Transport Insights

I have a further explanation from the Department for Transport (DfT) on why it doesn’t think that National Highways and the Office or Rail and Road (ORR) misled the public and Parliament when they said the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme would start construction in 2022-23, despite being deprioritised and its funding withdrawn.

It isn’t really much of an explanation and appears to depend on conflating the suggestion that these bodies should have said the scheme was cancelled (it wasn’t; I didn’t) with what I actually said, which is that they should not have actively pretended it was going ahead within a specific timeframe, when it wasn’t.

I think the top line is that:

The claims National Highways and the Office of Rail and Road misled the public are untrue, as the positions they set out were in accordance with the status of ministerial decisions on the projects at the time.

This depends on pretending that schemes going ahead soon and not (yet) being cancelled is the same thing. In addition: 

A Spending Review funding allocation is not the same as a project decision; the latter requires specific approval by a Transport Minister. 

The DfT also says that the scheme remained in the RIS portfolio [which] is reflected in the language used by the National Audit Office (NAO) report in September 2022 and the subsequent National Highways delivery plan.

It is absolutely true that the scheme remained without funding in the portfolio awaiting a final decision on whether to proceed, as the NAO revealed and as I reported.

But again, the DfT is trying to pretend that being in the portfolio without funding awaiting a final decision on whether to proceed is compatible with what National Highways said and the ORR also reported, which is that it was going ahead *that year*.

It is of course vaguely possible that National Highways did plan to carry out the project that year, in defiance of a DfT instruction to deprioritise it and without any funding. I have asked the DfT if this is the case, as it is the only scenario where what National Highways said in its delivery plan was not a lie.

The only additional admission I have got from the DfT is that no funding was allocated in the Spending Review. This extra concession means they are confirming everything I have reported but are trying to argue that black is white.

There is an obvious danger for the DfT in trying to argue that National Highways’ annual delivery plans are no more than a list of things that haven’t yet been cancelled.

The whole framework of the Infrastructure Act 2015 is based on the DfT, National Highways and the ORR telling Parliament how the company is delivering against the current road investment strategy, including annual updates. If we will start work on a particular scheme this year means only that the scheme has only been shelved and not cancelled, the whole system is worthless.