Anne Main
Main Page: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)Department Debates - View all Anne Main's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
That intervention says it all. It is all jam tomorrow from this Government.
The last set of GDP figures demonstrate the scale of the Government’s economic failure. The economy shrank by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of last year, demonstrating once again the desperate need for a strategy for growth. Since the Chancellor’s spending review two years ago, out of the G20 economies Britain has been 18th out of 20 when it comes to economic growth—worse than the USA, worse than Canada, worse than Germany, worse than France and worse than Turkey. So much for the Prime Minister’s global race.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
In the previous Parliament, I was fortunate to serve on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. The Committee examined why houses were not being built under the previous Government, and 400,000 planning permissions not implemented. Surely the hon. Lady ought to be looking at what is stopping building. The permissions have not been stopping. The banks were not lending under the previous Government. This is a deeply entrenched position.
Rachel Reeves
House building was down 8% in 2012 and the think-tank Policy Exchange has warned that the Government could end up presiding over the lowest level of house building since the 1920s. That is the record of the hon. Lady’s Government—not one, I would imagine, that she is proud of.
The Prime Minister says that we are in a global race, but in reality we are hardly out of the starting blocks. The Chancellor has been told time and again—most recently by the International Monetary Fund—that if economic growth undershoots expectations, the Government should boost the economy with greater infrastructure spending. Well, growth has undershot and the economy is shrinking. Over two years, economic growth has been 15 times less than the Chancellor promised in 2010.
Rachel Reeves
PFI in my constituency built three new secondary schools and helped to rebuild primary schools, as well as building Sure Start centres. I would not have wanted any of those projects not to go ahead, so I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s criticism.
It is not just independent outsiders attempting to urge the Chancellor to change course and take action or saying that change is needed. Even the Deputy Prime Minister, in what he described as a “self-critical” mood, has stated:
“I think we’ve…realised that you actually need, in order to foster a recovery, to try and mobilise as much public and private capital into infrastructure as possible.”
He did not quite get round to saying sorry for a second time, but at least he has finally stumbled upon the problem. We said that cutting infrastructure spending too far and too fast would stifle the recovery, but the Deputy Prime Minister’s brief lapse of regret came two and a half years too late. That moment of self-realisation will not help the construction worker who has already lost his job, the children waiting for their new school or the new business waiting for improved roads. We do not need mea culpas; we need the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Deputy Prime Minister to change course.
Rachel Reeves
The economic and political system in China is a bit different from that of the UK, but what we must learn from other countries is that we need a proper industrial strategy if we are going to create the jobs and growth that we need, and if we are going to excel and win the global race that the Prime Minister has talked about.
Two weeks ago, at Treasury questions, the Chancellor said that I was being “creative” with the facts when I said that he was spending less than Labour planned to on infrastructure investment. He said that I was being misleading on his record on investment. He had to withdraw that slur. Channel 4’s “FactCheck” has looked into his claims. The verdict is in, and I quote from its conclusion:
“Latest figures from the ONS show that Mr Osborne’s claim to have spent more on infrastructure than what Labour had planned is wrong.”
The Chancellor has refused to come to the House to put the record straight, so let us do that now. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility—which the Government set up—the Government are spending £12.8 billion less in capital investment compared with the plans they inherited from the last Labour Government. They are cutting too far and too fast. I am happy to take an intervention on that point.
Rachel Reeves
Yes, I would like to hear why the Government are spending £12.8 billion less.
Mrs Main
The Labour Administration had a target for rail freight interchanges, and the Howbury Park project was given the go-ahead in 2007. However, no work has yet been done. Should not the Labour Government have insisted on proper investment being put into the project, which would have benefited the local area?
Rachel Reeves
I have generously let the hon. Lady have another chance at intervening, but she did not explain why, in the first year of this Parliament, her Government spent £3.2 billion less than the last Labour Government planned to spend, or why, in their second year, her Government spent £2.9 billion less than the amount in the plans they inherited. Nor did she explain why, in the third year of this Parliament, they spent £6.7 billion less than we had planned. When the Chancellor says that he has matched the plans of the last Labour Government, he is just plain wrong.
