Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Grand Committee

Working through these various amendments, the underlying concerns are essentially covered, in many ways, or are not necessarily appropriate to the Bill and to the functions as they are envisaged. I hope that gives some comfort to your Lordships and that the noble Lord will feel comfortable withdrawing the amendment.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I was engaged on the Floor of the House for the first part of the Committee’s sitting, taking part in the debate on—

[Lord Bradshaw]

Manufacturing.

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[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Yes, manufacturing, so I may have missed this. The trouble as one gets older is that one forgets things, the most recent things in particular. As I confessed at Second Reading, I am not an expert on road legislation. I make that absolutely clear. I am a fairly regular road user, but that is about as far as it goes. None the less, I have tried to understand the structure of what is going to be set up here. I made my view clear at Second Reading that I thought this arm’s-length body would be an improvement on the Highways Agency, for reasons which I briefly mentioned and which my noble friend, the Minister, has spelt out on several occasions.

However, I am not entirely clear about the relationship between the Secretary of State and the highways company. I am told that there has been no mention, during any of the debates, of what is described in the document published last month by the department, Transforming our Strategic Roads—A Summary. On page 9, there is a very interesting chart which sets out the pattern of what is intended. It refers to a framework document which:

“Defines agreed roles, responsibilities, governance and working arrangements between the SHC and government”.

I listened very carefully to what my noble friend the Minister said in her reply to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I do not think that she mentioned the framework document. Is this something that has been published, or will be published? What form will it take? What statutory authority will it have? I understand completely the articles of association. Indeed, every limited liability company has articles of association; it also has a memorandum of association, which is normally the document where you set out the objectives of what the company is being set up for.

I quite understand that in this case the objectives are going to be transferred by the Secretary of State to the company by various transfer instruments and, probably, secondary legislation. But what is the framework document? It plays quite an important part in the chart here, and I am not entirely clear how it is going to be produced, what status it will have and what parliamentary accountability there will be for it. I would be most grateful if my noble friend could enlighten me. I hope she will forgive me if it is pure ignorance and everybody else knows but I do not, but if she would be kind enough to explain it to the Committee, I would be extremely grateful.

[Baroness Kramer]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for that addition to the discussion. What was published last month is the outline for the framework document. The document itself is not yet a finished article but the framework is here, which gives some clarity on exactly how it will function. Looking at it, I think it will be impossible to have a final framework document until we have a final Bill, since what it does is capture the relationship that the Bill will establish once it is an Act.

The outline goes a long way to making that clear. It says that the framework document will state in broad terms the aims and objectives that the Secretary of State will expect the SHC to achieve. It will set out the SHC’s legal status and administrative classification. It will list its responsibilities and accountabilities, such as,

“enshrining Managing Public Money and other relevant government guidance”.

It will list the responsibilities for senior roles in the company. It will provide for business planning, performance and monitoring, budgeting procedures, annual reports, and accounts. I could go on but it might be easier to provide any of your Lordships who did not pick this up at one of the earlier gatherings with a copy of the document itself. It will go a long way to clarifying exactly how all the pieces fall together. The document that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has in his hand is meant to try to show how the different pieces and documents all relate to each other. I fully accept that it takes more than a moment to sit down and work out how the various interrelationships work.

However, given that it is only the noble Lord who has raised this issue now, I would say that there is some comfort that the bits do actually fit together, which of course is essential for the successful functioning of the company.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. I will read very carefully what she has said in Hansard and perhaps try to get hold of the other documents she has mentioned, but it certainly would be very helpful if that document could be circulated. I do not know whether other Members of the Committee have seen it. I see heads being shaken so I am not sure that my noble friend is right when she says that, because nobody else has raised the point, everybody else is completely happy. If that is so, it would be a remarkable example of unanimity but, honestly, I do not think that is so. I think we will need to follow this up.

My noble friend says that this will be implemented after the Bill becomes law; that is, after it has been given Royal Assent and is an Act, in which case, of course, we cannot amend it, except by new legislation. What I need to get clear in my mind is the relationship of these various documents, which are obviously absolutely key to the working of the highways company.

[Baroness Kramer]

If your Lordships want to look at the document more immediately, it is attached to the Bill on the DfT website. That would be an immediate way to get hold of the document, if we cannot get a printed version of it into your hands at the moment.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have just retired as president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. At an annual general meeting about three years ago, when we dealt with substantial amendments to our rules, I have to tell you that the officer of the committee who was responsible for preparing the documents got into the most terrible trouble when it was said, “Oh, yes, they are all on the web, and everyone must look at it there”.

