Oral Answers to Questions

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We will review the national security strategy on the four-year rolling basis that we established it—that is the right thing to do. On what we have done on defence spending, we still have a top five defence budget of any country in the world; we have removed the £38 billion black hole that we inherited; and we have set out spending of £160 billion over the next decade on defence equipment. But we would not be able to get that modern defence equipment—the things that modern defence forces need—if we had not taken difficult and long-term decisions at the start of this Parliament.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Q7. More than 80% of spending on transport infra-structure will be in London and the south-east—nearly £5,000 per head there compared with less than £250 per person in the north-east. That gross disparity does nothing to help constituencies such as Middlesbrough pursue their ambitions for growth. Should not such investment be more equitably distributed across all the regions?

[The Prime Minister]

This Government have spent £8 billion on transport in the north of England in the first two years of this Parliament, including: the modernisation of the Tyne and Wear metro; the new Tyne crossing; £380 million to upgrade the A1 from Dishforth to Barton; and we have committed to feasibility studies to improve the A1 north of Newcastle and between Newcastle and Gateshead. All those proposals were brought forward under this Government. We are rebalancing our economy, we are investing in infrastructure and we are making sure that the north of England gets its fair share.