Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I rise in support of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, not because I have any involvement—I have no Jewish blood in me—but because we are looking at the project through rose-tinted spectacles, as the noble Lord, Lord King, has just said. I have in the last two or three years been personally involved in two significant big construction projects. The rate of inflation in the building industry has been going through the roof. The thing that he touched on will undoubtedly make this even more difficult to budget and then to carry through on budget. On top of that, whatever it will ultimately cost depends upon the detailed design. It is clearly a difficult site, as the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, said. That is why the contingencies are on the high side, and what are we faced with from the Government? We do not have any realistic figures giving any worthwhile indication of the order of magnitude of the bill that we are likely to be paying at the end of this process. It is not a matter of arguing about the detail of the morality, ethics or desirability of the project. Anyone embarking on a big project of this kind, which will incur very substantial expenditure, particularly public expenditure, ought to have a proper budget in front of them so that they can then take an informed decision on where they want to go. We do not have it. It is as simple as that. It is irresponsible to talk in grandiose terms about all kinds of things when the boring, prosaic aspects of cost and delivery have not properly been considered. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not an accountant.