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman will know that infrastructure is particularly important to Corby, and the link road that is to be built there is very important to that. He will also know that the increase in youth unemployment of 17% that happened under the Government he supported has contributed to the situation he describes.
Let me address the point of strategic leadership. How can we have long-term leadership and long-term vision for the future of our country, when important economic contributions to success, such as road schemes, are cancelled? That lunacy persisted for years, as our roads became more congested, to the detriment of the environment as well as the economy. It was not until years had passed that that nonsense was recanted by Lord Prescott, the then Deputy Prime Minister, and we decided that, after all, more traffic required more and better roads.
Mrs Main
Did the Minister note that the list of needs for strategic infrastructure put forward by the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) did not include the requirements of the location? There is no point in our having strategic infrastructure just where there happens to be a need for jobs if it is not where we strategically need to place the infrastructure. That should be crucial to our decision making.
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is right, and what she says makes the point I am making: a long-term strategic view of where we need to invest is crucial. Unfortunately, by the time the then Deputy Prime Minister had decided that we did need to have new roads after all, he had fallen prey to a new fad, regional assemblies—remember them? Having created those unnecessary and unwanted bureaucracies, they needed to be given something to do. What were they given to do? They were given the task of reviewing and prioritising every proposed regional road scheme that had previously been about to proceed. Projects that had been about to commence were delayed for years as regional bureaucrats invented methodologies to reprioritise them. The result was that, 13 years after Labour took office, the A21 road scheme in my constituency and countless other projects around the country languished undelivered.
The Opposition motion talks about dither and delay, which is pretty ripe stuff considering the sorry saga of their roads policy and, for that matter, their stewardship of British energy policy. In July 2009, after 12 years in office, the then Government announced that they expected to have to resort to power cuts in the years ahead. They even published a chart in their strategy for energy predicting an annual shortfall of 3,000 MWh by 2017—a truly shameful and damaging admission for the Government of a developed nation after 12 years in power.
How did things reach that point? As on the economy, when it came to infrastructure, the previous Administration took a typically ostrich-like pose to the challenges of the future. They knew for 12 years that, for example, most of our nuclear power stations and most of our polluting coal-fired power stations would have to close in the decade ahead—indeed, they signed the agreement to close down those power plants—but, unbelievably, by the time they finally made up their mind about nuclear new build, it was already too late to have the new stations up and running before the old ones closed down. How is that for dither and delay? They did not even get around to the long overdue reform of energy markets on which investment in new capacity depends. That surely is something that marks the record of Labour’s first and last Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whose name escapes me just now.
This Government have recognised the importance of infrastructure to the long-term prosperity of the British economy in a way that Labour never understood. We have published for the first time a national infrastructure plan, comprising £310 billion of investment in the most strategically important projects—keeping in mind the point my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made about the importance of looking ahead and looking at where those investments are needed—in sectors such as transport, energy and communications in the period to 2015 and beyond. The man who delivered the Olympics in east London with such spectacular success, Lord Deighton, is the Minister in charge of implementing that plan.
Despite inheriting the most disastrous set of public finances that any Government have bequeathed to their successors outside wartime, we are not only investing in infrastructure, but increasing that investment. Public sector infrastructure investment from 2010 to 2012 was £33 billion a year, which is £4 billion more than during the previous Parliament, and as the National Audit Office states in its report, “Planning for economic infrastructure”:
“Future investment is expected to exceed recent levels.”
Last year’s autumn statement included a further £5.5 billion of investment, including £1.5 billion for the strategic road network. That includes upgrades to the M1, the M3, the M6 and the A60 at Immingham; £378 million to upgrade the A1 between Leeming and Barton, as part of a much-needed drive to bring the A1 up to motorway standard between Newcastle and the M25; a new link between the A5 and M1; and dualling of the A30. On 27 of the road and rail schemes announced in the 2011 autumn statement either construction has already started or work is due to begin this year, including on the A453 widening, the A11 Fiveways to Thetford improvement, and the A43 Corby link road, which will be of interest to the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford).
