Labour lays out remit for national infrastructure commission to quickly "end dithering"

The Labour Party has set out a remit for its proposed national infrastructure commission, so it can include the new body in its first Queen's Speech, should it be in government.

The remit is to "identify the UK's infrastructure needs over the next 30 years in order to foster long-term economic growth across the UK and maintain international competitiveness". The recommendations must also "be consistent with the UK's long-term climate change targets and ensuring economic growth meets sustainability requirements".

This would include identifying the infrastructure needed to help deliver "more good jobs, stronger and more balanced growth and rising living standards for all" and "the most connected and open trading nation in the world," Labour said. This would include a "transport network which spreads growth and prosperity to every part of the country" and "new towns and urban extensions to ensure 200,000 new homes a year". 

The party said that the presumption will be that "current infrastructure plans will be the starting point for the infrastructure taken forward in the next Parliament while the new, longer-term and coherent plans are drawn up... the Commission will ensure we build on, and do not go backwards on, existing plans". The commission, recommended in the Armitt Review, would not, therefore, re-open the work of the Davies Commission on how the U.K can maintain its status as an aviation hub.

The Institution of Civil Engineers' director general Nick Baveystock said that Labour has put "a well-argued solution to our infrastructure governance issues on the table and other parties must now also take a position".