The fact of the matter is that one does not look for things there. When the Bill is going through the House, one expects to have the documents available in the Printed Paper Office. There was a reference to a document in the letter that my noble friend wrote to me following Second Reading, and I asked the Library to look it up and print it out. I now have that, which is perfectly acceptable—I get very good service from the Library. However, if I may say so with the greatest respect to my noble friend, for the Minister to say that we all ought to have it because it is on the website is not an answer. I regularly use my computer for many hours each day and use the internet and so on, but I really cannot be expected to search through the Department for Transport’s website in case there is another document that I have not come across.

[Baroness Kramer]

Let me just make a final response to that. There was a WMS when the documents were published, so I hope that some people have had the opportunity to find it.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

There was what?

[Baroness Kramer]

There was a Written Ministerial Statement when the documents were published, so I hope that some people have found them through that route.

Let me just provide slightly more detail. We intend to share draft documents such as the framework document later in the autumn, so as the Bill progresses we will be publishing them in draft form. The point that I was making is that you cannot go to final form until you know absolutely everything. It would be presumptuous for us to go to final form before the Bill had been concluded.

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Debate on whether Clause 2 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I did not give notice of my intention to oppose the question that Clause 2 stand part of the Bill because I had not heard all this debate before.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Simon) (Lab)]

I am putting the question.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I am sorry if I was out of order. The point has been made that the Bill incorporates, amends and transfers a great deal of earlier statutes. At some stage, this legislation might be consolidated. I made a study a year or two ago of how this could be done. I had a long—not frustrating, because I learnt a lot—meeting with the chairman of the consolidation committee, a High Court judge. It all depends on whether the department concerned is prepared to put up the cost.

We have occasional consolidation Bills. I was particularly concerned about the consolidation of the Gas and Electricity Acts, which have now become hideously complicated because of the constant amendment of earlier legislation. It was simply said: “Well, if the department in charge of those Acts is prepared to pay for it, the consolidation committee can make sure that the consolidated document is produced”. Is there any chance that the Department for Transport would contemplate this on a matter that obviously affects very large numbers of people over the whole of the administration of this Act? Might it in future contemplate agreeing to pay for consolidation?

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[Baroness Kramer]

I am very happy to attempt to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on this point. To try to work out whether we could do a consolidation Act is above my pay grade. However, what he says brings to mind two issues. First, there is the importance of putting the detail in the licence. Having spent part of my life in business, I know that having a clear operating document with all the essentials in it is a terribly effective way to ensure that you are doing what you need to do. When I look at the level of detail in the draft licence—for example, on the relationship between local authorities and devolved Administrations and the need to take account of local needs, priorities and plans in planning operations and maintenance, et cetera—the licence is a very important document in that whole process. The comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, underscore the importance of using that document rather than necessarily finding every opportunity to put items in the Bill.

In this case it is essential that we get on with this. It is important that we start to get certainty around the future of investment in infrastructure so that project after project can begin to take place without the stop-start pattern that we have all described. Therefore, while there may be goals for overarching legislation such as consolidation, I hope very much that we will not attempt to interrupt the progress of the Bill and the benefits that it offers. There may be opportunities for such efficiencies in the future, but this is something that can begin to impact what happens on the ground early next year, if we carry it through to its completion.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I entirely accept my noble friend’s explanation on this. It obviously very much depends on the licence, and we shall have to see how it comes out in the end. On that basis, I am most grateful for what she has said.

Clause 2 agreed.

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[Lord Whitty]

We now come on to the strategy and, by implication, the money. The Government have commendably said that they want a steady strategy that is going to last some time, with an allocation of resources against it. That in itself is highly desirable, but it is not so dramatically different from the various road programmes that have existed in the past and have been subject to sudden change, as the Minister said, mainly because of changes to financial arrangements but also because of planning delays and technical problems with the projects when they go beyond the initial feasibility study.

The national infrastructure plan, which has a lot of roads in it, broken down on a regional basis, is presumably going to be built on and represented as the strategic highways plan, and there will be a five-year programme of money attached to it. My Amendment 14 attempts to ensure that that five-year view is reflected in the Bill. The Government have made quite a lot of the five-year thing, but although I have not read every word of Schedule 3, I do not see it in the Bill. There are arguments as to whether five years is enough, given that it takes that long even to get anywhere near starting, but the five-year funding has been an important plank of the Government’s selling of this project, and I think that it should appear somewhere in the Bill.

