Select committee: Transport Committee
Recommendation 5
Second Report - Major transport infrastructure projects
Published 29 Sep 2021
Paragraph 34
Addressed to Department for Transport
Transport Committee Major transport infrastructure projects: appraisal and delivery All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government must utilise accurate, sensitive analytical tools to ensure that the projects that best support connectivity, growth and productivity are the ones that get built. In that context, benefit-cost ratios are useful, but they fail to capture regional inequalities and environmental and social factors. The Government must replace benefit-cost ratios with a “benefit-cost plus” system, which not only takes account of costs and benefits and therefore ensures value for money for the taxpayer, but captures regional inequalities and environmental and social factors.
From: Transport Committee, Second Report - Major transport infrastructure projects (HC 24), paragraph 34, 29 September 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 24 January 2022 (deadline 29 November 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government accepts some recommendations, partially accepts others and disagrees with a formal mechanism for additional parliamentary scrutiny of project overruns.
- On the National Infrastructure Strategy, it "partially agrees" and says "there is not enough evidence to justify amending the NIS at this stage", while longer-term impacts of COVID-19 remain uncertain.
- It accepts the recommendations on defining "levelling up" and on a worked example. The Levelling Up White Paper will set out a definition, and the Department will publish case studies on major transport investments in 2022.
- It accepts the principle of cost and schedule ranges, but disagrees with a formal trigger for additional parliamentary scrutiny, saying existing arrangements exist and a trigger "would complicate DfT's role as Project Sponsor and duplicate the function of existing fora".
- On a transport infrastructure delivery plan, it "partially agrees" but says it does "not plan to publish a single delivery plan", pointing to other publications including a Levelling Up White Paper and the Integrated Rail Plan.