King's Cross Railways Bill

HC Deb 10 December 1990 vol 182 cc714-58

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That the Promoters of the King's Cross Railways Bill may, notwithstanding anything in the Standing Orders or practice of this House, proceed with the Bill in the present Session; and the Petition for the Bill shall be deemed to have been deposited and all Standing Orders applicable thereto shall he deemed to have been complied with;

That the Bill shall be presented to this House not later than the seventh day after this day;

That there shall be deposited with the Bill a declaration signed by the Agents for the Bill, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill at the last stage of its proceedings in this House in the last Session;

That the Bill shall be laid upon the Table of this House by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office on the next meeting of this House after the day on which the Bill has been presented and, when so laid, shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read and committed);

That all Petitions relating to the Bill presented in the Session 1988–89 which stand referred to the Committee on the Bill, together with any minutes of evidence taken before the Committee on the Bill, shall stand referred to the Committee on the Bill in the present Session;

That no Petitioners shall be heard before the Committee on the Bill, unless their Petition has been presented within the time limited within Session 1988–89 or deposited pursuant to paragraph (b) of Standing Order 126 relating to Private Business;

That, in relation to the Bill, Standing Order 127 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words 'under Standing Order 126 (Reference to committee of petitions against bill)' were omitted;

That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during the last Session—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

7 pm

Mr. Gary Waller (Keighley)

The motion before the House is straightforward. It seeks to revive the King's Cross Railways Bill in the same form as it was last debated in the House. It may be helpful if I summarise briefly the principal purposes of the legislation.

First, the Bill provides for a new passenger concourse to serve both King's Cross and St. Pancras stations, replacing the present temporary structure for which planning permission expires in 1995. It will also provide greatly improved facilities for passengers using the two stations. Secondly, it provides for a new link between the east coast main line and St. Pancras station, so that the spare capacity at the latter can relieve the present limitations on capacity at King's Cross. Thirdly, it expands the capacity of the Underground station to reduce congestion and improve interchange between the Underground and British Rail. Fourthly, it will connect the east coast main line to Thameslink so that through-Network SouthEast services can operate from Cambridgeshire and west Norfolk to Gatwick airport, Sussex and Kent. Fifthly, it allows for the construction of a low-level station for Thameslink and for international services running from London and the north of England and Scotland via the channel tunnel to Paris and Brussels.

The House strongly endorsed the Bill's Second Reading last May by 211 votes to 41 and it has been exhaustively examined by a Committee under the distinguished chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton). The Committee sat in public for a record 51 days, as Committee members will vividly recall, spread over a year, and it made several amendments which were fully accepted by the promoters. The House will, of course, have an opportunity to reflect on those when the Bill is considered, and on Third Reading, before it moves to another place.

In giving attention to this revival motion, some hon. Members may be concerned at the continuing delay and uncertainty surrounding the future of the rail link between Folkestone and London. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson), then Secretary of State for Transport, announced the safeguarding of the eastern end of the route between Folkestone and the Medway in September this year and British Rail is currently studying route options between there and King's Cross. It is considering not only its own proposed routes through south-east London, but also proposals from other interested parties involving an approach through east London. However, it is worth recalling that whatever route is chosen, both British Rail and Ove Arup have endorsed the need for it to run to King's Cross.

On 14 June my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Transport said: There seems to be general agreement that any service will need to terminate at King's Cross. In our view, nothing in this statement invalidates the benefits to British Rail of the House proceeding with the King's Cross Bill."—[Official Report, 14 June 1990; Vol. 174, c. 483.]

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster)

As far as my constituents in the north-west are concerned, this is an extremely important Bill. Will my hon. Friend use his undoubted influence with British Rail to impress on the company the fact that it appears to have seriously underestimated the number of passenger journeys and the amount of freight that is likely to use the line? Will he ask British Rail whether it would be good enough to up its ideas to other forecasts and provide more trains as that would be of enormous assistance to my area in the north-west?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean)

Order. When the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) responds to that intervention, I am sure that he and all hon. Members will bear in mind that we are considering a revival motion, so the debate is on a procedural point. I appreciate that to make out an argument for or against the motion there must be some reference to the Bill's merits, but that should be somewhat restricted.

Mr. Waller

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman) that this is an important measure, and she will agree that it is vital that the revival motion be accepted so that she and others have opportunities to make their points. I agree that King's Cross is, in a sense, the hub of links between the north of England and London. It is important that British Rail should bear in mind the need to provide sufficient services to cater for the many people wishing to travel by rail between the north and south.

Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed)

Can the hon. Gentleman throw any light on last week's news that there will be a substantial delay in the running of through trains from continental Europe to the north-east of England via King's Cross? Does that delay arise from these proceedings, or is there some other reason for it? The answer to that would help us to know whether we should support or oppose this revival motion.

Mr. Waller

The hon. Gentleman is referring to the fact that there appears to be a delay in the delivery of the international trains capable of running between the continent and the north of England and Scotland. British Rail is committed to providing those trains as soon as possible, and tenders will be sought within a month. Only one consortium—GEC Alsthorn—is capable of building those trains, and unfortunately it cannot deliver them before June 1993. However, money is not a problem. In the interim, trains will run from the north of England and Scotland to Waterloo to connect with trains from London to Paris and Brussels. As the hon. Gentleman said, there will be a delay and the trains will not be available before 1993, but that in no way reduces BR's commitment to provide those trains. The Bill is necessary to ensure that an expanded King's Cross will be available—at a later date than the international trains. It will probably take six years to construct the low-level station and its associated facilities once the preliminary legislation and other planning requirements are in place.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

I realise that the hon. Gentleman has picked up the baton from his hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), who has gone on to greater things. Perhaps that is a harbinger for the career prospects of the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller). However, the hon. Gentleman said that King's Cross was the only location that British Rail was willing to consider for the new station. I take it that the hon. Gentleman has had an opportunity to read the report of the Select Committee which considered the King's Cross Railways Bill and which clearly stated that "it regretted that it was not in its remit to hear detailed evidence about the suitability of Stratford" in my constituency as an alternative. That is a failing in the Bill, and also in this whole procedure, and that is why I shall oppose the revival motion.

Mr. Waller

It is interesting that my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), like my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman), who originally took over responsibility for sponsoring the Bill through the House, has been promoted to the Whips Office.

With only one exception, all those who have suggested that an alternative route should be provided from Folkestone to link up with London and go on to the north of England and Scotland have agreed that a central London interchange is required and that it should be at King's Cross. That certainly goes for Ove Arup.

Mr. Frank Dobson (Holborn and St. Pancras)

The hon. Gentleman talked about the number of trains which might go to the north-east or to Scotland. When the Bill was last before the House British Rail talked of three trains a day. Has that number increased or decreased?

Mr. Waller

I am conscious of Mr. Deputy Speaker's injunction, but as yet British Rail has made no change in its plans. It has stated clearly on numerous occasions that it will monitor the demand for services and will respond speedily to that demand.

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey)

In relation to consideration of the revival motion, it might be pertinent for hon. Members to know when British Rail expects to make its announcement about the continued route from the channel tunnel beyond the boundary between Kent and Greater London. I have informal indications, but if the hon. Gentleman were able to give the House a clearer and more express indication—I am not trying to put him on the spot as he may not be able to do so—it would be helpful. Some hon. Members think that what happens at King's Cross is entirely or highly related to the line from the channel tunnel and to alternative stations for the terminus for traffic from the channel tunnel port, and whether King's Cross or Stratford should be bigger or smaller relates to a timetable which, as yet, is formally secret. Can the hon. Gentleman help us?

Mr. Waller

British Rail clearly maintains that, regardless of any future plans about the link—I am sorry that I am not able to enlighten the hon. Gentleman any further about the possible date for a future announcement —the requirement for an expanded King's Cross station, or King's Cross and St. Pancras station with a new concourse serving both, will still exist. The requirement for that improvement in station facilities arises not only from new international services, which will certainly come into existence before any new link is constructed, but from Thameslink services and the existing link between King's Cross and the north of England and Scotland. The need for the revival motion to be passed exists regardless of any future announcement which may or may not be made about the link from King's Cross to Folkestone.

Mr. Gerald Bowden (Dulwich)

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Waller

I am reluctant to give way at this stage. My hon. Friends will have opportunities to make their own points later. If my hon. Friends will forgive me, I should like to proceed with my speech, which may enlighten them or at least set the scene for the debate.

I stress again that, even in the interim period before the rail link is built, international trains could reach King's Cross via an upgraded Thameslink route which crosses the river at Blackfriars. Again, I stress the importance of the Bill to domestic rail and Underground services.

The other major announcement since the House last considered the Bill was that made by the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson), relating to crossrail—the new under-ground line between Paddington and Liverpool street, linking Network SouthEast services in London. Some hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), may consider that that strengthens the claim of Stratford to be reconsidered as an international terminal, and when crossrail is completed it will certainly offer better access to central London from Stratford than exists at present on the overcrowded Central line, but Stratford can never offer the substantial advantages available at King's Cross, which is well served by other BR and underground lines and is easily accessible from central London by bus and taxi.

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent)

indicated dissent.

Mr. Waller

King's Cross will be better served by bus and taxi when the Bill is passed and the new facilities are in operation. As well as accommodating through trains——

Mr. Chris Smith (Islington, South and Finsbury)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Waller

I am reluctant to give way again, but I will give way one last time.

Mr. Smith

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way on this specific point. The evidence presented to the Select Committee which considered the King's Cross Railways Bill indicated that at peak hours traffic in the King's Cross area would increase by 75 per cent. How can bus and taxi access to King's Cross possibly be improved as a result of a Bill which will generate that much increased traffic?

Mr. Waller

There has been some debate on the matter. King's Cross has such a wide range of InterCity, Network SouthEast, and London Underground services that relatively few international passengers would use private cars and taxis for access to and from the terminal. British Rail's road traffic consultants have advised that the additional vehicles generated by the international station can be accommodated by the local main road network, allowing for growth caused by the King's Cross railways land development. British Rail is also in discussion with the Department of Transport and local boroughs on possible trunk road alterations, coupled with measures to improve the environment in side streets.

As well as accommodating through trains from Paris and Brussels to the north of England and Scotland, King's Cross will provide excellent interchange for international passengers, with InterCity services to the east midlands, Yorkshire, the north-east and Scotland, and with Network SouthEast trains to the north of London, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

In a separate Bill, the promoters are seeking powers for a short connecting line to link the west coast main line with King's Cross so as to allow international trains to run via the new station to the west midlands and the north-west. That will be welcome information for my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster.

Mr. Dobson

The hon. Gentleman has said that one of the promoters, British Rail, is introducing a separate Bill allegedly to meet its promise, which this Bill does not, to assist in respect of through services to the north-west. Will the hon. Gentleman make any reference to the King's Cross Bill being promoted by London Underground, which is one of the joint promoters of the Bill, or will he leave the House in ignorance of the fact that it is promoting a Bill which is directly related to this Bill and which includes a clause identical to clause 19 of this Bill which the Committee unanimously rejected and threw out?

Mr. Waller

It is well known that London Underground is a joint promoter. In a separate Bill, which was deposited last month, London Regional Transport is seeking powers for new subway links at King's Cross. Those powers are being sought in a separate Bill because of the urgent need to carry out the works to meet the recommendations of the Fennell report. Other changes in the Underground station—for instance, a new and larger ticket hall and better connections to main line stations —remain part of this Bill.

The principles of the Bill were firmly endorsed on Second Reading and the project had a thorough and detailed examination in Committee. At the end of last Session, there was not time to pass a motion to carry the Bill over. The motion seeks only that the Bill should be revived in this Session so that those deliberations can be properly concluded.

7.19 pm

Mr. Chris Smith (Islington, South and Finsbury)

I begin by expressing my considerable concern, because I understand that Conservative Members are on a two-line Whip. This is a private Bill, which is being promoted by British Rail. Therefore, the motion should be left to the free decision of hon. Members of all parties. If Conservative Members are indeed on a two-line Whip for any votes that may come later, it behoves the House to ask the Government whether they are now proposing and promoting the Bill and whether it is now Government policy, because if it is——

The Minister for Public Transport (Mr. Roger Freeman)

The hon. Gentleman would not expect me to let pass this opportunity to correct his misapprehension. This is private business and there is no Government Whip on any votes that may take place on this business.

Mr. Smith

I have to accept in good faith what the Minister says. However, several of the Minister's hon. Friends appear to be under the impression that that was the case. If the Government are actively backing the Bill, my constituents will want to be very clear that that is happening.

A further technical point needs to be raised at the outset. The Select Committee, which considered the Bill and placed its report before the House on 26 June—the report has yet to be debated as have any amendments arising from it—will have to meet again to consider the amendments that the Committee itself has said that it wishes to table together with those amendments that it is requiring British Rail to make. Four hon. Members served on the Select Committee and did a sterling job in listening to many hours of debate and discussion. Although I demur from its central conclusion that the Bill should proceed, the Committee's report nonetheless made a number of extremely valuable and trenchant points, especially about British Rail's conduct throughout this saga. I understand that two of those Back-Bench Members have now received positions of some importance in Government ranks. Is it therefore possible that the original Committee that considered the Bill might have to change its membership further to consider the Bill if we give the carry-over motion the go-ahead tonight?

