Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move amendment 11, page 1, line 6, after ‘infrastructure’, insert ‘within the United Kingdom’.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 1, page 1, line 7, leave out ‘includes’ and insert ‘means’.

Amendment 9, page 1, line 11, after ‘health’, insert ‘childcare’.

Amendment 4, page 1, line 13, leave out paragraph (e).

Amendment 2, page 1, line 13, after ‘housing’, insert ‘, the function of which has a national significance.’.

Amendment 10, in clause 1, page 1, line 13, at end insert—

‘(2A) “Infrastructure” excludes the expansion of Heathrow airport before May 2015.’.

[Chris Leslie]

At near enough to 7 o’clock, I am glad that we finally turn our attention to the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill. Anybody following these proceedings might be astonished that we have been allowed just over two hours for the Committee stage. In our view it is unsatisfactory to leave the rules governing £50 billion of public expenditure to such scant and inadequate scrutiny. Although we do not necessarily disagree with the broad principles behind the Bill, that does not mean that we should fall short in our duty as parliamentarians to analyse, consider and improve the details of the legislation. Ministers cannot point to the House of Lords as the place where the Bill can be improved and amended if we run out of time for consideration in Committee. I think the last time the Lords sat in Committee on a money Bill was in 1995, when it considered the European Communities (Finance) Bill. This two-hour period is therefore the only opportunity we will get to scrutinise the particulars of the legislation; hence the amendments that are before us.

I want to talk to amendments 11 and 9 in this first group. Amendment 11 would make it clear that the substantive powers in the Bill, which give Ministers the ability to grant financial assistance to any persons, should be used for infrastructure in the United Kingdom, for essentially this reason: we believe that we should focus all our efforts on the domestic infrastructure needs of our country. That is why we think the Bill, if it can bring benefits, needs to focus very much on the benefits of infrastructure and bringing forward capital schemes here at home. Hon. Members will be aware that the UK has been falling behind quite considerably in the past couple of years in terms of infrastructure and capital investment schemes. Only today in the Financial Times we read about the Construction Products Association warning that

“infrastructure is in free-fall,”

and that it expects spending to fall by 13% in 2012 compared with the last calendar year, despite the hollow words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Noble Francis, economics director at the CPA, said:

“We are getting to the stage where the government just can’t make more announcements with nothing happening. At some stage they are going to have to launch some capital investment that sees work happening on the ground. This can be done quickly, easily and cheaply speeding up work on the repair and maintenance of roads, schools, hospitals and housing.”

The article points out that road construction, to take one example of infrastructure investment,

“is suffering in particular, with the CPA projecting a decline of 40 per cent this year and 5 per cent next year.”