Tony Lloyd
Main Page: Tony Lloyd (Labour - Rochdale)Department Debates - View all Tony Lloyd's debates with the Department for Transport
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Andrew Stephenson
My hon. Friend continues to make a passionate case for Lincoln. As he will know, many of the investments that he has campaigned so strongly for are the responsibility of other Ministers in the Department for Transport, but I am sure that they have, once again, heard his pitch.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
I say to the Minister that there is no evidence that the Department for Transport can deliver on time or on cost, so why has the change to the delivery mechanism taken place? The cuts that we saw last week will have a serious impact on the economy across the whole of the north of England. Rochdale wants to trade with Hull, Newcastle and Sheffield, but the Government’s plan does not allow that to take place.
Andrew Stephenson
The hon. Gentleman asks about the change from co-clienting to co-sponsorship. As he will know, Crossrail, which has yet to open, was a co-cliented project, and one of the major lessons we have learned from that project being massively over-budget and delayed is that co-clienting does not work on major infrastructure projects. There need to be clear lines of accountability to the Secretary of State for Transport—he needs to be solely responsible for these projects to Parliament, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and others—and that is why we are going for a sole-clienting model. It is one of the lessons we have learned from the Crossrail debacle.