That is an important point, because a Select Committee that examines a private Bill must be composed of Back-Bench Members who have no direct involvement in the matters under discussion. It would be useful for the House to know from the Government, the promoters or, in due course, from yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the exact constitutional position in the House if a Select Committee on a private Bill has to reconvene but two of its members have a different standing in the House from what they had when the Bill was originally considered by them.

I have never made any secret of my strong opposition to the Bill and to the manner in which British Rail has promoted it. The King's Cross terminus will destroy homes, jobs and businesses in my constituency. It will create traffic chaos and congestion. It will not sensibly serve the north, the north-west and Scotland, despite the claims which British Rail has consistently and erroneously made to the contrary. Furthermore, the Bill is still being actively promoted before any firm decisions about the high-speed link have been taken. I remain very much of that basic view about the Bill's inadequacies.

There are also a number of specific reasons why I believe that the Bill should not be carried over for further consideration this Session. First, British Rail is currently undertaking what is supposedly an independent review of all the various options both for the link from the channel to London and on the choice of King's Cross as the proposed location for the second international terminus. That investigation is being carried out by the Rail Link Project. We must question how a proper assessment of the options for the high-speed link and for the London terminus for channel tunnel traffic can be carried out if the outcome of that assessment is effectively predetermined by this Bill continuing to progress. That is exactly what will happen. If the Bill progresses—if the Government put their backing behind it, and if it is clear that King's Cross is the choice for the location—the work that is being conducted by the Rail Link Project will not be worth the paper that it is written on. I suspect that it would be revealed for the charade that it really is—a sop to try to dampen the criticism—and not a real consideration of the alternative proposals for either the location of the station or the route to it from the channel.

I have so far received many papers from the Rail Link Project, relating especially to the work being carried out by PIEDA—the Planning, Industrial and Economic Advisers —on the socio-economic and development impacts of the different route options. One section entitled "Station Area Studies" states: Each of the areas around proposed stations"— presumably that must include King's Cross— will have different characteristics: for example, in the labour market and housing market, in the planning and development context, and in the opportunities which the Rail Link might create. That is indeed the case, because one argument about this issue is the way in which King's Cross would suffer rather than benefit from the terminus being located there, whereas an alternative location, such as Stratford, might well benefit economically and socially from the station being located there.

Those are important issues and I cannot see how they can be properly and independently considered without prejudice by the consultants appointed by British Rail if the Bill ploughs on at exactly the same speed as previously by means of this carry-over motion.

My second point is linked to the first. There is still no decision on the high-speed link or its funding. We do not know where it is to go or how it will be paid for. There have been some reports in the press in the past few days that the Government may be revising their view. The former Secretary of State for Transport said that, although there would be no public money for the high-speed link, there might be some for commuter services, but even that was not stated firmly. However, we now read that the Government may be having second thoughts and that there may be some money for the high-speed link. It would be useful to know from the Minister whether that is the case and whether the Government are having a rethink. While there is still confusion about the Government's policy, we do not know how the high-speed link will be paid for or where it will run.

Until those questions are answered, it is an absurdity to press ahead with a Bill which identifies a specific location for the end point of a rail link which itself is indeterminate. It is not good enough for the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) to suggest that there is no need to know anything about the high-speed link before we make the decision about locating the station at King's Cross. To locate the station at King's Cross would predetermine an enormous amount about the location of the high-speed link. To attempt to divorce the two, as the hon. Gentleman did and as British Rail has consistently done throughout the passage of the Bill, is disingenuous in the extreme.

Mr. Simon Hughes

I understand that it may be possible to make a decision on the high-speed link in three months. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in that case we should defer the revival of the Bill by voting against the motion tonight? We would then have just the information that the hon. Gentleman, I and others would wish to have, even taking into account the points made by the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller). That would give us an opportunity to decide on the substance of the Bill with all the facts at our disposal. Would not that be a better way forward?

Mr. Smith

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, which is extremely important for several constituencies in south London. The route that the high-speed link takes from the London boundary towards King's Cross will be extremely important and controversial. If the House deferred the Bill tonight, at least we should know what British Rail was proposing when we considered the Bill further.

The third reason why the Bill should not be carried over is that the London Underground (King's Cross) Bill has been deposited in the House. I was surprised that the hon. Member for Keighley made so little of it. It is an extremely important Bill. It lifts large sections of proposed work out of the King's Cross Railways Bill and proposes them as a separate Bill. It is promoted by London Underground. It provides for the work required by the Fennell report, into the tragic fire at King's Cross—in which several of my constituents sadly lost their lives—to be carried out. That work is undoubtedly needed.

Clearly, London Underground has realised the state of play on the King's Cross Railways Bill, read the report of the Select Committee, examined the amendments that the Committee required and taken into account the time that the House of Lords will take to consider it and decided that it is not a game of soldiers that it wants to continue to be involved in. Therefore, it has decided to bring forward the essential Fennell works in a separate Bill ahead of time.

British Rail previously used the argument that it had to go ahead with the King's Cross Railways Bill in order to carry out the Fennell works in the underground station.

That argument has now been completely shot away because the works are included in the London Underground (King's Cross) Bill.

I must trespass briefly on your patience, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by noting that clause 19 in the King's Cross Railways Bill, which sought to remove listed building consent powers from English Heritage and the relevant planning authorities, and which the Select Committee roundly condemned and required to be deleted, resurfaces in the London Underground (King's Cross) Bill as clause 20. I am sure that several hon. Members will have more to say on that when the Bill comes before the House. The separately promoted London Underground (King's Cross) Bill contains precisely the same clause and provision that was so strongly condemned by the Select Committee on the King's Cross Railways Bill.

Mr. Beith

I am disturbed by what the hon. Gentleman says. If that outrageous clause reappears, a great deal of time and energy will have been wasted. Can the hon. Gentleman recall whether any undertaking was given by the promoters of this Bill that the clause would not be proceeded with? What value does he place on that undertaking? I shall seek to show later that undertakings given by British Rail are not reliable. I am extremely disturbed to find that the clause reappears in the new Bill.

Mr. Smith

I am tempted to agree with the hon. Gentleman about undertakings given by British Rail. He should remember that the new Bill is promoted by London Underground, not British Rail, but London Underground is a joint promoter of the Bill before us.

The Select Committee required that clause 19 be deleted. It was a strong and clear requirement in the Select Committee's report. Eventually British Rail grudgingly said that it would comply with that requirement, but the provision has cropped up again in relation to the London Underground works.

Mr. Waller

It is clear from the reactions of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) and other hon. Members that they imagine that clause 19 is being re-enacted to apply to the works proposed in the London Underground (King's Cross) Bill, which is promoted by London Underground. Clearly, the Select Committee which considers that Bill will want to consider the clause in the context of the Fennell recommendations.

Mr. Smith

I made clear to the House what I specifically referred to. As the provision in clause 19 was the subject of such a strong recommendation by the Select Committee, it seems odd that it should reappear in a further Bill. Paragraph 50 of the Select Committee's report says: The second reason for our rejection of clause 19 is that in our view it would set a deplorable precedent. That is pretty strong language for a Select Committee and I hope that London Underground will take good note of it and of what has been said tonight by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.

If London Underground removes clause 20 from the London Underground (King's Cross) Bill, I for one will have no objection to the Bill proceeding as rapidly as possible on to the statute book. But if it insists on including clause 20—which reflects the previous clause 19 in the King's Cross Railways Bill—in spite of the urgency of the Fennell requirements, the Bill should be opposed on the ground that it ignores the enormously important issue of principle which the Select Committee identified.

Mr. Simon Hughes

I hope that London Underground will take heed of that point. It has not only ignored a unanimous view expressed by the Select Committee five months before its new Bill was presented to the House, but included the same clause in other Bills. The same clause appears in the London Underground Bill, which deals with the Jubilee line. The hon. Member for Dulwich (Mr. Bowden) has observed and criticised that, as I have. London Underground should have got the message that the clause is unacceptable in any Bill. I hope that it will excise it from every Bill in which it appears. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Bill on the Jubilee line should be accepted only if London Underground removes a similar clause from it?

Mr. Smith

The hon. Gentleman is correct. The strong feelings that many of us have about attempts to undermine the heritage provisions of our planning system by means of private Bills is something that experienced promoters, as both British Railways and London Underground are—it is not as if they are naive and new to the job—should take on board.

Mr. Gerald Bowden

I wish to add my word of support, thus making the opposition to clause 20 all party. If it appears in any form in any Bill, it will be opposed strongly by hon. Members on both sides of the House regardless of party-political allegiance.

Mr. Smith

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I know that he has taken a keen interest in that issue and in the Bill that is before us.

The fourth reason why the Bill should not be proceeded with in the new Session is that considerable doubt now exists about the future of the railway lands development at King's Cross. In its report on the proposals for the channel tunnel terminus, the Select Committee drew attention to the important financial links between the proposed office and commercial developments on the railway lands behind King's Cross and St. Pancras stations and the proposal for the new station to go ahead. It identified the proceeds of the sale of the railway lands and the subsequent development as an important element in the financial viability of the station proposals that British Rail was making. The Select Committee set store on the fact that there is a close interlinking between the proposal for the new station and the proposal for office development on the railway lands. The proposal for the office development is still very much in a process of flux, negotiation and doubt. It is subject to planning consideration currently by the planning authority and the London borough of Camden, together with advice and comments from the London borough of Islington. It is subject to a number of local-planning-for-real exercises, in which people are together putting forward proposals that set out what they would like to see built on the railway lands. It will be some time, inevitably, before conclusions on the nature of the railway lands development are reached.

Meanwhile, the property market is uncertain. The economic climate is not good for large-scale developments. The principal partners in the proposed railway lands development are not as financially flush as they were when the proposals were first being made. We must ask whether we can be sure that British Rail will be able to finance the station development that it is proposing, bearing in mind the considerable uncertainty about the commercial and office developments on the railway lands. It is an important consideration. It was referred to by the Select Committee, and the reasons for its doubt and uncertainty about financial viability have been magnified several-fold by the market conditions that have developed since it published its report. In the light of that, we should pause for thought before launching ourselves yet further into the process of the Bill.

The fifth reason that I advance to support my argument that the Bill should not be proceeded with is that inadequate consideration has been given to the road traffic implications of what is being proposed in the Bill. The hon. Member for Keighley made brief reference to the advice of Halcrow Fox, the consultant which has been employed by British Rail. Its laughable advice is that the traffic that would be generated by the proposed station could be contained within the existing road system or network. It is obvious that the hon. Gentleman has not read in detail the Select Committee's report or the evidence that was provided to the Select Committee. The Committee referred to the Halcrow Fox proposals. It is worth remembering that Halcrow Fox changed its tune during its assessment of the road traffic implications of the Bill.

The Select Committee said that it had listened to what Halcrow Fox had to say as well as to the Department of Transport. The Department said that in its view the Halcrow Fox figures underestimated the impact on road traffic of the proposed station. That is before we start talking about construction traffic and the work that would have to be done to the railway lines. The Department estimates that instead of the 40 to 50 per cent. increase in road traffic that Halcrow Fox was talking about—that would be bad enough—the increase would be nearer to 65 to 75 per cent. That would be the increase in traffic at peak hours.

The hon. Member for Keighley made much of the bus links with King's Cross. Anyone who has tried to travel by bus through the King's Cross interchange at peak hours will know that at present it is appallingly congested. If we are talking about a 75 per cent. increase in traffic—that is the conservative estimate of the Department of Transport —I shudder to think of the traffic congestion and chaos in the immediate gyratory system around King's Cross and in the whole of north and east London. My constituents will be powerfully and deeply affected by the traffic chaos that will be generated by the location of the new station at King's Cross.

It is not good enough for British Rail to say that everyone who arrives from Paris or Brussels will immediately get on an underground train or British Rail train at King's Cross to travel elsewhere in the country. Some people will do that, of course, but an enormous number will take taxis to travel to business meetings. Many others will be met by car by friends or relatives. Others will want to board coaches, buses or specially hired vehicles. There will be an enormous increase in the road traffic in the area.

Unless British Rail wakes up to that fact and starts talking seriously with the Department of Transport about how best the impact of the increase in traffic on those who live and work in the immediate area of King's Cross and beyond can be alleviated, it does not deserve to have the Bill carried forward. The traffic implications have not been properly considered and researched. They need much further and deeper consideration.

My sixth reason—a linked reason—is that the road traffic impact may be exacerbated by some of the provisions that are set out in the Road Traffic Bill, which was being discussed earlier this evening. That Bill would give the Secretary of State for Transport the power to designate priority routes to assist with the movement of traffic. We have not heard from the Secretary of State or from the Department what they would propose for the potential designation of priority routes in the King's Cross area. Until we know that, it is difficult to judge exactly the transport implications of the proposed station.

The seventh reason for not advancing with the Bill is that the Select Committee required that a series of amendments should be made to it. First, it said that it would propose a right of reversion so that if property was compulsorily purchased but had not been developed within 10 years, that property would revert to the original owner at the original price. We know that that is the Select Committee's intention, but the precise proposal is riot in the Bill.

