Clause 7
Crossrail Bill
10:00 am
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster, Conservative)
I fear that the reference to Martini powers dates my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon and me. I am sure that our youthful Whip, our hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth, will not remember such things from the 1970s, although they were perhaps a precursor to today’s binge-drinking problem.
I support all that my hon. Friends the Members for Wimbledon, for Northampton, South and for Ilford, North have said. As I said earlier, the potential for blight within the whole project is sufficient to make unacceptable a compulsory purchase power as untrammelled as the Minister would like. Even our amendment limiting the land to 50 m beyond the outer limits of deviation would have a major effect in London, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South rightly pointed out. One of the difficulties of maintaining green spaces in London—some of which may be run by local authorities, some of which may be common land—is to prevent the residential population rising up in arms if such land is used even for the purposes of the 50 m limit, let alone for the untrammelled limit that the Minister would have us put in place.
I worry that in central London even 50 m is an incredibly large distance. It potentially brings tens of thousands more people within the scope of Crossrail’s inevitable blight. An untrammelled power would certainly send the wrong signals, not least given the sense from the business and residential communities that this is an important infrastructure project. Even those people who it will directly affect recognise its general national importance, but that good will could be undermined by the Minister’s untrammelled power of potential compulsory purchase. I accept that it is unlikely to be exercised in a great many cases, but the amendment is a sensible suggestion which would pare back the worst aspects of the power.