Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how much is being invested in national infrastructure in 2014, and how much planned over the next five years, as a percentage share of gross domestic product; and how that compares with the long-run Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average.

The Government's measure of total public infrastructure investment is public sector gross investment (PSGI). The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast at the March 2014 Budget that this will be 3.0 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014-15. Forecasts of government expenditure are generally made on a financial rather than a calendar year basis and are presently only available out to 2018-19.The figures to the end of the forecast period are as set out below:

PSGI measures the direct spending on infrastructure projects by the whole public sector, unlike other measures such as net investment which are adjusted to exclude certain elements of spending. Internationally comparable figures for PSGI are not readily available. The UK's fiscal framework is based around the entire public sector, many other countries only use a measure for general government that excludes public corporations so these are often the only comparative measures available. The OBR forecasts include some international comparisons of different investment measures. These can be found at the link below:

http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/economic-fiscal-outlook-march-2014/

Neither PSGI nor the OBR figures include private investment in infrastructure which is an important element of overall infrastructure investment in the UK. The published infrastructure pipeline, which covers economic infrastructure only, provides an overview of planned public and private investment to 2020 and beyond, and can be found at the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-infrastructure-plan-2013