Orders of the Day — Channel Tunnel Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 5 Rhagfyr 1973.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Eric Ogden Mr Eric Ogden , Liverpool, West Derby 12:00, 5 Rhagfyr 1973

I have criticised the right hon. Gentleman, but I do not think I have ever been impolite to him. I have sometimes said, as an aside, that compliments from him were not always helpful.

I have three points to put to the right hon. Gentleman. The first concerns those who are to be employed on construction. I hope that he will seek the advice and help of other members of the Government, particularly the Secretary of State for Employment, to see whether some of those who work on the construction and all that it entails can be recruited in the regions. I do not want this project to be one involving large numbers of people having to move away permanently from regions of high unemployment, but there are in the regions young men of skill, including men with families, who could for perhaps two or three years, with accommodation available, come to the South-East and take part in the project, later returning to the regions with the skills they have learnt not only in tunnelling but in other construction works. I would not want this great project to provide opportunities only for those areas where high unemployment already exists. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take this point up and at least make it known in the regions that some of the work is available to them.

The second point concerns the control of expenditure. I do not think that the stockbroker belt of London is really in the Channel Tunnel construction area, although no doubt the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) will tell me that it extends down there. It is no secret that when there are Government money and Government contracts, somewhere or other control of expenditure on the project is not always as tight as we would wish. It is perhaps a slander and a myth to say that half the kitchens in the world are constructed with Polaris steel; it is also not true that the whole Bristol area has seats which should have been provided for Concorde. But that kind of thing is not unknown. The Channel Tunnel project will, in effect, be a Government contract, using the taxpayers' money, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to say more about cost control, purchasing and so on. It would be fair to the company and to the contractors to let it be known at once that Government Departments are going to flood the place with inspectors from time to time, and that the Government will be watching expenditure all the time so that there will be as little waste of public money as possible.

My third point concerns reports and information. Any company, authority or board puts out its annual report and progress reports. I hope that many people will be interested in the beginning of the construction and in the extent of the progress. But I do not think the right hon. Gentleman should leave it merely to hon. Members to get their information from outside the House. Nor should he leave it just to Questions or the occasional statement. I hope that he will find a way, perhaps annually or half-yearly, depending on progress, of telling the House how the project is going, enabling us to question him and perhaps to hold a debate from time to time. We are, after all, deeply involved in this project and it is right that the right hon. Gentleman should go out of his way to provide information to the House of Commons.

With these three points, which I do not think will provide the right hon. Gentleman with difficulty, I hope the Bill will go through, and I look forward to when he will be there to see the opening of the tunnel in his rôle then as shadow Transport Minister.