The Select Committee also insisted on the deletion of clause 19 and the inclusion of what became known as plot 51. The House will no doubt recall from earlier debates that plot 51 is the piece of land that is needed to make the platforms longer to take the trains. British Rail had attempted to introduce a Bill that included a provision for platforms that were too short to take the cross-channel trains. The sheer incompetence in British Rail's detailed presentation has been breathtaking—the failure to take account of the length of the platforms is the finest example of that.

British Rail was not only incompetent enough to advance a proposal that was inadequate in the first place, but, to everyone's surprise, it stuck by it for several days of Committee evidence until it was forced to admit that it would be much more sensible to introduce a further proposal to extend the area of works to include plot 51. The Committee is right to insist that that inclusion should be made.

Mr. Tony Banks

My hon. Friend has made a number of telling points, but I hope that he will leave enough of them for the seven or so hon. Members who also want to speak. My hon. Friend has missed one small point, however, relating to the whole notion of having a second London channel tunnel station. When the original Channel Tunnel Bill was discussed, we were told that there would be one terminus in London. It is clear that past errors are vast, so how can anyone view with any seriousness the opinions and calculations that British Rail is now making?

Mr. Smith

My hon. Friend makes a strong point and certainly the saga of British Rail and the channel tunnel has been one of error compounded upon error.

Originally, Waterloo was judged the location for channel tunnel traffic. British Rail argued that one terminus would be sufficient and that Waterloo was the bee's knees. At the same time it specifically ruled out King's Cross as a viable option because of the classic congestion that would be caused by the location of such a terminus. That was only four years ago, but now British Rail is saying that King's Cross is the only location that makes sense. It was not singing that tune four years ago.

The Select Committee has required that a subway link to St. Pancras should be enshrined in the Bill, but no such requirement appears. It has also required that the compensation zone should be extended. That does not require an amendment to be made to the Bill, but an undertaking from British Rail. However, one has to take such undertakings with a pinch of salt.

I also understand that the points of access to the proposed station development are to be reconsidered. We do not have any of the amendments before us and therefore we do not know the detail. We know that they are to appear, but we cannot seriously consider this Bill any further until we know precisely what amendments will be made.

I know that other hon. Members want to participate, but there are a couple more reasons why we should not proceed with the Bill. The eighth reason against such further consideration is the environmental impact assessment that is referred to by the Select Committee. It is welcome as far as it goes, but it should be extended. We do not know when British Rail will come forward with any conclusions on that, but the Bill involves the destruction of an incalculably valuable natural park in Camley street. It is valued by hundreds if not thousands of my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn arid St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), especially children. The destruction of that natural park deserves a better environmental assessment to be made. We do not have such an assessment in front of us, so how can we possibly continue to consider the Bill?

Mr. Waller

The hon. Gentleman's argument is tautologous. The environmental impact assessment that the Select Committee required to be updated is currently in hand. It will be made available before the House has an opportunity to debate the issue any further. However, how can the House consider such an assessment and any further updated information unless it has an opportunity to reconsider the Bill? That can happen only if the motion before us is passed.

Mr. Smith

That is the first time we have had anything remotely resembling a guarantee from British Rail that that updated environmental impact assessment will be with us before we consider the Bill further. That appears to be the guarantee from the hon. Gentleman and, as he is the sponsor of the Bill, I grab it gladly and welcome it. As yet, however, all we have is the word of British Rail that that work is under way. We are entitled to be somewhat sceptical of the manner in which British Rail has conducted itself, and may yet conduct itself, in relation to the Bill.

The ninth reason why the Bill should not proceed is that there is still uncertainty about the future of the east-west crossrail. That route is crucial to links in the west. If we press ahead with the development of King's Cross and that crossrail goes ahead, we may find that we have ruled out the possibility of transport links to the west and to Wales that might have been available if an alternative location, such as Stratford, had been chosen. The Government should make clear their position on the east-west crossrail, as it will have a profound impact on the viability of Stratford as against King's Cross. I know that the Government have announced that they want to go ahead with that crossrail, but the Treasury has, as yet, made no announcement about the money available to British Rail for that link.

Mr. Freeman

The hon. Gentleman may know from previous exchanges in the Chamber on that specific issue that I have given a clear commitment that the Government will make the resources available to British Rail and London Underground to complete the east-west crossrail. I have given that commitment on two occasions and I repeat it tonight.

Mr. Smith

I am grateful to the Minister for that assurance and I hope that he is right. However, the figures do not appear in the autumn statement plans for public expenditure. Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will win his battles with the Treasury and will come up with the required funding.

The Bill has so many flaws and imperfections and there is so much that we still need to know about its consequences that it would be foolish for the House to continue consideration of it now. In its report, the Select Committee, in the strongest language that I have ever known a Select Committee use, said that it was deeply unhappy about the task that it had been given to do in considering the Bill, deeply unhappy about British Rail's conduct, deeply unhappy about the imperfections in Committee procedure and deeply unhappy about the exclusion of Stratford and other alternatives from the consideration that it was able to give the Bill. With such regret and unhappiness being expressed by a Select Committee, the best thing is for us to stop for a moment or two and ask British Rail whether it would be best to go back to the drawing board and start all over again.

I reiterate as strongly as I can why my constituents and I believe that British Rail has made the wrong decision. It should scrap the Bill now and start the process of thinking strategically about how best to maximise properly the benefits of channel tunnel traffic, rather than by means of the tawdry private Bill procedure that we have experienced over the last year and a half. King's Cross will not be able to cope. It is already the most congested part of London, both above and below ground; the Bill would impose millions of extra passengers on that already congested link.

British Rail itself ruled out the King's Cross option four years ago. It has not properly considered the alternatives. Its current examination of the options is either a serious exercise, in the light of which the Bill should be called off, or it is not. It is still conducting a vigorous campaign to promote King's Cross as the desired option while nominally conducting a review of that decision. The Bill would destroy a substantial slice of my constituency and create traffic chaos across much of north London. It would not even bring very much benefit to the north, despite British Rail's claims to the contrary. It is time that the House said, "Enough is enough" and denied the Bill the chance to proceed any further.

8.3 pm

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent)

What a pleasure it is to have on the Front Bench, if only briefly, the Chairman of the Select Committee which examined the Bill with such assiduity and acidity. We owe my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) and his colleagues an enormous debt. Today I have been reminded that when Brunel was arguing for the Great Western railway, the Select Committee which considered his proposals sat for 57 days, but the quality of those Committee members was nothing like so high as the quality of those who sat under the Chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton.

Since we last considered the Bill, a number of welcome changes have occurred. There is a new chairman of British Rail who seems able to take a wider view of his responsibilities than his predecessor. Whether he will be able to reform the hierarchy that he has inherited to the extent that I firmly believe is necessary remains to be seen, but I have certainly been persuaded that the new chairman of British Rail is determined to ensure that the review of the rail link proposals, station policy, environmental impact and many other factors is more thorough, open and public than anything that his predecessor was able to promise. A great many hon. Members present today should take credit for having helped to ensure that outcome.

I believe that great progress has been made. When I consider the arrogant contempt with which alternative proposals to British Rail's preferred route were treated for the first two and a half or more years of negotiations, the care and courtesy with which we are now being informed of an intention to examine the options seriously come as a welcome change. I have just come from a small meeting including, among other people, the managing director of the channel tunnel rail link project, and it was perfectly clear that British Rail has now agreed that the rail Europe proposal is technically possible. It requires to be evaluated for commercial and financial viability and has to stand comparison with other proposals, but at one stage British Rail was treating that proposal as though it were some sort of back-of-an-envolope joke. It is an enormous improvement that British Rail now accepts it as a technically viable proposition.

We should be grateful to British Rail that it has now established a whole range of studies, albeit late in the day. Nevertheless, the studies should make it possible for those outside as well as inside British Rail to form a judgment as to the right way forward for this massive investment in transport infrastructure. For example, the PIEDA study is to look at the proposed international and domestic stations to see how they act as catalysts for demographic and commercial change. I want to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) whether PIEDA will be looking at the demographic and commercial changes that will be introduced under the King's Cross option. I am assuming that it will, because King's Cross is clearly one of the international stations on the proposed route. If it does consider the likely changes and comes up with a proposition that those changes would be disastrous for the district, what would happen to British Rail's judgment about the King's Cross Railways Bill? If the PIEDA study came to that conclusion, it would reinforce the argument of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), who made the case so forcefully, that we should delay presenting the Bill. If the independent consultants recently appointed to assess what the demographic and commercial changes from a station are likely to be were to come up with a report suggesting that it would he disastrous for that part of London, it would be better to take note of that before the Bill was produced and revived rather than afterwards.

I share the view of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury and of the Select Committee that the traffic problem will be dangerous. Paragraph 65 of the Select Committee's report states: We believe that a satisfactory solution to the potential problems of increased traffic must be found before the Bill is allowed to proceed to Royal Assent. In saying that, the Select Committee was saying in as clear terms as possible that to take the Bill forward without having worked out exactly how to cope with the traffic would be totally unacceptable. We are talking not just about railway-generated traffic. When my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir. G. Young) first brought forward the Bill, he gave three principal reasons why it should be accepted. The second was the need to bring hack into use derelict land and to produce 30,000 jobs at King's Cross, in a preferred office location. Any right hon. or hon. Member who thinks that 30,000 jobs can be created without severely exacerbating traffic congestion needs his head examined. What about delivery vans, catering lorries, the shops needed to sustain those 30,000 workers, and the couriers who would travel to and from those offices? A whole host of vehicles would be trying to find their way around servicing 30,000 jobs at the back of King's Cross. The mind boggles.

Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow)

I wish that we had that problem up north.

Mr. Rowe

There is a very severe problem even closer when it comes to jobs. The creation of 30,000 jobs in and around Stratford would be extremely welcome. That alternative should be closely examined, and there is a good case for postponing the Bill for that purpose.

My hon. Friend the Minister for Public Transport has listened with exemplary care, and has paid exemplary attention to the details of the scheme. He has shown a far more open mind than his predecessor, who I always suspected fell into the trap of listening to British Rail rather too readily, and then feeling that he had to justify the position that he had adopted. In the earlier debate, we were told by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo) that we have not yet approved the British Rail investment case for King's Cross, and we look forward to looking at it"— [Official Report, 8 May 1989; Vol. 152, c. 634.] I assume that, all these months later, the Government have examined the investment case for King's Cross and have approved it—though I do not recall reading of that development.

Mr. Freeman

I confirm that no investment proposition has been put by British Rail to the Department, and I do not believe that any investment proposition is imminent. When a proposition is put for the King's Cross development as a whole, it will receive the Department's careful consideration, but no approval has been given.

Mr. Rowe

The private Bill procedure, which has always been the bane of our lives, grows more incomprehensible by the moment. We have before us a Bill relating to a railway whose route has not been determined, and whose financial viability has certainly not been realistically assessed, and to a station whose financial viability has not been assessed either. That sums up the whole debate beautifully.

Mr. Freeman

I thought that my hon. Friend wanted to keep an open mind.

Mr. Rowe

An open mind is of tremendous value, but if one is to keep one's mind open to such an extent, perhaps the Bill should also be left to be determined at a later date.

The value of the land to be developed should be taken into account in any investment proposal, although I suspect that it is worth a great deal less now than when the Bill first came before the House. I drew attention on a previous occasion to the Confederation of British Industry's observation that if all the office space that British Rail is seeking to develop at King's Cross were actually built, it would oversubscribe London's office needs by 5 per cent.—and that was in 1989.

We have as the undertaker for the development an operation which is a state-owned industry. The managing director of the channel tunnel rail link, who is a former senior official of the Department of Transport, told me, "It is not really for us to look at the wider issues—it is for us to see what we as British Rail can do to maximise our benefits." We have, growing on the east side of London, a massive office development that is badly under-served by public transport and in some difficulties as a result. We have a publicly-owned undertaking busily engaged in establishing a competitor to that vulnerable east London development, and insisting that it be served by a transport route which to a large extent would destroy the likelihood of any improvement to east London's transport infrastructure.

Mr. Mark Wolfson (Sevenoaks)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the east London situation raises questions which go beyond office development because it is symbolic of the likely move of the centre of London eastwards? That makes an even stronger case for the development of Stratford in strategic terms.

Mr. Rowe

My hon. Friend is right. It is reasonable for British Rail to think that some international passengers will want to travel into King's Cross, and it is equally reasonable for British Rail to make arrangements for the line to be continued from Stratford to King's Cross. British Rail's chairman made it very clear that he saw the line from Stratford to King's Cross as an integral part of British Rail's plans for the next century, and I agree. It would be of great value to domestic and international passengers if such a route were provided. However, if that were its principal purpose, it would be quite unnecessary to develop King's Cross on the scale that is proposed.

The development of a major terminal at Stratford would make sense for every possible reason—not only because it would serve a rapidly-growing freight demand right along the north of Kent but because it would make possible the development of an impoverished part of London rather than drive unwanted development into one of the most congested parts of the capital. I agree with my hon. Friend that London is moving eastwards and that more account should be taken of that, whereas the Bill moves in the opposite direction.

I welcome the growing support in recent months for the Stratford option. The Kent chambers of commerce have come out in favour of it, as has the London and South Eastern Regional Planning Conference, and Kent county council is much more interested in that option than it was before. Many other organisations are developing an interest in Stratford.