This Government are ushering in the largest programme of investment in the railways since Victorian times, with £9.5 billion of capital investment allocated from 2014 to 2019. That includes £1 billion to electrify the Great Western line between London and south Wales, as the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) will recognise; £500 million for the north-west and trans-Pennine electrification scheme, for which work is already under way; £800 million to electrify the midland main line and increase its speed, which I would have thought the hon. Member for Corby would welcome; and £500 million for the northern hub, which is of benefit to all the cross-Pennine services.
This Government are committed to investing in Britain’s infrastructure for the long term. The first phase of High Speed 1 will be followed by phase 2, which will revolutionise rail travel in Britain, with 211 miles of new track. I am surprised that the Opposition spokesperson, a Leeds MP, did not mention in her speech a project that will link Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester, create five new stations, and cut journey times from Birmingham to Leeds, for example, from two hours to one hour. I should have thought that the hon. Member for Leeds West would mention that. I should have thought that northern MPs would mention the cut in journey times from London to Manchester from two hours eight minutes to one hour eight minutes. The hon. Lady talks about the time it takes to build the track. If we had commenced in 1997, when Labour took power, we could be looking forward to buying our tickets for that railway now.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I profoundly disagree with the motion, particularly what it says about “dithering” and “delay”. I am all for a bit of dithering and delay, but I would call it caution and sensible planning. I am speaking up for the environment because I want us to take a considered approach to planning as well as kick-starting our economy. Carpenters have the old adage, “Measure twice and cut once.” We should be very careful that we get our infrastructure right rather than just dashing forward and building on any old place.
The motion stresses the need to get Britain building, but we need to have a cohesive approach, not a mad dash for growth without considering local communities or what is actually needed. I am concerned that we are intrinsically entwining planning and the Treasury. I want to make sure that we are giving these matters due consideration and are not trampling over communities, historic landscapes, and, importantly, the green belt, but getting our infrastructure right and getting it in the right place.
I want the infrastructure debate to be associated with economic benefit, local regeneration and jobs, but never to lose sight of the environment. The two are intrinsically linked. Local communities need to ensure that plans are not granted in a hasty fashion just to join the ranks of unimplemented or badly located permissions. The absence of a joined-up approach to getting our infrastructure right and ensuring that there are full appraisals of alternative sites for large, private-funded proposals, such as those for rail freight interchanges, is likely to result in a developer-led scramble to see who can get their project through first, and it will often not end up on the best site for the local area or for national economic growth. That can also affect investment in other sites that may be more suitable, but which are starved of potential investment as investors hold fire in case another rival site gets permission through the planning system.
I want to make sure that we ask where we need to deliver such infrastructure in Britain. It is obvious that large infrastructure projects can create jobs and they should, if possible, be based in those areas where there is a need for those jobs, while at the same time doing minimum harm to the environment. That would be a win-win situation for everyone.
There has been a “minded to grant” decision on a rail freight terminal in my constituency. According to the developer of the site, it will create more than 3,000 jobs, the vast majority of which will be blue collar. Such a development could—I agree with the Labour party on this—provide a considerable boost for a struggling local area if it had the work force. It would be a shot in the arm for an area that needed those jobs. In St Albans, however, we are fortunate to have an unemployment rate of just 2.5% and the vast majority of those 1,155 people are white-collar workers. In fact, we have a deficit of blue-collar workers. Beyond that, neither my constituents—some of whom would be situated 100 metres from the development—nor Hertfordshire county council want the site, we are not a regeneration area, and the site will depress our local house prices, concrete over 10% of our green belt and compromise commuter routes into London.
The site has had three refusals, but on the Friday before Christmas, there was a volte-face and the “minded to grant” decision was made. Residents were stunned, because, if we compare and contrast the situation with that of a nearby site in Upper Sundon, just a few miles north of St Albans, we will see—this may be coincidental —that it has all the supposed national benefits that I believe we should be looking for and none of the drawbacks, or very few of them. The site is located in an old quarry—it is not on the green belt—and a ready, accessible work force, who would not need to travel in an unsustainable fashion, want it. It is also on the M1, which I am pleased to say is being upgraded, as we have heard from the Government today.
The site is in the central Bedfordshire development plan and has the support of the council, which would make the planning process simple and, I hope, amicable. Luton airport is also nearby, which is also looking to expand. The site will have easy accessibility to roads and road freight. From the economic point of view, the site is located near Luton, where the most recent figures show that 5.6% of the population are unemployed, most of them blue-collar workers.
