James Ashton: Nation’s prosperity depends on rail plans staying on track

Given the glut of news last week, you can be forgiven for failing to pick up a copy of the UK’s first National Infrastructure Assessment. There is still plenty of time to leaf through the 163 pages because the National Infrastructure Commission won’t publish a sequel doorstopper for another five years.

While everyone else is occupied with the here and now, or at least what the world looks like on March 29 next year, Network Rail veteran Sir John Armitt and his team are tasked with gazing into the future to assess what transport and utilities the nation needs in 2050, when exiting the European Union will be ancient history.

In some respect it is a futile activity. Take roads. The commission’s crystal ball predicts traffic lights may become obsolete and speed limits higher because of the spread of driverless cars. But that poses a problem for spending. It suggests installing more vehicle-charging points in the short term to aid growth but favours smaller road maintenance work to mega-projects because no-one knows yet how driverless technology will pan out.

However, if the commission can stop prevaricating and overspending it will be seen as a good thing.

Sadly, its remit does not extend to critiquing work that has been approved by the government or will be imminently, so it won’t wade in on the Heathrow debate or on whether HS2 is still a good idea. Nor does it cover housing, where arguably the UK’s infrastructure deficit is greatest. But if long-discussed rail and power projects can be coaxed into being it will be doing its job.

The debate over the UK’s infrastructure needs will intensify this autumn. Chinese investors are tipped to buy into our estate of nuclear power plants, testing international relations.

Crossrail will be celebrated ahead of the Queen’s opening of the Elizabeth Line in December. Decades in the works, the capital’s £15 billion east-west rail project was nearly sacrificed for political gain many times and yet has become a model for how public and private sectors can unite in common cause after £4.1 billion was generated from a supplement on business rates to part fund it.

Two works vying to be green-lit can learn much from the Crossrail experience which won hearts and minds, built a solid economic case and, knocked back by John Major’s government only to be approved by Gordon Brown as prime minister, did its best to transcend party politics.

Its sister project, Crossrail 2, a proposed £31 billion north-south line across London, promises to unlock land for the development of up to 200,000 homes along the line but has yet to stir much passion.

Northern Powerhouse Rail, an overdue vision for better rail links between Liverpool, Leeds and four other northern cities inspires World Cup levels of emotion. Its business case remains in development, although the idea of an extra 850,000 jobs and £92 billion in additional gross value by 2050 is an eye-catching start.

The commission fits both into the government’s public capital expenditure projections that allocate no more than 1.2% of annual GDP to infrastructure. So in financial terms they are not regarded as an either-or choice between further London prosperity and a chance for the north to catch up. Nor should they be in political terms.

Beyond the fiscal remit, the question is where does the rest of the money come from? “Households ultimately fund all new infrastructure,” the commission admits in its report. Londoners, whose inflated water bills are already paying the debt interest on the Tideway super-sewer, will be aware of this.

Capturing the future uplift in property values from transport investment has become a sophisticated science. The Treasury insists the private sector must pay half of the cost of Crossrail 2 and half the money must be paid during construction, in contrast to the rates levy going towards the original Crossrail that runs until 2033.

In the north, ministers might be more generous. Transport for the North is a statutory body but so far with no ability to borrow money or raise revenues.

These two very different projects have similar aims. If both do not come to fruition long before 2050, it does not require a crystal ball to see the UK as a whole will be poorer for it.