INFRASTRUCTURE
Nicholas Soames: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make it his policy to consolidate departmental funding streams into a single national infrastructure fund; and if he will make a statement. [196964]
Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury: The Government believes that there is a powerful case for giving local business and political leaders the levers they need to create jobs and drive growth. In ‘Investing in Britain’s Future’, the Government accepted Lord Heseltine’s recommendations to devolve economic power to Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) through the creation of the Local Growth Fund (LGF) with over £2 billion of budgets from skills, housing and transport for 2015-16. An area’s allocation from the LGF will be available to be spent on the priorities LEPs and their partners have determined in their strategic economic plans.
The Government allocated capital funds between programmes at spending review 2010 and spending round 2013 on the basis of a zero-based review of the economic returns of every central Government capital programme, with investment being targeted increasingly at economic infrastructure. Once allocated between programmes, funds were moved into the appropriate departmental budgets to allow Departments to deliver those programmes.
Nicholas Soames: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the total value is of guarantees made under the UK Guarantees Scheme to date. [196965]
Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Three guarantees and one Stand-by Facility have been signed under the UK Guarantees scheme with a total value of £1,090,800,000.
Any guarantees signed are reported to Parliament as required by the legislation, Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Act 2012, underpinning the Scheme and can also be found on the gov.uk website.
Nicholas Soames: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the value of guarantee was of his Department's largest 200 infrastructure projects in (a) 2010-11 and (b) 2013-14. [196966]
Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury: The UK Guarantees scheme did not exist in 2010-11. Following its introduction in 2012, Drax Power, the Northern Line Extension and Mersey Gateway Bridge are the projects in the National Infrastructure Plan that have benefited from the scheme. The total value of those three guarantees is £1,082,000,000.
The infrastructure pipeline published alongside the National Infrastructure Plan 2013 provides a forward looking, bottom-up assessment of overall planned and potential infrastructure investment in the UK to 2020 and beyond, and includes details of the projected value of individual investments. It includes large public and private infrastructure projects and capital programmes (generally worth £50 million or over) and can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-infrastructure-plan-...
The pipeline has been published annually since it was first published in 2011.
Nicholas Soames: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of building information modelling in reducing the total cost of ownership for complex infrastructure assets; and if he will make a statement. [196968]
Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury: The 2011 Government Construction Strategy set a target that all publicly procured construction will require fully collaborative 3D Building Information Modelling (BIM) (with all project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic) as a minimum by 2016.
Infrastructure UK is working closely with the Government and industry groups implementing BIM on new projects. Early adopter projects include the Ministry of Justice Cookham Wood Young Offenders Institute which has demonstrated an overall saving of around 20% with BIM as part of a suite of efficiency measures deployed on the design and construction of the project.
Major projects and clients are now implementing BIM on new infrastructure projects. It is still too early to draw conclusive evidence of whole life benefits. However High Speed 2 has made a specific commitment to deploy BIM and the Highways Agency are piloting BIM on the new A556 trunk road project from which evidence of benefits will be collated.
Nicholas Soames: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the next 40 infrastructure projects are that the Government plans to undertake; and in what order the Government plans to undertake those projects. [196970]
Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury: The Government published its top 40 priority infrastructure investments in its National Infrastructure Plan (December 2013). This included projected construction start and finish dates. The relevant information is contained in Annex A of the Plan, accessible here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-infrastructure-plan-...