A TREASURY minister announcing a new tunnel on TV today had no idea how much it costs or where it is.
Labour’s Emma Reynolds was being interviewed about the new £10billion Lower Thames Crossing which will link Essex and Kent.
But as she was grilled live on LBC, she forgot where the project is taking place.
On top of that blunder in the car-crash interview, she couldn’t remember how much it is going to cost either.
Frantically leafing through her papers, she asked the LBC interviewer to “forgive” her for not being able to “recall” the key details.
Reynolds also appeared to confuse the Devon town of Dartmouth with Dartford in Kent.
Appearing on LBC Radio, the bumbling minister said: “I meant Dartford, excuse me, I had a very early morning.
“You’ll forgive me, I can’t recall the landing zone.”
Presenter Nick Ferrari then asked critically: “So the crossing that you’re talking about, you don’t know where it is?”
She went on to vaguely say it would connect the North with “key ports” in the South East.
Ferrari took the initiative to update Reynolds that the plan involves the construction of two tunnels beneath the Thames, located to the east of Tilbury in Essex and Gravesend in Kent.
When he pressed her on the cost of building the crossing, she again resorted to vague statements.
She floundered: “It’s going to cost quite a lot of money, several billion pounds.”
The presenter savagely asked: “You don’t know that either, do you?’
“Is there much point continuing this conversation because you don’t know where a bridge starts, where it ends and you don’t know how much it costs?”
Rachel Reeves called the project a “turning point for our national infrastructure”.
The £9.2billion project will comprise more than 14 miles of roads, and the Transport Secretary gave formal approval in March.
Heidi Alexander said the “crucial” project has been been stuck in “planning limbo for far too long”.
National Highways will build the crossing, and construction could start as early as next year.
It is expected to take between six and eight years to finish.
£1.2billion has already been spent on design and planning work.
