My Lords, I thank the Minister for that, and I thank other contributors. It is clear that the wording I have in Amendment 14 is not appropriate even for what I was trying to achieve, so obviously I will not be able to press that particular amendment.
However, I am a bit surprised by what the Minister says because the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is absolutely right that many in industry, plus companies involved in road construction, have hugely welcomed the announcement that there was to be some stability in funding. What they and I think we heard from Ministers was that there would be a strategy with projects listed in it and a near-guaranteed amount of money, probably for five years and possibly for as long as 10. That would obviously be of great comfort to industry as a whole, in using and depending on the roads, and to those who see their profit in having rather more road building which they could rely on, rather than a stop-start system. I do not think that the Bill reflects what they think they heard.
Clause 3 actually says:
“The Secretary of State may at any time … set a Road Investment Strategy … or … vary a Strategy which has already been set”.
That is not exactly a comfort of certainty and consistency. In fact, it gives carte blanche for the Secretary of State to change it every five minutes. Admittedly, that would be subject to the consultation arrangements to which
the Minister referred, which come later on. However, it is not the degree of firmness that people in industry were looking for and thought they had on that. I referred to five years because I thought that is what the Government were saying, but I actually think that the rolling programme is better. It could be for seven years, or whatever, as even in the best of years the average time between deciding to build a road and finishing it is seven years. It is probably a little longer.