Derek Twigg
Main Page: Derek Twigg (Labour - Halton)Department Debates - View all Derek Twigg's debates with the Department for Transport
(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
As I said when I made my statement on Tuesday, we have sought to take some hard decisions, and some of the schemes that were being taken forward by the Highways Agency had no realistic prospect of being funded in this spending review period or the next one. In those circumstances, I have taken the view that it would be wrong to continue to spend money on development of a scheme which is unlikely to be built in the foreseeable future, and therefore the scheme had to be cancelled. I am sorry to have to disappoint my hon. Friend.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State and the Chancellor for their support for the Mersey Gateway. However, construction can start only if funding is in place and we know when that will be released. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman the same question that I asked him on Tuesday? Subject to agreement on funding in January, as per his report, can he tell us if construction will begin before 2015? In other words, will the money be released to allow construction to begin before 2015?
Mr Hammond
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the money will be released for construction to begin before 2015. Of course, this is a local authority-led project, so the local authority will ultimately determine how quickly the project can proceed, but both the capital allocation sum that we have made available and the private finance initiative credits will be released for use before 2015.