Martin Flanagan: David Cameron’s motoring down a private road

It would be via a multi-billion-pound “ghost” privatisation whereby upkeep and development of the country’s main road network could be sold on long leases to the likes of sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and other investors.

The business lobby shares the Prime Minister’s feeling that the transfer of effective ownership of a national infrastructure asset is a price worth paying for the boost it could give the economy. The CBI estimates that congestion on our roads costs the economy up to £8 billion a year, and that every £1 spent on infrastructure adds £3 to GDP.

In addition, although the road network in Scotland is a devolved issue and Holyrood has no plans to privatise it, it would be obvious for Alex Salmond to monitor the money-saving potential of any scheme launched down south.

Cameron believes another vital infrastructure artery – England’s privatised water industry – is the one to follow to get the private sector playing a pivotal role in unclogging roads.

Under the scheme being considered for trunk roads and motorways, new investors would have to meet a set of targets to cut congestion and carry out maintenance and upgrades.

In return it is thought they would receive a proportion of vehicle excise duty, which currently all ends up in the public purse. Sovereign wealth funds and other infrastructure developers like this model because, for their investment, they get access to what is in effect a regulated utility with almost guaranteed income streams.

It is the extension of this model to roads, rather than any matter of principle, that is exciting attention as foreign operators of notable slices of UK infrastructure are already established.

Ferrovial of Spain owns the BAA airports network, including Heathrow, while the French, Germans and Spanish have large slices of Britain’s power industry.

But undoubtedly motorways and trunk roads coming under the “leased” ownership of sovereign wealth funds would break new ground in more ways than one.

Dinner parties winning over beer and skittles

Tim Martin, flamboyant founder‑chairman of JD Wetherspoon, is entertainingly outspoken in the latest issue of the pub group’s magazine. Not so much about the euro (don’t get him started) and mandarin nannying from Brussels this time; but, rather, the way New Labour’s initiatives on binge-drinking, un–reversed by the coalition government, have arguably backfired.

Martin claims the Blairite crackdown on pubs was due to New Labour’s pronounced dinner party tendency, the implication being that Blair, Harman and Jowell, etc felt far from at ease in the snug bar.

Whether one agrees or not, Martin’s other contention has a fair bit of anecdotal evidence on the ground: that the purge on under-age beer drinking has just driven it underground, in a straight line from cut-price supermarket to parks, parties and home.

That surely wasn’t what the former government had in mind, just as extending pub opening hours to make us more like Continental cafe society has not worked, as a visit to a British high street after dusk will often readily attest.

In addition, the Wetherspoon boss is supported by quite a body of opinion in the drinks industry that the decision to transfer pub licensing south of the Border from magistrates’ courts to local councils just added a lot of extra expense to the industry, helping trigger massive pub closures.

He claims that, in turn, has helped “denude many high streets and suburbs” of shops because many shoppers combine their trips with a visit to the pub. It’s an interesting observation. How much of our boarded-up high streets is indirectly attributable to the demise of so many pubs?

With an eye on tomorrow’s Budget, Martin calls for excise duties to come down to the European average to help redress this.

Ah. The chances of George Osborne listening? I suspect about the same odds, probably, as house prices and the quest for school places not coming up in conversation at most dinner parties.