Chief Secretary to the Treasury sets vision for future of Britain's infrastructure
In a speech at Skanska's national HQ, the Chief Secretary sets the Government's vision for the country's infrastructure.
Thank you for the kind introduction. Great to hear all of the great work you’re doing in my constituency. That’s always a good pitch when a member of Parliament is coming onto the stage.
And thank you to Skanska for hosting us. And it’s so great to see so many of you here. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to come and listen to me today - I’m very grateful -and to listen to our plans as a new government, with the intention of how we will continue to work together in delivering these priorities for the country.
So today, I’m setting out the government’s vision for our country’s infrastructure. Building on the Chancellor’s three pillars of stability, investment and reform. Taken together, we believe this approach to fixing the foundations will improve productivity in the public and private sector and help deliver on our mission for growth.
We all know why growth is this government’s first mission. If the UK’s economic growth had matched the OECD average over the past 14 years our economy would now be £140 billion larger. That would have generated £58 billion more in tax revenue to invest in our public services.
This failure to stimulate growth is the root cause of the £22 billion black hole we discovered in our public spending coming into government, which working people across the country understand all too well because they are living with the consequences of that failure to get growth into the economy.
That’s why this government, the Chancellor and I have made growth our defining mission and why, as a government of service, we will protect working people from the failures of the past.
You all know that infrastructure is a key engine for growth, but that engine is in serious need of an MOT. Because without maintained trains and roads, businesses will struggle to export, expand and grow.
Without investing in renewable energy, firms and families will be exposed to the volatility and insecurity of foreign gas and oil prices, often driven by increasing conflicts overseas.
And without a clear infrastructure strategy, investors can’t take long term investment decisions in the interests of their own firms, but more importantly, in the interests of UK plc.
That’s why I welcome today’s report from the National Infrastructure Commission, which sets out the drivers behind escalating costs of major projects over the previous years. They point to a lack of strategic clarity as one of the root causes. It lays bare in the starkest terms the consequences of what has happened over previous years. Instead of clarity, we’ve had confusion. Instead of strategy, we’ve had short termism.
And instead of stability, we have had chaos. All of which has reduced investment into infrastructure and our country. Because behind the complexity of the numbers, the graphs and the data, there is a simple truth.
What investors need most from government is trust. And sadly, that trust has been broken.
So I am here to rebuild it - so that you can help us rebuild our infrastructure and together we can rebuild Britain. To do that, we have to start by fixing the foundations.
We can’t build infrastructure or our economy on foundations which have been progressively fractured over the past 14 years.
Because just like good transport infrastructure provides a stable path for firms to grow, or a reliably priced energy supply system allows families to budget and plan for the future, it is only through fixing the foundations that we can achieve the economic stability on which we will rebuild Britain.
That will require tough decisions, not least to get a grip of public spending which had gotten out of control. But above all, it will require a change in approach.
But it will be the right type of change. It will be long term, it will be joined up and it will be strategic; not directionless chaos in the winds of political change, but the lasting change of a decade of national renewal. To sum it up in three words we will deliver ‘strategy and delivery’.
I’ll begin with strategy, which delivers on the Chancellor’s demand for stability.
We will publish a ten year national infrastructure strategy next spring, alongside the conclusion of our multi-year Spending Review.
This will outline our approach to our core economic infrastructure like transport, energy and housing, and for the first time will also profile our social infrastructure plans for the schools and hospitals which support a flourishing modern economy.
This strategy will be co-ordinated across the whole of Whitehall and will align with our new, overlapping and long term spending framework, making sure that we will allocate public capital better in the future.
A new and improved relationship with the private sector will also be crucial. There is, after all, only so much that the public sector can or should do, and we all know that the vast majority of our growth will be driven by private sector investment.
So we will unlock private investment by being a real partner to business, sharing in the risks and financial burdens that come with investing.
The National Wealth Fund will provide billions of pounds of public money to be invested alongside private finance, drawing greater investment into the industries that will power our growth for years to come.
