Funding for Major Infrastructure Projects

Stephen Hammond Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse]

My hon. Friend’s intervention goes straight to the issue. What were the initial contracts the Government signed with contractors? We have to scrutinise the plans for delivery to make them viable for taxpayers. To pick up my hon. Friend’s point, the National Audit Office has said that the decision to delay will lead to additional costs and potentially a more expensive project overall. The Transport Secretary himself even admitted that the delay would not save money—I would be interested to hear how much it will cost the taxpayer. I agree with my hon. Friend that, whatever our views are on HS2, it is important to know what the overall delay will cost the taxpayer.

The Institution of Civil Engineers says that delaying HS2 could make the building process

“more difficult as construction firms shift their focus to other countries.”

Whether or not we agree with HS2, this incessant delay and further uncertainty benefits no one.

Another example of this Government’s short-sightedness is the M4 to Dorset coast strategic road network, which is due to undergo major upgrades. This is a matter of great importance to my Bath constituents. The present strategic route is a mixture of the A36 and A46 and goes right through the centre of Bath—a world heritage site. My local Liberal Democrat council has rightly argued that the route should not go through Bath. I recently met with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), and National Highways to hear more about how the M4 to Dorset coast study is progressing.

National Highways said that the route through Bath has high accident rates, is heavily congested and has more cars passing through than it was designed for; it also said that the A350 route via Chippenham delivers greater benefits and has fewer challenges. However, it is still considering using the Bath route. I understand that money does not grow on trees, but why are the Government not giving enough attention to the long-term benefits to people, which include health? The A36-A46 route through Bath is not fit for purpose. The Government know this, but they are paralysed when it comes to promoting and delivering alternative routes.

The Government also fail to deliver for rail electrification. We need to electrify our railway to get to net zero. The Railway Industry Association notes that an electric railway is the cheapest to operate, saving £2 million to £3 million per vehicle. Electric trains are also up to 300% more reliable than diesel trains, and are three times more efficient than diesel or hydrogen trains. Electrifying our railway is a no-brainer. However, the Government cannot see past the short-term cost. Network Rail has said that 278 miles of track must be electrified every year to reach net zero. Last year, the Government added only 1.4 miles of newly electrified track.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

The hon. Member is making an interesting speech, and I agree with some of what she has said, but let us be clear: the reason so little track was built was because Network Rail failed to deliver it. That is not the Government’s fault; that is an implementation fault. Network Rail has actually underspent its investment budget in the last two control periods. It is not a question of money not arriving or the Government not doing their job; Network Rail is supposed to deliver the project but has failed to do so.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention; I have already answered half the points he raises. The problem is that the Government need a scrutiny process to ensure that those contracts are delivered on time and on budget. There seems to be something wrong with the Government’s system to keep track of them, because in the end, big infrastructure projects are national projects, and the Government should have some interest in how they are delivered.

Bath has a big air pollution problem. The council has tried to address the issue by introducing a clean air zone, amid considerable opposition, but the electrification of the line through Bath has been on hold for years, and dirty diesel trains are still going through the city. How can I persuade my constituents that it is reasonable to stop them from driving their diesel cars through Bath when the public transport alternative is still operating on polluting diesel fuel? Air pollution kills. Not getting on with electrification is a complete dereliction of duty, not just to our net zero plans but to public health—and that costs a lot of money if we get it wrong.

Just over a year ago, the Treasury blocked a £30 billion plan to electrify Britain’s railways over the next 30 years. The Government said that Great British Railways would produce a 30-year plan to electrify the railways. However, that organisation is not expected to be fully up and running until 2024 at the earliest—more dither and delay. We have not even seen the Government’s plans for a transport Bill. I am interested to hear from the Minister whether the Treasury is kicking electrification into the long grass.

