Spending Review 2020

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to speak about transport-related issues. The Chancellor announced an infrastructure package of £100 billion, which obviously covers more than just transport, but the total seems to be £27 billion higher than the amount announced last year, and is therefore welcome. The disappointment comes in the lack of a green strategy running through the package, and only small amounts of money specified for green projects. Likewise, the national infrastructure bank is welcome, but it lacks a green mandate. The Government would have done well to learn the lessons and recreate the principles behind the Green Investment Bank.

Only a tiny percentage of the £100 billion is specifically for reducing emissions. I am particularly concerned that a massive £27 billion has been earmarked for road building. Accepting that the £1.7 billion for road repairs is essential for the maintenance of what we have, the size of the road-building programme belies the Government’s professed commitment to reducing carbon emissions. The two are in essence incompatible. Have the Government not learned the lessons of past road projects: build the road and the traffic will come? Pent-up demand will show itself immediately. We are long past the point in the fight against climate change where we can expect to win it on the basis of free market ideology. The Government have to lead: they have to point us in the right direction, through a strategic approach to a mixture of investment and fiscal policy.

While the additional money for HS2 is welcome , it comes at a time when there are serious concerns that the Government are preparing to abandon, or at least slow down, the rollout of the eastern leg, which is so essential to transport links in the north and the Midlands.

I accept that the Government are facing challenges, but the most long-term of those challenges is climate change, and they are behaving like rabbits in the headlights, paralysed into inactivity and indecisive on which way to turn.