Schedule 7
Crossrail Bill
1:00 pm
Tom Harris (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Glasgow South, Labour)
This part of the Bill relates to the process by which the Secretary of State will specify which local authorities have agreed to become qualifying authorities under the Bill. A qualifying authority will be a local planning authority from which the Crossrail-nominated undertaker will seek various consents, and which has given undertakings to the Secretary of State on the handling of planning matters under the schedule. That is aimed to ensure that the process of obtaining consents does not unduly hinder the construction of Crossrail.
The hon. Gentleman’s amendments would require the Secretary of State to specify not only which local authorities have agreed to be qualifying authorities but all the bodies and individuals who might be affected by a specification order. If “relevant bodies or persons” in amendment No. 33 simply means those who are statutory consultees, I do not see the point of the amendment, as those consultees are already specified under part 4 of the schedule.
The amendment would also place a potentially large burden on the Secretary of State and could lead to lengthy argument about whether the list of affected parties is accurate. Even if such a list could be produced, I am genuinely unclear about what criteria the hon. Gentleman suggests we should use to assess relevance. It is unclear what the benefits of the provision would be, so I invite him to withdraw the amendment.