Sustainability should be woven into all aspects of transport infrastructure policy, not just for climate but for health reasons, as I have mentioned. The Government recently announced that overall funding for active travel in the current parliamentary term is being reduced by £800 million. That includes a cut of dedicated capital funding by two thirds over the next two years. It is a backwards move and will counteract the tremendous progress we have seen in recent years.

I am a keen cyclist, and I try to do most of my journeys within Bath on my bike. I am fully aware of the benefits of supporting active travel, which far outweigh the costs. People walking, wheeling and cycling in 2021 saved 2.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas, prevented 138,000 serious long-term health conditions and avoided more than 29,000 early deaths. Active travel contributed £36.5 billion to the economy in 2021, and with continued investment, that would only increase. I urge the Government to reverse the cut to active travel infrastructure, and help more people to actively walk, wheel or cycle to the places they need to go to. Will the Government support the Liberal Democrat’s plan for a £20 billion community clean air fund that will create new walking and cycle routes, as well as expanding bus routes and creating new council-led clear air zones for congested towns and cities?

The Government might claim that all those decisions were made to protect the public finances, but that is ironic, given their record of wasting money. Network Rail has spent more than £25 million on the new station at Reading Green Park. Its response to my written question had me wondering whether the decimal point was in the wrong place. The National Infrastructure Commission and the Climate Change Committee wrote a joint letter to the Government last year urging them to produce better plans to improve the resilience of infrastructure to climate change. Record temperatures last summer forced the cancellation of hundreds of train services, and flights were stopped at London Luton airport after heat melted the runway.

The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, in his former role as Transport Secretary, warned that it will take decades to make the UK transport system resilient to extreme heat, but we do not have decades to wait. If we do not prioritise climate adaptation now, we will pay for it later. A full national-scale economic review of resilience and adaptation, led by the Treasury, is needed to quantify the value of climate adaptation, and therefore to incentivise investment in resilience. Investment in renewables is vital to combat climate change and preserve our energy security. If the Government had supported renewables harder, faster and earlier, my constituents would not be paying the price for Putin’s war now.

China is currently the biggest investor in renewable energy. It accounts for just under half of global energy transition investment. Cumulative growth in Chinese wind power between 2021 and 2022 was more than three times greater than in the US and more than seven times greater than in Europe. If we fail to prioritise renewable investment now, we risk moving our energy dependence from one autocratic power to another. If we want to be a global competitor, we must get our act together now.

The US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s Net Zero Industry Act will be transformative and will incentivise huge investment in new renewable technologies and crucial net zero infrastructure, but our Government are not following them. There was no new funding on Energy Security Day, and the Chancellor has refused to go toe to toe with the Inflation Reduction Act. The UK’s investment in the energy transition fell by 10% from 2021 to 2022. In contrast, similar investment rose by nearly a quarter in the US and by 17% in countries such as Germany. When will we see a real response from the Government? Global competition over talent and resources is fierce, but the Government seem content to be left behind.

The UK has huge competitive advantages in renewables such as tidal, yet the Government have failed to give the industry the funding it needs to prosper. We still do not have enough detail about how net zero investment is being defined. I hope the Minister will provide some clarification today. If other countries provide greater certainty for green investment, we will see investors and engineers leave.

When he was Chancellor, the Prime Minister used Britishvolt as a success story. He said that the factory would produce enough batteries for more than 300,000 electric vehicles a year. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), told the House that support for Britishvolt would be delivered, and that the Government remained 100% behind the project, yet within a month it had collapsed. It is clear that mistakes were made at the company, but is there really nothing that the Government could have done to prevent the loss of a strategic battery producer? It is emblematic of an erratic Government without a plan—a Government who change their mind with the wind. Why on earth would people invest in the UK when they cannot have any confidence in what the Government will do from one month to the next?

