Queen's Speech December 2019 - National infrastructure strategy

National infrastructure strategy

“My government will prioritise investment in infrastructure...”

• ●  The National Infrastructure Strategy will be published alongside the first Budget, and will set out further details of the Government’s plan to invest £100 billion to transform the UK’s infrastructure.

• ●  The Strategy will set out the Government’s long-term ambitions across all areas of economic infrastructure including transport, local growth, decarbonisation, digital infrastructure, infrastructure finance and delivery.

• ●  The Strategy will have two key aims:

  • ○  To unleash Britain’s potential by levelling up and connecting every part of the country. Prosperity will be shared across all of the UK, and long- standing economic challenges addressed, through responsible and prudent investment in the infrastructure.

  • ○  To address the critical challenges posed by climate change and build on the UK’s world-leading commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

• ●  The Strategy will also provide the Government’s formal response to the National Infrastructure Commission’s 2018 National Infrastructure Assessment, which made a series of independent recommendations to government across all sectors of economic infrastructure (transport, energy, digital, waste, water and flood management).

  Key facts

• ●  The National Infrastructure Commission (the Commission) was set up in 2015 to provide the government with impartial, expert advice on the UK’s long-term infrastructure priorities. It was formally established as an Executive Agency of HM Treasury in 2017.

• ●  The Commission’s first National Infrastructure Assessment was published in July 2018, and made a series of recommendations to the Government across all sectors of economic infrastructure. The Government has committed to responding to these recommendations through the publication of a National Infrastructure Strategy, which will set out plans to close the productivity gap between London and other parts of the UK and address the critical challenges posed by climate change.

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• ●  The Government will look to introduce any legislation required to deliver plans set out in the infrastructure strategy in due course.

• ●  Much infrastructure policy is devolved. Any changes to reserved policy areas will apply across the whole of the UK, and the Devolved Administrations will benefit from Barnett allocations relating to any increase in spending.