Crossrail Bill

First, may I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for making available advance copies of the explanatory notes? I would like to take the opportunity to say how much we welcome the written statement of 14 July on the subject of publishing financial data in relation to Crossrail. He will be well aware that during all stages of the Bill's progress, I have been urging him to accept one of my well-worded amendments. It would have required the Government to publish an annual statement setting out that financial data. Although we are upset that he did not feel able to accept that amendment, we are pleased to see that the Bill will include such a provision. It is always good to see the Government adopting excellent ideas, and I thank him for his assurances in that statement on that part of the Crossrail project. This group of amendments will do some quite important things, in that it will do away with the previous clauses 23 and 24 and replace them with new clauses. Those clauses, which the Lords now seek to amend, were the subject of some lengthy discussions in Committee. They dealt with the so-called ““interim period””, which is the time between the granting of Royal Assent to the Bill, which I guess is not far off now, and the day on which passenger services commence on Crossrail. During that so-called ““interim period””, the Office of Rail Regulation was to have an ““overriding”” duty to exercise its access contract functions in such a way to facilitate the operation of Crossrail. The idea of an overriding duty was a principle that we were willing to accept—after all, it had a precedent in the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act of 1996. However, of great concern to us was the fact that the ““interim period”” was ill-defined and could be subject to unnecessary extension. Our fears were compounded when we saw the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill recently, which did indeed extend the interim period for High Speed 1 beyond the construction phase. We were concerned about the ““interim period”” being turned into an ““indefinite period””. The amendment will remove those clauses, and give us a definite time scale. The new clauses proposed by the Lords in the amendment will be welcomed by my party. The powers in question were merely reserve powers that the Government intended to use only if normal industry procedures were not possible. This time last year, the Government and Network Rail applied to the ORR for access rights for Crossrail on the existing network, and the ORR approved this access option on 14 April. With that agreement in place, there is no longer the need for Network Rail to be told when and where to enter into access agreements, and the operator of Crossrail will no longer have superior access rights to other operators, which is to be welcomed. I would like the Minister to clarify the purpose of the first amendment in the group, which inserts a new, but not overriding, objective into the remit of the ORR, namely the facilitation of the construction of Crossrail. We are often told that the amendments we table are unnecessary, but if the overriding need is taken away, I am not sure that this amendment is necessary. Perhaps the Minister could explain why he thinks it is. As for the London railway Act, open brackets close brackets, which he described so ably a few minutes ago, can he tell us exactly what might happen if the amendment were not enacted?