UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I can definitely say yes to one of the noble Lord’s questions, which I am pleased to be able to do. He talked about making sure that this investment is not cut back according to the economic weather, as it were. I completely agree with what he said about how previous Governments did that. That is why the fiscal rules are as they are. That creates the space to ensure that capital investment can continue and is not used to patch up day-to-day spending. That is important for us to appreciate.

The noble Lord is absolutely right that there has been too little investment in transport infrastructure in the past. We have talked before in debates such as this about the importance of connectivity to economic growth and the agglomeration effects that you get from joining up cities with each other, and joining up towns to cities. This ensures that people can live close to where they want to work and can travel to work and, on the skills conversation we have just been having, gets skills into the right place. There are huge growth benefits from transport spending. Some of the money that we are putting in—£15.6 billion into the city regions, £2.3 billion for the local transport grant and £2.2 billion of funding for Transport for London—is vital to what we were just saying. On the percentage of GDP, I do not have that number to hand, but I will write to the noble Lord.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government’s 10-year infrastructure strategy, and the industrial strategy published yesterday, are essential for future growth. If I had to single out one item in the 10-year strategy, it would be to develop our sovereign compute capacity for the future. I am a member of the Science and Technology Committee of your Lordships’ House, which is looking right now at the problems of scaling up science and technology companies. Can my noble friend the Minister assure the House that the National Wealth Fund will be able to provide vital early-stage development support for companies, because we want them to scale up in Britain for the benefit of Britain?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful for what my noble friend said. I share his enthusiasm for what we are doing in the innovation landscape, such as putting a record high of £22.6 billion into R&D as part of the spending review. It is exciting that yesterday the industrial strategy talked about allocating £2 billion for AI and £2.8 billion for advanced manufacturing. This is all incredibly important.

What my noble friend said is absolutely part of what the National Wealth Fund is for. My noble friend talked about start-ups and scale-ups. The British Business Bank now has a total financial capacity of £25.6 billion, which will result in a two-thirds increase in support for innovative UK businesses compared with 2025-26, crowding in tens of billions of pounds more in private capital The National Wealth Fund will play that role, but so too will the British Business Bank. That was one of the key announcements in yesterday’s industrial strategy.