My wording may not be quite right, but I think that it should be a rolling five-year programme, so that in year 3 you are still looking five years ahead. You would add to it, and you would add the financial commitment related to it at that point. My wording does not exactly say that, but that is what I am after. If the department can find better wording, that is so much the better. However, we should at least write into the Bill the embedding of a minimum five-year view and that it should be on a rolling basis and have money attached. Otherwise, a lot of the rationale for this whole exercise disappears. That is what Amendment 14 is about. The Government have made a start with the designation of projects within the national infrastructure programme and can turn that into a highways strategy, and the Chancellor has made the commitment for these five years.

The Government seem slightly naive in their confidence that the Treasury will never revisit this because it is now an arm’s-length company. The past 50 years have seen cuts to the money that has gone to private companies, to nationalised corporations and to local authorities. The fact that they are arm’s length from government has not stopped the Treasury deciding at particular points to change what it had previously—in effect—promised. So far nobody has managed to sue the Chancellor for that; I doubt whether it will be any different under this new arrangement. That may be a bit cynical. As the Minister said, it would be more embarrassing to do that, but my experience of Treasury Ministers and Treasury officials over the past few decades does not indicate that they are easily embarrassed. Indeed, interfering with other departments’ clear priorities is the way that the Treasury works, rightly or wrongly. Therefore, the benefits of having an allocation for five years can be exaggerated. Nevertheless, it is a desirable aim, and it is desirable that we know for those five years what projects are there and what stage they are at. Since it is a rolling programme, moving from feasibility study to planning, to precise engineering design, to the start of digging and through to actual completion of the road, it is desirable that it should appear in a five-year perspective. Before we finish the Bill, I hope that a form of words can be adopted that makes sure that that is reflected in the Act. If it provides a bit of embarrassment to future Treasury Ministers, so much the better, and so much easier will future Transport Ministers find their relations with the Treasury.

My Amendment 16 raises the broader issue of strategy. We have an infrastructure strategy but not a specific transport strategy. It needs to be made clear how the roads strategy, or highways strategy, fits in with the broader transport strategy—rail, ports and airports in particular. The whole logistical structure and the balance within it in terms of our economy, what pressure is put on the transport system and what the regional balance and stress points are, need to be reflected in all modes and, indeed, different corridors need to be judged on a multimodal basis. If they are not, simply having a sacrosanct—or near-sacrosanct—roads strategy will deal only with part of the problem. My Amendment 16 relates to putting the roads strategy into that broader context. I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, it is my impression that this road investment strategy, and the commitments made to it by the Government, is perhaps the aspect of this Bill that has been most welcomed by industry, commerce and, indeed, all those who depend on transport for their operation. I have just been rereading what the CBI said about this, and it attaches enormous importance to the stability that the roads investment strategy is intended to bring.

It will be a long time before those of us who lived through it forget what happened in 1997 when the Deputy Prime Minister at the time, the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, decided that roads were much less important than a lot of other things and there was a massive stop to almost the entire road investment at the time. That is the memory that I have and the impression that the noble Lord gave at the time, and that memory will take a long time to disperse. The Bill, particularly this clause and the policy that lies behind it, has been greeted with huge enthusiasm.

The Treasury has ultimate responsibility for managing the economy as a whole. I can speak as perhaps the only former Treasury Minister in the Room, having spent four years as Financial Secretary and then Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the 1970s. One is always aware that at the back of any policy there has to be Treasury approval. In the interests of the economy as a whole the Treasury has to be able to say to a department, “I’m very sorry, we can’t afford that”. Here, though, the combination of the strategic highways company, the roads investment strategy and the commitments that the coalition Government have given on this must to some extent make a Treasury Minister think extremely carefully about how far it would be right to interfere with this—that would be a major decision.

Of course, these things often happen when there is a change of Government. What industry is looking for here, as we heard in the debate in the Chamber today from a number of speakers, is common ground between the major parties so that there are not massive changes of policy on matters of this sort, which have such a devastating effect on manufacturing industry—which is what we were discussing then.

Whether one needs to have what the amendment suggests at least every five years I would regard as questionable; it seems to add an element of uncertainty that the Bill does not have. There is a five-year review but I am not quite sure why this particular condition would need to be put in. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I have enormous respect for his expertise in this field because he was a Minister in the Department for Transport, or whatever it was called at the time, but the advantage that has been gained by publishing this policy in this clause of the Bill is that it assures the commercial side of this country that there is now going to be far greater stability in the long term. I am delighted that there is such emphasis on the long-term strategy for infrastructure building so that we can get away from these five-year single-Parliament policy decisions, which might put it risk.