The Treasury should consider giving a statutory underpinning to the publication of a national infrastructure strategy every five years, as opposed to once every Parliament. That would provide greater long-term clarity to investors, supply chains and other stakeholders about the Government’s plans. It would provide developers with a clear, long-term timeframe to plan ahead with confidence when delivering projects. The Institution for Civil Engineers argues that that means that projects can be delivered quicker and at a lower cost. Will the Minister meet it to discuss the detail of how that change would work in practice?

After the 2019 election, the Government set out their intention to raise public investment to a level not sustained since the 1970s, but now that pledge is in tatters. The Resolution Foundation has said that an increase in public investment set at around 3% of GDP would not only improve our infrastructure but would boost economic growth by about 0.8% over five years. Its research found that that boost would still allow us to keep our debt-to-GDP ratio on a downward path. According to the same research, the UK’s public investment levels could have been a transformational £500 billion higher if they had kept up with the OECD average over the past two decades. I am interested to hear whether the Government think that we should be working to close the gap with OECD counterparts.

The quality of our national infrastructure will determine the quality of our lives. It impacts how we communicate, travel and power our homes. Infrastructure in the UK is now not fit for purpose. This Government have become so focused on the here and now that they are unable to consider the future. They are so used to short-term firefighting that they are unable to take the long-term decisions that would stop fires happening in the first place. They have failed to safeguard our public finances to ensure that we can afford the vital investments that our communities are crying out for.

We need an urgent overhaul of our infrastructure strategy and more focus on the long term. Only then can we fix our crumbling and outdated infrastructure and build a vibrant, sustainable country that is fit for the 21st century.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Sharma. I had not intended to make a speech this afternoon; I came to hear the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and to intervene on her. Given the vast number of people here, however, I thought I might make a small contribution.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Lady. I agree with some of her speech; her closing point that quality of infrastructure determines quality of life is key and has been a fundamental tenet of what Governments of both colours have believed for a long time. I think her analysis of some of the problems was also pretty accurate, although she will not be surprised to hear that I do not agree with all of her solutions.

On the financing of infrastructure, the hon. Lady is right that the accountability bodies have not been as good at holding the institutions that are supposed to deliver the infrastructure to account. She is also right that for a long period the United Kingdom did not have a strategic vision. That is why seven or eight years ago the two bodies—the National Infrastructure Commission and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority—were set up. I think it is difficult to argue that the Government do not have a vision or that the National Infrastructure Commission has not provided the Government with one. The hon. Lady and I met Sir John Armitt at an afternoon meeting only recently; I think she was there when he talked about the launch of his new national infrastructure green solutions project.

There are two issues. First, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority was supposed to bring into Government the expertise that would allow the Government to be given scrutiny over projects. A major infrastructure project has at least four phases before it even starts implementation. A key part of that is the initial working with designers—the ability to design a project and to understand whether that project will fulfil the requirements that one might want.

Secondly, there is the whole issue of contracting and procuring the project, ensuring its longevity and providing certainty that it will deliver on the price. This must be a source of frustration for Transport Ministers, if not for Treasury Ministers. In setting the control period for the railways—I have to confess that in my short period as a Transport Minister this applied to the highways as well—the attempt was to provide some certainty about investment and therefore give certainty to the pipeline. If there is a pipeline of projects that developers and suppliers such as the Railway Industry Association see, the contract price will almost inevitably decline because there will be a certainty of project work.

One thing that this debate should therefore focus on is that if we want to get financing right—[Interruption.] You are probably waiting to hear how we are to get financing right, Mr Sharma, but that may have to wait until after the Division.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Stephen Hammond]

I think I was just about to set out the key to getting the financing right. First, we must understand the long-term nature of the projects—a point to which the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) rightly referred. Secondly, if infrastructure is designed, contracted and procured in a way that is accountable but also looks at supply issues, a better contract is likely to be achieved. It seems clear to me that developing a long-term approach to infrastructure is the only way, at local, regional and national levels, because that will inevitably ensure good quality of life, and quality of economic performance.

