6420. MR CARTWRIGHT: In essence, what this is saying is that where an obstruction is placed on the land, then the person suffering that obstruction would be entitled to some compensation. It recites an example involving an obstruction of access which is directly relevant to our circumstances, ensuring, as it does, that compensation is due in the events that the works reduce the value of the barges which would be locked in for five or more years and most certainly this is the case. I believe that creates a very clear precedent.

  6421. CHAIRMAN: That is very helpful, thank you very much. Mr Mould, of course we want to hear what you have to say but I just wondered whether paragraph 10(5) of Schedule 2 deals with the question of the goodwill, for instance, of the restaurant. Supposing that Mr Cartwright, the owner of the restaurant, wanted to install a larger ship so as to run a bigger restaurant. The goodwill is a very valuable commodity as part of the value of the existing ship.

  6422. MR MOULD: Yes.

  6423. CHAIRMAN: Would that be compensated for under the terms of 10(5)?

  6424. MR MOULD: Your Lordship has in mind a case where the facts show a loss of opportunity to bring a larger vessel into the dock by way of a replacement ---?

  6425. CHAIRMAN: I start off with the fact that there is goodwill value in the existing restaurant which would be compensatable for, certainly in a compulsory case, but that is not what is going to happen here.

  6426. MR MOULD: The focus of the compensation right is on losses flowing from the obstruction of a private right of navigation, so the question would arise in the situation your Lordship has in mind in relation to any loss of goodwill in the operation of a restaurant which is already there and which would remain there, as we have indicated (it could not go anywhere else during the course of the works), as to whether the goodwill associated with that business would be affected by the loss of the right to move the vessel out from time to time—

  6427. CHAIRMAN: And replace it with a larger one.

  6428. MR MOULD: That is the next point. The first question as to the existing position is that it is difficult to see that in relation to a vessel which operates as a restaurant business and which on the face of it would continue to operate in its present location in any event, the loss of the right of navigation to move the vessel out from time to time would affect the goodwill associated with the restaurant. I suppose one might envisage a situation—I do not say that these are the facts here—where the restaurant operated not only at this location but where the vessel took diners on pleasure trips up and down the Thames.

  6429. CHAIRMAN: I do not think it does.

  6430. MR MOULD: That would be an example where the goodwill associated with the business might very well be affected by the loss of the navigation right, but I do not think that is this case. Moving on to the next question, and I think Mr Cartwright was raising this as a possibility, his restaurant business might grow and, as it were, be constrained by the physical constraints of the existing vessel and he might in ordinary circumstances wish to contemplate, shall we say in two years' time, replacing the existing vessel with a larger craft.

  6431. CHAIRMAN: This is exactly what I have asked you.

  6432. MR MOULD: Yes, 50 covers instead of 25 covers and perhaps have a more attractive entrance or whatever it may be. It seems to me in principle that if he is prevented from taking advantage of that opportunity for a period of two or three years where otherwise he might have done so, and he can produce the evidence to show that that would have been likely to be the case had it not been for the fact that he was unable to move one craft out and move the other one in, then the loss of opportunity to realise the commercial advantage of that larger craft might be a proper head of claim under his right, because the losses would result from the loss of the right of navigation in and out of the dock and one would see that such losses might, in appropriate circumstances, be clearly referable to the loss of that right; in other words, to use lawyers' language, they would be reasonably foreseeable and not too remote. The point is that it all turns on the facts; it all turns on the circumstances.

  6433. CHAIRMAN: It always does.

  6434. MR MOULD: Yes, but the principle, I would acknowledge, is that Mr Cartwright would have to persuade the Promoters or, failing persuading us, he may have to persuade the Lands Tribunal but one would hope it would not get to that, that there was a genuine prospect that, had it not been for the loss of his right of navigation through the docks system, he would have been in a position and would have taken the opportunity to replace his existing vessel with that larger vessel that we have been talking about. The same point, of course, applies in relation to the art gallery and, I suppose in principle, the same point applies in relation to the church, although—

  6435. CHAIRMAN: I hesitated to ask about the goodwill in the church.

  6436. MR MOULD: No, quite; that would be an invidious topic to discuss, I think, before your Lordship's Committee, but one could see the principle in operation. I think what one cannot do at this stage, and I think it would be unfair, frankly, to Mr Cartwright and those whom he represents, is seek to drive down too strongly into speculating on what the facts might be and how that might translate into compensation. It is enough to say that in the set of circumstances that your Lordship has, very helpfully, if I may say, ventilated with me in principle the right to claim compensation would lie.

  6437. CHAIRMAN: So you are saying that the combination of paragraph 10(2)(a) and 10(5) might on the facts cover the sort of circumstances we have just been discussing?

  6438. MR MOULD: Yes, I think that is right.

  6439. CHAIRMAN: And could be designed to have done so?