Oral Answers to Questions

Rachel Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I agree that we want to see private sector investment, and tens of billions of pounds of private sector investment is coming into the United Kingdom. Indeed, today the Chinese company Huawei has announced a $2 billion investment in the UK. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. We want to create the low-tax, competitive conditions for the UK economy in which the private sector can grow, but I think he would recognise that there is a role for public money in providing large-scale transport infrastructure, for example, which these companies need to succeed.

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

In a speech yesterday, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury declared that

“infrastructure is at the centre of our strategy to kick-start our economy.”

With that in mind, will the Chancellor tell the House whether the value of orders for infrastructure investment made by the private sector rose or fell between 2010 and 2011?

[Mr Osborne]

For a start, we have just announced £40 billion of additional guarantees for private sector infrastructure. If the hon. Lady wants the figures, £113 billion was invested over the period from 2005 to 2010, and £250 billion of investment for both the private and public sectors has been announced in this Parliament.

[Rachel Reeves]

As the Chancellor will know, there is a difference between announcing something and actually delivering it. The answer to my question is that those orders fell by a fifth, from £7.3 billion in 2010 to £5.9 billion in 2011—a result of the collapse in business confidence that the Chancellor’s disastrous decision to cut too far and too fast has resulted in.

Is it not the truth that next week’s Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill is necessary only in order to create the impression of activity and to distract from this Government’s complete and utter failure to deliver the infrastructure investment that they have been promising and that the country is crying out for?

[Mr Osborne]

There is a difference between announcement and delivery: Labour announced no more boom and bust, and delivered the biggest boom and the biggest bust. We know all about the record of the last Labour Government. One of the quite extraordinary things is that, despite spending and borrowing all that money, they did not actually invest in the modern infrastructure that the private sector needs to create sustainable jobs. That is the lesson that the hon. Lady should learn from their last period in office.