UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy

John Grady Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call John Grady, a member of the Treasury Committee.

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

I welcome today’s announcement and in particular the focus on housing and transport, because Glasgow has a real housing crisis. In my constituency, the busy Bridgeton train station does not even have lifts for disabled people. All taxpayers are concerned about value for money, particularly given the huge overspend and utter chaos of HS2 under the last Government. In Scotland, there is the absolute scandal of the Arran ferry. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me and set out the steps that the Government are taking to ensure value for money in this infrastructure spending? Will he commit to sharing the learnings with the Scottish Government, who desperately need help on that?

[Darren Jones]

The key thing I will point my hon. Friend to is the role of the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority sitting in the Treasury. The assessment on delivery, assurance, design and commercial capabilities for projects will be part of the advice now coming to me as Chief Secretary and to the Chancellor, and it will be aligned with spending decisions on budgets. That means that if a project is not delivering effectively or is not yet ready to start, we will not release the money for that project, and we will stop funding projects that are failing. That is a key difference from how decisions were processed previously, and we think it will lead to much better discipline in delivering big projects.