The Rt Hon Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury

CROSSRAIL IS “A SIGNAL OF FAITH IN THE FUTURE”

A major construction project to build a high-speed railway line through London is a signal of faith in the future of the UK’s economy, the Prime Minister has said.

Speaking at a ceremony marking the start of construction work on Crossrail, Gordon Brown praised the partnership between the private and public sectors that is making the scheme possible.

The Crossrail project aims to provide a high-speed railway line through London, stretching from Berkshire in the west to Essex in the east.

The prime minister and Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, were among the guests at the ceremony on Friday 15 May 2009 at Canary Wharf, where the first Crossrail station will be constructed.

BAA, Canary Wharf Group and the Corporation of London will contribute hundreds of millions of pounds towards the project, while government and Transport for London have set up a £15.9bn funding package to cover the costs of Crossrail.

When it is completed in 2017, the railway will run for 118km, including 21.5km of new underground tunnels through central London, and is expected to bring 1.5 million people within 60 minutes commute of London’s major business districts.

The PM said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, mayor, this is a great day for Canary Wharf. It’s a great day for public transport. It’s a great day, as we’ve seen, for new engineering changing the way we do things. It’s a great day for London, and I think most of all it’s a great day for partnership.

“This is a partnership between people who over the years have been committed to a dream that some people thought would never happen, to a project that people thought might be cancelled at some point, to an endeavour that people thought may never in the end be delivered. And I want to pay tribute to all those who are involved in this unique partnership of the private and public sector, of different levels and tiers of government, of the financial community here in Canary Wharf and, of course, the whole business community through London.

“Let me thank George for his leadership. Canary Wharf here is employing, as he said, 93,000 people. JP Morgan have just started to build a huge construction that will employ thousands of people in the next few years. Plans are already there to double the numbers of people employed in Canary Wharf over the next few years, and George, by his leadership, is sending a very important signal that the future of Canary Wharf is established and is going to go from strength to strength in the years to come.

“I also want to thank all those associated with the work of Transport for London for what they are now doing — Peter Hendy and all those who are involved in Transport for London. I want to thank the mayor for his leadership and what he has done to establish the basis on which this project can now move ahead. And I want to thank all those associated with Crossrail. This is truly a partnership of public and private sector, but let me give a special thanks to the business community this morning. It is important to finance this project that the business community has been prepared to contribute, that it has had the vision to see that the future of this area and of London depends on this level of investment, and so I want to thank all companies represented here today and all those who are part of the financing of the project.

“I think we’re sending out two signals today. The first signal is that we are not going to allow barriers to come in the way of an important project moving forward. This was first conceived in the 1980s; it was postponed in the 1990s. This is going ahead now as a result of the collective decisions of large numbers of people who were involved in this, and we are not going to fail to invest in the future because of the economic difficulties that we face.

“But I think it’s an even more important signal than that. This is our signal of faith in the future: the biggest infrastructure project in the country starting now: 14,000 people to be employed in the construction phase; a project that is worth £16bn; a project that will open up London and put 1.5 million more people within an hour of the centre of the city; a project that will link business as well as link people together; a project that combines with the work that is being done with the Thameslink, with the East London line, with the extension of the Docklands Railway, with the improvements in the tube and the overland railway; a project that is a signal of our confidence and our faith in the future; our faith in London as a financial centre; our faith in regeneration, creating jobs in this area and throughout the whole of London and this whole region; a faith that Britain is moving forward with investments about future jobs and about future opportunities for our economy; and faith in our integrated transport system that is linking the roads and the rails in a more environmentally friendly way for the future.

“If you don’t invest in the future, you have no future. Today we are sending a message that our faith in the future is such that today, in the midst of a downturn, we are starting the biggest infrastructure project in this country — one that will serve not just London but as a message to the whole of the world that we will invest through this downturn and we will emerge a stronger country as a result.”

Biography of the Rt Hon Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury

Mr Brown has also been a university and college lecturer and has written a number of books. His book on James Maxton is about the early Labour MPs and their struggles. Values, Visions and Voices is a study of the idealism and zeal of Labour's early thinkers. And The Real Divide, written with Robin Cook, is a study of poverty and inequality. More recently, a collection of his speeches has been published as Moving Britain Forward.