§ Mr. Gregor Mackenzieasked the Minister of Transport if he can now make a statement on progress in the Anglo-French talks on the financing of the Channel Tunnel.
§ Mr. MarshThe French Minister of Transport and I have completed our consideration of proposals for financing and arranging the construction of the Channel Tunnel submitted by three competing private groups earlier this year.
We have noted with satisfaction the considerable progress made towards defining the technical and financial terms for a jointly acceptable solution: we are also agreed that certain aspects of all the proposals need further improvement and that we should not be justified at this stage in narrowing the field for further negotiations to any one group of the three.
We have therefore established jointly-agreed guidelines for the use of the 305W groups, who are being invited in the light of this further guidance to supplement their earlier proposals or, should any of them prefer to do so, to combine for the presentation of fresh proposals.
We are confident that this final stage of talks will reach a successful conclusion leading rapidly to the choice of a private group to carry out further studies required for final assessment of the project and, given favourable results, to arrange for the Tunnel to be constructed.