John Stevenson
Main Page: John Stevenson (Conservative - Carlisle)Department Debates - View all John Stevenson's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Chris Philp)
A critical part of the Government’s growth plan is road, rail and energy infrastructure. We will be introducing legislation shortly to ensure that the delivery of that critical infrastructure is massively sped up.
Chris Philp
I thank my hon. Friend, who is a tireless champion for the great city of Milton Keynes. I would be delighted to meet him to discuss the idea along with colleagues from, perhaps, the Department for Education. I note that Milton Keynes has already received £23 million through the towns fund, but I am happy to meet him to discuss the idea.
John Stevenson
Growing the economy is about improving people’s lives as well as improving the success of places such as Carlisle. To achieve that, we need both public and private investment, and, in the case of public investment, it is infrastructure that will make the real difference. Given the rise in the cost of infrastructure projects, will the Minister confirm that where such projects have a shortfall in funding but are ready to go, the Government will step in and give additional funding to support them?
Chris Philp
It is very much our intention to speed up projects where they are ready to go. The growth plan announced a few weeks ago made clear our commitment to doing that. The last spending review provided, I think, about £100 billion of funding towards critical economic infrastructure. Where we can speed up projects, we will certainly be doing that. One project that we have in mind for exactly that is the A66 northern trans-Pennine route, which I believe goes not far from my hon. Friend’s constituency.