Will Rachel Reeves’s plan for economic growth work?
Will Rachel Reeves’s plan for economic growth work?
Share:
The chancellor has made an assault on the barriers, but the uncertain global backdrop is out of her hands. The chancellor laid out a series of “supply-side” changes, aimed at improving the UK economy’s potential to grow, including by tackling what she called “chronic underinvestment”.
Economists believe the UK’s low levels of investment compared with other large economies are a key factor behind the stubbornly weak growth since the global financial crisis of 2008. To encourage businesses to spend money and create jobs in the UK, Reeves is promising to sweep away some of the barriers that slow down major (and minor) infrastructure projects.
That means a new planning and infrastructure bill, coming in the spring, which will make it harder to object to buildings on environmental grounds, for example – and easier to build homes around train stations. Reeves explained other aspects of her plan to woo corporate investors, including urging the UK’s 100-plus regulators to pursue growth, alongside their other duties such as consumer protection.
She is also making changes to pensions regulation, in the hope of unlocking part of the surpluses of defined benefit funds, to be invested in pro-growth projects. The chancellor listed a series of transport projects she believes are critical to growth, including the much-delayed third runway at Heathrow, which has become symbolic of the UK’s inability to get infrastructure built.
