Last year Labour asked John Armitt to review long-term infrastructure planning in the UK. Armitt was fresh from the successful delivery of the Olympic Park to high standards, on time and under budget. It was a bold move by Labour after our 13 years in power. When Armitt said ‘Over the last 40 years, UK infrastructure has fallen behind the rest of the world and is increasingly struggling to cope with the demands we make of it’, he was inevitably talking about periods of Labour as well as Tory and coalition government.
It was a challenge we needed to face up to. As shadow secretary of state for business I had told a Progress meeting in 2011, ‘For all that business is queuing up to criticise the coalition, they are by no means confident that we are consistently better. We were not immune from the sudden politically determined policy change; or the political but investment deterring delay in decision-making’.
Like it or not, today’s High Speed Two debate is an early measure of our response to Armitt. He looked at why successive governments had found it so difficult to make long-term decisions on issues like energy, transport, water, flood defences and telecommunications. He recognised that such investments would inevitably span several governments, and, usually, governments of different political persuasion. Good government, measured by successful and sustained investment, required the forging of long-term cross-party support and commitment.
Armitt proposed a national infrastructure commission working openly, based on evidence and consultation. He set out how the infrastructure commission could both engage parliament and lock parliament into endorsing and delivering its priorities. If ever a project demanded to live up to Armitt’s challenge it is HS2.
Proposed by Labour and taken forward by the Tories, HS2 it is now drifting into uncertainty. Parliamentary endorsement at the next stage is by no means certain. First, backbench Tories with constituency interests dropped away. The government responded with increasingly shrill spinning of the case. Then Labour’s policy – confusingly revealed not by a clear policy process but by a briefing here, an interview there, an aside in a speech over there – became less certain. There has even been divisive briefing about who in Labour is in charge of the policy.
Now the debate is polarising in the age-old way. The government, anxious to divert attention from problems with its own MPs, poses support as a test for the opposition. The opposition insists on its right to scrutinise and give no blank cheques. In the process the objective examination of the project that is needed gets harder, not easier. Accusations rise that this is being played for politics, not getting the country moving. Here, in cameo, are all the reasons why so few ambitious projects ever get built in this country.
There is a golden opportunity for Labour to break this logjam. Ed Miliband was right to say ‘We will not play games with something that is in the national interest’. Welcoming the Armitt report, Ed Balls said, ‘We urge the government to work with us to implement this report as quickly as possible’. So why not suggest making HS2 the first vehicle for the new long-term cross party decision-making process Armitt proposed?
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John Denham MP is former shadow secretary of state for business. He tweets @JohnDenhamMP
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HS2 is a numbskull diversion from the real task, which is to bring all of our railways up to the standards of the rest of Europe: the Berne Convention. Because our MPs are traitors, they create special rail tracks [HS1, HS2, HS3….] to take trains from the continent, instead of upgrading all of it to benefit all. NO!!!! to HS2, YES to Britain’s railways ! ! ! ! .
Phooey. First, our MPs are not traitors. Some may be plain dumb and others corrupt, or, but they are not traitors. Second, why should we not bring our railways up to the standards of the rest of Europe? What is so terrible about that? Third, decision-making is sometimes a question of either this or that, but often it is a question of do this or don’t do it, and you seem to think this is an either/or scenario rather than a do it or don’t do it one. If we don’t build HS2 we will never have a modern railway. Sure, we need to modernise our urban railway network and conceivably reintroduce rail links where Beeching was over-savage (Lincolnshire comes to mind).
You underestimate, by the way, the importance to our EXPORTS of the rail links to Europe. We are still a trading nation. The Channel Tunnel is not full of outgoing empties.
When I lived in south-west London I found the Trains from there into town were way over capacity. How will a line from London to Birmingham help that?
In respect of HS2, of course we should not sign a blank cheque, nor ignore the environmental consequences, nor further findings on the cost/benefit analysis side of the economic benefits or dis-benefits.
