London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, I can boast no sporting achievement whatever but I have an interest in transport. I want to see the transport arrangements for the Games work and work successfully. One of the bravest decisions that Ministers made some time ago was not to try to include Crossrail as that would have been a disaster. I believe they have achieved some excellent arrangements without Crossrail. Whether the construction of Crossrail takes place can be debated elsewhere, but the arrangements are very good and I congratulate them. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, not only could the phrase ““gold plating”” be illegal but there are one or two matters in the Bill that are, shall we say, gold-plated. I would like to cover those briefly, although not in any particular order. I was fascinated by the Olympic transport plan. I recall seeing some of the publicity surrounding the bid and I have this vision of the main Olympic sites in Wimbledon, Wembley and Stratford being connected by vehicle-free roads with competitors, spectators and others being whisked along, led by police outriders and lots of blue flashing lights. That is a very sexy and attractive image for those in the car behind the police outriders, but for the rest of London it could cause a few problems, even in August. Clauses 10 to 15 will require scrutiny because what is required is unclear. It is quite clear that the whole of London and the south east will have to keep the streets clean otherwise somebody will get at them and no doubt charge them for doing the cleaning. I would be interested to hear from my noble friend what exactly is the Olympic route network, what is the transport plan and what exactly do they intend to do? They can block up roads and regulate traffic—they could probably do that at the moment if they chose the legislation carefully—but we have to consider residents, traders and businesses. I am sure the problem can be resolved but to me it is extremely unclear and could cause major irritation, which would be a great shame over the next six years. The powers that the Government are seeking are slightly draconian, but we shall see about that. I turn to the construction of the facilities, particularly at Stratford. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. These days, when large projects are constructed, there is usually a stated intention to bring in as many materials as possible by rail or water, if water is available and, of course, for the Olympics we have the Thames and the River Lea. I cannot see anywhere in the documentation any commitment to using rail freight for bringing in cement, aggregates and building materials. After all, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link has been built with an enormous amount of material brought in by rail, as was the Channel Tunnel—with which I was involved—and as is Terminal 5. How many lorries would have been required to bring in all that stuff, even to somewhere like Terminal 5, which is not in the centre of London? It is unimaginable. I was talking to someone today who may be bidding for the supply of cement. He said, ““We can bring the cement up the river in 10,000, 20,000 or 30,000 tonne barges””. Do you really want all that to be transferred to lorries or brought in from outside by lorry? My worry is that, to my knowledge—and I checked last week—the rail freight industry has not been consulted at all. If you want to bring things in by rail—I expect the same applies to the river—you have to have facilities. There are some facilities on the Stratford site. Very helpfully during the bid stage I had a discussion with the LDA, which said, ““We’re going to remove all those facilities at the start of the job because we need to construct a car park there—a single storey car park at ground level. The Queen will drive through it and she does not want to get cement dust on the Royal car””. I said, ““It’s possible to build multi-storey car parks these days and, anyway, you said that you were not having car parks on the site so why not leave the facility that could supply concrete by rail to help build the site?””. Someone grudgingly replied that they might do and I said that they might have to build another siding somewhere else to receive other materials. They said, ““There isn’t anywhere else””. I said, ““Well we could help look””, but they were not interested. I have heard that there is a certain disagreement between TfL and the Olympic Delivery Authority over this very issue. I think that it is absolutely fundamental. There should be some environmental consideration of the problems of construction. Otherwise, the communities around Stratford will get very angry. It is quite possible to solve but somebody needs to start planning now. I had a discussion with the LDA about rail freight going through Stratford during the Games because a large amount goes through Stratford. It will all go underneath in the depths. The LDA said, ““We will have to stop it for three months””, which effectively means that the ports of Felixstowe and Tilbury and other places may have to stop running rail freight containers for three months because the container might contain a bomb. I said that a passenger train could also carry a bomb and they replied that they had already decided. I said, ““Have you talked to the Department for Transport security department—TRANSEC—to the Metropolitan police or MI5?””. They said, ““Who is TRANSEC?””, which showed how good the research was. Eventually, I received letters saying that they were not going to stop trains after all. I hope that my noble friend will give me some comfort that that is still the case because it was not done in a very professional way. There is a nasty clause—Clause 17—which gives the Government powers to give directions to an independent rail regulator. We have had problems with this on Crossrail—rather worse problems actually which have been addressed and discussed, but it is not necessary for the Games. Everyone will work together to make sure that the passenger trains can get there and to make sure that the contractual rights that other operators have are not affected. If they are affected, they will have to be compensated. The Department for Transport is now in charge of letting passenger franchises. I suggest to my noble friend that he tries to set a timetable for the franchises which will be serving that part of east London and lines leading into that area. They should not start letting franchises around the time of the Olympic Games, because one finds that the senior management of the companies bidding put all their efforts into winning the next franchise and the quality of service can deteriorate pretty fast. My noble friend has six years to sort this out. It also applies to the Docklands Light Railway. Let us let them two or three years beforehand or leave it until afterwards so that everyone can concentrate on making these wonderful Games a real success. I wish them well.