Alex Massie Alex Massie

London is different: the government will spend money there

The chart at the top of this post comes from the government’s National (sic) Infrastructure Plan 2013. (Sic because it is largely a plan for England.) You can find it on page 30. You may notice that one rather large part of England is not listed on this chart: London.

Perhaps that is because the value of infrastructure spending in London comes in at a nifty £36 billion. Or, to put it another way, spending on infrastructure in London is equivalent to the total amount of infrastructure spending in every other part of England save the south-west. And the south-west’s figure is chiefly so high because of a single project: the new nuclear power station at Hinckley Point.

Ed Cox, from the IPPR, tweeted that the per capita spending on transport infrastructure comes out at: south-west £215, north-east £246, Yorkshire and Humberside £303, north-west £839, London £4895.

Now you may say there is nothing wrong with that and, to some extent, I would agree with you. London has special needs. London also, of course, is the British economy’s greatest engine. And to remain so it needs major improvements to its infrastructure. By their very nature these will be extremely expensive projects. (And a huge percentage of all rail trips are in London.)

All of that is fine. Everyone in the rest of the United Kingdom can, I think, understand all this. We also understand that money earned in London is sometimes redistributed elsewhere.

Nevertheless, you do wonder sometimes. You wonder, for instance, if London’s need is really so much greater than needs elsewhere. Since infrastructure spending is such a vital contributor to economic growth in London, you wonder if it might not also be quite important in other parts of England.

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