Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I think that my constituents in the highlands would say that describing it as close to my constituency might be a misuse of the word “close”, but none the less I recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s point. I gently observe that his party had 13 years in office to deal with that project, although I mean no disrespect to him in saying so.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Will the Chief Secretary give way?

[Danny Alexander]

Let me answer the intervention made by the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) and then I will gladly take a further intervention. I will deal with them one at a time, if I may.

I certainly will pass on the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns to the Department for Transport, which is aware of the matter. I have received representations from Members of all parties in the north-east of England about that particular project.

[Mr Robinson]

On road projects that would be advantageous, such as the one mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), is the Chief Secretary aware that not a single one of those announced in the autumn statement has yet got under way?

[Danny Alexander]

I would point out to the hon. Gentleman that one of the announcements in the autumn statement was about local authority major projects. He will know, for example, that the Kingskerswell bypass is under constructions, that the A164 Humber bridge to Beverley improvements are under construction, and that the east of Exeter scheme improvements to the M5 junction 29 are under construction. I could carry on, but I will save the rest of the list for further interventions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Alexander]

The right hon. Lady is referring to an important piece of legislation, which, generally speaking, will have been taken into account in the process of giving consent to a project. The guarantees will be offered to projects that meet a number of criteria, one of which is that they already have the necessary consents in place to get going within 12 months. The objective is to bring forward and accelerate the development of infrastructure, and it would be inappropriate to impose additional obligations on people delivering projects. This is about enabling projects that are already slated to happen to get going quickly.

[Mr Robinson]

This is a huge sum of money that the Treasury is undertaking to guarantee. I cannot imagine what some officials must think about it, but I know that there will be a strong case for ensuring that all guarantees are immediately and unconditionally added to the public sector borrowing requirement. Is it the case that any guarantee will be counted as public expenditure and be part of the PSBR?

[Danny Alexander]

It is good to hear from someone on the Labour Benches who thinks that £50 billion is a lot of money, given the freedom with which the Labour Government borrowed such sums during their time in office. The hon. Gentleman will know that these guarantees will not score to the PSBR, except to the extent that one makes an assumption about them being called, which causes a bit of immediate public expenditure. It is only at the point at which a contingent liability is called on that it scores as public spending. He will also know, because I suspect that he was involved in these matters when he was a Minister at the Treasury—

[Mr Robinson]

rose—

[Danny Alexander]

If the hon. Gentleman will let me finish my answer, I will give way to him again. He will also know that we recently obtained the agreement of Members on both sides of the House to introduce a new process known as the whole of Government accounts. That process, in addition to covering the national accounts that relate to immediate expenditure, also reports on off-balance-sheet expenditure of all sorts. Contingent liabilities of the kind that might be entered into under the Bill will be reported in the normal way.

The hon. Gentleman will also observe that the Bill includes significant reporting requirements. These will require the Treasury—or the Secretary of State, where appropriate—to report to the House in circumstances in which guarantees are issued under the terms of the Bill. I hope that that satisfies him—but perhaps it does not.

[Mr Robinson]

There was a long-standing Treasury tradition—I do not know when it was last breached, or whether it has been discarded—that a guarantee was counted as expenditure when it was given, not when it was called. The Bill seems to provide yet another easy way for the Government to find some off-balance-sheet expenditure in a way that they swore not to do.

[Danny Alexander]

I am advised that that is not correct, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes to enter into correspondence on the matter, I shall gladly follow it up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris), a fellow west midlands MP who sits on the other side of the House. I did not, however, agree with much of what he said, and certainly not about the Government’s great success in reducing borrowing. Figures from the last quarter of this year show that £6.9 billion more was borrowed than in the previous quarter. However, now is not the time to go into such matters.

Although we could question the need for this Bill, its focus is rightly on increasing infrastructure expenditure in the UK. I do not, therefore, want to enter into the rather arcane and intricate argument about whether housing is infrastructure investment. The point was made in a nutshell when it was said that after the war, there used to be competition between the parties over who could build more houses. I do not like to admit it, but I think Harold Macmillan showed the way by building 300,000 houses in one year. He found a way round the problems that the present Prime Minister seems unable to get over—of course, that building was coupled with a boost to the economy, increased spending power and confidence. Once a house is built, it still needs to be sold and people still need to buy it. That point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) who has just left the Chamber. As he said, if we want successful infrastructure, we need demand in the economy.

