Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent estimate he has made of the average number of jobs created by every £100 of public capital spending.

Infrastructure investment in the UK supports hundreds of thousands of jobs a year in the construction sector. Spending Review 2020 set out ambitious plans for capital investment across the UK to support jobs– from investment in the next generation of hospitals and upgrades to our roads and railways, to energy efficiency retrofits and tree planting.

HM Treasury worked closely with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) at SR20 to scrutinise the deliverability of schemes to ensure that investment can support jobs as quickly as possible. As set out in the National Infrastructure Strategy, HM Treasury strongly encourages all government departments and their agencies to progress approved and funded projects into procurement and contract without delay (subject to good project discipline). This is supported by the IPA publishing a comprehensive National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline, providing certainty to the market about planned procurement. The next update to the pipeline will be in Spring 2021. The government is also urging local authorities to take steps to support construction jobs in their areas by progressing funded projects as soon as practicable.