Examination of Witnesses (Questions 13280
- 13299)
13280. MR MOULD: It is a traditional
expression I believe.
13281. LORD SNAPE: It does not make it
any more acceptable, I am afraid.
The following Petition against the Bill was read:
The Petition of Mr Leo Walters
MR LEO
WALTERS appeared in person
13282. MR MOULD: I know. But having said
that, may I just introduce Mr Walter's Petition to you. What I
have done is I have put up a plan of the Mayfair area.[16]
Mr Walters is the long leaseholder of a flat at number 6 Dunraven
Street. That is this street here that I am just showing you on
the plan on the screen (indicating). Mr Waters, I believe, is
just above the Crossrail running tunnels in Dunraven Street. I
advisedly do not provide you with any detailed information about
Mr Walter's property at this stage because, as you will have seen
from reading his Petition, his case is really not in any detail
about the effect of the project upon his property per se. His
case, as I understand it, is very much to lend his support to
the submissions that you have heard ably presented by Mr Goodman
in support of the Residents' Society of Mayfair and in particular,
in his Petition, he focuses on what he sees to be the advantages
of alternative routes that your Lordships have been told about
during the course of today's proceedings. If there is a point
that he takes beyond that raised by Mr Goodman during the course
of today, it is perhaps that which arises under paragraph 5(c)
of his admirably succinct Petition, and it is to effect that he
sees scope for a multiplicity of claims in the courts for compensation
for negligent performance of the Crossrail works as a result of
an alleged lack of detail as to the environmental controls that
are going to be deployed by the nominated undertaker at the behest
of the Promoter as and when the scheme comes to be built.
The Petition of Mr Leo Walters
13283. My Lords, for reasons that have been
amply explained by Mr Berryman and by Ms Lieven during the course
of today, and indeed we have sought to deal with it on other occasions,
we do not accept the premise. We say that the regime for the control
of environmental impacts, which we have explained to you, is one
which is ample to provide an indication at this stage as to the
way in which the project will be managed and that in itself, we
confidently say, should limit very much the need for those affected
by the scheme to have to resort to claims for financial compensation
in relation to the impacts of the works. To put it simply, we,
as you know, are very much addicted to the concept of prevention
rather than financial cure. My Lord, having set the scene in that
way, I think it is probably sensible if I hand over to Mr Walters
to explain his concerns.
13284. CHAIRMAN: Mr Walters?
13285. MR WALTERS: My Lord Chairman and members
of the Committee, I have lived in Mayfair a long time, about 40
years altogether, and I was Chairman of the Residents' Association
of Mayfair. This is an enormous project, as you know sir, £16
or £17 billion, and it has got to be right and it has really
got to be put in the right place. We have been through all this
before. It is a real David and Goliath because you just have a
few residents of Mayfair who are fighting a Crossrail team who
have used about £400 or £500 million of public money
to devise this scheme—and we are not against Crossrail,
we want the west-east route across London—but we have been
through all this before, sir, as you well know. In 1994 the Opposed
Bill Committee of the House of Commons, an all-party Committee,
having heard all the evidence, 34 days of it altogether, rejected
this outright, and decided it was the wrong route, and of course
it was devised in 1987 so it is 21 years out-of-date. This is
my main contention. I know you are constrained. It seems so unfair
to us that if it had been a public local inquiry we could have
put the alternative routes in, but the Bill was drafted in such
a way that we cannot and coming to the House of Lords I had hoped,
because I was told that in the House of Commons the Committee
there, the Labour members at least, were put on the Committee
simply because they did not vote the right way in the Education
Bill and that is the sort of thing we are up against as members
of the public, but I hope even though you have been half destroyed
by the present Government at least we will have independence and
fairness here.
13286. I am also at the moment, my Lord Chairman,
the Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead. The Eurostar people came
down to Windsor the other day to address us about Eurostar, which
opened up at St Pancras and King's Cross in November last year.
I was astounded when I asked the Eurostar representative there,
"Have you spoken to Crossrail?" because here you have,
what is the alternative the Society and the Mayfair residents
route to go to King's Cross, a real traffic hub, to the north
of England, the cross-Channel Tunnel, to everything you can think
of. Just as an example, the headmaster of Eton said, "Well,
how are we going to get from Eton to Crossrail? Can't we go to
St Pancras; it is the obvious hub route? Have we still got to
go the old way?" Do you know, those two bodies, Eurostar
and Crossrail, had not even spoken. So here you have an enormous
project, £17 billion now, and I am sure, having dealt with
a lot of vast public projects myself, this is going to be £30
or £40 or maybe £50 billion in the end, how can we go
ahead in this tragic mistake of building it in the wrong place
because it is 21 years out-of-date. They have kept to the same
route. I have got nothing against the Crossrail people—they
are perfectly polite and all the rest of it—but they just
pretended to look at our alternative route. They have not really
looked at it and we are just a small organisation who have employed
people like Mr Winbourne and so on to help us with a few thousand
quid literally, 25,000 or 30,000 quid, and we have been up against
this mammoth organisation. And they have not looked at the alternative.
