Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

I normally agree with my hon. Friend, but I am afraid that I do not on this occasion. There is not now an excuse to go in for projects that do not make any economic sense just because we all want some more growth and jobs. Indeed, that would be a very good way of setting us all back further as it would damage the public finances without giving us the benefit of a good project that people wanted to use and that produced plenty of user revenue. When one is in a financial hole, as our country is, one needs to be very careful. We look to the Treasury, in particular, to evaluate such matters carefully and I want a little more guidance because £50 billion is a huge sum. I am not surprised that so few MPs want to discuss it—if we were debating £500 million, the place would probably be packed, but because we are discussing £50 billion everyone has gone off for a tea or a coffee—but to me it is a serious sum of money and I want some reassurance that we will get something worth having for it.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) roamed over many of the issues covered on Second Reading and over the scepticism on both sides of the Committee. I say to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) that I think evaluation is critical, as we have seen with the west coast main line, and undertaking projects on a wing and prayer at this stage is dangerous, to say the least.

The Bill, as we said on Second Reading, seems to be the reverse of the private finance initiative. PFI was meant to shift the risk on to the private sector, yet the Bill seems to shifting it back on to the public sector. I share the concerns. Clause 1(4) defines financial assistance in the broadest terms possible, so it could involve revenue assistance, and clause 1(3) refers to the operation of a project. In addition to a capital project, we could be subsidising in revenue terms the operation undertaken by a capital project. That leaves open the issue of hospitals being built by the private sector and then revenue supported under the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunt]

The thrust of my speech will reinforce the remarks made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) about the reassurance we should receive about the possibilities opened up by the Bill. The mechanism I have chosen to secure that reassurance is to table an amendment that would delete the reference to housing. I have no intention of pressing it to a Division; I am merely seeking clarity on what we want to achieve with the Bill.

On Second Reading, the Opposition spokesman said he thought that housing was infrastructure, but I am afraid that I do not—neither does the “Oxford Dictionary of Economics”, nor do The Economist or the Government in their 2011 national infrastructure plan. That does not mean, however, that I do not think that investment in housing is essential or necessary, which was the conclusion slightly unfairly drawn by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington on Second Reading. Given his interest in criminal justice, I was somewhat surprised that he then juxtaposed the need for decent prison facilities—

[John McDonnell]

I admit that I was a bit harsh.

[Mr Blunt]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his customary self-criticism and generosity.

The Minister must give us the necessary clarity. I note that the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) has tabled an amendment on housing schemes that would add the words “of national significance”—or words to that effect. It is at that point that alarm bells start ringing for me, as the Member for Reigate, a constituency wholly within the metropolitan green belt. We have had a significant increase in housing, particularly through infill but also through new housing schemes that were agreed and supported by the local authority, and there has been development in parts of Redhill, but that has actually led to a shortage of infrastructure to support the people in that housing.

We desperately need two new primary schools locally, and then there is the small matter of the M23 never being finished. In these circumstances, when we are looking for capital schemes, it might be rather nice if the M23, several decades later, was finally finished properly where it joins the A23. In addition to the schemes that the Government will come forward with, which I anticipate will be announced in the expenditure statement, I hope that we can begin to look at some of the schemes that have been around for a long time and that these funding mechanisms will help to enable expenditure on them to take place.

I am seeking the same level of reassurance that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham seeks. I have the same implicit trust that he has in the ability of the Economic Secretary and the team of Treasury Ministers to manage these things satisfactorily, but Parliament is owed proper accountability on this.

I am concerned that we will find housing schemes, particularly those of national significance, being imposed in the way they were under previous regional development strategies, with housing numbers simply being cascaded down from Whitehall to the regions, to the counties and then to local authorities, such as mine, in a way that leaves the borough councillors, as owners of the planning policy, completely unable to do anything other than mitigate the consequences. They have never been in the position that we, as a localist Government, want them to be in, in which they can judge between the economic and social need for housing locally and the environmental consequences of such development. Those are the balances that local authorities are there to draw.

The Bill will suddenly enable a substantially greater amount of new expenditure to take place, but where is the link with the rhetoric about planning policy? I just want to raise that concern, as I did on Second Reading. I do not want the financial provisions set out in the Bill to be combined with planning policy debates that take place elsewhere, and then suddenly find that in constituencies such as mine the powers of local representatives are being overridden in some rush to develop housing, which by no stretch of the imagination is infrastructure in the proper sense of the word.