Jeremy Corbyn responds to infrastructure announcement

I thank the Prime Minister for an advance copy of his statement. Once again, we see the government taking its ideas from the Labour Party, adopting much of our language but falling a very long way short on the substance. This is a government that is unwilling to make the scale of investment needed to revive the parts of our country that have been decimated by successive Conservative governments. And it’s a government that has proved unable to manage infrastructure projects properly and incapable to keep a lid on costs.

Today’s piecemeal announcements don’t add up to a serious plan to rebalance the economy or tackle the climate emergency. They don’t even come close to repairing the damage done by a decade of Conservative rule. The Prime Minister laments our inadequate infrastructure, yet it’s his party that has been starving the country of investment for the last 10 years resulting in the worst regional inequality in Europe. Yet today the Prime Minister is selling his announcements as a prize for parts of the Midlands and the North. I tell him: people in those regions, to whom he promised so much in the general election, are going to be sorely disappointed.