Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 5 Rhagfyr 1973.
At this late hour I shall not attempt to make the speech which I had prepared for the occasion. I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden). It looks as though we are probably to get a Channel tunnel by some terms or another. Those hon. Members who have argued against it—I hope cogently—must try to concentrate their efforts on improving the Bill.
I do not believe that the Department has considered how it will contain the ferry terminal at Cheriton within the 250 acres, or whatever total it was. Such a vast interchange station is bound to attract warehousing, hotels, amusements and every conceivable kind of development, which must be exceedingly unwelcome in that part of Kent and will serve to perpetuate the present traffic pattern, which is grossly distorted and which this project presented a marvellous opportunity to change.
Secondly, at the start of his remarks the Under-Secretary said some encouraging things about compensation. I hope he will follow these up. My constituents, who will be so affected by the line when it breaks surface near South Croydon and ploughs its way through a densely built-up residential area, are desperately worried about this. They have been in this state of mind since the "Panorama" programme in June, nearly six months ago. When I raised the point earlier on, I was told by my hon. Friend that until this House at least gave its general assent to the project it was quite idle, and indeed would be improper, for British Rail to pursue the subject of compensation.
The House has now done all that, although I believe that there is a British Rail Bill to come. But my constituents have already been waiting nearly six months. They have seen the value of their houses diminish during this time, and in the ordinary course of events they could expect to wait many months more before notices to treat were served. I hope that the Minister will ensure that that period is shortened as much as possible.
The best solution would be to return to my favourite theme of having those two or three miles of rail, from South Croydon on, still underground. This is technically feasible, and it would probably be cheaper than buying out my unfortunate constituents who are on the top.
In the last debate that we had on this subject, I raised with my right hon. Friend, not for the first time, what I took to be the technical nonsense of believing that we could drive high-speed trains at speeds of up to 150 mph through long tunnels. In answering me, he made a remarkable admission:
The answer is that there will be a 100 mph maximum speed limit in the tunnel."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th November 1973; Vol. 863, c. 1239.]
I welcome that very much, but it is a different figure from the one which has been commonly and widely quoted in all the earlier documentation.
If there is now to be such a limit, the economic forecasts of the revenue from the tunnel and the frequency of the trains and so on must be wholly revised, and revised downwards. This lends fuel to the arguments of those of us who think that the returns from the tunnel have been grossly overestimated already.
I leave my right hon. Friend with that thought. He should check those figures again, because if the original ones are wrong many of us will want to do a lot more probing in Committee about some of the other figures as well. I hope that he will be able to reassure me about those three points.