Clause 1 — Expenditure on financial assistance for the provision of infrastructure

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department – in the House of Commons at 7:00 pm on 15 October 2012.

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Photo of Nick Raynsford Nick Raynsford Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich 7:00, 15 October 2012

My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point about housing, but he understates the case. Infrastructure was the one sector of the construction industry that survived the early period of the recession relatively well. Indeed, by 2009, expenditure on infrastructure stood at £11.6 billion, which was the highest real-terms level for about two decades. That has now slipped away badly, because of the failure of the current Government to maintain infrastructure investment. That is the charge against them: they have allowed activity that was helping to counter the recession to be lost, and the sectors of the industry that are concerned with infrastructure are now as alarmed as the housing sector and all the others that have suffered so badly in the recession.