6220. MS LIEVEN: Yes.

  6221. CHAIRMAN: Very well. If there are other things that you want to say please go ahead and say them.

  6222. MS LIEVEN: The only other thing I want to say is that I anticipate that Mr Lewis in his closing will refer to various precedents in private bills about not extending power, but I just want to emphasise the fact that this power that we have in clause 6 is precedented in hybrid bills. Also, my instructions are that it is quite a normal power to have in Scottish bills. Of course, private bills no longer happen in England, so there are no recent precedents at all in England for private bills, because private infrastructure provision is now dealt with by Transport and Works Act Orders. The only precedents we have other than the hybrid bills now are those in Scotland.

  6223. CHAIRMAN: I do not think that is right because the provisional confirmation bills I do not think are now dealt with in Westminster, are they? I think they go to Holyrood.

  6224. MS LIEVEN: Yes, that is right, my Lord.

  6225. CHAIRMAN: So there is no Westminster basis now for a comparison?

  6226. MS LIEVEN: No, my Lord. It is merely that if you wanted, as it were, a trans-border comparison, in Scotland the Scottish Assembly does include such powers now, and if you are trying to look at the English situation, that which used to be dealt with by private bills is now dealt with by TWAs. Of course, that is a different process where one can simply promote another TWA and so go through the same process again. My Lords, I do not think there is anything else I need to deal with now. Obviously, if Mr Lewis raises some completely new point I may have to come back on it.

  6227. CHAIRMAN: Lord Jones, you wanted, I think, to ask a question.

  6228. LORD JONES OF CHELTENHAM: I have two questions. Firstly, in an ideal world, in those first five years this leg is the first bit of Crossrail to be done?

  6229. MS LIEVEN: My Lord, it is not the first bit to be built because the building goes on at various different points concurrently, but the Government has said that it is committed to the Isle of Dogs to Farringdon section being in the first phase.

  6230. LORD JONES OF CHELTENHAM: And that chunk, that area, including this station, do we know yet what length of time for all the building of that is likely to be? Is it all going to be completed in one year or two years?

  6231. MS LIEVEN: The building itself, my Lord, will take something in the region of five years, and Mr Berryman will tug me if I get this wrong, and that is obviously made up of different elements, so there is the tunnelling, there is the building of the box that the station goes into and then there is the fit-out. The construction period for the entirety of the project is something in the region of nine years because one starts with utility works and one ends with post-fit-out with commissioning works, but the actual time building the Isle of Dogs Station is about five years.

  6232. LORD JONES OF CHELTENHAM: So in fact you could be up against the buffers when you start on the five-year limit?

  6233. BARONESS FOOKES: But that is not critical once you have started.

  6234. MS LIEVEN: My Lord, just to explain, the five years we have been talking about today are for the service of a notice to treat to acquire the land. Once we have acquired the land and started the work, then theoretically one can have as long as one wants to complete it, but of course there will be incredibly strong financial pressure from everybody's point of view to get it completed as quickly as possible because we will be paying the capital costs of building this railway without getting the return, so I do not think anybody is worried that, once we have started the work, we will not get on with it as quickly as possible.

  6235. LORD JONES OF CHELTENHAM: And once we get Royal Assent for this Bill, which we think may be the summer of 2008, providing we do not make too many amendments and cause the Commons a lot of problems their end, I am just trying to imagine what the unforeseen circumstances might be that you talked about which might delay you in meeting that five-year limit. What could it be—a catastrophic terrorist bomb, the discovery of human remains?

  6236. MS LIEVEN: The nature of unforeseen circumstances is that they are at least to some degree unforeseen, but they could take a number of different guises. They could be physical circumstances to do with construction, they could be financial circumstances, they could be political circumstances. I do not really want to be drawn into giving specifics because I am sure they will held over my and the project's heads for ever more, but, with a little imagination, one can think of a whole raft of things that can hold up projects like this, and they can be physical things, such as discovering a medieval theatre or the odd newt which can cause disaster to development projects in terms of timing.

  6237. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms Lieven. Now, Mr Lewis?

  6238. MR LEWIS: Thank you, My Lord. As I indicated, I have set out my closing remarks in writing and I also have a few documents to which I will be referring of which I have given some notice to Winckworth Sherwood's. Perhaps I could just have those handed round first please.[7] While that is being done, I would just like to clarify the position and maybe I should apologise for not perhaps taking you through the amendment in more detail than I should.

  6239. The amendment, as Ms Lieven said, will not remove the Secretary of State's power to compulsorily acquire North Quay. What it will do, as you said, is remove the power to extend the five-year period in respect of North Quay, and we say that our amendment would not have the effect of meaning that the Isle of Dogs Station should not be built either because, if we just imagine that the station development agreement negotiations did fail, in the background to that there is the continuing offer from Canary Wharf Group to offer the site up for free to the Promoters so long as certain conditions are met in relation to how quickly they get off it, and also in the background the Secretary of State will still have the ultimate power to compulsorily acquire the site within five years from Royal Assent.