Policies focused around promoting green transport are costing the UK transport infrastructure to fall to third world standards, an independent think tank has suggested. This poor infrastructure is important as transport, utilities and communications are powerful drivers of economic growth and represent the best value for government spending, Reform says.
In its report ‘Road to Recovery’ published today, the charity rates the UK’s transport infrastructure 34th behind Namibia and Spain, despite being the 6th richest country in the world.
Stating that the UK is in the infrastructure ‘slow lane’, the think tank refers to an OECD recent survey of the UK economy which found that inadequate investment is a key reason for low productivity with Britain spending less on this area as a proportion of GDP than any other OECD country.
The UK economy is suffering at the expense of public sector investment focused around green issues, the think tank concluded. Infrastructure departments are mired in confusing targets and politicised priorities. The Department for Transport (DfT) spends around £2 billion per year to promote ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’; while the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) chooses energy production ‘winners’ it said. The cross-party interest in a ‘green technology revolution’ is a new corporatist agenda with as little hope as the ‘white heat’ of the 1960s, Reform says.
As a result, some projects have gone ahead that, on economic grounds, should not have done so uch as the Sheffield Supertram, while some projects have been blocked because they did not involve public finance (the Central Railway Group freight railway from Liverpool to the Channel) Reform conclude. Some essential developments have been blocked by lack of political will (water metering) and political debate is dominated by white elephant projects without economic merit, such as high speed rail and offshore wind turbines.
