Gareth Bacon

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and for advance sight of it. Make no mistake: infrastructure is the connective tissue that binds our economy together. Our railways and strategic roads are the veins and arteries of our economy, connecting businesses up and down the country. That is why these announcements are to be welcomed, just as they were when they were previously announced by the last Conservative Government. For example, the M54 to M6 link road and the Portishead branch line were both announced and granted permission under the last Conservative Government. The new stations at Wellington and Cullompton and the midlands rail hub were all approved under the previous Conservative Government. The development consent order for the A66 northern trans-Pennine project was signed in March last year under the last Conservative Government. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State calls from a sedentary position, “Where was the money?” As she well knows, that was in the last spending period, and the forthcoming spending review was always going to be after the general election. I could go on and on, because every single scheme announced by the Government today is the result of the work of the previous Conservative Government. I therefore cannot muster the same enthusiasm as her when it comes to today’s announcement. The truth, whether they know it or not, is that the Secretary of State and her Ministers have been sent to this House today to stage a distraction, because in recent weeks we have seen the economic credibility and political unity of this Government implode. We have seen the Chancellor, who promised to maintain an “iron grip” on the public finances, forced to contend with unfunded U-turn after unfunded U-turn, all because the Prime Minister has lost control of their Back Benchers. We know what it means: more taxes for families and for businesses—the Chancellor has admitted it herself. We also know the impact that this will have on the economy. In the last few months the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Bank of England and the OECD have all downgraded the UK’s growth forecasts—by as much as half, in the case of the OBR—so I am afraid that the Government are kidding themselves if they believe that reannouncing transport infrastructure projects that are already in the pipeline will revive an economy that is faltering after a disastrous first year in office. With the tax burden reaching an historic high, inflation almost double the Bank of England’s target and inactivity rising because the Government are seemingly incapable of implementing any kind of meaningful welfare reform, far from fixing the foundations, they are actively undermining them. Quite aside from the fact that these reannouncements on their own will not revive our faltering economy, no deadline has been set for the completion of the projects, and in the light of that I must question whether the funding for them is as secure as the right hon. Lady claims. Given that the OBR is expected to downgrade growth and productivity forecasts—not to mention Labour’s U-turns—we know that the Government have created a black hole of billions of pounds in the public finances, so I must ask the right hon. Lady how confident she is that funds will not be cut from these projects to fill the Chancellor’s economic black hole. Does she recognise that these projects alone will not revive an economy that is faltering under the Government’s economic mismanagement, and will she give a timeframe for them not just to be started, but to be completed? What we have seen in recent weeks is the following: a Prime Minister whose unpopularity with the public is apparently exceeded only by his unpopularity with his own Back Benchers and who is now clearly at their mercy; a Chancellor who is wilting under the strain; and a Government with no new ideas, out of steam after only one year in office and forced to rely on ideas thought up by other people. It is no surprise that Ministers would like to speak about anything other than their own record in office, but Britain deserves better than this.