Speeches by Aquarone.

“These are commissioning things, not construction things.”

“Before we get back to building stuff and moving earth, you mentioned, Mark, the certification and documentation thing. Is that about the future systems, or stuff that is affecting operations right now? In other words, are there any risks—health and safety risks, failure risks—to the project as it stands, because that p…”

“Aside from the potential for the reset to make it happen more quickly and more cost-effectively, you have described stopping lawyers arguing and getting on with agreeing things—that is clearly a material improvement. Are there any benefits in terms of the certainty of the scheduling of works that you think this reset w…”

“We are talking about stuff getting built. What is going to get built by the end of this year?”

“I accept that. Thank you.”

“We understand that. We are not here to scrutinise you for decisions that were made prior to your tenure or even in the past; we have plenty to scrutinise and discuss here. But I am going to quote one of the pieces of evidence we have heard: “Nothing is cheaper than freezing the design and building against a stable scop…”

“No, we did not.”

“Lord Hendy, I do not want to underestimate the importance of what you just described: the visible impact of things rising out of the ground when the decision was taken to proceed rather than to cancel the whole project. That is the decision that has been taken and it is important that the public can see and have pride …”

“Mark, what are the biggest risks? Are skills shortages potentially going to drive a train through your plans?”

“The stuff that Scott has just asked you is probably the single most important decision to be made in the last two years. I put it to you gently that every review of this project has cited scope change, particularly due to politicians meddling with the project, as one of the single biggest impacts on cost. Are you not i…”

“That was going to be my next question. So Mark asked the Secretary of State to ask him to look at what the impact would be of removing the highest peak of the high-speed element of this.”

“That is fair enough. Sorry, Dean, do come in if you want to.”

“So—let me be really clear—this is not political meddling in the scope. You welcome this, and you think it is a sensible, achievable thing to do.”

“Lord Hendy, forgive me for coming back to you. I am not needling you for any particular reason other than to come back on your previous explanation, because that still does not discharge the claim that the most reliable thing to do is to stick to the design of the entire project as it is—that is the lowest-risk way for…”

“And I feel as though the arguments for that decision make sense. I am sure the arguments for previous scope changes were not done on the basis of delusion, and were done with the right intention—or were they?”

“This year?”

“Can you repeat that, please?”

“One level up from the leaseholder is the housing association. In my North Norfolk constituency, they took vast swathes of estate from councils and they are pretty much designed and laid out in the same way as they were when they were council house estates. It is even more complex than the typical town street, where at …”

“Just to be an extra thorn in that side—I appreciate your commitment to do that—we do not have lamp posts in most of these places, so access to cheap charging is limited, as you know, and the undertaking that goes from having a parking free-for-all, which is already far from ideal, to necessarily allocated parking will …”

“But this is specifically about eVED and the impact on uptake. Surely, you would not be doing this were it not for the revenue requirement. You could do this two years later. You could admirably advertise that it is coming two years in advance, but still do it two years later. It could still be the right tax at the wron…”