In 2008, the Labour government established the Infrastructure Planning Commission to oversee nationally significant projects in England and Wales.
In 2010, the Tory manifesto pledged the abolition of this unelected body to be replaced by an “efficient and democratically accountable system that provides a fast-track system for major infrastructure projects”.
This was one of the Tory planks of the coalition agreement and the Infrastructure Planning Commission was duly abolished in 2012.
A National Infrastructure Commission was promised by Labour in their 2015 manifesto. The Conservatives did not include it in their so-called ‘long-term economic plan’.
Today, we have George Osborne delivering on Labour’s promise – and doing a U-turn just three years after abolishing a very similar unelected body.
I personally believe in national oversight of major infrastructure projects so I don’t object to the idea. But George Osborne really needs to explain the Tories’ complete incoherence on this issue. What has changed since 2012? And what about the cost to the taxpayer of abolishing a quango only to reinstate something very similar three years later.
Its time to expose the myth that the terms ‘Conservative’ and ‘economic competence’ go together.
* Simon Horner was Lib Dem candidate for North-East Scotland (European Parliament) in 1989 and 1994 and for North Tayside (Westminster) in 1992.
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7 Comments
I don’t think that this is a lack of coherence, it is part of a machiavellian, strategy. George Osborne is obviously going to steal some of Labours ideas so that he can argue that the Tory party is an non ideological moderate, centrist party that will consider any good and workable idea.
Thankyou Simon!
At last we have an article on here about the Tories. They are after all the current government and the only Party actually doing anything at the moment!
Instead we seem to be totally obsessed by the “Sayings of Chairman Corbyn”, or in many cases the “things Chairman Corbyn said 10 years ago, or might have been overheard saying at the back of a meeting some time…”
Or on “who do we hate more, Tories or Labour?” Really everyone, lets focus!
Surely someone has something to say about benefit cuts of more than £1000 “helping British people to work like the Chinese”?? And a myriad other things?
Meanwhile though we seem to have seized on something vaguely sensible George is proposing! Better than nothing though!
Vaguely sensible ? A national planning body that will put the national interest first before local concerns. No thank you !
Tim,
Yes, but the way every new railway in this country gets delayed for decades by endless NIMBYs is a bit ridiculous.
There has to be a balance…
And I think Tim’s new Garden Cities are going to need to override local opposition too….
Its either a good idea or its not, and basically it is a good idea. Big infrastructure projects have a life-span, sometimes even a gestation period, far greater than a 5-yr term of office. There needs to be some kind of cross-party consensus for the HS2s of this world, its not good that one government starts a project that the opposition dislikes and then binds the hands of successive governments by the contracts they sign. But, this does need proper open and transparent discussion of all the options before starting a project. Not something this country has been good at.
We should see this as a window of opportunity to hold George Osbourne personally to account for the lack of a sustainable national energy policy ,a viable national water policy .The delivery of a national rail system that includes all the nations of Great Britain , recognising the value of regional airports to our “devolved” local economies .
He is slipping into Gordon Browns shoes lets see if he repeats all the same mistakes.
I think, there is a subtle but important difference between Labour’s Infrastructure Planning Commission and the proposed new infrastructure body.
The Labour commission was tasked with overseeing delivery and hence had a vested interest in projects going ahead with the resulting reality distortion that creates. We can look at HS2 Ltd and see how it is being transformed from an advisory organisation with no interest in the outcome into a project delivery organisation with vested interests.
Whereas the proposed organisation seems to have its remit limited to making recommendations to Parliament for infrastructure projects. Hence the proposed commission, if it had existed, would have been the body tasked with both the HS2 route assessment and public consultation and the consultation over airport expansion. Interestingly, I suspect that such a commission would have binned HS2 and given the green light to airport expansion at one of Gatwick or Heathrow…