Examination of Witnesses (Questions 12940
- 12959)
12940. MR GOODMAN: My Lord, I can only
take what has been said earlier by Ms Lieven that offers have
not been taken up but certainly I would encourage any opportunity
to discuss those with Crossrail.
12941. CHAIRMAN: I am sure you would
and it would be very sensible of you to, but has it happened?
12942. MR GOODMAN: It has not happened.
There have been no meetings, to my knowledge, between my clients
and Crossrail.
12943. CHAIRMAN: So they have never been
through the interminable list of things you have very properly
put into your Petition? They have never been discussed with the
Promoters?
12944. MR GOODMAN: May I say `not yet'
would be my answer.
12945. CHAIRMAN: This is the last day
of this Committee's sitting and if we are going to do anything
about it, it is a bit late to say not yet because there is a lot
of detail there, is this not?
12946. MR GOODMAN: There is, my Lord.
12947. CHAIRMAN: And the Scottish case
is only an example of the sort of thing that you want?
12948. MR GOODMAN: Yes.
12949. CHAIRMAN: But there are lots and
lots more.
12950. MR GOODMAN: My Lord, I understand
the difficulty faced by your Lordship. Looking at the Petition
there is a wide range of matters raised and the difficulty that
I have had in advising my clients is that the expertise, as I
flagged up earlier, upon which those kind of demands can be made
is simply not available to them, and that is why I made the second
suggestion I did, that if this kind of procedure in the future
in the course of construction is to be very valuable to both parties,
then my clients are going to have to have proper assistance.
12951. MS LIEVEN: My Lords, if I can
just say, having now seen this document for the first time and
Mr Berryman having seen it, it is plain that the substance of
it is what we are doing, it is just we are doing it through a
complex suite of documents which is appropriate for a project
the size of Crossrail. The precedent that has been put in front
of you is for a surface level railway that has very little to
do with the issues that arise with Crossrail, and Mr Berryman
will go into the witness box in a minute and explain that the
safeguards that Network Rail are giving on the Airdrie railway
are, in substance, the same, or possibly a little less comprehensive,
than what we are doing. It is just an example that if the Petitioners
had only talked to us and given this material to us in advance,
clearly, we could have sorted out these issues but, as far as
this one is concerned, which is the one specific precedent they
have produced, I can deal with it in evidence, I am happy to say.
12952. BARONESS FOOKES: Mr Goodman, the
Lord Chairman requested the Promoters to provide a list of all
the arrangements that were being made through the various papers
on noise and construction and so forth plus any particular undertakings
and they have now been circulated.
12953. MR GOODMAN: I have not had a chance
to go through them.
12954. BARONESS FOOKES: I appreciate
that is probably not possible but my guess is that most of the
concerns that have been expressed by your clients are actually
addressed within this list of undertakings and general arrangements
and that probably the real concern of your clients is whether
they will actually be carried out in practice. That, as I understand
it, is the worry of your clients, particularly as they appear
to have no confidence in the local authority whom one would expect
to be the first line of defence, as it were, for the interests
of your clients. Would that be fair?
12955. MR GOODMAN: That is certainly
the way I have been trying to put the case to you this morning.
The position is obviously that now it is very late in the process,
it is going to be difficult for us, and has been very difficult,
without any technical experts, for us to come up with any undertakings
that are technically accurate or justifiable, and so my suggestion
has been that the concerns be met by the provision of some form
of technical assistance so that as the matters go along this feeling
of anxiety that the bargains that have been struck will not be
kept, that the local authority will not stick up for them—and,
incidentally, the group of local authorities referred to by your
Lordship earlier today does not include Tower Hamlets.
12956. CHAIRMAN: It has done one of the
generic exercises.
12957. MR GOODMAN: I understand it is
not included within all the agreements.
12958. CHAIRMAN: It has not been doing
noise ones but it has done one of them. I think it has done the
local employment one.
12959. MR GOODMAN: My Lady, that is certainty
the thrust of my argument today that I hope the Committee will
take on board.
| 
