Funding for Major Infrastructure Projects

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on securing this important debate. Some Members may be surprised to see me; I am covering for a colleague in the shadow Treasury team, but I always welcome the opportunity to hold the Government to account on their record on public and private funding for major infrastructure projects. There are three main areas that I will focus on: the Government’s underinvestment in energy, the Government’s record on transport and the dysfunctional planning system that means that infrastructure, especially housing, simply does not get built.

First, on energy, the UK is losing the global competition for green jobs. We are now investing five times less in green industries than Germany, and roughly half of what France and the USA invest. The Institute of Directors has warned that:

“the UK will find itself left behind in the accelerating race to lead the green economy.”

Only now, eight months after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, has the Chancellor finally confirmed that the UK will have to wait more than a year to respond. The Opposition think that is simply not good enough.

Ordinary families have paid the price for the Government’s dithering and delay. In 2015, the Government slashed solar subsidies, causing a huge crash in the market. That missing capacity has left household energy bills another £2.5 billion higher this winter in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis on record. We must remember that in 2013, the coalition cut energy efficiency programmes, which saw home insulation rates crash by 92%. If we had insulated 2 million homes every year since then, people’s bills would today be £1,000 a year lower.

On the offshore wind markets, as Scottish Power CEO Keith Anderson has said:

“The wind farms that are coming online today were approved when Gordon Brown was in power.”

Unfortunately, yards across the UK are closing and we are delivering three times fewer offshore wind jobs than Denmark, despite our being over 10 times their size. The Government said in December 2022 that they would introduce planning reform for onshore wind by April of this year. That deadline has been missed and no action has been taken. I hoe that the Minister will confirm whether the Government will end the ban on onshore wind, and, if so, when that will happen.

Let me turn to transport. A recent survey of global investors has seen the UK slip down the rail infrastructure rankings; we now sit between India and Kazakhstan at 30th in the global league table. That is a national scandal—how on earth did we get here? We know that transport projects need certainty, but time and again Ministers have mismanaged key projects. On the key trans-Pennine route, for example, we wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money before cancelling the project and starting again. That has meant that on one of the major rail routes in the country, which transports millions of passengers a year, upgrades are almost a decade late. That has hurt the taxpayer and has profound consequences for the UK, costing the northern economy £16 billion.

Finally, I come to our planning system. Planning applications for homes fell to a record low last year, while the number of local housing plans submitted in the last few years have plummeted. What are the Government doing about that? Planning changes snuck out by the Government three days before Christmas have already resulted in 55 local authorities withdrawing housebuilding plans. Experts are now saying that housebuilding is set to fall to the lowest level since the second world war.

Wherever we look, it is the same story—housebuilding is at a record low, inward investment in transport is in decline, and Britain is falling behind on green energy. But we do not need to continue down this path of managed decline, because Labour has a plan to get the economy growing and to drive the investment and infrastructure that we so desperately need. The Labour party is committed to overturning the senseless ban on onshore wind and to the radical reform of planning rules, to drive growth and build affordable homes.

Fixing our transport system is a prerequisite for growth in this country, and that is why we are working hand in hand with business leaders and pledging that a future Labour Government will deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail, including that vital new train line through Bradford. Meanwhile, our green prosperity plan will grow the UK economy by investing in the green industries that can power our economic future, cut the cost of living for British families, and make Britain a clean energy superpower.

The Minister has listened carefully to all the concerns voiced in the debate. I hope that he responds to them, including those that I have just outlined.