Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I am not sure I accept my hon. Friend’s characterisation of quantitative easing. One of the strengths of the tight fiscal policy that this Government have run and will continue to run is precisely that it allows the monetary activism that we have seen in this country and, indeed, in other parts of the world. However, he is right that the purpose of the Bill is to enable infrastructure projects to come forward quickly. That is why one of the key criteria by which we will decide whether to issue a guarantee to a particular project is that it can get under way within 12 months of the guarantee being issued, and that it has the necessary consents in place. This is about bringing forward projects now; it is not about offering guarantees now for projects where nothing will happen for many years to come.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many Members will want to follow where the public money is spent, and we should consider the role of the Public Accounts Committee in understanding these measures. Will the Minister say a little more about when a liability will go on to the balance books, and the impact of the value for money assessment of the Public Accounts Committee of any of these projects? What will be the impact on those decisions and on any future liability that might be incurred?

[Danny Alexander]

Of course, the Public Accounts Committee will be able to undertake scrutiny in the normal way. Clause 3 sets out detailed reporting requirements to Parliament for the guarantees, and the PAC will want to scrutinise such matters. As I was explaining earlier, these contingent liabilities will be reported through the whole of Government accounts process, which is the appropriate way to report such things. They will manifest themselves as public spending only as and when the liabilities are called, or where an assumption has to be made about the likelihood of a guarantee being called; otherwise, they are contingent liabilities, as the hon. Lady will well understand.

The Bill contains measures that will support growth, jobs and families, all at minimal expected cost to the taxpayer. It will support the UK’s construction sector by providing access to finance for financially credible, high value for money projects. It will unlock the investment that the UK needs to make it one of the best places in the world to do business, and to support sustainable growth balanced across sectors and regions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

With every piece of legislation we are asked to consider in this House it is important to apply the test of why we are here. I believe that all Members across the House are here because they wish to improve the communities they represent and forward the causes they care about. The test for me tonight is whether this Bill will deal with the issues that my community and others across the country currently face.

The economic crisis across the nation cannot have passed anybody by. Given current levels of debt, disappointment and fear, many companies and families in our communities are struggling. When that happens, people look to their Governments as the first line of defence. Many of us in opposition fear that, in some of the ways the Government are approaching legislation, rather than being the home front, they seem to be saying, “Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring.” I think that that is what we are seeing tonight. The Bill is designed to give the appearance that something is being done, but the critical question we must all ask is this: what is the something that needs to be done for the communities we represent?

Our communities are suffering from a toxic mix of several factors. First and foremost, there is a crippling lack of confidence in our country’s economic condition. The figure that should challenge the Government the most is the £750 billion-worth of assets that companies in this country are sitting on, which they have been stockpiling over the past four years. Frankly, companies in this country do not need credit; they need good reasons to spend. We have to give them those good reasons to spend credit and get demand going again.

When that demand is going, we know that that means jobs for communities such as mine, where there has been a stubborn 5,000 people out of work over the past year. It means tackling the long-term unemployment that is pock-marking too many of our young people. It means tackling the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) mentioned, as people are having to work in different ways that do not suit their needs, setting up their own businesses and hoping against hope to make the money to keep a roof above their heads. It means tackling the low level of vacancies in our economy. It means tackling the third part of the trifecta of issues affecting the rising costs of living in our communities—families who are struggling with unemployment and wage freezes are also struggling with the increasing costs of transport, housing and food.

We have to ask ourselves whether the Bill will do more to advance the issues that people need to be advanced, and can be tackled, or will simply pass them by. We have to ask how it will help to restore our economy. We all understand the impact of choking off investment infrastructure, because we have seen it over the past two years. We have seen the fall in housing construction, which has resulted in 120,000 jobs disappearing from our economy. We have seen the dithering over our transport infrastructure, which has affected the discussions on aviation, high-speed rail, and, in my part of the world, London Transport, trains and electrification. We have seen the consequences for companies that are reliant on the internet and for communities who needed the broadband promise to have been implemented in 2012, not by 2015. We have seen decimated new industries that could offer great hope to our economy —in particular, the solar panel industry, decapitated by this Government through the choices they have made.

