Transport Minister has "fingers crossed" for guided bus launch

12.48.00pm GMT Thu 11th Mar 2010

Kilian Bourke

Labour Transport Minister Sadiq Khan is "crossing his fingers" that he will be coming to Cambridgeshire soon to announce the opening of the guided bus.

He said that Cambridgeshire County Council had told him that it had almost resolved its problems with contractors BAM Nuttall and the project was close to completion.

His amazing statement came yesterday (Wednesday) as he revealed that the government was spending more than £80 million of taxpayers' money on a guided bus for Bedfordshire with BAM Nuttall as the likely choice of contractor, despite the fact that the company is locked in a dispute over Cambridgeshire's disaster-stricken guided bus.

"I have been assured by Cambridgeshire they have almost reached resolution of the problems they have got with the contractors, and fingers crossed I will be able to go to Cambridgeshire to announce the opening of that scheme soon," said Mr Khan.

He then proceeded to cite Cambridgeshire as an example of what not to do. Defending the likely choice of BAM Nuttall as contractor, he added: "They (Nuttall) have learnt the lessons from Cambridgeshire and they are going to make sure this scheme doesn't have the problems Cambridge has."

Liberal Democrats were astounded by Mr Khan's announcement which came only days after the Tories on Cambridgeshire County Council revealed a catalogue of defects with the guided bus and admitted legal action would be needed to resolve the issue.

Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Cambridge said: "The government is throwing good money after bad to repeat an experiment which has been fraught with disaster.

"What planet is Sadiq Khan on? He is clearly trusting everything to luck or else he has been given a very poor account of the situation in Cambridgeshire. There is no way this guided bus experiment should be repeated with taxpayers' hard-earned money until the lessons learned from Cambridgeshire have been well-documented."

Martin Land, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Huntingdon said: "National government is clearly hopelessly out-of-touch with the reality of the project in Cambridge; the question is whether this is through ignorance or the Tory council misleading them?"

Kilian Bourke, Lib Dem highways spokesman said: "This project is already more than a year over deadline with no sign of a quick resolution. It will be a long time before we see Mr Khan in Cambridgeshire announcing the end to this farcical project."

But the Labour controlled Borough of Luton is optimistic claiming it has "a very different contractual arrangement to the one they have in Cambridge; we have placed all the risk with the contractor."