Eurotunnel

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

No, the legal advice was not ignored. As I said earlier, the legal advice we were given was in line with the expedited form of contract competition that we entered into.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, this £33 million to Eurotunnel is nothing more than hush money to shut it up and to avoid the disclosure of something like 1,500 pages of probable rubbish that demonstrates just how bad the procurement process has been. Can the Minister explain how Eurotunnel can possibly spend £33 million in four weeks to improve the movement of medicines across the channel when there is no evidence that there will be a shortage of capacity on any of the ferries or the Channel Tunnel? There will probably be a reduction in demand because of business going down. Surely what the Government need to have arranged in Calais is an enormous car park, with many more people checking the goods going backwards and forwards: it has nothing to do with the capacity on the ferries.

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, this is all about guaranteeing capacity. As I said before, there are measures to improve security and traffic flow at the border, benefiting both passengers and businesses. This will include improved access to the UK tunnel. This will happen whether there is no deal or we get a deal. So the money will be well spent and this will go on for longer than the next four weeks.