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Light Rail

: I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification, but if he goes back to the transcript of his interview on Radio Merseyside, he will see that he did not give that qualification and that he incorrectly said that no due diligence had been carried out since June. If I am wrong about that, I shall apologise, but I followed him on the radio and clearly heard what he said. In fact, due diligence work was carried out, and the scale of likely cost overruns was identified as £24 million. A great deal of work went into finding a way to fund that overrun, and the consequence was that Knowsley council and Liverpool city council gave an undertaking to take out loans of up to £24 million to bridge the likely gap. That still was not enough for the Minister and the Department for Transport, which asked for guarantees over and above the amount identified by Investec. The scheme's promoter, Merseytravel—it had the idea and put in all the work—then gave an assurance that it would meet any costs over and above the likely £24 million overrun. Indeed, it also gave an undertaking to do so within its £250 million annual budget. The likely cost overrun over the £170 million made available by the Government would therefore be covered by a loan guaranteed by Liverpool city council and Knowsley council, and Merseytravel undertook to meet any costs above that £24 million. That was about as reasonable an offer as one could get. Although I have a slight criticism of Merseyside's attitude in general, which I shall discuss in a moment, I strongly feel that the guarantees offered to the Department should have been acceptable. Indeed, if the scheme had been proposed elsewhere, they would have been. A prejudice against Merseyside, or at least Merseytravel, seems to be at work in the Department, although that is not necessarily true of the Minister. That prejudice has played a part in this outcome, and that is wholly unacceptable. I am concerned that the Department will not allow us a fair crack of the whip in the future. Criticism can be levelled at Merseyside, as the Minister will no doubt point out, and I share that criticism to some extent. Like you, Mr. O'Hara, I have been an elected politician for part of Merseyside for a very long time—in my case, almost all my adult life. I used to argue that we have always been unfairly compared with Greater Manchester. However, when Greater Manchester's section 151 officers—that is, officers with financial responsibility—were asked to give their assurance that it was within the means of the local authorities to meet any costs involved, they did. When Merseyside was asked the same, two of the local authorities—St. Helens and Wirral—turned their backs on it completely. They were not prepared even to risk any cost falling on the levy, and therefore on the council tax payers in the case of Wirral. They were not prepared to let anything affect tunnel tolls. Sefton was far more generous, but in the end it did not think that it could go along with what was being asked of it. It was left to Knowsley, the smallest local authority on Merseyside, Merseytravel and Liverpool city council to provide as much guarantee as possible. Liverpool city council undertook to guarantee to meet most of the £24 million, but the officers of the council, as distinct from its members, have done everything possible to sabotage the scheme, even to the extent of commissioning legal advice on the eve of the end of the decision-making process, which in effect blew the whole scheme out of the water. I do not know why those senior officers set out to do that. Nor do I know why they defied the wishes of their elected Labour and Liberal Democrat members. I am sorry to say that that shows yet again that Merseyside is politically dysfunctional compared with Greater Manchester. I am not blaming any one political party, because no one political party was pitted against another. Without being offensive to Conservative representatives in the Chamber, there are no Conservative representatives on Merseyside, so they did not figure in the decision-making process. I conclude by making two criticisms. First, the Government should have accepted the case, which was a strong one, and the assurances that they were given. Secondly, Merseyside should have united to back the scheme, as Manchester did in the case of the Metrolink, instead of doing everything that they could in some quarters to undermine it.