Setting out his plans to “get Britain building”, the Chancellor said infrastructure will be at the heart of next month’s Spending Review, and he pledged £100 billion in infrastructure spending by 2020 – including full funding for the £15 billion Roads Investment Strategy.
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This will include £100bn earmarked for projects including housing, road building and energy projects.
George Osborne has revealed the eight members of the new National Infrastructure Commission, including one the key figure behind Labour’s proposals for a similar body.
“Infrastructure isn’t a few obscure concept – it’s about people’s lives, economic security and the sort of country we want to live in”, he will add.
Since Osborne became chancellor in 2010, infrastructure investment has fallen by 5.4%, according to the FT.
Initially, the commission will focus on northern connectivity, improving the London transport system, including developing Crossrail 2, and helping to balance the energy market.
The membership of the commission, announced today, includes former Olympic Delivery Authority boss Sir John Armitt, who led an independent review of infrastructure for Labour.
“But I don’t want to be the politician who stands here and says the time when we planned for the long term is a museum piece now, and I don’t want the time when we built the greatest infrastructure in the world to be a footnote in the history books”.
He said that as more powers were devolved from Whitehall to city regions, “relationships” between the two would become significant in delivering major infrastructure projects.
The Chancellor is launching the new National Infrastructure Commission today (30 October 2015), which is being led by former Cabinet minister Lord Adonis.
Lord Adonis said that nearly 200 years after the North East of England became the birthplace of the railways, northern connectivity desperately needed to be improved to help rebalance the economy and transform the relationship between northern cities.
A study by the CBI showed that most firms are anxious about how quickly infrastructure projects are being delivered.
The creation of the NIC will make a “huge difference” to the challenge of rectifying the UK’s infrastructure failings, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin told the BBC on Friday.
“We need to think long-term and deliver a cross-party consensus on what we need to build”.
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“We need to look at what we can do to remedy that weakness”. “Yes, it has come forward with a preferred option, but it is right that we listen to the representations we are getting, but also see that a few of the things that are suggested in the report are actually do-able”.
