so far as it can be ascertained, when it
comes to consider the `environmental information' of which the
statement will be but a part."[16]
4039. CHAIRMAN: When this comes to Parliament
the Regulations are not going to help us of course.
14 Crossrail Ref: P25, Promoter's Opening Remarks-Spitalfields
Petitions (SCN-20080312-014) Back
15
Crossrail Ref: P23, Crossrail Supplementary Environmental Statement
SES3, Southern Alignments (SCN-20080312-015) Back
16
Crossrail Ref: P25, Promoter's Opening Remarks-Spitalfields Petitions
(SCN-20080312-016) Back
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