The question of why ministers are putting billions of pounds of our money into the “privately-funded” Lower Thames Crossing two years before a full business case has become even curiouser with the Department for Transport (DfT) insisting that the scheme does not even have a completed outline business case (OBC).
The DfT has turned down a request from Transport Action Network’s (TAN) Becca Lush for the OBC to be disclosed under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) on the grounds (inter alia) that:
this information is draft and the outline business case has not been finalised
This is quite a surprise, given that Lush quoted the National Audit Office (NAO) as telling TAN
At outline business case stage, the decision to commit further public funding to the project and to proceed with government’s preferred financial model for the project was subject to departmental and ministerial approvals by DfT and HM Treasury.
Interestingly, the DfT’s refusal letter acknowledges that:
Disclosure of the draft outline business case would allow the public to view the information and see on what basis the Secretary of State made his decision.
It’s not clear what the decision was here but it is worth noting that the last time there was a male transport secretary was Tory Mark Harper, before the 2024 general election.
There is heaps of case law that says that completed documents that are used for specific stages of approving projects, such as an OBC, cannot be considered draft because they are likely to be superseded by different documents further down the line.
Also, even if the OBC was technically a draft, the fact that it was the basis for a decision would probably mean it should be published.
But the main concern is that the NAO is stating clearly that the decision to commit further public funding to the project was taken “at outline business case stage” and the DfT is saying that a document on which a decision was made was incomplete.
Is it plausible that ministers have now committed £3.1bn of public funding to a project that doesn’t even have a completed OBC? Such a situation would clearly not be consistent with the Green Book.
I think we should be told – and the NAO should very definitely look into it.
One response to “Back of an envelope?”
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For goodness sake why are our taxes being wasted on this scheme when there are so many more deserving causes even for capital infrastructure investment – like hospital reinvestment to bring them back up to a reasonable standard. Indeed within the ‘DfT’s remit’ starting to reinvest in the roads and footways that represent 97.5% of the country’s roads assets in the local authorities’ responsibilities but without any money for years and decades to look after such national assets. The outline of the two private investment options published a couple of years ago showed that if you do want to build this (daft) scheme, for everybody’s sake now and in the future let it be in public ownership!
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