Darren Jones

I thank the right hon. Member for his question, because he invites me to talk the House through our infrastructure strategy. For the first time, we are bringing together Government plans on economic infrastructure, housing and social infrastructure in the same place. It means that when we go through the spending review in the Treasury, working with colleagues across Whitehall, we will be much better than the previous Government at taking place-based decisions. In the past, it was a bilateral discussion between a Department and the Treasury, with no dots being connected between different types of infrastructure. That has led to the failure to capture the growth potential in different places. We will take a different approach and make sure that infrastructure investments relating to public investment are capped by the numbers set out in the Budget. That is the spending envelope that we have, and we have to prioritise those investments, but they will be based on driving growth and opportunity for people in the places in which they live. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central made a great point about the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor, the role of connecting some of our great universities, and unleashing the opportunity that exists between them. As I said to the House earlier, the living connectivity arrangements between Oxford and Cambridge are basically non-existent. By connecting these two hubs of innovation and investment, the opportunities are endless.