Treasury minister falls apart when asked about her own announcement

A Treasury minister fell apart on LBC this morning over a key part of the government's 10-year infrastructure plan.

Economic Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds appeared this morning on LBC to talk about the £10bn Lower Thames Crossing, but was unable to answer basic questions including where it starts and ends or how much it costs.

The project, which will be the UK's largest road tunnel, has been awarded £590m by the government.

Building the Lower Thames Crossing, linking Tilbury in Essex and Gravesend in Kent, will cost an estimated £10bn. It will link the A2 and M2 in Kent with the A13 and M25 in Essex, cutting out the need to use the Dartford Crossing.

In a car-crash exchange with an increasingly incredulous Nick Ferrari, Ms Reynolds, the MP for Wycombe, was asked where the crossing 'starts and lands.'

"Well...it's...you'll forgive me, I can't recall the exact landing zones," she said.

"So the crossing you're talking about, you don't know where it is?" said Nick.

"It's...the Lower Thames Crossing, which has been in planning for many, many years...and it's to enable essentially people to not have to take the Dartford Tunnel which is a huge problem..." she said.

Nick then asked her "how much is it going to cost?"

She said: "It's going to cost quite a lot of money.

"But we today are announcing £590 million towards that cost, we'd already put some money in the Autumn Budget into this project but we want this to be a public-private partnership..."

"But how much is the crossing going to cost, Secretary?" asked Nick.

She said it would cost 'several' billion pounds, to which Nick replied: "It's ten billion to put you out of your misery, it's not several, it's ten."

She also mistakenly referred to the existing Dartford crossing as the "Dartmouth tunnel".

Nick went on to ask her when people in London might expect Hammersmith Bridge to reopen.

"I'm not here to talk about the Hammersmith Bridge, I'm not a transport minister", she said.

At one point a clearly exasperated Nick Ferrari asks her: "Is there much point in continuing this conversation?"

The funding for the Lower Thames Crossing is part of the Government's 10-year plan for infrastructure.

A new structures fund will also invest in repairing bridges, flyovers, tunnels and other transport infrastructure such as roads.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has said that the Lower Thames project is "essential for improving the resilience of a key freight route and is critical to our long-term trade with Europe".

"It will speed up the movement of goods from south-east England to the Midlands and the North, crucial to thousands of jobs and businesses," she added.

Rachel Reeves has said that ministers are "going all in by going up against the painful disruption of closed bridges, crossings and flyovers".

The Chancellor added: "This is a turning point for our national infrastructure, and we're backing it with funding to support thousands of jobs and connect communities, delivering on our plan for change."

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