However I fear we are at what those with very long memories might call a Blue Streak or TSR2 moment, when governments of the day suddenly lost their nerve on big projects and veered away from them leaving us, as in the case of these two projects, without a missile delivery system or a high performance combat fighter. Many of us will think that no loss, but the technology for TSR2 could have fed better into Concorde and made that a better aircraft, with a less heavy instrument cockpit, so requiring less fuel to lift the aircraft, and thus less noise also. And without TSR2 a generation of aircraft construction fell into USA hands instead of ours. The slippery slope down to selling off our Harriers and having no replacement aircraft for our aircraft carriers follows, and thus the end of our aircraft carrier navy. Which may or not be a good or bad thing, but actions and in-actions, decisions and in-decisions all have foreseeable and unforeseeable consequences.
If you go much further back, the farsighted burghers of Southampton dredged their harbour and build a massive dock, anticipating larger ships. Bristol could not do so and Liverpool would not do so, and so the Atlantic liner trade in less than a decade shifted to England’s south coast (just about in time for Titanic, with Liverpool emblazoned mournfully on her stern but with a largely Southampton crew, to pass through).
The point I am making, in a laboured and metaphor-strewn way, is that we may have reached the moment when a fatal (in-)decision is made for our infrastructure. If we do not build HS2, I fear we will not build – ever again – a fresh rail line through greenfield land. Because we are afraid of the uproar, in the case of Tories fearing for their constituencies, and the risk of cost over-runs in the case of Labour (which, not without cause, values capital projects not being threatened by other capital projects eating up their resources). And if we do not build any fresh rail lines, rail will wither on the vie through its ever more creaking infrastructure; which will leave us with road traffic requiring ever more motorways, by-passes and so on. Rail, well-routed, is less harmful than road.
I welcome the Armlitt challenge. We must learn how to master major projects. We should do more analysis and costing before the first sod is cut. We should have evidence-based decision-making rather than decision-based evidence-seeking.
But it is not simply a question of organisation, or book-keeping, or managing the contracts or the tendering challenge, important though those aspects are. It’s also a psychological one – the point when crossing Niagara on a tightrope when you suddenly get acute nerves and feel the pressing need to turn back even though reversal can be trickier still.
There are times on big projects when the sponsor needs to be reminded of two pieces of advice, both peculiarly summoning up the ghost of Lady Thatcher, (without thinking too much of the outcome for her or the misleading nature of the Second Witch) given to Macbeth, who had got on his particular project “Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,.Returning were as tedious as go o’er”:
“But screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we’ll not fail”
and
“Be Bloody, Bold and Resolute!”
Local Agenda 21 was the precursor to “Sustainable Development”; not the Cameron sound bite variety suited to personal gain but the sort that embraces economic, environmental, social and health consideration locally, regionally, nationwide and globally.
I visited the Eastleigh (Hants UK) Local Plan exhibition recently and asked about its context in the above sense. Apparently there isn’t any National Infrastructure Plan (NIP) to inform local planning and decision making! A NIP would help shape both development, conservation and employment!
This VOID in which planners work leads to adhocracy, inefficiency and potentially unsustainable development! HS2 should NOT be used as a casual example in infrastructure development! Rather, we should know where major centres for industry and commerce are planned with associated investment) plus the utilities (reservoirs, power stations & distribution networks) and road, rail and air transport services that serve them and the Nation. We should know where our major ports are and how they are to be used to the Nation’s (and EU) advantage. We should know what’s happening to our green belt, where our conservation areas are and how our global protection responsibilities are to be achieved!
The concept required in called “Managing UK plc – its people and environment”. Complacency and political expediency (countdown to the next election in [5-x] years!) are diseases of politicians that they endeavour hide behind powerful speeches (often empty rhetoric) of the “We must ….” variety!
NO, sadly I don’t know what the answer is – probably somewhere between benevolent / educated dictatorship to proper democracy where support for the weakest and a meaningful voice for them exists! In the meantime we flounder from disaster to disaster with an occasional ray of sunshine by default.