UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I completely agree with what the noble Lord said about the importance of that sector. He mentioned the example of the energy sector and, as I said, we have, in the industrial strategy, made an investment into engineering skills, which are particularly important in that sector. I hear what he is saying and we will keep driving towards what he wants us to achieve.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister may recall that I spent six years at No. 10 as Tony Blair’s strategy adviser. I spent a year of my time there, with the team of officials, looking at national transport infrastructure—road and rail. We quickly identified that we have by far the worst road and rail infrastructure of any major country; it was very easy to demonstrate. We went further and looked back—I cannot recall the precise term; I think it was 70 years, although it might have been slightly less—at national investment in infrastructure of all kinds over that period. It was the same story: we spent a smaller proportion of our GDP than any major country. Under both main parties, again and again, on every occasion when the economy went into slight reverse, national investment in infrastructure was cut back. Will it be different this time? Does the Minister know what proportion of GDP over this 10-year period is implied by this plan? If he does not, perhaps he will write to us.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I can definitely say yes to one of the noble Lord’s questions, which I am pleased to be able to do. He talked about making sure that this investment is not cut back according to the economic weather, as it were. I completely agree with what he said about how previous Governments did that. That is why the fiscal rules are as they are. That creates the space to ensure that capital investment can continue and is not used to patch up day-to-day spending. That is important for us to appreciate.

The noble Lord is absolutely right that there has been too little investment in transport infrastructure in the past. We have talked before in debates such as this about the importance of connectivity to economic growth and the agglomeration effects that you get from joining up cities with each other, and joining up towns to cities. This ensures that people can live close to where they want to work and can travel to work and, on the skills conversation we have just been having, gets skills into the right place. There are huge growth benefits from transport spending. Some of the money that we are putting in—£15.6 billion into the city regions, £2.3 billion for the local transport grant and £2.2 billion of funding for Transport for London—is vital to what we were just saying. On the percentage of GDP, I do not have that number to hand, but I will write to the noble Lord.