Infrastructure and Projects Authority

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action ministers are expected to take when they receive adverse reports on costs or progress from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority provides confidential and independent reviews of major projects being delivered by government departments. While primarily aimed at project leaders, Ministers monitor delivery confidence in projects and intervene where necessary.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Is he aware that the two departments with the biggest spend on the Infrastructure and Projects Authority list are the MoD and Department for Transport, with about £130 billion each? HS2 is by far the biggest project on the Department for Transport’s list. In my book, it is coming up to between £50 billion and £100 billion. The IPA’s red/amber/green traffic light analysis on HS2 says that for six years it has been amber/red, which means:

“Successful delivery of the project is in doubt, with major risks or issues apparent … Urgent action is needed to address these problems and/or assess whether resolution is feasible”.


What have the Government been doing over the last six years with HS2 being at amber/red? Did they talk to the Department for Transport and what was its answer?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for trailing his supplementary question in the House magazine. To put this into context, the IPA was formed in 2015 to help the Government to deliver critical national infrastructure projects. It does this by commissioning independent reviews, which the noble Lord referred to. It then gives a rating to the relevant projects. Those ratings are taken very seriously, as I said in my initial reply, by the project leaders in the departments and by Ministers, who take action when necessary. After the rating has been allocated to a particular project, the IPA and the relevant department have an ongoing dialogue to ensure that milestones are met and that projects meet their commitments. The noble Lord mentioned £50 billion. That is not a figure that the department recognises. The estimate is roughly half that.