§ Mr. AltonTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what considerations underlie the necessity for road schemes which have been given detailed approval by his Department to be subjected to the same detailed appraisal and approval following their inclusion in the Merseyside objective 1 bid; and if he will make a statement.
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§ Sir Paul BeresfordI have been asked to reply.
Applications for European regional development fund grant under the Merseyside objective 1 programme, including road schemes, are appraised against project selection criteria agreed by the programme monitoring committee. The purpose of these criteria, which include value for money, job creation and economic benefit, is to ensure that only those projects best able to meet the aims and objectives of the Merseyside objective 1 programme receive approval. This assessment for ERDF purposes is necessarily a separate assessment from that carried out by the Department of Transport when evaluating local authority road schemes.
In any event most of the road schemes seeking funding under the Merseyside objective 1 programme are access roads to proposed development sites which do not fall within the Department of Transport assessment.