It strikes me that this Government are one of the most incompetent in delivering their plans. They announce and reannounce plans again and again, yet they get nowhere. We need only look at what the Prime Minister has repeatedly said and what the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce thinks about that. As far as I am aware, the director general is not a political fan of the Labour party, yet he has called the national infrastructure plan “hot air” and “a complete fiction.”

I remember the Prime Minister saying in this House that there is nothing wrong with the Government machine or the way they are organised, and that they must say what they want and make sure they get it. He has been saying that for a long time, but the situation gets worse and worse. He repeated that point recently, but we know that the more the Government repeat things, the more desperate they get. Now they have presented this plan for guarantees. Strictly speaking, we do not need such guarantees, but they are a sign that the Government want to do something and I would be the last person to stop that. Nevertheless, they are not doing anything yet; they are providing guarantees that could be there if needed.

Let us look at the national infrastructure plan. It is dedicated to projects of national significance that are critical for growth. How many projects in that plan have the Government delivered? Fewer than 20% ever saw the light of day. The Government are still asking businesses, “Where is the project? Where are the diggers?” but, of course, they are not there yet.

I hope we can manage to get some useful infrastructure projects under way, and I want to make two points. The first concerns a project that I am greatly in favour of, and the other a scheme I would like the Government to drop—HS2. I know that HS2 was begun by the Labour party; it is a bright idea, a lovely, high-profile project and all the rest, but it is simply not value for money. The Treasury must look at the return on it, which has gone from over £2 for every £1 spent, to £0.90—below the established Treasury allowance for a return on a capital project. It is not as if HS2 is a small capital project; it costs £17 billion for a line that will go from London to Birmingham—no further—and shave quarter of an hour off the time. With improvements to our national railway, we could get that journey down to an hour by having four tracks between Coventry—my own city that I am proud to represent—and Birmingham. That would take 10 minutes off the journey time, and eliminate many causes of delay. HS2 will cost a huge amount of money for an elitist project that will go up and down an already well-established corridor. Other reasons for and ways of dealing with the situation are much cheaper and involve a much better cost-benefit ratio.

Why are the Government going ahead with HS2? I do not understand. The Treasury has warned people, yet the Bill contains a guarantee of £50 billion and will allow £17 billion for HS2. No guarantee is needed—nothing at all—and the cost-benefit ratio has gone down and down. One can imagine what the Government have had to do just to maintain that ratio—they could not even keep it at £1 and it has reduced to £0.90. I hope that the Government will reconsider HS2 and put their foot down. After all, the Treasury should be the guarantor not only of how much we spend or the balance of spending, but for the return on that spending. The HS2 project does not stand up on any of those grounds.

The Prime Minister might be happy because he thought there was cross-party support for HS2. However, so much has he lost his self-confidence and the guts for the battle, he is prepared to commit to something only when he has cross-party support. Until there is cross-party support on Heathrow, he does not want to do anything. What has happened to this man? He has lost it; he has lost his bottle. Does he expect Opposition Members to come along and bail him out after what he has said about us and others? I do not get it. What world is he living in? I will not be part of that.

The Prime Minister does not want to face up to Heathrow. He says that we will discuss the issue in 2016-17—despite the urgent need to do so now—because he has not got cross-party support. He is steaming ahead—perhaps racing ahead is the right word for aircraft—with the one issue on which he has got cross-party support and about which he can do something. He can be seen to be acting by saying, “Oh, we’re fully committed to that.” I think it is pathetic. The trouble with the Government is that they never had competence and they have now lost their confidence. By introducing a Bill that we do not strictly need, they are—more intensively than ever before—trying to give the impression that they are doing something. I am sure that the Bill will be quite embarrassing for the mandarins at the Treasury. I cannot describe the problems that the Labour Government had to get one small, £2 billion guarantee not counted in their borrowing figures—although we should have counted it.

I am pleased to have spoken in this debate. We should press ahead with Heathrow. Even though I know that it is unpopular, the Government should have the courage of their convictions. I believe that we should stop HS2. Many projects are ready to go, and hon. Members cannot understand why they are still on the drawing board—or just off it—or have been discarded. This is a Government of shambles and without the conviction or the drive to remain in charge of the country.