Infrastructure

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I inform the House that the Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

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[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. Let me point out to her that spending on PFI schemes amounts to billions and billions of pounds—as I understand it, somewhere in the region of £800 billion—and is totally unaffordable. Is it right to spend money on a hospital—[Interruption.] Opposition Members should listen. Is it right to build a hospital under a PFI scheme whereby at the end of 25 years, we will have paid for it 18 times over? It might have cost £120 million to build, but by the time it is finished it will have cost more than £2 billion. I will not agree to spending money on that basis. We should spend money in the correct manner that is affordable for the people of this country; we should not have to pay for something 18 times over. Would you buy a house and pay for it 18 times over?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

That means me. Members should speak through the Chair.

[Rachel Reeves]

I do not know how the hon. Gentleman bought his house, but when I bought mine, I had a mortgage because I could not afford to buy it outright. That is why schemes such as PFI were introduced. I am not sure what school, hospital or children’s centre in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency he would prefer not to have opened during the last Labour Government. I bet a lot more of those things opened under the last Labour Government than have been opened under this Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government.

The reality is that what the Government are doing is hurting business confidence. The director general of the British Chambers of Commerce has described the Government’s plan for infrastructure as

“hot air, a complete fiction”.

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[Rachel Reeves]

I hope the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that the Government are not going to be able to make the repayments on their debt. We know that their triple A rating is under threat, so if this is a warning that the Government are planning on not paying their debts and the deficit back, it will be interesting news.

The CBI has warned the Government that

“businesses in Britain are looking for action and we haven’t seen any yet”.

Yesterday, the monthly index published by BDO showed that business confidence hit a 21-year low. That is the lowest level of business confidence since Norman Lamont was Chancellor and sterling was ejected from the exchange rate mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992. I am sure that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen will remember that day. The Prime Minister certainly does—he was working for the Chancellor at the time. Confidence is now at those low levels again.

It is now clear: business has lost confidence in this Government, who do not have a plan for jobs or growth. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Government are failing to attract the private sector funds they need for their infrastructure investment. It is worth remembering how the Government’s plan to target £20 billion of pension funds for investment is going. Responding to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks), the Chief Secretary to the Treasury had to tell us that the Government were on course for just a 10th of their original target: £2 billion out of £20 billion raised.

The Government lack the policy framework to attract the long-term investment we need. Changes such as cuts to feed-in tariffs have had a detrimental impact on low-carbon investment. The CBI warned the Government that such measures have been

“damaging to business confidence, with implications not just for immediate investment decisions but for longer-term trust in government policy”.

It is no wonder that, last year, 50 companies, investors and industry bodies wrote to the Chancellor asking him to set a firm decarbonisation target for 2030 to give investors the confidence they needed. On energy policy, the Institution of Engineering and Technology has been clear in saying:

“Short-term uncertainty around UK energy policy…is very unhelpful and has the potential to… delay much-needed investment in all forms of energy infrastructure.”

According to the findings of a poll by KPMG, two thirds of businesses believe that the UK’s energy and water infrastructure is unlikely to get any better because of uncertainty about the policy framework.

From the business community, we hear resounding frustration when it comes to the Government’s infrastructure policy. The Government do not seem to understand that businesses long for certainty when attempting to grow, employ more people and build for the future. Those are the people and businesses that we need to encourage, not put off, and infrastructure is vital to that, but the Government’s ideological decision to cut infrastructure investment further and faster is hampering confidence rather than nurturing it.

Small businesses, the engines of growth, are still waiting for the Government to roll out universal broadband. The Government abandoned the commitment from the last Labour Government to provide broadband for virtually every household by 2012. When business needs this Government, they are nowhere to be found.

Fundamentally, the Government fail to understand the need for a comprehensive and long-term plan to build Britain’s infrastructure for the 21st century. That is why the Labour party has commissioned Sir John Armitt, chair of the Olympic Delivery Authority, to consider how long-term infrastructure decision making, planning, delivery and finance can be radically improved. The Olympics taught us what we could achieve together as one nation. With the right leadership and the right investment, and by building consensus around the long-term projects that are essential for our energy, transport and housing needs, we can compete globally, with a national infrastructure that is fit for the 21st century. Labour is therefore making the case for a British investment bank, which would help to support long-term finance for British businesses so that they could take risks and grow. That is especially urgent given that net lending to businesses has fallen by a staggering £13.5 billion over the last year.

