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Road Schemes

That is not quite what I am saying. The consultation that we have been doing in recent months and are now analysing was about how the regional funding allocation process works. Our understanding in the Department for Transport was that people out in the regions understood that they could decide such matters for themselves. If they wanted to top-slice some money for local schemes, they could have done that before making their prioritisation. The feedback that I have been receiving is that some regions did not realise that they could do that, so they put all the money into one big pot and prioritised it from there. That perhaps led—I am not saying that this is definitely the case, but it is arguable and hon. Members have argued it today—to the big city regions dominating the taking of that money out of the pot so that there was not enough left for smaller schemes. I hope that we will indicate some time this year how we believe the regional funding allocation process could be worked better. Perhaps it will simply be a case of us explaining that we are happy for the regions to make decisions for themselves before they do their prioritisation, and maybe we will give clearer guidance on the best way they can do that. It will then be for the regions to go away and produce new advice, which I expect from them next year. Some regions have not stopped the process and have taken the view that they want it to be continuous. They continue to discuss their priorities and progress on the schemes that they have advised us to follow, and they write to us from time to time telling us what is happening and how their minds are changing. Other regions have taken the view that they were asked to do it last year and will be asked to do the review next year, and that there is nothing in between, so they have not continued to meet and discuss the matters. At the moment that is entirely a matter for the regions to decide for themselves, and if my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire thinks that it would be good for the regions to have interim meetings in the run-up to the next decision point and the next set of advice that we are to receive, she is free to suggest through her county council, the regional assembly or the regional development agency that people should get together again and chat about how things are going to ensure that they understand her priorities for the Ormskirk bypass. We accepted the advice of the north-west region that the Ormskirk bypass should not be a priority for funding in the period up to 2016, and I understand that that was disappointing to the hon. Member for Southport and my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire. I emphasise that that does not prevent Lancashire county council and other supporters of the scheme from making the case either for funding to be made available from the regional funding allocation in the longer term or for the scheme’s inclusion in the region’s priorities at an earlier date should that become possible, which could happen in three ways. The first is that we may give out some more money. I am not sure whether that will be the case, because we are already working to tight spending guidelines, but who knows? Future Governments might make more money available. The second way in which it could be done sooner is if there is slippage in other schemes and the region decides that it is the best one to bring forward. The third is if the hon. Member for Southport and my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire win the argument in the region that their scheme is more important than one of the others, so that it is give priority. I encourage them to make such a case.