I want to see this aspect of the Bill going through as effectively and swiftly as possible because it is what the country, particularly its commercial elements, have been looking for for a long time. I am going to look at not just this amendment but a number of the others that have been tabled—I was going through them earlier today—to see whether they would interfere with that aspect by raising doubts or putting additional bureaucracy or obstacles in the way of getting the strategy fulfilled. That is what one will need to look at very carefully. At the moment, as far as I can see, most of the Bill achieves what is wanted. I express my doubt about whether Amendment 14 from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, would improve that; I suspect that it would add an additional obstacle and raise doubts that ought not to be there.

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[Baroness Kramer]

I do not want this point to go unchallenged. I say to the noble Lord that I think the industry has heard absolutely correctly, but nobody I know in the industry believes that a Parliament can bind every future Parliament from thereon out and totally remove its democratic right. It would be inappropriate to attempt to do that and, frankly, I do not think it could be done, so it is absolutely crucial that we recognise that the Secretary of State can make a variance. It is not the intention of this Government that they will vary the RIS that they put forward, but I do not see that they can completely bind a future Parliament 100%. That is why the mechanism in place is to set a very transparent course—one could say an obstacle course—for any change or variance, so that it in no way would be done lightly. Perhaps no Government would do it lightly but it would be done with consultation and engagement, and with various steps in place. Industry has widely recognised that that provides it with a very substantial degree of certainty—enough to have the kind of positive responses to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Perhaps I might add to that before the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, resumes. I have in front of me the British Chambers of Commerce brief. I want to read only one sentence from it. It says that,

“the transformation of the Highways Agency into a more flexible body, with five-year investment programmes”,

should offer,

“more certainty to business on key road projects”.

It is not expecting to have complete certainty and for this to be totally fixed over a period because it recognises the reality, as my noble friend has just said, that to some extent it has to reflect what is happening in the rest of the economy. What it welcomes is what it sees as the opportunity of much more certainty than we have had in the past.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, that is very realistic; nevertheless, the way that it has described the situation is more than is actually in the Bill. Some other form of words would give more certainty than the Bill does currently, as past changes show that there is a need for some protection. It may be that the obstacles—if that is how the Minister wants to describe the consultation—are one way of ensuring that it does not get easily changed. The other way is to put the strategy to Parliament and have to report to Parliament if you are going to change it. In some industries or sectors, that is done in certain respects. You have to provide a strategy and, if you change it, there is at least an argument in Parliament. These things change from time to time.

I am sorry to take up the Committee’s time, but I shook my head at the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, earlier and I need to explain. I became the Roads Minister in 1998. In 1997, the Government inherited a roads programme from quite a good 1996 White Paper of the previous Government, which listed projects but did not list money attached to them. Projects got added in as we approached the 1997 election, by both parties, for reasons I will not go into. We therefore had a programme with far too much in it at the tail-end, and which did not have the right amount of money attached to it. The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, announced that he thought his aim as Transport Secretary was to reduce the number of cars on the road, and he was therefore not going to build roads which simply increased traffic. I know this well because we announced the roads programme in 1998, about four days after I became the Minister, so I take no responsibility for the decisions but I do take responsibility for the presentation. The majority of things which had been in the previous paper were back in, and then there were one or two more and one or two fewer—but they were all costed. A lot of those costings proved to be utterly inaccurate, most of the timings proved to be most inaccurate and one of the projects was indeed the A303 past Stonehenge, and we know what happened to that. Certainty is not easy in this area. We need a bit more certainty than we have here.

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[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I am in great danger of running into the same brick wall of a government response as my noble friend Lord Whitty. It was an interesting response: “We are creating a new company; we are setting out a new strategy for roads; we have a five-year programme; and we are talking seriously about infrastructure. Please do not come to us with any suggestions of what considerations such infrastructure developments should take into account”.

My noble friend Lord Whitty tried to analyse the road investment strategy and what that might involve in terms of wider consideration. I will deal with the national networks policy statement, with exactly the same objective. I see no point in the Government arguing that they have got improved machinery but reined-in objectives. In circumstances where wider society is clear that what it wants from our infrastructure is greater integration and greater realisation of the relative impact of public expenditure in one area upon another, I do not see how the Minister can maintain that these things are too burdensome. It is not too burdensome to include in the Bill the possibility, some period further on, that there may be more than one company. It is not too burdensome to have a decade-forward look at certain aspects of the legislation.

