Armitt: Long term infrastructure planning ‘impossible’

Sir John Armitt has admitted that long term infrastructure planning can feel like an “impossibility in a democracy”.

Giving evidence to the House of Lords industry and regulators committee, the long-serving chair of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) was pressed on whether long term projects are a “pipedream” when they can be halted as a result of political changes.

“In my more negative moments, I say to myself that long term infrastructure planning is an impossibility in a democracy,” he said.

“Clearly the objective is to find ways to overcome that and recognising the very nature of election means short term political decisions are inevitably going to be made.”

One brake on short term decision making would be to let Parliament vet reversals of decisions it has previously approved, he said: “If something is essentially decided by an Act of Parliament you shouldn’t be able to reverse that decision without going back and having that debate again in Parliament.”

Sir John also joked about being “slightly jealous” of the statutory status that the Climate Change Committee (CCC) enjoys.

The NIC was set up as a non-statutory agency of the Treasury in order to get it up and running quickly after the 2015 general election, which Sir John had recommended it should be in his initial report that paved the way for the organisation’s introduction.

“Whether statutory or not, what is more important is quantity of work we do. You can be statutory and produce rubbish, it is more important to produce good quality work.

“On the other hand, I get slightly jealous of the CCC,” he said, adding that statutory status means the climate change watchdog probably gets more attention.

“On balance, it (statutory status) possesses advantages and certainly outweighs any disadvantages of being statutory.”

Sir John also poured cold water on the suggestion that the NIC could take on a role overseeing utility regulators, like Ofgem and Ofwat.

“Regulators are statutory bodies overseen by both the NAO (National Audit Office) and select committees so the fundamental reporting line is through those systems.

“If we were to start overseeing them, it would add another group of people overseeing their work.

“We don’t have the resources to do that, it would require a different resource,” he said, adding that understanding the work done by the different regulators would be a “pretty complex process”.