My Lords, that is very realistic; nevertheless, the way that it has described the situation is more than is actually in the Bill. Some other form of words would give more certainty than the Bill does currently, as past changes show that there is a need for some protection. It may be that the obstacles—if that is how the Minister wants to describe the consultation—are one way of ensuring that it does not get easily changed. The other way is to put the strategy to Parliament and have to report to Parliament if you are going to change it. In some industries or sectors, that is done in certain respects. You have to provide a strategy and if you change it, there is at least an argument in Parliament. These things change from time to time.
I am sorry to take up the Committee’s time, but I shook my head at the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, earlier and I need to explain. I became the Roads Minister in 1998. In 1997, the Government inherited a roads programme from quite a good 1996 White Paper of the previous Government, which listed projects but did not list money attached to them. Projects got added in as we approached the 1997 election, by both parties, for reasons I will not go into. We therefore had a programme with far too much in it at the tail-end, and which did not have the right amount of money attached to it. The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, announced that he thought his aim as Transport Secretary was to reduce the number of cars on the road, and he was therefore not going to build roads which simply increased traffic. I know this well because we announced the roads programme in 1998, about four days after I became the Minister, so I take no responsibility for the decisions but I do take responsibility for the presentation. The majority of things which had been in the previous paper were back in, and then there were one or two more and one or two fewer—but they were all costed. A lot of those costings proved to be utterly inaccurate, most of the timings proved to be most inaccurate and one of the projects was indeed the A303 past Stonehenge, and we know what happened to that. Certainty is not easy in this area. We need a bit more certainty than we have here.
4.45 pm
My second point is about relating this to a wider strategy. Amendment 16 says only that,
“the way in which the strategy fits within wider planning”,
should be taken into consideration. It does not say that we should have a totally integrated investment programme, in the way that the Minister seemed to interpret my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s remarks, but that the Secretary of State should at least have to pay attention to it. The way in which the roads programme is therefore presented—probably in a separate document, but nevertheless—must have some wider context. That is all that Amendment 16 would require.
Amendment 14 is clearly not going to run. However, the Minister and her officials should perhaps consider whether they could give a little extra certainty. The department could also consider Amendment 16 further. At this point, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.