With these amendments, we suggest the road investment strategy will need to take account of its impact on local road systems and will need to consider the links between other significant parts of the transport infrastructure, such as ports and airports. If we had not had the built-in five-year delay on the decision regarding an additional runway in the south-east, we would currently be discussing infrastructure in relation to aviation as well as roads. The Minister maintains that there cannot be a case for pressing additional obligations on the strategy. I do not accept that. I do not see why we should not ask, as Amendment 29 does, the Secretary of State to provide the strategic highways company with a survey on the condition of the local and strategic road networks. I do not see why we cannot envisage increased co-operation with Network Rail. I know we cannot flick a switch overnight and deal with such complex issues as if they are givens to immediately act on, but unless we have the objectives then the whole concept of the integration and improvement of infrastructure over a period of time disappears.

I listened very carefully to the Minister’s reply to my noble friend Lord Whitty. I understand what she is driving at, in that we cannot take everything on board at the same time. However, we are not suggesting an enormous increased cost as far as the road investment strategy is concerned; we are suggesting that it should have the perspective to understand what integration and development of the infrastructure is all about. That means that the Government should give serious consideration to this group of amendments, as well as to the previous group, introduced by my noble friend Lord Whitty, which seek to guarantee that our improved investment strategy for infrastructure will take in all the factors that wider society regards as being germane to transport improvement. I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I would like to put a question to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, about his amendment. I believe I am right in saying that local authorities already have a very effective system for regularly analysing the state of local roads, the investment that needs to be made to bring them up to standard and what it will cost, called the ALARM system. What is wrong with that? If they have that already, why write something more into the Bill? I merely ask the question. Maybe the noble Lord can answer when he winds up at the end of the debate, and perhaps my noble friend might like to comment on that in the course of her reply.

I understand, of course, that different parts of the road structure will have an impact on each other. I would have thought that would be covered by the duties of consulting that my noble friend referred to in relation to earlier amendments. This will be an integral part of the operation of the strategic highways company. There is already a very good system, as I understand it. One sees headlines in the newspapers every year about the state of local roads and what needs to be spent to bring them up to standard. If there is a headline word that has entered into the public consciousness, it is “potholes”.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, through these amendments, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and others seek to ensure that the impact of the road investment strategy on the various local road networks and other transport infrastructure is considered. This is an important argument, and I need to be clear that, through the licence, we are requiring the strategic highways company to have an asset management strategy. Understanding the condition of its assets is absolutely key to this.

The condition and performance of the local road network are, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, clearly outlined, matters for the local highway authority. Frankly, we would not wish to include in the Bill a requirement to survey the condition of local roads, because its focus is the strategic road network. We are not anxious to usurp authorities’ powers. I share the assessment of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, that the tasks are currently well carried out by local authorities, which, I suspect, would not want to surrender a lot of resources and have the task taken over by a centralised body.

That said, we want this new company to co-operate with its partner road networks. The route strategies, with which I think many of your Lordships will be familiar, are a key source of information in developing the road investment strategy. They provide local authorities and, by extension, local highway authorities with a mechanism to work with the new company and thus ensure that the impact on the local road networks of interventions on the strategic road network is considered. We think that that will be an extremely effective mechanism and it is well provided for in the legislation as it stands.

In addition, as part of the changes elsewhere in the Bill, the company will, as I have said before, become a traffic authority. That is new and means that it will be subject to the network management duty—a legal obligation on all local traffic authorities to ensure, among other things, that traffic flows smoothly from one jurisdiction to another. At present, the Highways Agency is not subject to this requirement, so this will be a new guarantee of co-operation.

I could start to list the kind of support that we are offering for local roads but, setting aside our significant financial contribution, I also want to make it clear that we are supporting efforts by local authorities to share knowledge and best practice under the highways maintenance efficiency programme, as well as encouraging co-operation and common procurement. There is therefore a gathering momentum to achieve much more co-operation and partnership working, which will continue under the new arrangements.

I talked earlier about aligning road and rail investment strategies, so I will not repeat that. Instead, I shall use this occasion to underscore how much we recognise that there is significant value in Network Rail and the new strategic highways company working together on the kinds of issues that your Lordships have listed. However, we do not think that you need a legislative mechanism to try to prescribe how those two companies should work together. We would find it extraordinary if they chose not to, and I doubt that the Secretary of State would permit them to ignore each other in that way.

It is entirely appropriate that the road investment strategy and the new company’s response to it will have due regard to the national network’s national policy statement—that is a mouthful. However, it would not be appropriate to create a formal link between what is a planning document and what is, in effect, a funding and investment plan. The two documents align but there is not a hierarchy between them.

On that basis, looking through the details of the amendments, we think that the underlying issues that are of concern to your Lordships are already addressed. Therefore, we feel that the amendments are not needed and we hope very much that the noble Lord will feel comfortable in withdrawing the one he has moved.