I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley can confirm that one of the changes since we last debated the Bill is the substitution of a spur railway for the travelator, which was meant to ensure that people from Manchester and the north-west had a trouble free journey to the international railway. It was exciting to think that one could get off a train at Euston, get on a travelator and whirr along to King's Cross. I hope I am right in my understanding that a spur of the main railway is now proposed rather than a travelator.

Mr. Waller

I understand that there are difficulties in providing a travelator—desirable though such a scheme may be in theory—because of the foundations of the new British Library. Therefore, it is necessary to consider alternative means to provide for passengers travelling between Euston and the new station.

Mr. Rowe

I am rather glad about that, because if people from the north-west had to change to get to the international railway station, it would not be a through journey to the continent, which is what was promised.

Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley)

Can I assure the hon. Gentleman that people from the north-west believe that what we have been offered by British Rail is, at best, second best, totally unacceptable, and a nonsense proposal?

Mr. Rowe

I could not have put it better myself.

Mr. Dobson

Further to that point, the hon. Gentleman may find it useful to know that the proposal for building the British Library on the site in question was made in 1975. Apparently British Rail discovered only in the past two or three months, that the site lay between Euston and King's Cross-St. Pancras, which is further proof of its total incompetence and incapacity to do anything sensible about the proposal.

Mr. Rowe

Taking a charitable view, one might think that that was one of the improvements resulting from the appointment of a chairman from the hard world of private enterprise where one has to learn such things early if one is planning a project. If the King's Cross Bill, as it stands, were later regarded as having pre-empted the choice of route for the high speed rail link, it would be utterly disgraceful, and I am only marginally encouraged by the belief that British Rail is taking alternative routes seriously.

Finally, I add my voice to those who are warning London Regional Transport that if it tries to get around protection for historic buildings as it has been doing, and in the teeth of the Select Committee report, I shall gladly go into battle against it with as much zest as I have tried to display against British Rail's proposals to date.

8.23 pm

Mr. Frank Dobson (Holborn and St. Pancras)

I do not intend to detain the House long. As the whole of the present King's Cross station lies within my constituency, and the bulk of the work will do severe damage to it, and as the nature park is wholly within my constituency, I feel moved to speak against the revival motion.

Another way to describe the motion would be a carry-on motion, and nothing could more appropriately describe what has been going on. We are back to the farcical film, "Carry on Up the Junction" or, "Carry on Up King's Cross"—unfortunately without the benefit of the immortal Kenneth Williams to add a little class to the whole proceedings.

Once again the House is being treated in a deplorable fashion, as a second-rate legislative slot machine. We have only ourselves to blame if promoters such as British Rail treat us in that way, because we allow ourselves to be so treated.

British Rail and London Underground have reached the stage where they know that they have the money, the time and the influence to put any rubbishy proposals before the House. They put their money in and they get their legislation out. For some years that has been their experience, and that is what is happening now. When they put forward the original Channel Tunnel Bill they sought powers to build the first terminus at Waterloo. At that time —they were stupid, incompetent or liars, or all three—they said that it would be impossible to have a terminal at King's Cross, as it simply would not work. After they got that Bill through, they appeared before the House again and, without mentioning that they had got it wrong before, they said that the perfect solution was to build the terminal at King's Cross. Apparently the traffic does not matter any more, although it was excessive three years earlier and has got worse since. One of the problems is that British Rail and London Underground feel confident that the Government will help to get their legislation through if it relates in any way to the channel tunnel, because that is what experience has shown them.

The Committee appointed by the House to consider the matter met on 51 occasions in public, had five private meetings, inspected the site, took evidence from 60 witnesses and looked at 248 documents put forward by the promoters and others. The Committee was not allowed to consider alternatives to King's Cross. Under the farcical procedure—which the House has accepted until now—for private Bills, every private Bill has to be considered on its merits and on the merits of the proposals put forward. The fact that the proposals are ludicrous and that there would be better ways to deal with the problem is out of order for the Committee. It had to consider a terminal for the channel tunnel rail link before the route had been decided. Nothing could be more farcical than that. We were faced with what might be described as premature legislation. We are being asked to authorise something when we do not have the necessary information upon which to base a sound judgment.

Also, we are faced with what the Committee described as "impropriety". I should explain what British Rail was up to. Allegedly, British Rail is a public servant. It is supposed to be honest, straightforward and decent. However, because the Bill was doing so badly in Committee, because the technical evidence was so full of faults and the people pleading the case before the Committee were so incompetent, British Rail began a secretive, disreputable lobbying process to try to undermine the Committee's work. The Committee said that what was happening might have been acceptable in ordinary politics but was certainly not so in the quasi-judicial context of private bill procedure. The Committee said that it considered that British Rail's tactics in this regard were improper, and verged on being a contempt of the House. I do not think that we should carry a revival motion to help those who are so incompetent that they have to deal contemptuously with the House.

Mr. Tony Banks

Do not mince your words.

Mr. Dobson

I am mincing my words, because if I said what I really thought about some of these people, I should undoubtedly be ruled out of order.

The Committee also said that it had been placed n the situation that it had wished to avoid—taking a decision while lacking significant information If, after 51 public sittings and the scrutiny of 248 documents, the Committee could not come to an informed decision, certainly the Chamber cannot do so.

The Committee was extremely dubious about allowing the Bill to proceed in the absence of what it described as clear assurances to Parliament on various issues which—employing a masterly understatement—it said currently remain uncertain. Practically everything in the Bill "currently remains uncertain". We know that there is no route between the channel tunnel and the proposed station: we may be about to see the first underground white elephant in the history of the world. We also know that there is as yet no guarantee of any funds to provide the line between the station and the channel tunnel—if the station is to be placed at one end of the line. Moreover, we have discovered tonight that there are apparently no proposals to fund the project. It seems that the House is expected to endorse a proposition for a project that may not receive any funding.

That brings me back to the cogent point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) about the possibility of private funding. Apparently, the idea is to fund the station by building offices, which will provide 30,000 unwanted office jobs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) pointed out, those jobs would be better placed in the north-east, where they are needed—or in the north-west, or, indeed, almost anywhere except K.ing's Cross. The last thing that my constituency needs is any more office jobs, let alone 30,000: that is roughly 10 times the number of jobs at the Ford works in Dagenham.

I believe that the company that is supposedly to be one of the joint financiers of the project, Rosehaugh Stanhope, incurred a loss of £168 million in the previous financial year. I hope that it will shortly prove the truth of my motto that the only good property developer is a bankrupt property developer, but, if it does indeed become bankrupt, it will certainly not be able to part-finance the station.

Since the House last discussed the matter, there have been one or two other developments that may undermine the financing of the project. It has recently been discovered —again, British Rail in its far-sightedness had not noticed —that St. Bartholomew's hospital and the Church Commissioners have the right of reversion of a substantial part of the property on which it had intended to indulge in property speculation to raise the funds for the station. That has now gone up the pictures, as they say: Barts and the Church Commissioners are entitled to recover the property that they sold more than 100 years ago to the Great Northern Railway Company under threat of compulsory purchase. That is another of the issues that —as the Committee so delicately put it—"currently remain uncertain", and a further reason why we should not approve the motion.

It is particularly galling to hear the Bill's sponsor trying to explain away the fact that clause 19—which would have done away with listed-building protection for Victorian buildings in the area—was struck from the Bill by the Select Committee, quite rightly, only for London Underground, one of the Bill's joint promoters, to have the audacity to present another Bill relating to King's Cross containing the self-same clause to cover works that would be proceeding at the same time as the works proposed in this Bill. The promoters are a collection of incompetent crooks who should be stopped in their tracks —and I do not mean railway tracks.

The promoters—British Rail and London Underground—argued that the clause was necessary because of the sheer scale of the demolition that they proposed. The Committee rightly decided that the sheer scale of the demolition was the very reason why protection should be given to listed buildings. The lunacy of the proposition now being advanced again by London Underground lies in the notion that the only time when historic buildings should not be given protection is the time when they need it because someone is carrying out excavations beneath them.

In being asked to approve the Bill, the House is being treated with contempt. Let me remind hon. Members that, as originally drafted—and defended day in, day out, which led to brain damage among Select Committee members —the Bill provided for a concrete underground box to form the station, which was not big enough to contain the trains for which it had been designed. Surely any organisation that is so purblind, stupid and incompetent as to propose the building of a station with platforms too short for the trains that that organisation is having built is not fit to present a private Bill, pull the lever and ask us to deliver its piece of legislation. We should tell the promoters to go back and start all over again if they are determined to build at King's Cross.

There was a time when the House was more robust in its treatment of private Bills—for instance, on only the second Bill promoted by a railway company. In 1825, George Stephenson—now so distinguished that he appears on the new fiver—presented, along with other promoters, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill. His evidence was so bad—so dreadfully incompetent—that it was said that he was shattered, that his credibility as a witness and an engineer had been publicly destroyed and that he knew that he had failed his loyal supporters miserably.

No words could more accurately describe those who appeared before the Committee to promote this Bill. I must commend to the House what our forebears did: they voted the Bill down. They said—even to someone as distinguished as George Stephenson—"This is total incompetence. You cannot justify what you are saying and doing. If you think that you can do the job properly, go away and do it, and then come back and put a proper Bill before the House." That is what Stephenson duly did. If he had been allowed to build the railway that he had originally proposed, there would never have been a successful railway between Manchester and Liverpool: the project would have failed.

In my view, the best thing that we can do is follow the example of our Victorian forebears and sling the Bill out now. There is no need for it; it has been incompetently drafted and incompetently put to the Committee, and it would be a disgrace if we allowed British Rail to get away with this further bit of legislative slot machining. It would be humiliating for the House to accept this proposition. If British Rail built the station that it has proposed in the Bill, it would not be a Euro-terminal of which we could all be proud; it would turn out to be the most notoriously stinking, gloomy pissoir in Europe. We should do our best to stop that coming about.

8.39 pm

Mr. Tony Banks

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you could advise me about how a matter that I intend to draw to your attention could best be resolved. You know that there are certain places in the Chamber that we cannot recognise as existing, but not a million miles from you sit experts and civil servants who are able to pass notes to Ministers when they are in difficulty, as they are from time to time. At the other end of the Chamber there is a Gallery in which sit advisers —parliamentary agents and others—who provide similar services for hon. Members. The regulations relating to the Galleries, as they apply to the space under the Gallery, say: Strangers are not permitted to read books or papers, draw or write, stand in or behind galleries, or carry opera glasses or cameras. This may be a little bit of theatre, but I do not suppose many people come here carrying opera glasses. As for being unable to write or pass notes, it seems slightly unfair that those of us who do not have the back-up of civil servants are unable to obtain written advice from our advisers. I wonder whether you could advise me on how best that problem could be resolved—somewhere else, perhaps.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

This is a long-established practice. If the hon. Gentleman feels uneasy about it, as he clearly does, may I suggest that he should ask the appropriate Select Committee of the House to look into the matter.

8.40 pm

Mr. Gerald Bowden (Dulwich)

I, too, oppose the revival motion. I wholeheartedly subscribe to the reasons enumerated so far for opposing it. They have been more eloquently stated than I could ever hope to state them, but I wish to emphasise one point: the Bill is premature.

I thought that the Bill was premature when it was first introduced in May 1989. I now believe even more that it is premature. It was deviously drafted to make no mention of the route that is to lead to the buffer stop terminal. The very fact that the terminal is to be there predetermines the route to the terminal. Thus, by skilful draftsmanship provision has been made for the development of the terminal. At the same time, those who are immediately affected by the possible route have been denied the opportunity to make representations against it, or even to appear before the Select Committee that considered the Bill. That demonstrates the inadequacy of our private Bill procedure and the way in which that procedure can be misused, to the grave disadvantage of those whom the Bill will profoundly affect.

My constituents, particularly those who live in the Warwick gardens area and who are affected by the threat of the line going through the area, are profoundly concerned about the position of the terminal. For that reason, we should reject the revival motion. We ought not to consider it again until we know the alignment of the preferred route.

British Rail has said that it is looking again at all the options. It is reconsidering the strategic advantage of Stratford as the terminal for the whole of the United Kingdom. It is already a junction for the whole of the United Kingdom. If British Rail proceeds with the King's Cross proposals, that will suggest that it has already decided the result of the reassessment. Therefore, it will not be a truly independent, objective or detached view of the so-called other options.

Mr. Waller

May I reassure my hon. Friend that other recently promoted options, including the Ove Arup scheme, assume that there will be a low-level station King's Cross. The rail link is a completely independent issue. Approval of the motion would in no way adversely affect my hon. Friend's constituents.

Mr. Bowden

I wish that I could accept that assurance and the spirit of good will in which it was made, but I am afraid that I cannot do so. I noted that in his speech my hon. Friend said that all the other proposals, except one, include an interchange at King's Cross. That is not strictly true. All the other proposals recognise that there must be a mid-town link. It would be feasible to have a junction at Stratford, with a left turn going westwards from Stratford and stopping at several places—at Fenchurch Street, perhaps, King's Cross, perhaps, and certainly at Paddington. The proposal that we are considering is crazy. Those who come from continental Europe and who wish to go to Wales and the south-west will have to make their own way across London from King's Cross to Paddington to pick up their connections. What sort of channel tunnel rail link is that? It is no better than what already exists. In fact, it is considerably worse. It will result in increased congestion.

