Sadie Morgan plays down Brexit worries

It’s “business as usual” for major infrastructure projects like HS2, a leading member of the government’s infrastructure commission has said.

Architect Sadie Morgan said she has “every confidence” projects will go ahead because infrastructure spending is critical to lifting the country out of the Brexit crisis.

“As far as the NIC is concerned, it’s business as usual,” she said at a House of Commons reception for the construction industry hosted by Building and the All Party Parliamentary Goup on Construction & Urban Development.

“If anything is going to get us out of this hole it’s infrastructure,” she said.

“It would be a catastrophe to stop that now. I have every confidence that the projects will go ahead.”

Morgan, a director at dRMM and who said she is making a good recovery after recent surgery for breast cancer, is chair of the HS2 design panel and a member of Lord Adonis’ National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) which is next due to next Tuesday.

A meeting held on Friday on location to discuss the proposed Oxford-to-Cambridge railway link had to be abandoned because so many of the people involved were called back to Westminster to deal with the fallout from the referendum result.

The NIC was set up last autumn and given three initial areas of focus by the government: northern connectivity, London’s transport system and energy. Its other members include former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine.

In his autumn spending review, chancellor George Osborne pledged £100bn of infrastructure spending over the next five years.