Transport Insights

A minister’s answer to a parliamentary question this week includes a claim that appears to be untrue but would be just as controversial if it were true.

I wrote yesterday about Simon Lightwood’s response to a parliamentary question from shadow transport secretary Richard Holden, about the Ely Area Capacity Enhancements scheme, making the point that Lightwood contradicted rail minister Peter Hendy’s claim that the government is “backing rail with the funding needed”.

Lightwood also said this:

The Ely Area Capacity scheme was closed by the previous government and it has not been possible to reprioritise it at the most recent Spending Review.

Firstly note that Lightwood’s claim that is has not been possible to fund the scheme, which again gives the lie to Hendy’s claim.

But Lightwood also claimed that the Tories had “closed” the scheme.

Although it is true that neither Labour nor the Tories have provided funding for the scheme, this claim is not matched by information in the public domain.

In a parliamentary answer last December, he made no such claim, stating only that:

the previous government made no funding available for EACE

Network Rail does not appear to regard the scheme as closed. Its webpage on the scheme states:

Future funding decisions on the EACE programme will be made by the Department for Transport following the Rail Networks Enhancements Pipeline.

And a spokesperson told me that this remains the situation, specifically that the scheme is awaiting funding for the next stage of the design process.

Is this another case of the last government secretly cancelling a transport project, like it did with the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme, or is Lightwood cheerfully making stuff up?