I want to marry up those two happy coincidences, but I am concerned that the prevailing mood—driven by the Opposition in particular—is that, in the name of economic necessity, we must give permission to build at whatever cost. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) would not let me intervene when I wanted to ask her whether she agreed—
Rachel Reeves
Of course infrastructure investment should be in the right place, but there is no risk of any infrastructure under this Government. That is the problem that we have been trying to highlight today, and the hon. Lady seems to welcome that lack of investment.
Mrs Main
I point out to the hon. Lady that in 2007, under her Government, the Infrastructure Planning Commission granted the decision to build Howbery park, against much opposition from local residents, on the green belt, on the basis that the Strategic Rail Authority said that it should be situated just about there. However, not a shovel has been turned on that development —the previous Government did nothing about it. I do not see why we should not have a strict rule that infrastructure must be placed exactly where it is needed, not where a developer happens to want it, which may lead to a situation such as that in Alconbury, which ended up with the Trojan horse of a business development park because it never got the rail links it was promised. That is not what we should be doing with our infrastructure. It should be in the right place and linked to the right work force.
If we are going to allow the development of much-needed housing, we should also look at why we have 142,000 unimplemented planning permissions that have already been granted. Across England, the figure is up to 400,000. Our priority should be to look at what has already been granted and ask why it was not built in the first place or why it was not built according to the planning permission that was granted to it, as in the case of Alconbury. If we do not make sure that infrastructure is correctly located, future generations will judge whether we had proper stewardship of our countryside.
We should examine historical permissions, both for large-scale infrastructure developments and large housing developments, that have not come to fruition. We must not just speed up the planning process and churn out more permissions that can be banked for five years, because that does not help the economy by ensuring that development happens where there is economic need and where there are people who can take up the job opportunities that are created.
A clear-sighted strategic decision-making process that was more “steady as she goes” would give investors confidence that they would not end up with permissions granted but never see the developments delivered properly in the way that was envisaged. If people want to get involved in strategic rail, there are many spin-offs such as people working on the site and promises of additional infrastructure upgrades to support the development. However, all those things fail if the developer never puts a spade in the ground and does not deliver the site as it was envisaged. All the potential jobs that are linked to such planning permissions never actually happen.
That has happened under previous Governments, and not only the last Government. However, the Opposition are now arguing that we should rush through more planning permissions and accuse this Government of dithering. I ask the Treasury to please be a bit more cautious and not to do what the previous Government did in allowing loads of permissions to be granted that never delivered what they should have delivered. We should consider applications slowly, cautiously and carefully to ensure that instead of a developer pushing the area where he would like to build, developments are built where we want them to be built and where communities want them to be built. That would be in the best interests of this country as a whole.
To return to the site in St Albans, it will not benefit my constituency one jot to have a rail freight interchange. It would probably benefit Sundon quarry and the surrounding area because of the jobs that it would create, but it would not benefit my constituency if it happened in Radlett. I hope sincerely that the “minded to grant” decision is suddenly reversed to match the original three refusals, because those refusals were sensible. Two of them came under the previous Government, so I hope that Labour Members would approve of them as well. The harm that will be done by that development certainly does not justify its going ahead, especially where an authority slightly further up the road would like to have such development, very much as the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said his area would.
We should encourage development to go where communities would welcome it, and where it fits in with our with our bigger, broader strategic plan for the economy of this country.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I draw attention at the outset to my interests as declared in the register.
This has been a curious debate to date. Infrastructure is, at least in theory, a subject on which there is a large measure of cross-party support. There is general agreement across the House that we need to ensure that we have the transport networks, power arrangements, waste and water distribution systems, sewerage systems, flood protection systems and all the other necessary infrastructure that is essential to a modern, functioning economy. Really, we should have been debating how to make a reality of the current investment programmes to deliver the kind of infrastructure that is essential to our economic well-being in the longer term and, in the short term, that will help to create jobs, employment and growth in our stuttering economy.
However, we did not do that. Instead, we have seen a series of differences—not just across the House, between the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) on our Front Bench, but between the Minister and his Back-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), who took a very different view from him. Rather than echoing his stated wish that infrastructure investment should be speeded up, she made a fairly passionate case for slowing it down.
