It will go down in history as one of the most farcical wastes of public money, surpassing even the high bar set by aircraft carriers with the wrong type of aircraft and illegal water cannon.
So it was, perhaps, unsurprising that nobody wanted to take responsibility this week for the “staggering” £285 million project to build an unusable airport on the south Atlantic island of St Helena. Now, however, it has emerged that someone was ultimately responsible — and, in fact, boasted about his role in the project — albeit before it was revealed as a white elephant.
Step forward Sir Alan Duncan, knight of the realm, and minister of state for Europe and the Americas. In remarks that may now come back to haunt him Sir Alan, who was a minister in the Department for International Development, boasted that he had been instrumental in the “amazing” and “brilliant” plan.
In an interview with the Institute for Government last year, Sir Alan said that he thought the project had gone “absolutely brilliantly”.
“We decided we would build an airport on St Helena,” he told researchers who were interviewing ministers about their time in power. “I said, ‘Never before has this department spent this money on an infrastructure project, nor has any infrastructure project been handled, you know, at such a distance. I therefore require someone who can advise me on what constitutes a proper, fair and, as far as possible, risk-free building contract so we can avoid all the overruns. Someone who can oversee it, to make sure that it has been implemented as per the contract’. And as far as I know, that has gone absolutely brilliantly and I think a lot of that is down to the absolutely rigorous monitoring.
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“I think that has been a success. It has been an amazing project.”
But Sir Alan added rather prophetically: “Whether there will be any planes going to the airport later is another matter.”
That question is appropriate, given what happened next. The airport had been due to take commercial flights in the summer but this has been indefinitely put on hold because it is not safe to land in high winds. In a report last week, parliament’s spending watchdog noted that wind hazards had been known about for at least 180 years.
Elsewhere in the interview, Sir Alan, who was brought back into government by Theresa May as a senior Foreign Office minister, said his role was as a “steward of the nation’s money and the integrity and efficacy of its use”.
In a concession that might be of interest to the public accounts committee Sir Alan said: “You [as a minister] are there to explain and defend what you are doing to parliament.”
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Meg Hillier, chairman of the PAC, described Sir Alan’s comments as “absolutely staggering”. She said: “It beggars belief that just a year ago Sir Alan was describing the project as going ‘absolutely brilliantly’ when it was clear from our inquiry that there were real question marks over the project going back to his time in office.”
The committee’s report concluded that the government had “unquestionably failed the residents of St Helena and the British taxpayer”.
“It has spent £285.5 million of taxpayers’ money on building an airport in St Helena that is not usable. There is also doubt over whether the airport, when operational, will lead to St Helena becoming financially self-sufficient, due to significant uncertainties over projected tourist growth figures,” it said.
Priti Patel, the international development secretary, is understood to have started an inquiry and has called in all the paperwork.
Her advisers tried to pin the blame on departmental officials and Atkins, the engineering consultancy, which may yet be subject to legal action. Yesterday they declined to comment on Sir Alan’s involvement and referred the matter to the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office referred the question back to Dfid.