I have gone into it myself. I have tried to find out from the
different people I know, and they have not looked at the alternative.
I know you are constrained, it is a great shame you are, but,
there you are: if you want a massive project like this to go ahead
in the wrong place then so be it.
The Petition of Woodseer and Hanbury Residents
Association
13287. The only other thing I would like to
say, sir, is this: talking about the local authority, I know Westminster
pretty well, although obviously I am not an authority myself,
but when this planning application went originally for Crossrail
to the Westminster Planning Committee, with enormous objections
from all over Mayfair, I went to the meeting and it was not even
discussed whether the route was the right one or the wrong one;
it was not even discussed. I was actually present. It was just
passed in a vote and that was the end of it, so can you imagine
how much confidence we have in a local authority to look after
somebody's wall that has cracked, you have got to phone up the
helpline—and we all know how helpless most helplines are
and all that. You can imagine if you, sir, yourself were living
where we live in Mayfair how you would feel. I am not an expert
by any means but these tunnels are eight metres in width and all
that noise and all the rest of it. I am not arguing about that;
I am just saying this ginormous project is being built in the
wrong place right through the heart of the Mayfair Conservation
Area, which is right at the centre of London, and you can imagine
the chaos.
13288. Sir, you have probably had enough of
listening to all this evidence but there is one person, Sir Peter
Hall, who summed it up, and he is the President of the Town and
Country Planning Association and he said this: "The one evident
fact which increasingly stares any dispassionate observer in the
face is that the official Crossrail scheme makes absolutely no
operational or economic sense at all. It urgently needs saving
from itself." That is all I wish to say and thank you for
listening to us, sir.
13289. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much,
Mr Walters. Do you want to say anything, Mr Mould?
13290. MR MOULD: Only this, that members
of this Committee will recall, I think, in opening the Select
Committee proceedings all those weeks ago, we referred to the
important work done at the behest of the then Deputy Prime Minister
in examining options for a new rail route across London which
you know is the London East-West Study, and it was the results
of that study and the consideration of alternative routes, including
those that have been touched upon by Mr Walters in his submissions,
that were the principal driver for the hybrid Bill scheme and
the scheme which you have before you in the Bill today.
13291. The transport planning advantages which
will derive from the construction of the railway that is set out
in the Bill have been explained to you. They have enjoyed cross-party
support, both in the House in the other place and indeed at second
reading in this House -precisely, as I recall, because of the
substantial advantages that will flow to Londoners and others
who use the public transport network through the centre of London,
in particular the Central Line—cross-party support and a
recognition of the benefits that will flow from the scheme which
is set out in the Bill before this House in the event that, as
we expect, that Bill becomes law later on this year.
13292. My Lord, it is the principle of seeking
those advantages for the public that lies at the heart of this
project. We have examined the alternative that Mr Walters looked
at. We have explained, and it is on record in information paper
A1 and in other documents including the Environmental Statement,
as to the comparative disadvantages of that alternative, and it
is one of the reasons why the route is proposed as set out in
the Bill before you.
13293. My Lord, if I go on any further I shall
begin very greatly to repeat matters that this Committee is very
well aware of and, unless there is anything else I can assist
you with in relation to this Petition, I shall stop there.
13294. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr Mould.
13295. MR WALTERS: Can I just say one more thing,
sir?
13296. CHAIRMAN: Yes, of course you can.
13297. MR WALTERS: All I want to say is this:
all the Crossrail present route does is relieve congestion on
the Central Line. What we want and what we should be having is
a strategic route connecting the Channel Tunnel, as I have said,
the north of England, Eurostar, all that. All this does is relieve
the Central Line. That is all it really does from the west to
Canary Wharf and the City.
13298. CHAIRMAN: I am afraid, Mr Walters,
there is nothing this Committee can do about that. We are very
much obliged to you, not least for your brevity. Ms Khela, I think
would like to ask a few questions very briefly.
13299. MR ELVIN: I will recall Mr Berryman
in that case.
MR KEITH
BERRYMAN, recalled Cross-examined
by MR KHELA
16 Crossrail Ref: P80, Park Lane Shaft-Crossrail proposals
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