In this country, major financing problems are often not about the money committed to a project at the beginning, but project creep. That results from an inability to go through those first three phases. I think in particular of the Great Western electrification upgrade, which the former Chancellor, George Osborne, signed off at £888 million. A huge number of unrealistic expectations were built into that quote. For instance, the infrastructure provider, Network Rail, suggested that it would be able to pile between 17 and 30 piles an hour. In fact, in the end, it was only achieving three, and unsurprisingly the whole cost of the project went up.

Equally, there were other institutional problems. An analysis of why there has been cost creep on several routes in this country is under way. One element is about understanding over-specification, as well as the right specification. There is a contractual professional liability issue, which, if solved, would help do away with some of the problems of cost creep. I could go into the technicalities of why we do not need to take out the complete specification for the possible movement of half an inch of earth over a 20-year period, which is costing a certain bridge project £20 million. That is really happening, because the contractor does not want to take out the liability. If the Government were to underwrite that liability, it would force that financing down. If we got technical matters right in the design, build and financing phases, it would affect a number of the issues that the hon. Member for Bath mentioned to do with the cost of projects increasing and pressure on the overall budget.

On the need for long-term certainty, I mentioned in my short intervention on the hon. Member for Bath that one reason that Network Rail gives for not being able to spend its budget is that it is not certain what projects it should be delivering. That is nonsense. Network Rail is the infrastructure deliverer for rail; it should be very clear about the projects, and it has timelines for them. We are talking about the financing of projects. The Minister would be well advised to talk to his colleagues in the Department for Transport about what we can do to make the successor body to Network Rail more responsive and more accountable for some of its cost.

The hon. Member for Bath quite rightly talked about decarbonisation and electrification. Rail accounts for about 10% of transport air pollution in this country. It seems to me, therefore, that getting the financing in place for the investment in decarbonisation projects and long-term electrification is key. She is right about the amount of electrification the country needs. A number of projects have been looked at, but that is simply not deliverable on a 10-year timescale. It may be deliverable on a 25-year timescale, so we need to plan for that.

We need to ensure that transport infrastructure makes interim investment in hybrids. There are plenty of dual-fuel opportunities for rail. There are battery alternatives for rail, which would reduce emissions immediately. If we focused on that, it would help drive down costs, because we would then consider not only interim rolling stock, but new electrified rolling stock.

My final point is this. We talk about financing infrastructure as if the only source of financing were the Government. There are plenty of ways of involving the private sector, and having it work alongside Government. I do not think anyone in this room would disagree that using private finance to help deliver the public good is sensible.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I completely agree, but there is also the issue of the long term. I go to meetings and listen. Private investors in green infrastructure or insulation projects, for example, ask time and again for longer-term planning, because that is the only way they can deliver. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree?

[Stephen Hammond]

Private investors ask for two things: certainty that the project they are involved in will be delivered; and the certainty of an operating licence for a period, so that they can get back their investment. Therein lies the second accountability problem. In the operational phase, one should ensure the operator’s accountability. Design, build and finance operational models are well known throughout the world, and have delivered major infrastructure projects across the world—and, at times, in this country.

We must not close our eyes to the fact that the UK is still an attractive place to invest for many people. It has legal and regulatory certainty, which other countries do not have. It has certainty of Government. The Government should look again at the opportunities for an electrification infrastructure bond. What are the opportunities for working with major institutions, such as Siemens, that produce the battery infrastructure that could be accelerated into the rail industry? There are many opportunities for the Government and the country to look beyond the Government’s providing all the finance.

The key issues coming out of this debate are these. There is not a lack of vision, but a lack of implementation. We need to ensure that the bodies are put in place, be it Highways England, Network Rail, Great British Railways or BT Openreach. We have talked today only about transport and hard, physical infrastructure, but the investment in digital infrastructure and human infrastructure is almost as important for quality of life, which is a debate in itself. Getting the design and implementation phases right will undoubtedly make the financing of major infrastructure projects easier.