Keir Starmer has asked the cabinet secretary, Sir Chris Wormald, to examine issues raised in a report on HS2 and infrastructure delivery and their implications for the civil service.
The cabinet secretary will be asked to consider if an investigation is necessary, with some media reports suggesting this could lead to a "Partygate-style" probe.
The Department for Transport yesterday published and accepted all recommendations from James Stewart's Major transport projects governance and assurance review, which sets out where HS2 has gone wrong and how DfT should learn from its failures, but also contains recommendations to drive civil service-wide improvements.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander confirmed yesterday that ministers would use Stewart’s findings to “transform infrastructure delivery across government” and said the government would set out a new approach in the upcoming 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy.
She added: “Implementing real change in how we deliver infrastructure is not just for the Department for Transport.
“In that spirit, the prime minister has also asked the cabinet secretary to consider the implications for the civil service and wider public sector of the issues raised in the report, including whether further action or investigation is warranted.”
One of the Stewart’s recommendations for wider reform in the civil service is the need to establish a team of commercial and delivery specialists to support departments and the wider public sector in the delivery of infrastructure projects.
The report says Partnerships UK plc, a former Treasury-owned firm which closed in 2011 acted as a “fixer” for delivery issues on major projects, and that this central capability needs to be rebuilt.
PUK was replaced by Infrastructure UK, which then merged with the Major Projects Authority to become the Infrastructure and Projects Authority in 2016. This year, the IPA merged with the National Infrastructure Commission to become the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority.
Stewart said the IPA “has some good people who offer support to projects”, but that “this has not been present on HS2 Phase 1 in any meaningful way”.
He said the IPA is perceived as an assurance body, which affects the effectiveness of its advisory support, and that accountability and ownership for assurance should be kept separate from the advisory function, as was the case with PUK.
Stewart has asked NISTA to rebuild a public sector “centre of excellence” to provide advisory support, “with a recognition that some of the people will need to be recruited from the private sector, and so pay flexibility will be required”.
The report also calls for pay frameworks to be agreed upfront for new infrastructure projects.
It says operating within the normal public sector pay framework has been a constraint to recruiting the best people for HS2, and that this has been partly fuelled by “political reluctance to pay salaries aligned with market rates”.
An upfront bespoke pay framework would therefore prevent future pay awards being “subject to the changing views of ministers”, the review says.
Another of the recommendations is for NISTA to conduct a review on how delivery capability can be built, retained, shared and transferred from one project to another.
The report says there is a history setting up brand new public sector delivery vehicles to deliver each new infrastructure project or programme and that this “significantly increases risk and increases the time needed to stand up an organisation”.
DfT has also published a letter from HS2 Ltd chief executive Mark Wild on the programme's current position and how he intends to reset things. The letter warns that the project is not deliverable by 2033, and raises concerns about the organisation’s culture and capability.
Wild, who was appointed to the role in May 2024, said he will design and implement a new, cost effective HS2 Ltd organisation structure to meet the challenge of delivering Phase 1, and “radically simplify” its operations.
He said the organisation will also address issues around delivery capacity, culture and capability and reset its relationship with government “to establish alignment and enable successful delivery”.
“In my short time in this role, I have been encouraged by the collaborative spirit and working between my team and your officials,” Wild added.
Alexander said Wild's letter laid bare "the shocking mismanagement of the project under previous governments".