Infrastructure

Brian H. Donohoe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I wonder whether the next Government Member to intervene will congratulate the Chancellor on spending £12.8 billion less over three years than the plans he inherited from the previous Labour Government.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

I hope that I do not excite the shadow Minister so much that she delivers her baby early. What does she think about the fact that once again the Government have kicked into the long grass the problems of congestion in air traffic in the south-east? Money could be invested in that without the need to spend any public money. Why are they kicking that into the long grass?

[Rachel Reeves]

It is being kicked into the long grass because of weak leadership. It is desperately disappointing for businesses wanting to invest today that no decision will be made and no report published from the man charged with conducting the review until the next Parliament.

The Chancellor should take the IMF’s advice and use the March Budget to rethink the Government’s failed economic plan. We told the Government that to cut too far and too fast would hurt the economic recovery and that the country needed leadership, not warm words. That is why since the Government choked off the economic recovery we have been calling for a boost to jobs and growth by bringing forward infrastructure investment, as the last Labour Government did in the aftermath of the financial crisis.