6320. CHAIRMAN: Mr Lewis, the difficulty is that a Committee reads petitions before Petitioners come to deliver their case. There is nothing in the petition that I know of which talks about unilateral undertakings and there is nothing that provides for a special protection in clause 6 for Canary Wharf in terms of the amendment that you now propose. We are therefore completely taken by surprise by these events. I dare say we shall survive it, but that is the situation. I know that your petition, as do all petitions, has wonderful sweeping-up clauses at the end which allows you to make any further and better particulars or suggestions that you might think fit, but it does not deal in terms with this, does it?

  6321. MR LEWIS: My Lord, it does not refer specifically—I am just reading through the petition again—to the amendment which we are proposing, but—

  6322. CHAIRMAN: Or any unilateral undertaking.

  6323. MR LEWIS: No, indeed, but I would submit that the specific solution which we are proposing, which is the amendment backed up with the unilateral undertaking on our part, addresses the general points which we have raised in the petition about the blighting of the site.

  6324. CHAIRMAN: I see.

  6325. MR LEWIS: My Lords, if it assists, I have also been instructed that if it would assist in terms of the timing we could look at the draft unilateral undertaking, which will not be nine pages long; it is probably going to be a page and a half long, and produce it for you today if necessary and answer questions on it this afternoon if that is what you wish us to do. I am in your hands on that.

  6326. CHAIRMAN: I think the best that I can say, Mr Lewis, is that we have to stop now anyway because the next Petitioners are not due until 2.30, so therefore coffee is ad lib this morning. If you wish to produce a unilateral undertaking and you wish to show it to the Promoters and you want to do that before we resume this afternoon, I do not think any of us are going to stop you. We would then have to make it clear for ourselves whether this would take the place of the amendment which you want or not and, if so, why, and we could, I think probably quite briefly, discuss this, but we have not got a lot of time this afternoon. We have got some substantial Petitioners coming and I do not think we can give you very much time to spend on this further point, particularly as we have had no notice of it at all.

  6327. MR LEWIS: Understood, my Lord.

  6328. CHAIRMAN: I think I will adjourn the Committee now until half past two and see what happens. We will all see what happens, if anything.

   After a short adjournment

  6329. CHAIRMAN: Mr Lewis, shall we proceed?

  6330. MR LEWIS: Thank you, my Lord.

  6331. CHAIRMAN: We have got copies of your proposed new unilateral undertakings, and we have read them. I think I had better ask Ms Lieven to make any comments she thinks fit upon them.

  6332. MS LIEVEN: Certainly, my Lord. They very much follow the pattern that I had assumed to be the case this morning. What this undertaking does is have nothing to do with the amendment that the Petitioners have actually asked your Lordships to accept, because this undertaking renders the amendment otiose, contrary to what appears from clause 1 of the undertaking. If your Lordships look at clause 5 of the CWG proposed undertaking:

  6333. "If (a) the Works are not commenced within a period of 3 years from the date of Royal Assent; or" (do not worry too much about (b) or (c)) "CWG shall ... be entitled to proceed with the development of North Quay."[11]

  6334. What that means is that this undertaking would require us to commence the works at Isle of Dogs within three years of Royal Assent. It is therefore more stringent than the amendment that you have been asked to make, which, if your Lordships think back to the amendment, would simply put us in the position where we have to serve a notice to treat within five years. The undertaking goes further than the amendment and would render the amendment pointless. So if the undertaking was accepted there would be no justification for your Lordships recommending or approving the amendment to the Bill. Self-evidently, my Lords, given that the undertaking goes further than the amendment, all the points I made this morning, about the need for the project to have ten years—five years initially and then five years subject to special Parliamentary procedure—in order to give us the flexibility we need, arise even more strongly in respect of this undertaking.

  6335. Where that gets us, my Lord, is that this is wholly unacceptable to the Promoter because it restricts our powers to an unreasonable degree and even further than the proposed amendment, and it does—to put it bluntly—put the Crossrail project at serious risk. If we were to accept this undertaking then we would be putting the entire project—certainly at this location but potentially the entire project—at serious risk that it simply could not happen.

  6336. One other point, my Lords: the undertaking actually goes further than the agreement which the Canary Wharf Group have been trying to persuade us to accept, because if your Lordships go to clause 3 of this undertaking, in the third line from the bottom: "The offer of free occupation shall automatically terminate in the event that the Works are not commenced within a period of 3 years from the date of Royal Assent", but then further up, at the beginning of clause 3: "Occupation under Schedule 5 in accordance with paragraph 2 above would be subject to DLR and EDF's occupation of part of the site and will be conditional on the occupation being for a period of 5 years starting on the Commencement Date."[12]

  6337. So they are not just trying to limit when we commence our works, they are trying to limit how long we occupy the site as well. That is wholly unacceptable as well. My Lords, I hope I have made the position entirely clear as to how this relates to the amendment that your Lordships were being asked to make this morning.

  6338. CHAIRMAN: Nevertheless, I think that Mr Lewis's clients are still asking for the Select Committee to suggest the amendment to clause 6.

  6339. MS LIEVEN: My Lords, that is a matter for Mr Lewis.

12   Committee Ref: A33, Canary Wharf Group plc, Undertaking for the Select Committee on North Quay (SCN-20080319-007) Back