Woolwich Crossrail- What's the hold-up?

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that potential bureaucratic problems were putting the Woolwich Crossrail station project at risk. The story said construction must begin within the next six days if the station is to be ready in time to connect with the rest of the network. However, "officials from the Department for Transport and Transport for London are yet to sign off on the project ".

Under the terms of an agreement with Berkeley homes, they will fund the £100m cost of creating the shell of the station, with Greenwich Council funding its fitting-out. It is not clear from this story where exactly the problem is, but the Department for Transport was quoted as saying "Progress continues to be made, with final resolution of the issues expected shortly,”

At Wednesday night's Council meeting I asked Councillor Peter Brooks, Deputy Leader of the Council, if he could shed any light on the situation, and what part we were playing in resolving it. He replied that in the absence of Council Leader Chris Roberts, he was unable to give an answer, but would have officers write to me. I have just received their response:

"It would appear that the reported story concerns anxieties to address some of the detailed agreements between Crossrail, TfL and the constructors in time to hit the construction programme. The Council has been in close touch with all parties, who believe that these details are in the process of being resolved, and this is expected shortly."

Not hugely revealing, and there is still no hint of the exact nature of the obstacle. I am told I will get a fuller report "early next week", but that, according to the reports, is the deadline for agreement to be reached. Given the importance to the Borough of getting the station built, I certainly hope the Council is doing all it can to help reach a deal, but if so, they're not saying a great deal at the moment.

How to resign from Parliament...

There have been a spate of resignations at Westminster this week - Alan Johnson, Andy Coulson, Brian Cowen... and Gerry Adams. Or not, in the latter case. Newsnight's political editor Michael Crick has a fascinating blogpost about the Sinn Fein leader, who on Friday informed the Speaker's office at the House of Commons that he is resigning his seat in order to stand for the Irish Parliament.

The usual method for MPs to resign, given there is no formal mechanism, is for them to "Take the Chiltern Hundreds" - that is, apply for and be appointed to an "office of profit under the Crown", which disqualifies them from the Commons, thereby vacating their seat (the full details of the convention are covered in this House of Commons factsheet). But as Crick notes, a staunch republican such as Adams, who has not taken his seat in Parliament because he refuses to swear an oath of allegiance to The Queen, is hardly likely to accept an office under the Crown. Hence, according to the Parliamentary authorities, he is still an MP, whether he likes it or not.

But fear not - I have a solution. The two "offices of profit" commonly used are the conventional route, but they are not the only ones. Disqualification is governed by the House of Commons Disqualifications Act 1975, which contains a lengthy schedule (updated last year) of other offices which also disqualify their holders from being an MP, including judges and serving members of the Armed Forces. For example, in 1981 Sir Thomas Williams ceased to be an MP when he was appointed a circuit judge.

No, I'm not suggesting Gerry Adams be made a judge - there are plenty more prosaic offices to choose from. Take a look at the list here. He might have had a problem if he'd wanted to stay as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, as many of the offices would disqualify him there too, but there are some which don't. But he has already resigned his Stormont seat, so this complication doesn't arise. He therefore has the pick of the full list. All he has to do is apply to the relevant UK Minister, and for them to appoint him. How about a Director of Northern Ireland Water Limited? After recent problems, I suspect there may be a few vacancies soon...

Greenwich Council destroys what the Blitz could not

Last night Greenwich Council gave approval for a housing development on the old Thames Water site in Plumstead. I am a member of the planning committee for the area, and was therefore involved in the decision. There were objections from neighbouring residents about the loss of light and privacy it would cause, the over-development of the site and other issues. These were properly considered by my colleagues and me, but on balance we felt they were not sufficient grounds for refusal.

My concern, however, was that the development involves demolishing a World War Two communal air raid shelter, which is shown circled on the plans below:

The planning department's response to objections about the demolition of this shelter was:

"Whilst it is not disputed that this structure has some historic value, this does not necessarily mean that it is worthy of listing in order to preserve it and protect it from demolition."

It then mentions that an archaeological survey will be carried out prior to work starting on site.

This, and the architect's attitude when we questioned him, concerned me. They seemed to suggest that if a structure is not listed, it has no value. This is certainly not the case, and new national planning guidance (PPS5) provides greater scope for planning authorities to consider local historic value in deciding applications, and to require applicants to demonstrate clearly they have considered alternative uses for heritage assets on a development site. I certainly wasn't convinced this had been done - the shelter was essentially seen as an obstacle to be removed. For that reason I voted to reject the application, but was outvoted on the committee.

If you compare the plan above to the proposed (and now approved) site plan of the development, you can perhaps see why I was so frustrated:

If you overlay the two plans, you can see that the steps down to the shelter on the south side are barely (if at all) covered by the building's footprint. I simply cannot see why, with a bit of imagination, the shelter could not be retained in situ as part of the development, allowing the site to be regenerated whilst preserving an important part of its history for future generations. It is not that it couldn't be done, but that it hasn't been deemed worthwhile. So instead, it will be demolished. This seems to me unnecessary and unjustified vandalism.

