CNJ Comment - Railroading a high-speed line with stunning arrogance

Published: 22 April, 2010

ARE we living under a dictatorship?
Decades ago, the Tory peer, Lord Hailsham, described our first-past-the-post parliamentary system as an “elective dictatorship”.
This should have made high politicians and civil servants sensitive to any drafters of legislation or authors of ministerial proposals that they should take fully into account the rights of the British people to be properly consulted about government schemes, both in their early planning stages and later as they incrementally take shape.
To counter Lord Hailsham’s fears, it could be argued that the implementation of the Human Rights Act offered a firm defence wall against the strangling embrace of officialdom.
But this seems to have been ignored by the Department for Transport, that is if it were ever considered.
Nothing exemplifies better the deadweight of officialdom than the High Speed Two project planned to run through parts of Camden (see page 1).
Though the scheme was announced nearly two months ago by Lord Adonis, it was not until local councillors and Labour’s parliamentary candidate Frank Dobson began to poke around in the thicket of the sparse information released by the Department that the boundless arrogance of its civil servants began to emerge.
Going online, it became apparent that in expectation of claims for compensation caused by damage to property by the High Speed Two line, residents were told that they had until May 20 to register as possible claimants.
While Lord Adonis lined up the Press and TV studios to publicise the project, he, intentionally or not, forgot one thing – the people whose lives would be directly affected by the project… the people whose properties could be damaged by  the high speed line running under their homes in a 20-metre deep tunnel.
The extent of the Department’s and Lord Adonis’s arrogance takes the breath away.
It could have unintended consequences.
It could inspire residents to pursue a judicial review of the project on the failure of the Department to let them know what their intentions are by direct contact, by post, for instance, or by proper advertising.
It could equally inspire a groundswell of opposition in Primrose Hill that would shake Whitehall. 
In the 1970s transport experts wanted to run a motorway through Archway.
A storm broke out among local people, and the experts retreated defeated.
We hope a similar debacle awaits Lord Adonis and his team of experts.