Chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said Conservatives were “not really listening” to the NIC
The chief secretary to the Treasury has criticised the previous government for having a dismissive attitude towards the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC).
Darren Jones, a rising star in the Labour party who is second in command at the Treasury after chancellor Rachel Reeves, said the NIC was doing a “brilliant job” but the Conservatives were “not really listening or taking it seriously”.
His comments came at a speech in Westminster earlier this week at the launch of the Labour Infrastructure Forum in which he provided more detail on Labour’s plans to merge the NIC with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) to create a new body called the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA).
He said: “Why did we come to that conclusion? The NIC was doing a brilliant job on strategy. I think everybody agrees that their outputs are actually great, but let’s be frank, the government wasn’t really listening or taking it seriously. So it produced great reports but it wasn’t informing decisions.”
Jones argued that the IPA had also been reduced to a “compliance function” and it needed to be “more about speeding up delivery and focusing on delivery”.
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“We need to help the great officials that work at the IPA with mandates, with capacity, with authority, with policy to be able to really deliver that,” he said.
“And by bringing them together into a new strategic centre on infrastructure and digital transformation and public services, we think we can really create an authority at the centre of government that has the buy-in of Treasury, the cabinet office and Number 10 working with departments and other partners to really drive delivery in the way we want.”
The new body will feed into Labour’s plans for a year 10-year infrastructure strategy which aims to create a more stable environment for investors to smooth the delivery of major infrastructure projects.
Describing the strategy as a “call for stability”, Jones said: “We saw the last government chop and change every couple of years - ‘we want this, we don’t want this, we’re going to deliver this, this is going to be world leading’.”
“It’s just very difficult for anyone financing, delivering or working on these projects to be able to deliver them and for many global investors looking at us thinking ‘what are you guys doing, what do you want, I don’t know what to invest in, what not to invest in’.”
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The cabinet minister said further details about the strategy will be announced “very shortly”, including on how the government will consult on its production and when the completed document will be unveiled.
Reeves will deliver the government’s first full Budget on 30 October setting out spending plans for the rest of the financial year. This will be followed by a spending review in the spring which will settle budgets for the rest of Labour’s five-year term in office, Jones said.
“That means all of the government will have agreed about the trade offs as well as the detail about infrastructure, about things we think we can deliver, that we will deliver, and then will be accountable for delivering, and that won’t change.
“So you will have a very clear view from us with public financing, where that’s relevant, to really focus on things that are important for the country,” he said.
Prior to entering government, Jones won admirers across the built environment through his involvement in the former shadow Treasury team’s direct engagement with the industry.
Labour is being advised on the infrastructure panel by several industry bosses including Mace chief executive Mark Reynolds, Skanska chief executive Katy Dowding and incoming HS2 boss Mark Wild.
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