Particularly now, with the 70th anniversary of the Blitz, we should see the value of the human story of that period in our history. Surveying and recording the site is one thing, but if it is possible actually to preserve a direct reminder of what Londoners endured at that time, we should do so. I will not be leaving this matter to rest here, and (free from the legal restrictions on discussing applications with developers before the committee decision) will be making the case to them for preserving this small part of our local heritage.

(NB: Links to the full plans and drawings can be found here)

The flaw in Ed Miliband's "Concede and Move On" strategy

This week Ed Miliband has been attempting a classic and necessary opposition strategy- "Concede and move on". His speech to the Fabian Society yesterday was heavily briefed as being the moment when he would criticise the previous Labour government and distance himself from its mistakes.

However, as the BBC's Nick Robinson noted, the text he delivered fell rather short of this. He conceded more should have been done to regulate the banks, and that Gordon Brown had been slow to acknowledge that cuts would be necessary. But at the heart of his speech was a fundamental argument:

"The implication of much of what the Conservative-led government say is that it was high levels of public borrowing that caused the crisis. That is just not true."

He may be correct that high government borrowing didn't cause the crisis, but that is not the main criticism of the last government's economic policy. The charge is that years of unsustainable borrowing gave us a structural deficit which meant we were spectacularly badly prepared when the economic crisis hit. His speech doesn't address that. Instead, having set up and knocked down an argument that no-one is seriously making, he turns it on its head to make an assertion of his own:

"In fact, it was the crisis that caused high levels of public borrowing."

This is demonstrably untrue. He claims that borrowing was at "manageable levels" until the crisis, when the bailout of the banks pushed it up. There was, in other words, nothing wrong with maxing out the national credit card during years of growth and hoping for the best. It could have been Gordon Brown speaking. In Robinson's words, "Ed Miliband believes that his old mentor got his language, but not his fiscal policy, wrong".

The Labour leader continued this line in his interview on the Andrew Marr show this morning, where his intransigence was more starkly illustrated from the start:

Marr: Can I ask you about Labour spending?... Do you accept that before the crisis happened, actually Labour was spending too much?

Miliband: No I don't.

You cannot be clearer than that. It may be his firm belief, and he may think he can win the argument with the public. But he cannot expect to gain the benefits of a "concede and move on" strategy on the economy unless he is prepared to concede more than just presentational errors.

What does Ed Stand for?

Ed Miliband was today fielding questions on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show, and it's fair to say it wasn't a wholly comfortable performance. He faced embarrassment when asked about his perceived slow start to the job, the fact the public think he "shafted" his brother in the Leadership contest, and some aspects of his domestic arrangements. But what I thought was the weakest part of the interview was his answer to the very last question (Listen on i-Player and scroll to 55 minutes in) :

Vine: What do you stand for?

Miliband: Well, l-let me just say what I think are the most important issues for us in 2011 going forward. It’s how we build a good economy, where we have the growth and jobs of the future, and that’s my critique of the government, going too far and too fast. It’s how we guarantee a future for our young people, because that is so important that the next generation has not just a hope but an expectation they can do better than the last. And also, frankly, and this does perhaps go to some of the questions, how we do politics differently. Y’see, I’ve always said that wisdom doesn’t just reside in one political party, I want the Labour party to reach out to people who we lost, to other parties where people perhaps feel they were Liberal Democrats and they want to come over to us, and I think we’ve got to do politics differently in this country, so we actually speak to people’s concerns.

It was a particularly weak response, which didn't address the point of the question - what do you stand for? What are your beliefs? Even Gordon Brown had his "moral compass". What his successor cobbled together was a series of vague sentiments which can perhaps be summarised as "I'm against the cuts, I want a better future for our children [who doesn't?], and I want Lib Dems to defect to us". In fact, it would have been better if he'd just said that.

His new press team should be worried that after 100 days as Leader there wasn't a simple and convincing summary of his beliefs which he could recite in answer to a pretty basic question. It was, to me, reminiscent of a classic scene in the West Wing, when White House press secretary CJ Cregg receives the transcript of an interview with the opposing Presidential candidate:

C.J. Cregg: He got the question.
Toby Ziegler: Who?
C.J. Cregg: The Majority Leader.
Toby Ziegler: When?
C.J. Cregg: Last night. Local news, Cleveland, Ohio - oh me-o, oh my-o, oh Cleveland, Ohio! He got the question.
Bonnie: What's the question?
Toby Ziegler: "Why do you want to be president?"
Bonnie: And what did he say?
C.J. Cregg: [reading from a transcript of the interview] "The reason I would run, were I to run, is I have a great belief in this country as a country and in this people as a people that go into making this country a nation with the greatest natural resources and population of people, educated people."
C.J. Cregg: [makes a shotgun motion with her arms] Chk-chk, boom!