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Road Schemes

That is certainly an issue, and I shall come to it in a moment. However, my remarks highlight the rationale of the regional funding allocation process. To be fair to the hon. Gentleman, he acknowledged that it is an improvement on the previous arrangement. It is more transparent. The way that we did it first time round might not have been perfect, but it beat the heck out of my sitting in my office in Whitehall making all the decisions by myself without any reference to local people and stakeholders. Under those circumstances, big road schemes that seemed to distort local priorities were often prioritised. Sometimes, the Minister of the day thought that it would be politically better to have lots of small schemes and no big schemes—again, that was a distortion of priorities. It is far better to ask local people about their priorities for the region. That is what the regional funding allocation process was set up to do. We intend to continue to deliver sustained improvements to the transport infrastructure. We announced in July 2005 that each English region would be given indicative regional funding allocations for transport, housing and economic development in each year up to 2015-16. That covered major transport schemes costing more than £5 million promoted by local authorities and by the Highways Agency on trunk routes of regional importance and funded by specific grants from the Department. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that, and talked briefly about the distribution of funding. Before we introduced the funding formula through which we decided how much money will go to each region, we consulted all the regions about what they thought was the most appropriate way to distribute the money. We accepted that advice, and the money is basically distributed per capita around the country. The process has given us an opportunity to see how the interrelated areas of transport, housing and economic development could be better aligned. Each region’s schemes were assessed by the respective regional development agency, regional assembly, local authority partners and other key interests against regional, sub-regional and local transport policy criteria, as well as value for money and deliverability criteria. In that way, a realistic, prioritised and affordable programme was developed to meet those objectives. The regions devoted considerable care and effort to developing their advice, and to securing a consensus on what needs to be done to improve the transport infrastructure. In January 2006, each region submitted advice to the Government setting out those transport projects that it considered should be given priority for funding in each year up to 2015-16. We announced our response in July last year. It included formal approval for various transport schemes in each region, as well as a list of further schemes that the Government expect to fund over the 10 years. Largely, we accepted the advice from the regions. In the case of one or two areas, we went back to the region, made comments and asked for comments back before we confirmed the advice. In the north-west, we accepted the advice that we received following clarification from that region. The advice has identified the further schemes that the Government expect to fund over the next 10 years. For example, the regions recommended a further 39 local road schemes that could be delivered over the next 10 years to 2015-16, subject to a satisfactory business case being submitted and all necessary statutory approvals being secured. We also accepted the advice to slip a number of schemes to later start dates, as well as not to prioritise a number of other schemes that were already in the programme. In responding to the regions, we also explained that we expected to seek further formal advice on transport priorities within the next two years. Both points are important. On the advice of the regions and of local people, we were prepared to slip back schemes that were moving forward and had been put into the programme by ministerial diktat. We have acknowledged, too—my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire made this point—that we need to ask the regions to go back and have another think within two years of the original advice to see whether they feel they have made any mistakes and whether any schemes they have suggested for later in the period could be brought forward. The Ormskirk bypass is clearly one such scheme, so the region might want to reconsider it. The regional funding allocation process has been generally recognised, and the hon. Member for Southport has acknowledged that it is an improvement on ministerial diktat. However, I recognise that it is far from perfect. That is why we carried out a consultation seeking views on how it could be improved for the next round. That consultation ended on 31 October 2006 and the Department is now considering the responses received, a number of which shared the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about how the process affected schemes of predominantly local importance that were not identified as regional priorities. We are also considering options for taking forward the wider regional funding allocations exercise as part of the sub-national review of economic development and regeneration, which will report to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury ahead of the comprehensive spending review for 2007. For the first round of the regional prioritisation exercise, it was the responsibility of the regions themselves to determine their own methodologies for prioritising schemes within the overall framework set out in the guidance issued in July 2005. It was therefore open to regions to decide whether they wished to set aside some funding for smaller, locally important schemes. That is one issue that we will consider before seeking further formal regional advice in the future.