Project delivery functions to be transferred from Cabinet Office to the Treasury
The merger of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) and Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) will take effect from the start of April, the prime minister has announced.
The combined body, which will be known as the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), will be a joint unit of the Treasury and Cabinet Office, with Darren Jones named as the responsible minister for the body.
Jones, a rising star in the Labour party who is second in command at the Treasury after chancellor Rachel Reeves, has been at the forefront of the government’s plans for infrastructure and first announced the plans for NISTA last May, before the general election.
In a written statement to the House of Commons, Keir Starmer announced the upcoming “machinery of government change”.
“This change will bring infrastructure strategy and delivery together to address systemic challenges to growth, and combine the expertise and functions of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority and the National Infrastructure Commission,” he said.
As part of the changes, the IPA’s functions and responsibilities, including the Government’s project delivery expertise and functions, and assurance reviews for the Government’s largest projects, will moved from the Cabinet Office to HM Treasury.
The chief secretary to the Treasury, currently Jones, will be the lead minister for NISTA, while the department’s permanent secretary will be the principal accounting officer.
Last September, Jones hit out at the previous government for having a dismissive attitude towards the NIC.
Speaking at the launch of the Labour Infrastructure Forum, he said the NIC had done a “brilliant job” but the Conservatives were “not really listening or taking it seriously”.
“The NIC was doing a brilliant job on strategy,” he said.
“I think everybody agrees that their outputs are actually great, but let’s be frank, the government wasn’t really listening or taking it seriously. So it produced great reports but it wasn’t informing decisions.”
He also argued that the IPA had also been reduced to a “compliance function” and it needed to be “more about speeding up delivery and focusing on delivery”.
The chair of the NIC, John Armitt, recently questioned the benefits of greater ministerial oversight of major public projects.
Speaking at a House of Commons transport committe, he said that “transport is an intensely political area” which he said made it “very difficult for ministers to stand back”.
“They’re the ones who, at the end of the day, have to stand up here and defend what’s happening,” he said.
“On the other hand, that is bound to lead to delays, it’s bound to lead, I fear at times, to too much desire to actually meet every concern and objection and requirement for extra facilities within a scheme.
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