National Infrastructure

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, those of us who work in systems industries are well aware of the fact that when you are using 85% of capacity—whether it is roads, water, electricity or railways—you put yourself in a position where a slight aberration in performance starts to collapse the system. We have to get our priorities right and we have to invest early enough. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, will remember that when he was Secretary of State, we persuaded him to order 200 new diesel trains but he was unpersuaded after the OECD notice and I do not know why.

The noble Lord, Lord Deighton, would do well to address the whole issue of the appraisal of schemes and the capturing of the economic effects. Last night’s Evening Standard announced that house prices would rise 54% in Whitechapel because of Crossrail. As far as I know, none of that money accrues to the public purse or is even credited to Crossrail. We create wealth but it is not created for the public purse.

Air quality and congestion are enormous problems. As at present constructed, business cases do not give enough emphasis to that. In the infrastructure plan, there is a very imaginative scheme for Bath city centre. The local council wants to improve the appalling traffic flow and the huge damage to buildings by relieving the whole pressure of traffic on Bath. However, it is difficult to get the scheme to conform to the appraisal system. While I am on appraisal systems, I do not think there is any economic justification for adding together huge numbers of very small time savings and justifying things on that basis. They have to be credible and realisable time savings to be worth being taken into account.

I am very pleased to say that the railway franchise bidding procedure is at last taking quality into account. That has long needed to be done but the Treasury has shied away from it because it cannot be proved in financial terms. It is very heartening to see that the Stagecoach bid for the east coast and the Abellio bid for the ScotRail franchise have taken these things into account. I ask the Minister to note that the railway franchise system overspecifies the service. Lots of small stops are put into routes. Lincoln to Nottingham could be a very fast service, end to end or stopping at Newark, but it is precluded from that by the passenger service obligation.

I am interested in the idea of an independent infrastructure commission, as advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I am a victim, I suppose, of the Strategic Rail Authority. In the years in which I was involved with it, we had constant fights with government departments as to who was in charge of what. A decision has to be made about who will be in charge—Whitehall or the independent infrastructure commission. There have to be clear lines of demarcation.

I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, said about training. Training is essential. We need huge numbers of engineers and people to support them. I am very pleased that this Government have at last delivered a great increase in the number of apprentices.