Road and Rail Projects

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Baroness will know the answer to that. As I said at Questions, taxation is a matter for His Majesty’s Treasury. The Chancellor will determine taxation policy from time to time.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Secretary of State and my noble friend on producing a comprehensive list of railway and road schemes they intend to go ahead with. This is the first time that we have seen such a list for years. In her introduction, the Secretary of State says that she is green-lighting over 50 rail and road projects. I am not sure whether green-lighting is all right, because occasionally greens go to orange and red, but I hope that is wrong. Within the text, there is quite a lot of uncertainty about which schemes are going ahead and which are what Ministers call “paused”. Pausing could happen for just a week or for a year. It would be useful, the next time Ministers do this, to spell out what pausing means.

One of the schemes paused is the Dawlish scheme mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. I have an interest as I live down the other end. I am not suggesting the work should start now but, as my noble friend said, monitoring should continue because, if the cliff does come down—it could happen quite quickly if it does—it will put the south-west in a very difficult position.

Could my noble friend, over the next week or two, publish a short paper giving the criteria used for going ahead with or pausing different schemes? It can apply to roads as well as to rail. We have had so much stop-start over the last few years, for reasons we need not go into. It would be nice to know what the reasons are. What are the criteria? Is it that there is a good business case, is it because the local MP knows the Minister very well, or is there some other good reason? I am sure there are good reasons for the decisions, but it would be helpful if Ministers could come up with that in the next few weeks. Otherwise, I congratulate the Minister on a good, comprehensive document.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his compliments. Of course, the real significance of this list is that it is a funded list, rather than one that is not funded—a list of aspiration and hope. I am not too sure about the phrase “green-lighting”; I am not too that it is in the dictionary and, if it is, it is a shame. What it means is that these are funded schemes to go ahead. One or two still need development consent orders, which is a process that has to be taken to a conclusion. Therefore, the start dates will be different across the huge list, but many are ready and have been waiting for funding for quite a long time.

On the pausing at Dawlish that I referred to in the discussion with the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, monitoring will take place. It is not that it “should” take place. The monitoring of those cliffs needs to continue. My understanding of the situation, which I have to say is from the last job I did rather than this one, is that monitoring those cliffs is essential. The work needed to remedy all this is, at least partially, about what we see in the monitoring process, so it is sensible to look now and do something when agreed.

Will we publish a paper on the criteria that have been used? There are two things here. One is that the Government have decided to do these schemes and have taken a view, from the wreckage they inherited, to prioritise things that need to be done that will contribute to a better local economy. We will get on with doing that first. In the longer term, there is an intention to have both a 10-year infrastructure strategy and a long-term railway plan. In conjunction with the revision of the Green Book that the Chancellor talked about in the spending review—to look at aspects that allow projects in parts of the country with lower rates of economic activity to benefit—I think there will be a case to publish a long-term railway plan and talk about the criteria used. For now, we will get on with what has been announced.