No, my Lords, I am saying that the policy has to be decided by the Secretary of State. I would query if the Secretary of State always has to be involved in deciding whether or not we are going to put another two miles on a particular road junction because that could probably be devolved further down the line, but leaving that aside, the Secretary of State sets the policy and the Treasury gives him the taxpayers’ contribution to that policy. However, an expanded ORR would see that it was carried out on both the rail side and on the road side, in corridors in both modes, and with interconnections between them at various key points on the strategic network. One of the things that is sadly lacking in our transport system is intermodal transfer. I would actually include access to ports and airports within that too, if we were doing a comprehensive job.
I thought that the whole point of hiving off the Highways Agency and giving responsibility for its regulation to the ORR was a move in that direction, but the Minister seems to be unravelling all that and saying, “We don’t need any of that. That is far too many steps too far. Railways are completely different from roads. We have to consider them in two different frameworks”. I would have thought that in terms of efficiency of return on taxpayers’ contributions, you would have to look at them together. There are different levels of policymaking and delivery, but this is actually an opportunity for increasing the degree of integration and of comprehensiveness, and therefore for increasing the return to the taxpayer and the transport user of expenditure on this area.