Investing in infrastructure is about more than the tarmac on our roads or the bricks that make up our schools. It is about creating skilled jobs for our youngsters. It is about supporting the entrepreneurs who want to export and grow their businesses. It is about ensuring we can grow and operate across the globe. It is about attracting investment from abroad. It is about being ambitious in the face of challenges, and attempting to build a better country for the next generation.

The Prime Minister said in his new year address:

“This is, quite simply, a government in a hurry. And there’s a reason for that. Britain is in a global race to succeed today.”

Whichever way we look at it, however, this Government do not seem to be in a hurry to invest in our country’s infrastructure. Indeed, as I said earlier, they are spending £12.8 billion less on capital investment than the amount specified in the plans that they inherited from the last Government, which amounts to an 8% cut. A Government in a hurry? Hardly. Inertia is the watchword of this Government, at a time when what we need is action.

When other countries are investing in their infrastructure, aware of the benefits, this Government dither. On infrastructure, as on so much else, the country needs decisive leadership. Instead, we get incompetence, delay and cuts. It is time that we changed course.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before I call the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, I should inform the House that a speaking time limit for Back Benchers will be announced when he has sat down. I advise Members not to think much beyond eight minutes for the moment.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I inform Members that there is an eight-minute limit on speeches.

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[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) on bringing forward this debate on what the Opposition know to be an incredibly important and urgent issue.

I disagree fundamentally with the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) when she says that we need to go slowly in bringing forward infrastructure in this country. Given the desperate state of our economy and the number of people who are desperately looking for work, we need a great deal of urgency from the Government, particularly given their appalling record over the past two and a half years.

It was interesting that the Financial Secretary chose to speak mainly about policies from the past. Most of his speech was actually about the last century. Some of the people who are now suffering, such as those who want school places in my constituency while the Government are failing to bring forward infrastructure investment, were not even born at the time of the decisions that he talked about.

The Financial Secretary took on the former Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, in particular. I was at the opening of the new St Pancras station when John Prescott was praised by Lord Heseltine for his fantastic contribution to ensuring that the channel tunnel rail link went ahead and that that fantastic building was saved for the nation. The many people who arrived at that station ahead of the Olympics saw what we can do in this country when we commit ourselves to major infrastructure projects. I agree with the CBI and the many other people, including some of the economists who previously endorsed this Government’s plans, who say that this Government lack the political will to take forward major infrastructure projects.

When people get on the train at St Pancras, which John Prescott and the last Labour Government did so much to make possible, they can now come to Corby and see the new railway station that has been built there. If the Minister tells any one of the commuters or the people who use that line for leisure day in and day out that the last Labour Government did not do enough to improve rail services in my constituency, they will laugh him out of town on the next train.

We want to do more and to go further. We want to have northbound routes on that railway line. The other week, the Government made an announcement that was typical of their infrastructure announcements. They said that they were going to electrify the midland main line with £1 billion of expenditure. However, the figure was exactly the same as the amount of money they disastrously took out of the plans for infrastructure spending to which the previous Government had committed in this Parliament. They give us jam tomorrow.

Earlier, the Economic Secretary whispered to the Financial Secretary about the improvement to the A43 in my constituency. Ministers talk about that proudly, but nobody was fooled when that announcement was made—it was just weeks before a by-election. I was surprised there was no announcement today of an Eastleigh bypass or orbital route, a south coast Hampshire link road or some other such potential bribe. Perhaps the coalition parties cannot agree on what appropriate bribe to give.

Labour can give hope to the people of Eastleigh because we have a plan—a five-point plan for jobs and growth. We have talked—[Interruption.] You can laugh.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I think the hon. Gentleman meant to say, “The Financial Secretary can laugh.”

[Andy Sawford]

Some young people from my constituency were here yesterday to learn about parliamentary etiquette —I should have taken more tips, Mr Deputy Speaker. If the Financial Secretary had laughed in front of those young people when I talked about the desperate need to invest in jobs and growth in this country, they would have given him very little credit indeed.

There is a fanciful picture of how the Labour Government did not invest in infrastructure, but hon. Members should come to Corby and east Northamptonshire and drive past the schools that were built there, such as the brand-new Kingswood school, which is a fantastic facility. My nieces get a fantastic education at the Corby business academy—[Interruption.] The Economic Secretary says that we will pay for those projects, but a combination of funding from the public and private sector—[Interruption.] He should listen to bodies such as the Monetary Policy Committee, which says that we need to find ways of investing in infrastructure in this country.