Although many of the alternative proposals recognise that King's Cross may be a mid-town stopping place, it is not regarded as a buffer stop terminal. That leads us very much to the view that we are discussing not so much the construction of a rail terminal as a large office development. This is a developer-dominated enterprise. On previous occasions I have asked—I hope that British Rail will deal with it in due course—that we ought to be told more about this office development project. Is the development value of the land affected in any way by the fact that a channel tunnel terminal will be situated beneath the office development?

Mr. Rowe

My hon. Friend has chilled me with the awful thought that, if British Rail plans office development, can we be sure that the desks will be wide enough?

Mr. Bowden

I do not know whether British Rail believes that it will be the prime developer, but its development partners may have come to an understanding with British Rail that if value of the land, as ordinary office development, is £X, the fact that the channel tunnel rail link terminal will be on the spot will lead to the value of the land being three times £X. A great selling point for office development would be to say, "All you have to do is to go down in the lift, get on a train and you will be in Paris or Brussels within two and a half hours." Any developer who wished to let such an office block would find that a supreme selling proposition. We ought to be told whether that is the prime reason for the Bill or whether its purpose is genuinely to find a way in which to link the whole of the United Kingdom and London with continental Europe.

We need to know what the rail alignment is likely to be before we decide whether to give the go-ahead to the King's Cross development, as provided for in the Bill. British Rail does not deserve to have the Bill passed by means of the private Bill procedure. It has deviously misused that procedure to deny those of us with constituency interests the opportunity to make our voice heard in the Committee. For that reason, I shall oppose it.

8.47 pm

Mr. John Prescott (Kingston upon Hull, East)

It is a little unfair to blame British Rail for using the private Bill procedure. I presume that the Government did not want to use the Government Bill procedure that they ought to have used. It may have been a hybrid Bill, but that would have been the proper way to introduce such a major Bill to the House. British Rail has used the private Bill procedure for many years. However, the Select Committee pointed out that that is totally unsatisfactory. The Committee was chaired by the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton). The hon. Gentleman and the other Committee members are to be congratulated on preparing an excellent report. It criticises the way in which British Rail and the promoters have approached the matter.

In some ways, this is a sad day for me. There has been so much criticism of British Rail. I am a defender of public sector industries, but the way in which British Rail has handled the channel tunnel rail link does it no credit. The channel tunnel rail link goes back to earlier times, under a Labour Government. British Rail's lack of knowledge of how much the link would cost finally led to a Labour Government cancelling the channel tunnel development.

I have heard of carry-over motions coming before the House, but we now have a revival motion. As the House is being asked to revive the Bill, the Selection Committee will have to select new Members to sit on it. The hon. Member for Tatton has a new job in the Whips Office, so he may not be available, although I hope that he will be.

Mr. Dixon

No, he will not.

Mr. Prescott

My hon. Friend whispers, "No, he will not." Members who sat on the Committee built up much expertise and knowledge which, if the House agrees to the motion, will be useful.

Labour has made its position clear—we have not supported or voted against the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) made it clear that we would want to be satisfied about several matters, because the Bill clearly was not simply a British Rail King's Cross matter but applied also to the Underground. At the heart of the project was the development land associated with it. It was hoped that with such finance British Rail would finance and develop the whole project. That stemmed directly from the fact that the Government were not prepared to find sufficient finance to assist with the development. It had to be funded in that way—hence the need for the land, which became an important part of the financial deal.

We are being asked to consider whether the concerns expressed on Second Reading have been satisfied by the Committee. I have never seen such universal condemnation of private Bill promoters by a private Bill Committee. Members on both sides of the House mentioned the Committee's criticisms. It said that there was considerable doubt about the justification for the Bill and considerable confusion about the real intentions of the promoters. There were growing uncertainties about the viability of the project and its dependence on the land profits, which have now been thrown into doubt by the court case and the claims of the Church Commissioners on lands which were an essential part of the project. I do not know whether that has been settled, but the first step towards establishing a case for the Church has been taken and accepted.

Probably the most alarming of the Committee's conclusions was that it threw considerable doubt on the promoter's credibility. Credibility has been at the heart of the argument since the beginning of the debate—whether one could believe what the promoters were saying on behalf of British Rail, the credibility of the information provided to the Committee and the credibility of continuing with the evidence given to the Committee, which was clearly shown to be false. To that extent, no greater condemnation could be made of the promoters of this important Bill. The Committee said that the promoters seriously delayed proceedings by persisting with evidence which proved to be false, and that about half the petitioners were unable to present their arguments due to the hostility of British Rail. There was a lack of candidness in providing essential road traffic statistical information, on which the Department was at variance with British Rail. That was known to both parties, but the Committee said that it was informed on the last day and was therefore unable to make a judgment on the essential matter of traffic statistics and whether buses or taxis would provide a better service. That basic information was not available to the Committee.

Paragraph 20 of the Committee's report said: We consider that British Rail's tactics in this regard were improper, and verged on being a contempt of the House. This is particularly inexcusable in the light of the fact that British Rail are a very experienced promoter of private Bills. We very much hope that future promoters of private bills will not be tempted to act in a similar manner. The judgment and recommendation of the Committee in its report was that British Rail's behaviour bordered on contempt of the Committee.

The Committee found—the House has now reached the same judgment—that the system of dealing with private Bills for the development of King's Cross was inadequate and deeply flawed. The House has agreed to a new system to deal with such matters, but it is interesting to note the Committee's conclusion that the procedure was not satisfactory.

The Committee recommends that we proceed with the Bill, despite the lack of substantial bits of information. There is continuing uncertainty about the tunnel link and the funding of the project—two essential requirements of the Bill. I was staggered to hear the Minister say, "We do not have a project on our desks as yet". I know that he is telling the truth as I do not doubt him for a second, but it is staggering that the Government are allowing bodies to come forward with Bills on a major strategic transport decision—probably the most important transport decision this century—while the Department is saying that it still has not received the proposals. That may be true, but is it not time for the Department to get off its backside, find out what is going on, and say, "We may have a view about what is important to the development of the channel link."? People in Europe cannot understand that. They are staggered that the Government can stand aside in that way. In Committee, the promoters argued that money would be available with the EuroRail consortium, but then in June the Secretary of State told the House, "I am sorry, but we do not have sufficient money for the project." It does not stand up.

Finding the finance for the essential link could not be agreed on the conditions that the Government had laid down. I welcome the fact that the Government may now be prepared to find the public money. We said that we would support them in that, if necessary by repealing section 42 of the Channel Tunnel Act 1987.

We are hearing conflicting statements from Ministers compared with the ones that we heard a few years ago, but I should like to hear the Minister say that the money will be provided. I believe that the Secretary of State made a similar statement in the newspaper, Scotland on Sunday. He gives his major statements to Scottish papers. We shall wait and see what we get in England. He has said that public money will be available. Will the Minister make clear what he means by that? Normally when the Government have said that public money will be made available they meant loans—the privilege of borrowing at a higher rate from the Government, and to be financed by passengers. Does he mean grants when he talks about public money? Will the difference between revenue and cost be made up by direct funding in the way that we understand public funding on such projects? I hope that the Minister will come clean about that and give us more information about the funding of the project.

The Committee faced a difficult decision in recommending to the House that the Bill should continue. The balance of the argument which persuaded the Committee, although there was some dispute about it, was that it would not be fair for the promoters to be faced with tremendous costs while the Committee imposed further delay. Given the recommendations that it received, it had no choice. Nevertheless, it means that the House must now decide whether to pass the revival motion. I understand the comments by the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) about operational factors, about the role of King's Cross, about whether the route should go through the south or north of Kent and whether it should be the Thames alternative link international system, the Ove Arup route or British Rail's preferred route.

An essential part will be played by King's Cross, but I do not see a conflict between King's Cross and Stratford, especially as the Government have suggested a surface cross-rail possibility. Such strategic thinking may link those aspects. Only one body can do that—the Government. That is their job. We need strategic thinking on transport issues. The Committee said that northern interests were being led to believe that they would not get the King's Cross development. They therefore had to use pressure groups such as the Confederation of British Industry and the Trades Union Congress to lobby Members of Parliament. There was to be a north-south battle. That was not necessary. The Committee made it clear that information was being given out. The promoters at the Committee were excused from giving out such information, but the promoters outside the Committee tried to exploit the differences between the north and the south, as though Stratford and King's Cross were alternatives. There is no reason why Stratford and King's Cross should not complement each other. I believe that the Ove Arup connection via north Kent is a far better proposal. It provides eurogauge, eurospeed and a dedicated track and gives British Rail the possibility of developing. A route through the south of London would be crazy, because it is the most expensive and environmentally damaging proposition, although that route may be preferable to British Rail and the promoters.

Will the Minister give us a guarantee about Ashford station? We have already been told that it will not be a new international station, as we were promised that King's Cross would be. It will be readjusted and a line away from the middle of the station will be used. Building costs and commercial requirements mean that costs are likely to exceed an 8 per cent. rate of return. British Rail may say that it wants Ashford station, but the Treasury will not permit that development because it does not meet the 8 per cent. requirement. Development of Ashford station is therefore clearly in doubt.

The Secretary of State told us about the guaranteeing of the route to the north downs, but British Rail seems to want the route to go through south Kent. As Kent county council will find, it will go through the most populous part of Kent, disgorging all its traffic into the Swanley area, next to the M25 and the bridge which is also being built by Trafalgar House. The biggest car park will be in Hythe, and probably around Brands Hatch. Major environmental damage will be caused to the south Kent area.

The south has an interest in the proposal. People from the area believe that the south Kent proposal will be damaging to them. Unless the Government provide public money, Ashford station will not be developed. The north will not get trains travelling directly through the area until three years after development because British Rail is ready to put most of its traffic into King's Cross so that it can feed its InterCity system, ready for privatisation. That is why the north will not get through routes, despite the promises.

Only one purpose-built freight terminal, Port Wakefield, will be ready by the time the tunnel opens. The north is constantly kidded about the facilities that will be available, the south will suffer major damage and London will be torn apart. All parts of the United Kingdom will be disadvantaged.

When the Minister went to Stratford, he said that the Government were looking into all options. If the Minister says that, I believe it, but can he assure us that evidence to the inquiries reviewing the TALIS, Ove Arup and British Rail routes will be made available for others to make an assessment? All too often, when British Rail has carried out assessments and reviews, it has said, "This is our judgment and we will not give you the information on which it is based." We do not trust British Rail's statements, and that is a tragedy. We are not confident about its attitude to this major strategic decision. The Government are responsible.

There have been considerable changes since the report was published. The cross-rail commitment by the Government, which we welcome, marks an important change in the strategic thinking on these matters. I hope that there will be a new dedicated track and a route through the north of Kent, although I shall listen to all the arguments. If the north is to meet the strategic requirements of fast through trains, freight and a connection with King's Cross, there is no reason why one strategic route, as advocated by Ove Arup, would not meet several of those obligations.

I appeal to the Minister not to stand aside in this matter —it is far too critical. The Labour Front Bench has not yet voted on this matter. I shall not vote against the revival motion, although I am far from convinced that British Rail's proposal is worthy of support because of the operational matters associated with King's Cross. If the Bill's promoters do not satisfy us on the route and financing before Report stage, we shall consider whether as an Opposition we should support or reject the Bill. I hope that the promoters and British Rail are listening. Apparently the new Secretary of State now recognises that there is a role for planning and development. I hope that, in that new spirit, the Government will reach a firm decision to provide a good strategic link to Europe, because that is what the Bill is about—it is a public issue, not a private issue, and it requires action by the Government.

9.5 pm

The Minister for Public Transport (Mr. Roger Freeman)

On the face of it, this is a procedural motion; as such, it has the Government's support. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) appeared to be lending support to the passage of the motion, which would allow the Bill to continue to be considered. If so, I agree with him. As my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) so ably explained, strictly speaking, the question before us is whether the House should continue to consider the granting of planning permission for the measures in the King's Cross Railways Bill. To that question, the Government's reply is an unreserved yes.

I understand why several of my hon. Friends and some Opposition Members wish to kill the Bill at this stage. They do not agree with the concept of an international passenger terminal at King's Cross, notwithstanding the advantages that will accrue to commuter services to London from the north and from Kent.

Let me remind the House of two matters concerning the proposals for the redevelopment of King's Cross. First, no investment proposal has been put to the Department of Transport and no approval has therefore yet been given. The matter is enormously complicated, but there are precedents for the seeking of planning permission for major railway projects before investment approval is given. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East will be aware that his colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench have given a warm welcome to a recently deposited Bill which would extend the docklands light railway to Lewisham and Greenwich. No investment approval has been sought in respect of that Bill and such approval is not appropriate because it is a project for private finance. In respect of several light rail schemes, the permission of the House has been sought long before investment approval has been granted. It is by no means a break with precedent for the House to consider the granting of planning permission before investment approval has been given.