Mrs Main
The right hon. Gentleman will see clearly that I talked about the strategic rail freight interchange in my constituency. More to the point, I am sure he would agree that these issues—whether waste disposal or otherwise—cause tensions in communities and that harm to the environment has to be weighed in the balance against development.
Mr Raynsford
I put it to the hon. Lady that when she reads Hansard tomorrow, she will see some pretty clear references to going slowly and not following the advice of her Front-Bench colleague, who wants to accelerate development. He has not been very successful in doing that, but at least his heart is in the right place, and I am with him on that.
The Minister chose to present a case that was, frankly, absurdly partisan—perhaps to divert attention away from his difficulties with his own party, which does not always share his enthusiasm for speeding up the development of infrastructure. The implication that there was no worthwhile infrastructure investment under the previous Government and that the arrival of the current Government has unleashed a cornucopia of new infrastructure schemes is, frankly, risible.
Let us look at the record. I tried in my intervention to point out to the Minister that it was completely unfair to say that there had been no worthwhile investment, particularly in rail, under the previous Government. Let us look at the history of High Speed 1, the link between the channel tunnel and London. That link was not constructed when the channel tunnel was built, because the then Government, headed by Baroness Thatcher, did not believe in rail investment. The French did, and there was a high-speed link between the tunnel and Paris. The Belgians did, and there was a high-speed link between the tunnel and Brussels. But there was no high-speed link between the tunnel and London because the then Conservative Government did not believe in it. Eventually, the Major Government had a last-minute change of heart and began to recognise the importance of such a link, but they could not get it together and the scheme was in a state of financial uncertainty when the Labour Government came to power. The Minister is a fair-minded man, and I hope that he will recognise that High Speed 1, an important piece of infrastructure investment, was the achievement of the last Labour Government.
I would also like to remind the Minister about Crossrail. The scheme had been talked about for a very long time, since the mists of antiquity, but it was the Major Government who introduced a Bill to enable it to be built. However, rather characteristically of them, their political management in this place was so poor that they entrusted the project to a hybrid Bill Committee, which rejected it. So the Bill never progressed, the infrastructure was not built and, once again, it was left to the Labour Government to introduce the Crossrail scheme, to take the Bill through Parliament and to begin the work.
I give credit to the current Government, because they have sustained the investment in the Crossrail scheme. I am glad that they have done so, but it is risible to argue that everything being done today is wonderful and that nothing good was done before. As the Minister must recognise, the Crossrail scheme was developed by the previous Government and is being carried forward by the current Government. Making a reality of such long-term investment schemes depends on that degree of cross-party consensus.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Given the new time limit and the scope of the Government’s activities in the infrastructure field, I shall limit my remarks to the rail sector.
It is pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford). I must say, however, that the second most absurd comment in his speech—after the one about the Thames estuary airport—was when he invited the Minister to recognise that HS1 was the achievement of the last Labour Government. I thought he was about to make an appeal by saying that infrastructure was a long-term thing and that both parties had been involved in it, but no. Perhaps even more striking was the comment of the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford), when he said that we had Lord Prescott to thank for the preservation of the wonderful façade of St Pancras station. That might have been news to the late Sir John Betjeman.
HS1 certainly has better branding than the channel tunnel rail link, and I congratulate Labour Members on that, but the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act was passed in 1996, and it included outline planning permission. The then Government decided as part of that to have the station at Ebbsfleet, and very serious redevelopment in north Kent flowed from that. HS1 cuts through my constituency and there was significant opposition to it at the time. To a degree, the community’s view of it has settled down; certainly the noise and interference from those trains has not been as great as I feared. We have very significant benefits from having Ebbsfleet, and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich should recognise the cross-party impetus that was behind HS1.
As for HS2, Opposition Members have spoken of it as it were just some little add-on. We have heard that great things are being done in Brazil; some project worth about £5 billion has been mentioned. However, the scope, scale and ambition of the HS2 project, and the vision shown by the Chancellor in driving forward that project from his time in opposition until now—despite the state of the public finances that we were left—are hugely impressive. That £35 billion project is basically inventing a high-speed rail network for this country.
