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CAPITAL PROJECTS
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
So much happened in Napoleon's Hundred Days that we are prone to judge new governments by what they do in their first 100 days.
The day after the new government took office it was announced : the policy is that the NHS is broken.
This is not a policy but a reality. A reality that we have known since the mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal broke.
We knew from then that when an area or region is served by a single NHS hospital the patients and referring doctors cannot vote with their feet to avoid dangerous or poor facilities until visible pressures force change. It is the old internal choice issue addressed by Alan Milburn, the best of the Labour health secretaries.
So when the 40 new hospitals building programme was announced we were all behind it. The somewhat sterile argument of public sector/private sector ownership could be left behind. The fully new hospitals would, it seemed, be state owned and those that were in fact refurbishments of existing hospitals would have their governance substantially determined by existing NHS trusts.
Arguably Rishi Sunak was also the best of the recent Conservative chancellors for heading a Treasury that nodded this through.
No one sensible believed that they would be finished by 2030. Start them and they would have to be finished one day. Now the additional £40bn+ capital expediture before 2030 has gone AWOL.
The new government has its own promise - to switch electricity generation away from fossil fuels by 2030. No one sensible believes all gas generating plants will be closed but start building the new generating capacity and it is likely to come on stream one day if and when it is connected to an electricity grid that can distribute its output. There is already capacity waiting to be connected and new capacity will still struggle to meet just the gap left by retiring capacity.
The phasing out of gas boilers needs to end. Heat pumps will consume vast amounts of electricity, demand which the generating system will not be able to meet without opening a dozen gas-fired power stations and which the grid definitely cannot meet.
Phasing new diesel and petrol cars and vans out by 2030 needs an indefinite exemption for petrol hybrids (the least polluting option .... no none much buys diesel cars now). EU political objectives are delivered years or decades behind schedule whatever it might say. The culture is to agree the political text and move on. Sometimes the text is incomprehensible. If you think you will be able to take your solely electric vehicle to Europe and drive everywhere in 2030, think again.
Many of the problems we face in Britain are due to a failure to apply rigour. The social media culture hardly encourages it. Falling back on ideological slogans like Stop the boats! and The policy is that the NHS is broken shows a lack of rigour. They dump duties on others and offer no solutions.
Very little of the technology for HS2 exists in Britain. Where it is to run the grid cannot cope with the additional demand. It needs mothballing for 10 years with a promise that when it returns using better technology it will run to Euston or connect to the HS1 line.
It needs to be a slower railway, much slower than its fantasy conception as a 250 mph railway. HS1 is a much better conceived railway - fast but able to stop at two intermediate stops in England (stops now not used).
HS2 thundering to Birmingham with no stops is a white elephant.
It needs two stops on the route.
Escalating rental costs need the edge taken off by an increase in supply of new solely rental property. The ownership profile of this property does not matter too much.
HS2 needs two new towns on its route, doubtless to be dubbed Rentsville 1 and Rentsville 2, but with this soon regarded as a badge of honour by residents. The kicker is that the residents should be offered subsidised rail fares for 10 years to London and Birmingham. Prices are set by marginal demand and a bit less demand in Britain's two largest cities will moderate rents and cut social tensions.
By then you would have a grid in place that can meet demand in the Midlands including for the frankly doubtful experiment of heat pumps.
This is where a government should build two new towns.