Transport Insights

Two Tory transport secretaries gave Parliament misleading information over the secret decision to shelve a major National Highways scheme, I can reveal.

By way of a recap, in February 2022, following the 2021 Spending Review, the Department for Transport (DfT) secretly told National Highways that it should pause two of its enhancement schemes – one smart motorway conversion and the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme.

The smart motorway scheme (M25 junctions 10-16) was officially paused by transport secretary Grant Shapps in January 2022, following a recommendation from Parliament’s Transport Select Committee.

But the DfT, National Highways and regulator the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) conspired to keep the shelving of the A1 scheme from Parliament and the public. As I have reported, both National Highways and the ORR falsely claimed that the “paused” scheme would start work during the 2022-23 financial year.

This deception also extended to the July 2022 National Highways’ Performance Report to Parliament 2021/22, which was presented to Parliament by Shapps as part of oversight of the government-owned company.

The report stated:

In total, as at the end of March 2022, of the 69 schemes originally announced in RIS2; 10 have been completed, 23 are currently under construction, 25 are in the development phase (including 23 at various stages of the planning process) and 11 have been paused following the Transport Select Committee’s recommendations.

The 11 paused schemes are the smart motorways, which puts the A1 scheme “in the development phase”.

As I have reported, the DfT has told me that the scheme was officially paused in February 2022 under a change form that referred to “pausing the development of two schemes”.

It is not clear how this paused scheme was considered to be in the development phase, although National Highways did state in March 2022 that it would “continue the development of this project”.

It may be that the company did not consider the scheme to be paused, given that it told the DfT in February 2022 that it would be paused under a future, separate change control submission. I am still trying to clear up this confusion.

In any case, the effect of including the scheme in a report to Parliament as in development rather than paused was part of a deliberate policy of hiding its true status.

Similarly, the report presented to Parliament in July 2023 by the then transport secretary, Mark Harper, concealed the Morpeth to Ellingham scheme in the count of schemes “in various stages of development”.

The report said there were 22 schemes in various stages of development, of which 18 were due to start construction before the end of RIS2. The document listed the four schemes that had been deferred until the next RIS and these did not include the A1 scheme.

By this time, the scheme did not have a delivery date, which was falsely blamed on the delay (from ministers) in granting planning permission.

This means that two transport secretaries told Parliament that the scheme was “in development”, rather than “paused”, despite the scheme’s development having been officially paused.