Examination of Witnesses (Questions 8380
- 8399)
8380. BARONESS FOOKES: Perhaps you ought
to be asking BAA why they are not putting in what seems to us
obvious common sense.
(Mr Berryman) I am sure they would be
happy to answer that question, my Lady. I would be interested
in their answer, too.
8381. LORD JONES OF CHELTENHAM: My Lord
Chairman, may I just add my voice from the West Country in favour
of Lord Snape's view that it does seem bizarre that we cannot
get to Heathrow by train from the West yet we can get to Gatwick
by changing at Reading? I am just asking Mr Berryman to look in
his crystal ball for a moment. Are you saying that at some time
in the future someone somewhere might build us a link to get from
the West into Heathrow?
(Mr Berryman)
I think there is a very strong possibility that the link from
Reading, on the south-west lines, into Heathrow will be built.
We do not know what is going to happen to BAA, as you say, but
certainly in their current plans there is a very strong likelihood
that that will be built. There is nothing to stop them building
this connection, as you have described, if they feel that there
is sufficient traffic there to justify it, but it would be really
for them, in the same way as it was for them to make the connection
with the M25, to decide if they want to do that.
8382. BARONESS FOOKES: It is very unsatisfactory.
Very.
8383. CHAIRMAN: Mr Elvin, I think that
we must return to the ambit of the Bill itself. It would be very
helpful if you would go through Mr Francis's points, because some
of them, I think, are within the principles and some of them are
not. If you could identify which is which for us.
8384. MR ELVIN: My Lord, I am not in
a position to do that, at the moment. I was not expecting the
Committee to ask me to do that. I will happily do it but I will
need ten minutes just to check. I made it clear at the beginning
I was not proposing to deal with these in any detail. If you would
like a note on those matters I will happily do that, but there
are a large number that Mr Francis has put forward, and I dealt
with them rather more generically at the beginning.
8385. CHAIRMAN: There are disadvantages
but there is also the question of powers.
8386. MR ELVIN: Yes.
8387. CHAIRMAN: Some of the crossovers,
for instance at Old Oak Common or thereabouts, are within the
limits of deviation.
8388. MR ELVIN: My Lord, our position
is simply this: for those such as Old Oak Common and, possibly,
Custom House, which have been suggested, which may well lie within
powers, Mr Berryman has explained to you why the position is far
less simple than Mr Francis would have you think, and that there
are difficulties in terms of justifying it in terms of cost, and
there are engineering difficulties—for example, at Custom
House with the need to align with the existing tunnel and with
the existing overhead power lines. At Old Oak the position is
simply that quite apart from having to move an electrical substation
(which, I suggest, is not simply an easy subject, as Mr Francis
has glossed over—one has to get all sorts of consents and
persuade the electricity undertaker to relocate), and apart from
the difficulties that, also, Mr Berryman has identified, the issue
of putting a station there simply is not related to Old Oak Common
at all; it is related more to Ladbroke Grove. There are difficulties
which Mr Berryman has identified with regard to those matters
which lie within the limits.
8389. With regard to others, such as the Heathrow
western link, however it is put, or the north-south link to Richmond,
those plainly lie outside the scope of the Bill, and if the Committee
were interested in those matters then that would put the Bill
progress back by several years, I should imagine—if indeed
it did not require a new Bill in the first place—because
it would require such a drastic re-engineering of the proposal.
The access option would be worthless, the current Environmental
Impact Assessment would be worthless and one would really need
to start from scratch. Where those matters go outside Bill powers,
the sort of amendments which Mr Francis is talking about—however
some of them may seem like common sense to the Committee—would
effectively lead to the need for a new Bill.
8390. So far as the Terminal 5 connection is
concerned, that is the subject of an agreement which I put before
the Commons Select Committee. I can have the correspondence produced
for this Committee, if it would assist. I gave you the references
in the Fourth Volume of the Select Committee Report. That preserves
the option for BAA of building Air Track, which is the western
connection. It is fair to say that after one of the longest public
inquiries in history, that is the Terminal 5 inquiry, in which
Mr Taylor represented another party than the Government (BAA,
I think) and in which I was involved for a different party but
not at the inquiry, no requirement was imposed on the developer
of Terminal 5, although there are requirements, as Lord Snape
has pointed out, with regard to the M25 and M4 connection, requiring
a western connection. So Terminal 5 was permitted on the basis
that only the Heathrow Express and the road connections were required,
not on the basis of any western connection.
8391. So the difficulties of that decision,
in a sense, have already been considered in the context of T5.
It does not rule out the possibility of a western connection,
and one can see the sense of that in a general way from the point
of view of travelling from the West Country. The difficulty is
that it lies well outside the scope of this Bill. It is not Crossrail
as we know it, if I may say so.
8392. LORD SNAPE: I understand that,
Mr Elvin, but perhaps, my Lord Chairman, you could advise me and
other Members of the Committee, whilst not wishing either to inflict
this particular exercise on any other Members of either House,
is it within the powers of the Committee to recommend the land
over which Mr Francis's cord line would be built to be preserved
or be safeguarded to allow such a cord to be built if at some
time in the future BAA, or someone else, acted with some degree
of common sense?
8393. CHAIRMAN: I do not see any reason
why we should not recommend the safeguarding.
8394. MR ELVIN: It might be prudent,
before making any such recommendations, to get some information
as to the land ownerships that would be affected, because by making
such a recommendation you would be asking the Secretary of State
effectively to put down a marker as to the owners of the land
affected and their ability to develop in the future, and they
may well have something to say about it and if they did not know
this was coming forward there may be legitimate scope for complaint
that they did not know this was coming. All you could do is make
a recommendation. Clearly, the Secretary of State in due course
would have to consult those land owners.
8395. LORD SNAPE: And your grandchildren
in the future might bless our foresight, Mr Elvin!
8396. CHAIRMAN: There would be the blight
problems, would there not?
8397. MR ELVIN: I am simply thinking
about the natural justice issue that those whose land could be
affected by such safeguarding as at present know nothing about
the suggestion, and I would be concerned about that.
8398. LORD BROOKE OF ALVERTHORPE: But
there is a world of difference between making the suggestion and
making a direct recommendation, at least in the knowledge that
we know nothing could be acted on it.
8399. You may have sensed from the Committee
that there is a good deal of interest in this area and, having
listened very carefully to Mr Berryman, there seems to be a range
of options and alternatives which are around there that could
be pursued, and if the Committee feels minded to point in the
direction of these possibilities I would have thought we might
have looked to you for all the support and assistance we could
in ensuring that we were as accurate as possible in what we might
say.
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