Opposition Members complain that trains will not stop in certain places or will not go to others, but the fact is that even places that will not be on the new line and will not be given new stations will gain significant benefits from HS2. I am thinking particularly of the link that will go all the way to Wigan, the link that will go almost as far as York, and the link that will allow trains to come on from Crewe. All those will provide huge benefits for Newcastle, Liverpool and Scotland, which, as with the cities actually on the network, will see substantial reductions in travel times. The Government deserve to be given a measure of credit by Opposition Members for pushing ahead with HS2, particularly given the finances with which we were left.
I am happy to give credit to the Opposition when it comes to Crossrail, and I was pleased to hear the right hon. Gentleman give credit to us for keeping it. I think that particular credit is due to us in view of the financial circumstances in which we have proceeded with Crossrail. If he will do me the courtesy of allowing me to visit his constituency on 27 February, I look forward to seeing the handover of the Woolwich station box to Crossrail. Berkeley has done an excellent job, and it will be a real gain for his area and for south-east London in general. I am an Eltham boy of old myself. I also think that there will be huge benefits for north Kent. Crossrail will go through Woolwich to Abbey Wood, and the connections with Dartford, Gravesend and the Medway towns will be much improved.
A Crossrail spur from Stratford to Stansted could serve as a tribute to, and be a legacy of, the current Government. We are seeking to have infrastructure projects that can be proceeded with quickly. The Davies commission is due to report in 2015, but an interim report is expected this year, which will consider how existing runway capacity in the south-east can be better used. The single best answer to that must be Stansted, because it has one runway which is only half used. It has the capacity for a further 18 million passenger movements per year, but it does not have good links with central London. If we had the Crossrail spur, it would.
The former aviation Minister Steve Norris is doing fantastic work in promoting that idea. He proposes a six-mile tunnel from Stratford to Fairlop Waters, and for the railway to run along the M11 all the way to Stansted. As a result, the journey from Stansted to Liverpool Street would take only 23 minutes, and it would take only half an hour to travel to the west end or to Ebbsfleet. What a legacy for the Government that would be! What better way could we find of kick-starting the construction industry? I would expect the Liberal Democrats to support it: they may not want any new runways ever to be built in the south-east, but at least they believe in improved rail connections, and they are working with the Conservatives to deliver that.
I hope that Treasury Ministers will allow Steve Norris, and perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and me, to put the case to them. I think that it would be more than a short-term—perhaps a longer-term—solution to the aviation issue.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend is advancing a powerful argument for the joined-up thinking that I stressed in my speech. I hope that he continues with it, because the more we can marry areas that want development with the benefits that result from it, the better the position will be for all concerned.
Mark Reckless
I think that the Stansted Crossrail spur could provide an answer to that, from not just a local but a regional and a national perspective.
I was sorry to learn that my hon. Friend, for whom I have great respect, was encountering a difficulty in regard to the freight terminal that is planned for the lovely area of Radlett. In my constituency, the infrastructure is being put where we want it. Only last month, the Government announced that we were to be given a brand-new railway station in Rochester, which will be built exactly where we want regeneration to happen, in the area around Rochester Riverside. It will hugely assist us in making the case to developers, and in encouraging people to visit and to move to Rochester. It will improve the transport times to London, it will be immediately open to the whole of Rochester high street, and it will link the high street with the regeneration area. This Government have worked very closely with Medway council, through Network Rail, to get this announcement and to get these funds, for which I am very grateful.
Mark Reckless
I agree. I am a localist in these matters. I had the privilege to serve under the Financial Secretary when he ran the Conservative party’s policy unit, and he probably did more than any single person in our party to push that localist agenda. What he has achieved in planning, and in getting agreement for a planning system that boosts the economy and regeneration in this country yet allows local needs to be reflected and gives proper powers to the local democratically elected councillors, has been exemplary. The more we can work to get the economy moving through investment in infrastructure where both communities and the nation want it, the better.
I ask the Financial Secretary to take this agenda forward and to look in particular at giving a further boost to the economy with an extension of Crossrail. I urge him to ensure that the Treasury, as well as the Department for Transport, looks at the case that has been made for a Crossrail spur from Stratford to Stansted.