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Light Rail

: There were extra expectations of the Merseyside political community that did not exist in Manchester, but I will come to that later. There is another view of the Merseytram scheme: that the Government are looking for a way out of a scheme that they are not convinced provides value for money. The Northwest Development Agency would have preferred the projected route to Liverpool John Lennon airport to be the first route, because that would have guaranteed obvious regional benefits, but it would also have lost some of the equally obvious social exclusion benefits. Such a scheme might have been more broadly supported across the political community. I simply do not know. I would like to know what advice the Government offered at the early stage about how to proceed. The Government's tone throughout the scheme has been largely that of a bank manager rather than a partner. They have not taken a proper partnership approach. The supposition that local authorities, which are, after all, capped, can take on board whatever liabilities come their way, and that the Government are just stuck at the figure of £170 million does not reflect, for example, the experience in Edinburgh with the Scottish Executive. The experience on Merseyside has been traumatic, wearing and deeply discouraging. People on Merseyside want to know where the £170 million is actually going to go, because at the moment Merseyside is a net loser in real terms. Significant amounts of money have already been spent on the scheme, with no result so far. Many Members, including the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer), have said that there is a north-south split in the debate, and there genuinely is. Most Members present are from the north. Looking ahead, do we really think that schemes such as Crossrail, and the billions that will be spent on them, will be subject to same rigour as schemes that are far less expensive in real terms? Why, for example, did the Government change their attitude in the negotiation with the Merseyside passenger transport authority and the Merseyside political community and insist that the local authority, not the PTA, underwrite the scheme? Was that advice given right at the start, and if not, should it have been? That leads us to the big question: are the Government trying to give up on trams, full stop? What will they do to make tram schemes proceed better in the future? What will they do to reduce the costs of such schemes—the cost associated with the utilities and so on? What will they do to respond to the criticism made of them in April 2005 by the Public Accounts Committee? Why are they taking such a non-negotiable stance on tram schemes? That stance is not applied to road schemes, and it is not found in Scotland, where the Scottish Executive consider light rail and other schemes. How will the Government evaluate and weight subsequent schemes? What advice will they offer? Why does it take them so long to give a clear steer to local authorities that are progressing the schemes? That refrain has been repeated many times during the debate. There are appreciable transactional and contractual costs involved. What do the Government expect of future schemes? How do they think that they will be progressed? Will they all be progressed as part of a regional priority list? I saw a speculative list for regional transport for the north-west quite recently, and £825 million—of an overall figure of about £1.4 billion, I think—was allocated for future transport schemes. Will transport schemes in the future require the assent of the region rather than being progressed through PTAs? For example, what is the future for major projects not in the Minister's in-tray, such as the Blackpool tram scheme? What of future schemes? What about alternatives to our big-scale schemes? Is there any future, for example, for trolleybuses and the like? With so much confusion and uncertainty around, we need specific answers from the Minister. At the moment, there is collective unhappiness across the north-west region—and the north region in general—which I hope that the Minister can do something to assuage.