Secondly—and perhaps more important—I can assure the House that the Bill does not prejudge the line of route of any high-speed rail link from Folkestone to London. I agree with the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East that the Stratford option is not inconsistent with the Bill. A railway line for passengers coming into central London could pass through Stratford—indeed, two of the options on the table envisage such a possibility and one of them at least specifically envisages passengers being carried on to King's Cross. The question of where freight should move north of Stratford is a separate matter, but the Bill does not prejudice British Rail's review of the appropriate route from Folkestone to King's Cross.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East asked me specifically about Ashford. I repeat the assurance, which I have given in public, that the Government remain committed to an international passenger station at Ashford, and such a project is not inconsistent with any of the three major options that British Rail is considering. All the routes would pass through Ashford; their paths would diverge thereafter.

Mr. Rowe

I think that eventually all three options will make that transition, but a number of us are worried that we should have no clear idea about the financing of the schemes. The House will have spent hours and hours on the Bill and there is a danger that, as a result of all that investment of time and effort, we shall feel bound to accept the financial package, however inadequate or unsatisfactory it may be. We could end up with a project that is inferior to one of the other schemes simply because we have been ground down into accepting it, even if the financial package proves inferior to another in the end.

Mr. Freeman

I must make the obvious point that any high-speed rail link from Folkestone, whether or not it passes through Stratford, would require planning permission and, given the present rules, would require the approval of the House. The Government are still considering representations in response to our consultation paper about reforming the planning procedure for rail and port schemes, but the present rules require any such proposal for a link to come before the House. The House can therefore express a clear opinion about the line in principle or its specific route.

British Rail has promoted the Bill because it is a complicated set of proposals involving commuter services, international services and the underground service. As the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) said, the revival motion refers to the Bill's provisions for part of the necessary work for the underground, in particular the expansion of the ticketing hall, and not to works required by the Fennell report, which are urgent. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that he would support the Fennell works if such proposals appeared in a Bill that could be considered more quickly.

Mr. Chris Smith

The Minister is under a slight misapprehension. The King's Cross Railways Bill originally contained two sets of underground work. One set related to the Fennell requirements for safety and the other related to the provision of interchange facilities below ground specifically in connection with the construction of the new international British Rail station. The first set of works has been lifted from the Bill and is being proposed in separate legislation. The other works, which relate specifically to BR's proposals, are still contained in the present Bill.

Mr. Freeman

I understand that perfectly and I apologise if I did not make myself clear. The work connected with the proposed new international station includes improvement to the ticketing hall and facilities. I understand the hon. Gentleman's position.

Mr. Dobson

Before the Minister leaves the matter of financing the project, does he accept the statement in the report from the Select Committee to the effect that the failure of the promoters to convince the House that they could afford to complete their proposed works has on several previous occasions been regarded as grounds for finding the Preamble of a Bill not proved which led to the Bill being thrown out? Does he also accept the Select Committee's view that the Bill should not be enacted in the absence of clear assurances to Parliament on the various issues which currently remain uncertain"? Further uncertainties have been introduced tonight. When will the House receive the assurances for which the Select Committee called?

Mr. Freeman

I am mindful of the fact that I represent the Government, not the Bill's sponsor. No doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley will have heard the hon. Gentleman. As other hon. Members wish to contribute to the debate, I shall deal briefly with some of the issues that have been raised for which the Government have specific responsibility.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) referred to the need for British Rail to continue to update traffic forecasts. I assure her that its section 40 plans will be updated by British Rail periodically and that it will certainly take into account improved and changed forecasts for passengers and freight.

The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) referred to trains north of London and that is clearly relevant to the Bill. We are dealing with seven trains to provide the service north of London. The issue is complicated. Although the contract has not been let, that is not for the want of resources. We are dealing with an international consortium that is designing and building the trains. The companies involved in the United Kingdom have no direct control over their international partners in the consortium and specifically over the Belgians who have been involved in building the body shell for the inter-capital trains. Therefore, the Department of Transport, British Rail and the United Kingdom parties are, to some extent, at their mercy. I hope that the international consortium will soon be able to put an attractive proposition and be able to sign a contract.

Another aspect involves the technical problems of running trains north of London. They have to split and that involves some technology, because passengers must be able to move the entire length of the train under the tunnel—that is a safety requirement. Therefore, they must pass through the portion of the train that will split at appropriate stations north of London. Also, one must make sure that signalling on British Rail is not affected by the new technology on a train. That is by no means certain at the moment. British Rail will seek to make as rapid progress as possible. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) laughs, but we are dealing with a third rail south of London and overhead electric power north of London.

The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) asked about the timetable for establishing a new route between Folkestone and London. That matter is directly relevant to the revival motion. I confirm that British Rail hopes by the spring to reach a conclusion on the route from Folkestone into London. W. S. Atkins has been appointed to review the procedure by which a decision is reached. It will then be for my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Transport to decide on any propositions put to him by British Rail and when to make an announcement to the House. The only firm part of the timetable about which I can tell the House is that for concluding the work on reviewing options.

The hon. Members for Islington, South and Finsbury and for Kingston upon Hull, East asked about the financing of any high-speed rail link—a perfectly appropriate and relevant point in relation to the revival motion. There is no change in the Government's policy on financing. We have said that the Government will not seek to amend section 42, which prevents subsidy to any high-speed line for international passenger traffic. We have not ruled out the financing of the investment by British Rail in the conventional way, similar, for example, to the electrification of the east coast main line when British Rail financed the investment—in this case it would clearly be on a substantial scale—by means of Government loans from the national loans fund, from public service obligation grant, which is paid to British Rail, and from its own internal resources, including the sale of assets.

In the case of such a major project as this, Government loan financing would have to play a significant role. We have not ruled out that option; nor have we ruled out a capital contribution on behalf of Network SouthEast for any improvement in services for commuters in south-east England.

Mr. Prescott

Nothing has changed.

Mr. Freeman

Nothing has changed—that is right. I hope that my clarification has cleared up some hon. Members' confusion about subsidy and financing.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East specifically asked me about through trains from King's Cross. Of course, through trains will be able to run to King's Cross—that is one of the main purposes of the Bill —including, for example, through trains down the east coast main line and the west coast main line.

Mr. Dobson

How many?

Mr. Freeman

That depends on the volume of traffic whenever a high-speed rail link is constructed. Of course, if under the Bill the King's Cross terminal is built in advance of any high-speed rail link which, by then, would obviously be coming, trains would be able to run straight through King's Cross, through the Thameslink tunnel to the Southern region, instead of going around the west of London.

The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury selectively quoted from the Select Committee's report. However, he did not quote paragraph 38 of that report.

The Committee concluded that it approved the principle of the Bill. By definition, the Select Committee recommended further consideration of the Bill and the Government therefore support the revival motion. I note that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East also supports it.

Mr. Prescott

So that the record is clear, I said that I would not vote against the revival motion, but I still need to be satisfied. That information is not yet before the House, as the Committee made clear.

9.19 pm

Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth)

I shall support the motion, but not because I am impressed by the Minister's argument, not because I am happy and satisfied by British Rail and not because I am in favour of the preposterous procedures that affect the issue. However, if passed, the motion will allow us to maintain the arguments for investment and sensible railway decisions that will serve the interests and concerns of my own area, which are now urgent and serious.

I shall certainly not commend British Rail. It has had a difficult time in recent years because its masters have been foolish, dogmatic and unreasonable. British Rail does not deserve our sympathy. I recall expressing deep regret a few years ago because, although British Rail had used red station seats on all its platforms on the north-eastern line, it had felt it appropriate to use a blue seat at Grantham. When I raised the matter in the House at Question Time and asked why on earth a blue seal had been used at Grantham, the then Minister said that his right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher)—the then Prime Minister—had told him that she had enjoyed her journey on the train. That was probably the only train journey that she ever made.

Mr. Prescott

The seat is yellow at Huntingdon.

Mr. Hardy

My hon. Friend is extremely observant, but that seat will probably change colour—at the same speed as the new methods of signalling to which he referred a moment ago.

However, my concern is related not only to my constituency where economic need is now vital and where we are bemused by the delay and incompetence that have surrounded the matter. I am also concerned to reflect the position in Europe. Until recently I acted as chairman of the Council of Europe Environment Committee, which takes an interest in transport. I have watched with great interest the speed at which French decisions and French investment have proceeded. The other day I flew from Paris to the City of London airport at fairly low altitude. The weather was reasonably good and one could actually see the evidence of the competence and investment in France, where the channel tunnel is already seen as something to be achieved and where it has already been the focus of investment and, years ago, was the subject of decision making——

Mr. Tony Banks

rose——

Mr. Hardy

I shall give way to my hon. Friend in a moment. I am sure that he will like my next point.

The state of affairs in Britain will be so appallingly unreasonable that I suspect that the first French passengers to reach the United Kingdom when the trains start running under the tunnel will feel impelled to report the United Kingdom to either the European convention against torture or the Court of Human Rights. Those passengers will take the view that it is unreasonable of Britain to see passengers travelling cheaply and comfortably on French trains, which run on smooth and permanent tracks, while our foreign visitors have to suffer the experiences that the constituents of the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) and those of some of his hon. Friends have had to tolerate during the lifetime of this Government. The position is clearly unsatisfactory.

Mr. Tony Banks

My hon. Friend is an observant Member of the House—even at 15,000 ft when flying across France. However, I must pick him up on one point. He described the airport to which he flew as the "City of London airport". It might only be a name, but it is actually called City airport. Although many people in the London borough of Newham, where City airport is located, bitterly oppose the airport, it gets right up our noses that we are not allowed to call it "Newham international airport". As I said, it is called City airport, not City of London airport. My hon. Friend should get it right.

Mr. Hardy

I apologise to my hon. Friend and to his constituents for my error. My hon. Friend knows that I have some regard for that airport, perhaps because using it means that I am not dependent on London Underground, which costs a fantastic amount of money and is not always terribly pleasant, but can travel to his area on the Riverbus instead, which is the most historic and perhaps the most pleasant form of transport in London. The airport has many advantages, including the fact that aeroplanes fly at a sufficiently low altitude so that one can watch the physical progress being made in France, where there is an entirely different approach. Perhaps because the French Government have not been so dogmatic as the British Government in the past decade, they have ensured that the Pas de Calais, the most impoverished region of France, will receive all the advantages that the improved communication will provide.

It seems years since the House debated the channel tunnel. Some of us made the point then that in France the region where the tunnel terminal is located is the most impoverished while the tunnel reaches the wealthiest region of Britain. We said then—and, as a Yorkshire Member, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) is well aware of the arguments —that if the tunnel was to serve the national interest, early and intelligent decisions would have to be made to ensure that the industrial areas of the north of England were properly served. Yet we have suffered years of appalling and stupid parliamentary procedures, which may have been relevant at the time when a Foreign Secretary was run over by a train early in the 19th century—[HON MEMBERS: "The President of the Board of Trade."] Yes, it was the President of the Board of Trade. One could think of several Ministers who might benefit from a similar experience.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman

Does the hon. Gentleman recall that, following the unfortunate demise of that gentleman, the train was claimed as a deodand, which, of course, is now out of date?

Mr. Hardy

I am sure that the House is greatly obliged to the hon. Lady for that information.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South)

Perhaps the hon. Lady was present.

Mr. Hardy

My hon. Friend is being rather ungallant. The hon. Lady may be foolish enough to support the nonsense and incompetence that the Government have demonstrated over the past decade. The whole sorry saga of the tunnel is an illustration of the sad decline of our country caused by the dogma and incompetence of a Government who would rather see service of private interest to the sacrifice of public good than create any opportunity for Britain to secure the national advance that we need.

The ability of the French to provide an adequate, efficient and inexpensive train service should have been obvious to us a long time ago. In case Conservative Members, including perhaps the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) who has had much connection with Europe, need an illustration, I recently made two train journeys in France. One was between Paris and Strasbourg and the other was between Paris and Brest. I compared them with my journey from King's Cross to my home in Yorkshire the other night. I arrived at King's Cross station to catch the 11.15 pm train only to find that it was not running. I arrived home at 5 am, having caught one train from King's Cross to Stevenage, one bus from Stevenage to Hitchin, one train from Hitchin to Peterborough and, after an hour on Peterborough platform, another train from Peterborough to Doncaster.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman

rose——

Mr. Hardy

The journey was long enough without adding the hon. Lady's observations to it, but I give way to her.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problems that he has just outlined are an excellent reason for denationalising British Rail?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. We seem to be moving some way from the revival motion.

Mr. Hardy

I regret giving way to the hon. Lady because I did not want that argument to be made. The French political system is very different from ours, but so are its railways.

On the journeys that I have made in France, the trains have been both on time—as they invariably are—and on permanent way, which is smooth. I have paid fares for more comfortable rolling stock which were little more than two thirds the level of the fares in Britain. Yet after 11 years of this Government we have an unsatisfactory train system, which does not compare with that of our competitors, and areas such as mine, which are in appalling environmental and economic need, cannot look forward to the future.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East will be aware, only the other day we had a televised announcement that a terminal was to be built in Yorkshire. I regret, but my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) does not, that the site of the terminal is on the west Yorkshire rather than the south Yorkshire side, which I should have preferred. However, at least it will be in Yorkshire. My hon. Friend will share my confidence that we shall have the Yorkshire terminal ready, operating and efficient before there is anything to link it to in London or Kent. We should be paying serious attention to those matters.

