Transparency is a prerequisite for the success of West Yorkshire mass transit - Alan Lamb
At a recent West Yorkshire Combined Authority meeting, I publicly challenged the Mayor over the way mass transit was being presented. She was clearly not happy with the way I went about it and the exchange attracted attention. I understand why it looked uncomfortable. But I spoke up because I believed staying silent would have been wrong.
Members of the Combined Authority have been shown an Independent Peer Review of the mass transit programme in private. I have read it. The public has not, because it has been declared exempt from publication under existing access-to-information rules. What concerned me was that the public presentation of the programme did not, in my view, reflect the substance or tone of that independent review.
This matters even more in the context of the Government’s recent announcement that mass transit in West Yorkshire will be significantly delayed. When a project of this scale slips, people quite reasonably expect a clear explanation of what has gone wrong and why.
Instead, elected members are being asked to sit quietly while the public are reassured, even though we know there is important independent evidence that raises significant issues. That puts members in an impossible position and, more importantly, undermines public trust.
This is not a small scheme. Mass transit will involve billions of pounds of public money and will shape our region for decades. When projects of this scale are delayed, it is absolutely in the public interest for people to understand the reasons. Keeping independent evidence confidential does not protect confidence; it damages it.
Mass transit is not an abstract policy debate. It is about whether people can get to work without losing hours of their lives in traffic. It is about whether a nurse in Wakefield can take a better-paid job in Leeds, whether a young apprentice in Bradford can reach training reliably, and whether businesses can recruit and grow without being constrained by poor connectivity. Transport determines wages, productivity and quality of life.
Leeds is the largest city in Europe without a mass transit system. That fact alone explains why so many people have little confidence that this project will ever be delivered. Decades of over-promising and under-delivering have left deep scepticism. Announcements have come and gone, but the infrastructure has not.
Transparency is not a threat to mass transit. It is a prerequisite for success. A mature organisation is willing to be open about its weaknesses, explicit about the reason for delays, and clear about what it is doing to put things right. Withholding the substance of an independent assurance review sends exactly the wrong signal.
I am not arguing that genuinely sensitive commercial detail should be published. There will always be information that needs to remain confidential, but this should only happen in exceptional circumstances. Where an independent review makes recommendations about governance, assurance, the business case, planning, skills and resources, the public deserve to see the substance of what led to those recommendations, or at the very least a full, non-exempt summary.
Most people do not believe mass transit will ever be delivered in West Yorkshire. That scepticism did not come from nowhere, and not publishing relevant information about the scheme will only reinforce it. Openness, by contrast, gives people a reason to believe that this time might be different.
Alan Lamb is leader of the Conservative Group on Leeds City Council.