Westminster Matters

Central Railway's plan for a 672 km freight railway line between Liverpool and Lille, via Merstham and a tunnel under the north Downs, appears to have hit the buffers. Hopefully.

Central Railway had it's original proposals turned down flat in 1996 by Parliament. It then decided to promote the scheme for a second time trying to get Labour government support. The Government seeing a potentially unpopular decision, body swerved on it's own consideration of the scheme and asked the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) to examine the proposal. The SRA recently sent it's report to the Secretary of State, Stephen Byers, he who has had a slight PR challenge recently.

Now the SRA have made their own contribution to railway communication cock ups. In response to an enquiry from a local paper in Buckinghamshire, another area that would be adversely affected by this scheme, a press officer at the SRA inadvertently spilt the beans on the SRA's view of the scheme. He said it could not recommend the scheme to the government, citing fundamental issues needing to be addressed. The SRA believed more information was needed on freight schedules, terminal designs, and how the line would operate with the cross-channel link. Then, whoops, the SRA rang back to say this was not meant to be public and withdrew their statement. Too late, the cat was out of the bag.

The objections named by the SRA are among the many voiced in Parliament and by me, there is no other project to which the statement could obviously apply.

It would be premature of us to pop corks, it is certainly not beyond the realms of Mr Byers' infamous spin doctors to “edit” or “adjust” the SRA statement to achieve a better fit with policy that ended up backing Central Railway. But surely he has enough difficulties with the railways without adding to them.

If Central Railway has finally hit the buffers, it's not enough. This company and project has to be put out of it's misery permanently. Opponents of the scheme will not have won if the company is left in a position to return with yet another ill prepared proposal in a couple of year's time. The company has caused enormous blight and uncertainty for thousands of property owners. It has unnecessarily preoccupied scores of Local Authority officials and other concerned specialists on the basis of a scheme that has never presented evidence of detailed preparation and financing.

We must learn from this I will press for a framework of standards to ensure proposals such as Central Railway have real credibility before they blight tens of thousands of people's lives.