And we will bring together the deep pension pots that exist throughout the United Kingdom, but which often don’t provide a particularly good return. By our estimates, pension pots could be boosted by £11,000 on average, whilst unlocking £8 billion of new productive investment into our economy.
And of course, as so many wise voices have called for, we have committed to taking on the role of a strategic state through a new modern industrial strategy.
It will provide much needed clarity and certainty over the government’s approach to key British sectors and industries, and long term guidance on our priorities and missions, helping investors to plan ahead.
It will help ensure our growth mission is resilient to global challenges, support regional growth, and deliver an acceleration on net zero.
But strategy without delivery is meaningless. The last government made a plethora of empty promises they never delivered, and this failure to deliver has further undermined the trust in government - and, quite frankly, in the United Kingdom - that is necessary for investors to invest. We have already taken steps to change that. Here are just three examples.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which we will introduce this session, will accelerate the delivery of high quality infrastructure. It will streamline and simplify the consenting process for major infrastructure projects and enable relevant, new and improved national policy statements to come forward, giving increased certainty to developers and communities.
We are working at pace with the energy industry and regulators to connect renewable energy projects to the grid more quickly, and the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has already approved several major solar projects for example, consenting more capacity in the last three months than was installed in the last year, creating thousands of jobs alongside it.
And the deputy Prime Minister herself can now intervene in the planning system where the potential for growth demands it. Early examples include recovered applications for two data centres in Buckinghamshire and Herefordshire, and a film studio near Marlow. That I hope is all welcome news, but I want to provide even more assurance to those looking to invest in Britain’s infrastructure.
Because you must all be thinking that you’ve heard it all before. Some nice words from a politician, often in a hard hat and high vis (sadly, not today) saying: “this time it will be different”. And then six weeks, six months, six years later, it’s the same problems and the same challenges.
You need to know that you can trust me and this government to change. And here’s why you should.
When the Chancellor addressed the state of our public spending inheritance earlier this year in Parliament, she stressed the importance of our expert led institutions such as the office for Budget Responsibility for Fiscal Stability. I fully agree with her.
And that’s why we are confirming today, in line with our reform pillar, that we are strengthening the oversight of the delivery of government’s infrastructure plans through the introduction of the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, or NISTA, which will be operational by spring 2025.
We will do this by combining the functions of the National Infrastructure Commission and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. We will give NISTA a strong mandate and we will bring in external expertise and provide direct ministerial oversight from the centre of government and in each and every department across Whitehall.
The National Infrastructure Commission, as we all know, has produced excellent strategic reports of what infrastructure the country needs and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s expertise and commitment to delivering critical infrastructure projects is unmatched. But the government has collectively still failed to deliver in the past. This is what we will change.
Building on the work of the NIC and the IPA, NISTA will bring oversight of strategy and delivery into one organisation, developing and implementing our ten year infrastructure strategy in conjunction with industry, while driving more effective delivery of infrastructure across the country. In short, it will bridge the gap between what we build and how we build it. It will be a crucial part of our plan to improve delivery.
I’m also delighted to announce that Sir John Armitt, who I’m sure you all know very well, has agreed to extend his term as the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission during this transition period and that he and his team will help inform the infrastructure strategy over the coming months. Building on the analysis and recommendation of the Commission’s second National Infrastructure Assessment, working with the IPA as we create NISTA together.
I recognise that as ever, there will be lots of questions about what this means for industry, investors and infrastructure. I look forward to answering them and most crucially, I look forward to working with all of you as we develop these plans over the coming months. Announce them in the spring and then get on with delivery. But there is one message I want you to take away from today.
A few months ago, the Chancellor announced that we will unlock investment and deliver growth through economic and political stability, and that that growth will only come by investing and fixing the foundations. There is much work to be done to build a new Britain, and today our infrastructure plans begin that work.
Updates to this page
Published 10 October 2024Last updated 10 October 2024 + show all updates
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Amended grammar in wording.
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First published.