Mr. Cryer

I am sure that my hon. Friend will acknowledge immediately that British Rail is short of funds because the Government have deliberately starved it of moneys. They have even counted investment that has been generated by British Rail as investment authorised by the Government as if it were some form of largesse. Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that the ordinary work people of British Rail use their best endeavours to provide a decent service in spite of those difficulties and in spite of a sometimes indifferent management and a Government who are completely hostile to the railways?

Mr. Hardy

Yes, I acknowledge that. I would——

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will link his remarks to the revival motion that is before the House in responding to the intervention of the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer).

Mr. Hardy

My hon. Friend was leading me to the final part of my brief remarks, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the other reason why I shall support the Bill. It has been made clear that the senior management of British Rail has deserved all the criticism that has been offered. At the same time, we need to send a message to those who work for British Rail that we understand and appreciate that they have had to put up with an enormous amount during the past 11 years. They have had to put up with the permanent criticism of a group of people in the Government who wanted them to fail. They have had to put up with grossly inadequate investment and an obligation to work with a level of return on that investment that our neighbours in France and Germany regard as ridiculous.

By supporting the motion, preposterous though it may be, we shall be giving a message to the employees of British Rail that we believe that British Rail is important, that the railway industry is vital and that we deplore the incompetence with which it has been managed at senior level and guided by the Government.

Mr. Dobson

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) and I share my hon. Friend's view that we need good links between the channel tunnel, the midlands, the north, Scotland and Wales. It was for that reason that we proposed a direction that would have required British Rail to guarantee that with this project there would be a fast, frequent and reliable service to the midlands, the north and Scotland. British Rail had so little faith in that proposition that it refused to accept the direction.

I urge my hon. Friend to consider carefully the prospects of getting a fast, frequent and reliable service to Yorkshire through an underground station that will have only one track in from the south and one track out from the south. The station will purport to serve eight platforms, when the current King's Cross station is limited on Fridays because it cannot get enough trains out and there is not enough space. If we add to the congestion, there is every danger that the service to Yorkshire will be reduced.

Mr. Hardy

I should hate to see the current service to Yorkshire reduced any further. I accept, however, that there is a risk. We need to maintain our argument, and that is why I shall support the Bill.

I have another reason for supporting the Bill. I have enjoyed some of the speeches that I have heard tonight; we have had the opportunity to hear my hon. Friends the Members for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) and for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith). We shall hear my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), who will be talking from a different viewpoint. We have suffered enormous delay and incompetence. The arguments that have been advanced by my hon. Friends have much merit. I shall support the motion to try to ensure that no one may accuse south Yorkshire Members of not seeking sensible decisions that should have been taken a long time ago.

9.34 pm

Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed)

If I had not intended to oppose the revival motion, I have now heard sufficient to cause me to do so.

The Minister kindly sought to address some of the anxieties that have been expressed about the broken promises of British Rail. However, he was unable to do so except by recourse to arguments that produced laughter on the Opposition Benches. The very idea that the technology employed by British Rail is, for example, incapable of coping with splitting a train through the length of which it was possible to walk prior to its being split is laughable. Southern region runs such trains through most of its main line stations every day of the week and has done so for decades. The arguments to which the Minister has had to turn have been supplied to him by British Rail and they do not stand up.

I have an overall anxiety about the Government's longstanding hands-off attitude to the rail link. The idea of having to revive this Bill in the absence of the sort of positive lead provided in France is depressing. The French were determined that their industry and passengers should take full advantage of the tunnel. Therefore, their Government took the lead to ensure that a dedicated link was available. Our Government, however, have come to this debate to give lukewarm support to a revival motion for a Bill which does not provide such a dedicated link facility.

I have sufficient reason on the Government's attitude alone not to support the motion, but one should also take into account the attitude of the promoters, British Rail, whose record is so strewn with broken promises in connection with King's Cross and railway lines out of that station that it is impossible for my hon. Friends and me to support the motion.

We have also been told that the recently announced delay in providing through services from the north to the continent is due not to the failure of the Bill to make rapid progress, but to international arrangements for building trains. It is alleged that the Belgians are holding us to ransom. We are also told that British Rail is unable to provide the necessary technology to split trains that must go to more than one destination in the north of England. Such arguments do not stand up and they belong to a series of broken promises.

During the passage of the Bill, British Rail has obtained the support of a number of hon. Members who represent the north of England. During earlier stages of the Bill, I, too, supported British Rail, in common with other colleagues, because British Rail argued that services would be provided from the beginning to ensure that the north was not put at a competitive disadvantage with the south-east. That is what this is all about. None of us would want the channel tunnel unless it was directly linked with transport routes to the north of England; otherwise the sole effect would be to provide a competitive advantage for industry and commerce in the south-east, which would increase the relative disadvantage of the north.

Mr. Simon Hughes

My hon. Friend's view is shared by those of us who represent the south-east. We are aware that we are over-congested and that the planning bias has led to more people and more development in a part of the country where, to be honest, we need less development. Such linked transport routes are entirely compatible with providing proper regional strategic economic planning, not just general transport planning.

Mr. Beith

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out that this is not a north-south battle. There is a shared interest between the northern region and the congested parts of the south-east to ensure that communications are linked directly to the areas that can most readily accommodate industrial and commercial expansion. British Rail has broken its promise on that important point.

The delay on the provision of through services has not been occasioned by the proceedings on the Bill; nor will it be shortened if we pass the motion. A positive decision on the motion would not remove the various technical difficulties that British Rail finds so insuperable when it comes to providing direct trains.

Within living memory we have managed to have direct trains running out of London on ships to and through France to Paris and Brussels. British Rail could not even keep those trains going. Some of us remember travelling on the night ferry train to the continent. The very idea that, with a tunnel at its disposal, British Rail cannot run through trains from the north to the continental centres of Europe seems ludicrous. That is one fundamental broken promise.

The second promise to be broken was made in the same context as the Bill, but was spelt out in detail in the British Railways (No. 2) Bill in a previous Session and also relates to King's Cross. It was the promise that sleeper services and overnight services to Teesside, Tyneside, Northumberland and the Borders would be resumed when electrification had been carried out, if a survey to be conducted by British Rail in conjunction with the local authorities could not demonstrate conclusive reasons for not doing so.

We now find that British Rail does not intend to carry out that undertaking which was given to the House. That casts doubt on the undertakings British Rail has given in relation to the motion. The excuses given by British Rail when it withdrew overnight services to King's Cross were various. I shall leave out some of the more absurd ones and relate two on which BR concentrated.

First, British Rail said that it had a shortage of class 47 locomotives and so could not manage the diesel traction required, but that electrification would solve that problem. Secondly, it said that platforms at King's Cross were too short to accommodate full-length sleeper trains and that that problem would be overcome when the King's Cross Railways Bill had been passed and the works associated with it were completed. Now we discover that those two excuses are no longer the reasons why British Rail is not prepared to reintroduce overnight services.

British Rail's latest reason is that it is no longer acceptable to stop sleeper services en route because it wakes up some passengers. In addition, it says that it is no longer acceptable to drop from or add coaches to sleeper trains in the course of the route. We have just been discussing British Rail's own plans to split continental trains, which British Rail is taking a little time to work out, so that argument does not stand up very well. In any case, both those practices are currently in use in order to provide sleeper services to Carlisle, Bournemouth and Poole, to which I suspect the rolling stock was taken when British Rail withdrew the services from the east coast main line. That is another broken British Rail promise that relates directly to King's Cross and the King's Cross Railways Bill.

As a result of those experiences, I have no faith in any assurances given by British Rail relating to the Bill or the motion. For that reason, I shall vote against the motion.

9.43 pm

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

I am truly delighted to see you, Mr. Speaker, back in the Chair as we move towards the end of the consideration of the procedural motion. I am delighted because there is much discontent——

Mr. Cryer

Stop grovelling and get on with it.

Mr. Banks

My hon. Friend seems to think that I am grovelling, but I have always thought that a little judicious crawling never does any harm, so I shall persist in my present style.

We are discussing a procedural matter and you, Mr. Speaker, will know—and thus be able to use your good offices to impress on the Government—that it is about time that we got away from the lunacy of the private Bill procedure. I sat as a member of the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure—a joint House of Commons and House of Lords Committee. We reported in July 1988 and made about 52 recommendations to avoid Parliament facing problems such as those before us now. We have had the Government's response to our recommendations and I am delighted to say that they have accepted most of them. To get round the problems of private Bill procedure, we need primary legislation initiated by the Government.

In business questions last Thursday, I asked the Leader of the House whether, despite there being nothing in the Queen's Speech relating to the subject, we would have the opportunity to consider legislation from the Government to implement the Joint Committee's recommendations, as we seemed to have plenty of time on our hands. The Leader of the House said that, unfortunately, he did not think there would be an opportunity to do that, and I believe that there will probably be a general election before British Rail gets its act together and makes a decision on the fast rail link. Be that as it may, however, we need to pressure the Government into bringing forward legislation which will avoid the necessity to debate arcane matters of the kind that have come before the House today.

I missed only a few minutes of the debate, at around 7 o'clock when I left the Chamber to give an interview in my role as Mr. Angry of east London for my regular Monday night slot on LBC. I was asked what a revival motion was, as it sounded like something akin to spiritualism. I said that it probably was, in a way, as the House was trying to revive something which in my opinion should have been long dead and buried—the proposal to locate the second London channel rail link station at King's Cross.

Those of us who sat on the relevant Committee and who studied the Select Committee report believe that this is not the way to take that decision. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) made the same telling point raised by other hon. Members, though not of his stature and seniority in our party—that this is not the way for a major strategic decision to be taken. As my hon. Friend emphasised, this is probably the single most important transport decision of this century, and perhaps for decades to come. My hon. Friend contrasted the approach taken by the French to our own piecemeal, shoddy, hit-and-miss approach. It is not acceptable for Britain in the 1990s to take such an important decision in that way, using a private Bill procedure which dates back to the 19th century and requires anyone laying any track, be it British Rail or an urban transport system, to seek Parliament's approval. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East made it clear that the Government should take a strategic overview. It is absurd for them to walk away from their responsibilities, and for Ministers to sit with their hands under their bottoms saying, "This is not for us to decide —let British Rail get itself out of the mess that it has clearly got itself into."

Among the many hats that I wear in this place—as you, Mr. Speaker, kindly pointed out the other day, in calling me last during Question Time—is that of chair of the London group of Labour Members of Parliament, whose members have a close interest in the Bill. The Secretary of State for Transport before last—they change so rapidly that it is difficult to remember them, but I believe that it was the right hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon)—came to a meeting of that group of London Members, and when asked who was responsible for the strategic overview in respect of King's Cross, the fast link, and the location of the second station, replied, "Not me —I am not the strategic authority for transport in London and the south-east." So we put the same question to British Rail, who replied, "Not us—we are a transport undertaking; it is our considered belief that people will want to travel into King's Cross, and that we shall make the most money from that location, which is what we are required to do as a transport undertaking, but we are not the strategic transport authority for London".

There seems to be an enormous vacuum. Every sensible right hon. and hon. Member—there are still a couple left on the Government Benches—knows that such a decision should not be subject to the procedural approach that has been adopted, nor should it be left to British Rail and developers to decide the matter. It is outrageous that the Government have walked away from contributing to such a major decision. I hope that those points will be taken on board by the Minister, and that he will speak urgently to his Cabinet colleagues so as to ensure that we do not need to resort to revival motions in the future. The matter has been dragging on for so long and we all know that this is not the way to deal with it.

The Minister said that the Government had not imposed a Whip tonight—we shall test that shortly, but I already detect a certain buzz in the Chamber and I know that it has nothing to do with my speech. Everyone is expecting a Division at 10 o'clock, and will be hurrying back from places of excitement to be here to vote. It is scandalous that the Government are hiding behind British Rail and letting it make a decision on a matter which is important not only to London but to the south-east and to the whole country for decades to come.

Also, it is scandalous that British Rail should be using the private Bill procedure, which has effectively been brought into disrepute by the way the Government have maltreated it. All the private Bills passed recently have been highly controversial, affecting broad areas of the country and a number of political interests. The Government have their payroll vote standing by—Members who have not been here to listen to the arguments, but who come through in droves at 10 o'clock to do the Government's bidding.

I oppose the revival motion on all the grounds that I have mentioned so far, and on others which I am about to mention. The Minister says that British Rail has stated that it is on target to make an announcement by next Easter about a route for the link. As hon. Members on both sides of the House have said, it seems crazy that we are deciding about the location of a station when we have not yet decided the route of the rail line.

Mr. Freeman

If I may correct the hon. Gentleman, I said that British Rail would reach a conclusion about the preferred route by next spring.

Mr. Banks

That does not seem markedly different from what I said. I assume that the announcement will give their conclusions.

Mr. Cryer

Perhaps they are not going to tell us.

Mr. Banks

I am sure that they will—if nothing else has come out of this long, involved and Byzantine procedure, British Rail has reluctantly accepted that it cannot play fast and loose with the House as it has done so far. British Rail is fortunate in having a Government who are sheltering behind it and who will undoubtedly be backing it tonight, but no one in the House will be satisfied with the way in which this has been done, or the way the House has been treated by British Rail.

Mr. Chris Smith

I hope that when British Rail reaches its conclusions on the location of the route for the high-speed link it will give the matter rather more serious consideration at its board meeting than it did when it opted for King's Cross—a decision which was taken by British Rail's board in 40 minutes of discussions.

