This week’s decision that the fixed link between Britain and France should be a rail-only one — with the Prime Minister reportedly pressured into this by the French, while she had favoured road — provides a poor picture of how a major planning issue should be tackled.
The length of time taken for public inquiries (shades of Stansted) is thought to have been the principal factor why one is not to be staged for the Chunnel, but such inquiries, despite all their attendant delay and propensity to be highjacked by minor pressure groups, should not be allowed to die in this way. Firing planning decisions from the hip can be a risky business — Michael Heseltine’s intervention with a Special Development Order at Vauxhall is just one example of where want of planning examination was followed by all sorts of problems.
The procedural treatment the Chunnel proposals are to have in Parliament, the Hybrid Bill, allowing representations and the hearing of witnesses, not open for Bills going along the normal route, is claimed to give opponents an opportunity for protest: but is this enough? And with the Prime Minister and President Mitterrand so committed to the project — a commitment to be reinforced by a formal treaty between the two countries — surely the whips will be on to make sure the Bill is passed expeditiously. A few Kent and Kentish rebel MPs will not stop it.
The groups and interests which might appear at a public inquiry — Kent County Council, the affected district councils and parishes, the local residents and larger landowners, as well as the threatened ferry operators — look genuine cases for a full-scale public hearing with independent assessment, aside from the generalist environmental lobby which can be expected for all such occasions.
The Chunnel is painted as a triumph for private enterprise, creating a public facility at no cost to the public purse but, while Mrs Thatcher says there will be no Government funds for the project, plenty of calls are certain to be made for public spending in related areas. The job creation, no matter how short-term, can look attractive: it is put at about 40,000 in both countries. For those jobs, though, British Rail will have to spend £185m on infrastructure improvements alone (then there will be rolling stock), the M25, M20, A2, A20 and A23 will need further work and, less measurable, there will be the environmental impact, land lost in the inevitable despoliation at the Kent terminal, and the jobs lost in ferry services not replaced by the tunnel. At least the French are providing £300m in aid to alleviate foreseen hardships at their end of the Chunnel.
All that to shave a little off the time taken for the Channel crossing — surely one of Britain’s least pressing infrastructural needs and a gain which Customs & Excise requirements may yet dissipate. It seems unlikely that the time-saving alone can hope to increase to any material extent this country’s trade and economic prospects.
The Government’s offer of a White Paper and some public access to Parliamentary procedure is not enough; the huge sum of public and private sector investment, the environmental impact and even the very concept itself should all demand to be more carefully discussed, without the eye so obviously kept on election dates in both countries. If the private sector was, apparently clearly, keen to fund all the options for a fixed link, not just the rail scheme chosen, the political decision to go for the cheapest method seems to have rejected what, with greater technical innovation, might have provided better community benefits.
With all the ECC-inspired enthusiasm behind the fixed link, it is useful to remember that the EEC Council last year adopted a directive requiring environmental impact assessments for major projects. The Government has to accept and implement the directive by July 1988 — a year after the work is due to start on the Chunnel.