The Government have failed to understand the crucial link between the public and private sectors and the consequences of investment in one for benefits to the other. That is what the Bill must address. To give an example from my constituency—I am sorry that the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) is no longer here—Willowfield school was good to go under the Building Schools for the Future programme and is now finally being rehabilitated. Not only have the children in my constituency had to wait—and are still waiting—for the quality school environment that they need to achieve their potential, but young people who were out of work could have been put to work on building that school, which we all recognise we need.

It is a false economy not to see infrastructure investment as part of a growth strategy. I welcome the fact that the Government have now understood the potential that that has to make an impact on my community, let alone the other struggling communities across the country. It is also something that businesses would support. Two thirds of companies are worried about the standards of our local roads; 95% of them believe that congestion has impacted on their business; and a quarter feel that they have lost at least £1,000 in the past year alone because of problems with their internet connectivity. Most crucially, two thirds of businesses have no confidence that there will be improvements to address the problems, despite the Government’s proclamations.

The Bill must pass that test if it is to be part of the economic revival that our communities and our country need. Frankly, as many Labour Members have pointed out, it does not pass muster because of the restrictions that it places on spending. As the shadow Chief Secretary said, it is, in effect, deadweight funding for schemes that would get support in any case. I hope that Ministers will deal with that issue, because they have yet to identify the schemes that should receive funding—the so-called perfect schemes that have all the requirements in place and are good to go, but that for some mysterious reason are not moving forward. There is no clarity about when these projects might be chosen so that we know when and how they might make a difference. We might look to the national infrastructure plan, but we are already on version 2 and are promised version 3 shortly. One can understand why the businesses sitting on the £750 billion do not have confidence in the situation.

I encourage Treasury Ministers to think again about how they use the Public Accounts Committee. The Chief Secretary brushed off the argument that the PAC has an important role to play in value-for-money questions, especially in deciding what projects are invested in or what constitutes good value for money. As other Members have pointed out, there is lack of clarity about how the decisions on which schemes are invested in will be made, which Department will make those choices, and how the schemes will fit in with other spending priorities and, indeed, other priorities across Government.

I endorse the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who talked about the social value test and the importance of looking at investments in the round. We should not merely ask, “Can we get the road built?” We should also ask, “Can we get our young people back to work? Can we skill them up so that this money does not just pay back once but repeatedly?” That is the social return on investment that we should all look for.

Ministers also need to answer the question that occurs to many of us when we examine the current economic climate. One in four public sector organisations have reportedly said that they are planning to cancel investment projects in the next four months. If there is not clarity about which investment projects will be taken forward, when, and how that will be decided, what confidence can we have that the decision making process has not already corroded the possibility of those projects happening? Businesses that rely on work that they know is not going to come about will not get the comfort that the Bill should offer.

That is why the shadow Chief Secretary was right to talk about the Bill being a peashooter when we needed a bazooka. Frankly, it is a peashooter when we are facing a tank of a problem, because we know that there are worse things to come in our economy if the Government do not change course. We know that the cuts to benefits will kick in next year and that the cost of living will continue to rise as the cost of transport, energy and housing goes up. The impact of any investment that the Bill brings forward will not be felt for years to come, so it does nothing to address the challenges that my community and others around the country are facing now, about which I talked at the start of my speech.

I urge Ministers to consider what more they can do for the real wealth creators in our communities. We know that two thirds of jobs come from small businesses, so I make the same plea that I made in the Queen’s Speech debate for the Government to look again at what more they can do to help small businesses and unlock the money that is sitting in companies’ bank accounts, which could be invested in Britain’s future entrepreneurs. They should consider how we could use time-limited tax breaks to get our economy moving now, so that we can give real hope to families who are in debt.

We all want to get Britain back to work and reverse the current toxic cycle. I say that in a week when we have heard of one company doing fantastically successfully. It would not be a speech in the House by me were I not to point out that legal loan sharks are the one blooming industry in our country—we heard this week that Wonga’s profits are up 300%. We cannot have another year in which the only people doing well in this country are the legal loan sharks.

I ask Ministers not just to invest in infrastructure but to think again about what they can do for communities such as mine, Ealing North, Nottingham and Portsmouth. They should consider how they can bring jobs back to those communities, because the people we represent need and deserve nothing less.