Mr. Banks

Yes, fast decisions are repented at great length. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) said in answer to an intervention, how can the House be expected to treat seriously the calculations that British Rail puts before us? There was to be only one station for London—Waterloo —when the first Channel Tunnel Bill was tabled, but the calculations for potential use of the tunnel were so 13adly wrong that British Rail has had to go for a second site. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury pointed out, British Rail specifically ruled out King's Cross when it proposed Waterloo. Yet now it has suddenly become British Rail's conch shell, which British Rail intends to stand by as a test of its virility and will not consider any other option seriously. That does not make any sense, and it does not leave us with any confidence in British Rail's calculations.

I visited one of the Minister's predecessors at Christmas last year. He gave me a glass of sherry, which was much appreciated at the time as it was much needed. He now has responsibility for the poll tax. I said to that young Minister, "Sir, you should make sure that British Rail give you good advice." I told him that I had the feeling that, judging by the way it was going about the matter, it would give him a "bummer". I am not sure whether that is a parliamentary expression, but I used it then and I told him, "And you are going to be stuck with it". That is exactly what British Rail has done. I warned the Minister that he should not accept what British Rail was doing at face value. I said, "Minister, you must intervene." He said, "Now is not the time to intervene." That is how the Government have played this all the way through.

I know that discussions have gone on behind the scenes. I do not know exactly what has been said, but I cannot believe that the Government have completely walked away from the matter. I cannot believe that they have no interest in what British Rail does, or that they cannot see what everyone else can see, including Conservative Members —that these are matters of national significance, and that the decisions cannot be left to British Rail and a bunch of developers who view King's Cross less as a station than as a major office development.

Mr. Cryer

Is not one of the unsatisfactory aspects of the way in which decisions have been blundered into the fact that British Rail cannot be trusted with such decisions? It has given the northern cities no guarantees of through journeys and through running, and it seems that investment in King's Cross could well be pursued at the expense of much-needed investment in provincial railway lines serving cities such as Bradford, Leeds arid Huddersfield.

Mr. Banks

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Such are the pitfalls that we encounter when decisions are made on a one-off basis. A whole range of London developments is being proposed, but there is no coherence. If the Government can get a bit of money from a developer, they will go along with that developer's proposals.

One of the reasons why Stratford would be a far better location for the tunnel from my point of view—and from the point of view of all the London boroughs, both Tory and Labour—is the number of developments in progress which will involve Stratford, such as the east-west cross-rail and the Jubilee line extension. I do not oppose the latter, as it will bring more transport investment into my part of the east end, which will aid its economic regeneration, but we all know that the Government opted for it not because the Jubilee line was the most important in relation to London's commuter needs but because the developers of Canary Wharf put up some money. That is how decisions are made—not only is there no strategic overview, but there is no interlinking.

Mr. Cryer

Does my hon. Friend agree that if British Rail had not specifically rejected the resolution proposed by the House in relation to the guaranteeing of through services, the basis for discussions about this development would have been entirely different? The northern provincial areas would have been far more sympathetic and encouraging. Having rejected that condition, British Rail has been breaking similar promises ever since.

Mr. Banks

That is absolutely true. Earlier, my hon. Friend rightly pointed out that the debate was turning into a "get British Rail" session, but we are not criticizing British Rail's work force—we are criticising its planning and investment procedures, its board, its senior management and the Government. The ordinary employees must accept decisions made at those levels, while they themselves have no input. It is not a case of getting British Rail because it is inefficient. We are getting at the way in which British Rail has been coralled by the Government into making decisions which are neither suitable for London and the south-east nor appropriate——

Mr. Waller

rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The House divided: Ayes 141, Noes 43.

Division No. 24]	[9.59 pm
AYES
Aitken, Jonathan	Freeman, Roger
Alexander, Richard	French, Douglas
Allason, Rupert	Fry, Peter
Amos, Alan	Gale, Roger
Arbuthnot, James	Garel-Jones, Tristan
Atkins, Robert	Gill, Christopher
Atkinson, David	Goodlad, Alastair
Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)	Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)
Barron, Kevin	Greenway, John (Ryedale)
Bellingham, Henry	Gregory, Conal
Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)	Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)
Benyon, W.	Ground, Patrick
Boswell, Tim	Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')
Brandon-Bravo, Martin	Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)
Brazier, Julian	Harris, David
Browne, John (Winchester)	Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney
Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)	Howard, Rt Hon Michael
Buck, Sir Antony	Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)
Burt, Alistair	Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)
Butler, Chris	Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)
Carlisle, John, (Luton N)	Hunter, Andrew
Carrington, Matthew	Irvine, Michael
Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda	Jack, Michael
Chapman, Sydney	Janman, Tim
Chope, Christopher	Jessel, Toby
Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)	Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)	Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine
Coombs, Simon (Swindon)	King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)
Cope, Rt Hon John	Kirkhope, Timothy
Cran, James	Knapman, Roger
Currie, Mrs Edwina	Knight, Greg (Derby North)
Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)	Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)
Davis, David (Boothferry)	Knox, David
Day, Stephen	Latham, Michael
Devlin, Tim	Lawrence, Ivan
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James	Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)
Dover, Den	Lightbown, David
Durant, Tony	Lilley, Peter
Fallon, Michael	Lord, Michael
Favell, Tony	McCrindle, Sir Robert
Fenner, Dame Peggy	Macfarlane, Sir Neil
Fookes, Dame Janet	McLoughlin, Patrick
Forman, Nigel	Mans, Keith
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)	Marek, Dr John
Forth, Eric	Martin, David (Portsmouth S)
Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman	Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick
Fox, Sir Marcus	Monro, Sir Hector
Franks, Cecil	Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)	Taylor, John M (Solihull)
Nicholson, David (Taunton)	Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)
Norris, Steve	Thorne, Neil
Paice, James	Thurnham, Peter
Patnick, Irvine	Trippier, David
Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth	Twinn, Dr Ian
Rhodes James, Robert	Walden, George
Riddick, Graham	Waller, Gary
Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm	Wardell, Gareth (Gower)
Rossi, Sir Hugh	Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)
Ryder, Richard	Warren, Kenneth
Sackville, Hon Tom	Watts, John
Shaw, David (Dover)	Wells, Bowen
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')	Wheeler, Sir John
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)	Widdecombe, Ann
Skeet, Sir Trevor	Winterton, Mrs Ann
Speed, Keith	Wood, Timothy
Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)	Woodcock, Dr. Mike
Steen, Anthony	Yeo, Tim
Stevens, Lewis	Young, Sir George (Acton)
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)
Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)	Tellers for the Ayes:
Sumberg, David	Dr. Keith Hampson and
Summerson, Hugo	Mr. Humfrey Malins.
Taylor, Ian (Esher)

NOES
Abbott, Ms Diane	Hardy, Peter
Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)	Haynes, Frank
Banks, Tony (Newham NW)	Howarth, George (Knowsley N)
Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)	Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Beith, A. J.	Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)	Janner, Greville
Buckley, George J.	Lewis, Terry
Callaghan, Jim	McCartney, Ian
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)	McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)
Clelland, David	Meale, Alan
Cook, Robin (Livingston)	Morgan, Rhodri
Cryer, Bob	Pike, Peter L.
Dalyell, Tam	Sheerman, Barry
Dixon, Don	Skinner, Dennis
Dobson, Frank	Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)
Duffy, A. E. P.	Smith, C. (Isl'ton & F'bury)
Dunn, Bob	Spearing, Nigel
Eastham, Ken	Steel, Rt Hon Sir David
Evans, John (St Helens N)	Wardell, Gareth (Gower)
Faulds, Andrew
Flynn, Paul	Tellers for the Noes:
Foster, Derek	Mr. Jeremy Corbyn and
Fyfe, Maria	Mr. Andrew Rowe.
Godman, Dr Norman A.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Question put accordingly.

The House proceeded to a Division—

Mr. Tony Banks (seated and covered)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. One of the arcane procedures of this place is that I must put on a top hat to raise a point of order during a Division. You will know, as we all do, that the normal custom in this place is that there should be no instructions on private Bills and that hon. Members should be allowed to make up their own minds without being pressured by the party managers. It is manifestly obvious by the turnout in the Ayes Lobby that pressure has been put on hon. Members by the Whips. Is it in order for the Government to use the payroll vote to push this measure through?

Mr. Speaker

How hon. Members vote in the Chamber is not a matter for the Chair.

The House having divided: Ayes 146, Noes 21.

Division No. 25]	[10.11 pm
AYES
Aitken, Jonathan	Allason, Rupert
Alexander, Richard	Amos, Alan

Arbuthnot, James	Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')
Atkins, Robert	Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)
Atkinson, David	Harris, David
Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)	Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney
Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)	Haynes, Frank
Barron, Kevin	Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony	Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)
Bellingham, Henry	Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)
Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)	Hunter, Andrew
Benyon, W.	Irvine, Michael
Boswell, Tim	Jack, Michael
Brandon-Bravo, Martin	Janman, Tim
Brazier, Julian	Jessel, Toby
Browne, John (Winchester)	Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Buck, Sir Antony	Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine
Buckley, George J.	King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)
Burt, Alistair	Kirkhope, Timothy
Butler, Chris	Knapman, Roger
Carlisle, John, (Luton N)	Knight, Greg (Derby North)
Carrington, Matthew	Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)
Cash, William	Knox, David
Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda	Latham, Michael
Chapman, Sydney	Lawrence, Ivan
Chope, Christopher	Lightbown, David
Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)	Lilley, Peter
Clelland, David	Lord, Michael
Coombs, Simon (Swindon)	McCrindle, Sir Robert
Cope, Rt Hon John	Macfarlane, Sir Neil
Cran, James	McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)
Currie, Mrs Edwina	McLoughlin, Patrick
Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)	Mans, Keith
Davis, David (Boothferry)	Marek, Dr John
Day, Stephen	Martin, David (Portsmouth S)
Devlin, Tim	Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick
Dixon, Don	Meale, Alan
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James	Monro, Sir Hector
Dover, Den	Montgomery, Sir Fergus
Durant, Tony	Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)
Eastham, Ken	Nicholson, David (Taunton)
Fallon, Michael	Norris, Steve
Favell, Tony	Paice, James
Fenner, Dame Peggy	Patnick, Irvine
Fookes, Dame Janet	Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Forman, Nigel	Rhodes James, Robert
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)	Riddick, Graham
Forth, Eric	Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm
Foster, Derek	Rossi, Sir Hugh
Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman	Ryder, Richard
Fox, Sir Marcus	Sackville, Hon Tom
Franks, Cecil	Shaw, David (Dover)
Freeman, Roger	Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
French, Douglas	Skeet, Sir Trevor
Fry, Peter	Speed, Keith
Gale, Roger	Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)
George, Bruce	Steen, Anthony
Gill, Christopher	Stevens, Lewis
Goodlad, Alastair	Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)
Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)	Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)
Greenway, John (Ryedale)	Sumberg, David
Gregory, Conal	Summerson, Hugo
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)	Taylor, Ian (Esher)
Ground, Patrick	Taylor, John M (Solihull)
Hardy, Peter	Thorne, Neil

Thurnham, Peter	Widdecombe, Ann
Trippier, David	Winterton, Mrs Ann
Twinn, Dr Ian	Wood, Timothy
Waller, Gary	Woodcock, Dr. Mike
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)	Yeo, Tim
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)	Young, Sir George (Acton)
Warren, Kenneth
Watts, John	Tellers for the Ayes:
Wells, Bowen	Dr. Keith Hampson and
Wheeler, Sir John	Mr. Humfrey Malins.

NOES
Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)	Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Banks, Tony (Newham NW)	Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Beith, A. J.	Lewis, Terry
Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)	Morgan, Rhodri
Callaghan, Jim	Pike, Peter L.
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)	Skinner, Dennis
Cryer, Bob	Smith, C. (Isl'ton & F'bury)
Dalyell, Tam	Spearing, Nigel
Dobson, Frank
Duffy, A. E. P.	Tellers for the Noes:
Dunn, Bob	Mr. Andrew Rowe and
Flynn, Paul	Mr. Jeremy Corbyn.
Godman, Dr Norman A.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ordered, That the Promoters of the King's Cross Railways Bill may, notwithstanding anything in the Standing Orders or practice of this House, proceed with the Bill in the present Session; and the Petition for the Bill shall be deemed to have been deposited and all Standing Orders applicable thereto shall be deemed to have been complied with; That the Bill shall be presented to this House not later than the seventh day after this day; That there shall be deposited with the Bill a declaration signed by the Agents for the Bill, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill at the last stage of its proceedings in this House in the last Session; That the Bill shall be laid upon the Table of this House by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office on the next meeting of this House after the day on which the Bill has been presented and, when so laid, shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read and committed); That all Petitions relating to the Bill presented in the Session 1988–89 which stand referred to the Committee on the Bill, together with any minutes of evidence taken before the Committee on the Bill, shall stand referred to the Committee on the Bill in the present Session; That no Petitioners shall be heard before the Committee on the Bill, unless their Petition has been presented within the time limited within Session 1988–89 or deposited pursuant to paragraph (b) of Standing Order 126 relating to Private Business; That, in relation to the Bill, Standing Order 127 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words 'under Standing Order 126 (Reference to committee of petitions against bill)' were omitted; That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during the last Session.