High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report stage: House of Lords
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

One of the problems with this whole Committee today is that there are only four or five of us here who know exactly what happened, what exactly the atmosphere was and how we dealt with particular circumstances. This was certainly one which we spent a lot of time on. It might help take some of the heat out of this question if people actually read through the verbatim report of that day, which I am sure is available. It is just an idea, but I feel as though we are being accused of doing down—

[Lord Hunt of Wirral]

No.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

There is the suggestion that we should have come up with a solution. But we came up with the only practical solution at that stage and did not rule out there being another practical solution. When it comes to the tenor of the conversation, I am sure other members of the committee will agree with me when I say people should not be too harsh. It happened on one or two occasions earlier in this meeting today and I decided not to talk about it, but I think we were all really striving to deal with this, and I am sure the people from Park Village East realised that. I just wanted to make that point.