The publication of an updated National Infrastructure Plan with the chancellor’s Autumn Statement is a welcome appearance. There is pretty much consensus over the absolutely crucial value of significant investment in the country’s infrastructure – transport, communications, energy, waste and environmental that together provide the physical manifestation of stuff – the stuff that we all, without exception, rely on across so many aspects of our everyday lives.
But this infrastructure does far more than that – it provides the channels for our interaction with each other, our employment and education, our ability to survive and prosper, our enjoyment and ease of living. The ever-increasing sophistication of our infrastructure has been behind our continually improving quality of life. By recognising that point we begin to understand how crucial it is to increasingly prioritise infrastructure for focus in terms of strategy and spending.
Infrastructure requires a long-term vision. It doesn’t appear overnight, it doesn’t come cheap and it usually comes with controversy attached due to the physicality as well as the cost (think any new high speed rail line or road for example!). These factors together can cause a long-term plan such as this National Infrastructure Plan to miss its purpose and appear somewhat cobbled together more for expediency than long-term commitment to delivery.
A plan needs to have a fundamental long-term vision of the desired end – for infrastructure from the perspective of today, think of 2050 as our optimal target. The plan is then the roadmap of how we put all the pieces together to get to that 2050 vision. We can map out the detail in terms of actual projects for the next 15 years or so along with the strategic targets for the second half of our plan.
So upon reading the coalition’s National Infrastructure Plan it is a shame but unsurprising to see that it is flawed in that it sets out very little vision and very little commitment. In this context, it is for Labour to set out our long-term plan for our country’s infrastructure and to give certainty by truly committing to it. This requires leadership, vision and courage.
We can set out the key tenets of our Infrastructure Plan, making clear what we are seeking to achieve by 2050 – a fully electrified railway network (comprising high speed inter-city; regional; suburban and local); a shift in energy policy to bring security of supply with diversity of sources; a cutting-edge communications network that facilitates economic growth; and, the ability to ensure that if opportunities for additional schemes can be added into a scheme in progress that this is proactively encouraged (for example, fibre optics or pipelines built in along new railway lines). But there are then two key elements to add – funding and competence.
We should commit to an infrastructure fund from Treasury that would have a number of billions of pounds per annum put in to spend on national infrastructure projects. With that comes the need for a national strategic entity that ensures our long term vision is being met and to provide the prioritisation, value for money, competence and order of schemes as well as the sense-check that can provide balance across politicians, civil servants, the business community and other relevant organisations.
This competence also needs to be shared across organisations in a decentralised manner. Our Infrastructure Plan can be bold as long as it is certain, creating opportunities on a local and regional level rather than being overly-prescriptive – local interests should be leaders and delivery agents for the delivery of infrastructure as well. Alongside this point is the need for local partners to have the ability to build up local infrastructure funding additionally.
There are a number of pieces to the infrastructure puzzle and a lot of time and effort has to go into making the right decisions as they have to be right first time – it is simply too big to get wrong. It is too important, too fundamental to our lives to pull together a half-hearted, inconsistent, vague long-term plan for our strategic infrastructure – infrastructure is the sign, the marker for the progress of a society and a progressive approach to infrastructure is the only way to do it.
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Alex Burrows is head of strategy at Centro (the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority) and member of Sutton Coldfield CLP. He writes here in a personal capacity.
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Even after the deficit is reduced, the state will still be spending some £700bn a year. That’s less in
real terms than before the Crash but still a very significant proportion of the UK’s GDP. It means the
state can still do much to promote equality and social justice but it will also mean facing up to big
strategic choices about how to use existing expenditure. As such, given the flat-lining economy, the
hit to living standards and the need to identify new sources of potential growth, Labour’s criteria for
spending choices should be based on a simple question: will a spending option directly boost short
and long-term growth and create jobs? This may mean very constrained funding for healthcare,
pensions and welfare for the foreseeable future. It’s tough, but the alternative is ducking the genuine
decisions nearly every government of an
advanced economy currently faces.
interesting to see whom would suffer the most for a break down in banking, not the top but the bottom nothing much changes.