Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)

My Lords, I want to say a word or two in support of my noble friend Lord Eccles and his amendment and my noble friend Lord Blencathra. Much of what I was going to say has been well forked over already, but I think it underlines the importance of moving towards a clear structure and organisation as quickly as possible. The spider’s web of committees and advisory boards referred to by my noble friend on page 11 of the National Audit Office’s report must be a recipe for disaster. As he pointed out very forcefully, it is a way to ensure that nobody will ever be blamed for anything. It does not matter whether it is too much money, design faults, cost overruns, failure to meet timescales or failure to meet commitments, as page 13 of the National Audit Office’s report puts it—they can only have been designed and drafted by Sir Humphrey—it is, in effect, an organisational blank cheque. We need to make sure that it is very much better controlled, in the interests of performance delivery, the taxpayer and Parliament as a scrutinising body. I hope that the Minister, who has so far put his foot to the metal, will take some time to think about these organisational problems, which are very real and have been brought forward by the National Audit Office on other pages of its report. If we do not do that, we are setting ourselves up for a very unhappy period during which this project gets going.