Infrastructure and Projects Authority

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Baroness raises a very important issue. If she looks at the annual report of the IPA, she will see the action it is taking in order to make sure that the Civil Service has exactly the skills and resources it needs. There is a fast-stream process and it is recruiting graduates and providing leadership programmes in order to ensure that the Civil Service does indeed have the capacity to manage these very large and costly projects.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

If my noble friend’s reply to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is that this signalling system, whatever it is called, is for the project managers, then the question perhaps ought to be reformulated: what have the project managers been doing while the lights have been flashing?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The project managers are frequently asked to appear before the PAC or the NAO in order to answer precisely those questions. If my noble friend looks at the relevant recent reports of the PAC and the NAO, he will see that they,

“recognise the steps it has taken to strengthen project assurance, improve transparency and introduce project leadership training”.

More recently, in a recent report on property acquisitions by the Department for Transport in relation to HS2, the NAO noted that positive steps have been taken,

“to develop capability and provide greater assurance on improving project delivery”.

No one would be happier than me if civil servants were to answer this question rather than Ministers.