Wes Streeting, the former health secretary and Labour leadership hopeful, is today calling for new laws to speed up the construction of critical infrastructure projects.
In a speech this morning, he is saying:
We used to be a country that could do great things. With the promise that the next generation can have it better than the last. We still can. And I want to give people reason to believe again.
If parliament can act in days to save British Steel, it can act with urgency to save Britain’s future prosperity.
Successive governments have been sleeping, while Britain’s crying out for action. I will pass emergency laws to build data centres, nuclear power generation, transport infrastructure connecting people with jobs, and more. We still can build the infrastructure to grow our economy, we have to, and - if I become prime minister – we will.
According to a preview, Streeting is making these comments in a speech on “progressive capitalism”. He is running what is in effect a leadership campaign, although when he resigned as a cabinet he said he did not want to launch a formal bid to replace Keir Starmer until Andy Burnham was back in parliament and able to stand as a candidate himself.
Streeting’s decision to focus on the need for laws to speed up infrastructure building is surprising because in the first session of parliament Labour passed a Planning and Infrastructure Act that was specifically intended to speed up the process leading to the construction of what are designated as nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs). Streeting’s speech suggests he does not think this law goes far enough.
In the speech, Streeting is also calling for the government to allow more drilling to go ahead in the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea.
And he has called for a national “global talent programme” with the aim of recruiting 20,000 world-leading scientists, AI experts and engineers to the UK over the next three years. He says £250m should be set aside to fund this.
In an article for the Financial Times published at the weekend, Streeting explained what he meant by progressive capitalism. He said:
I am putting forward an agenda for progressive capitalism, that backs enterprise, rewards work, takes on vested interests and makes markets serve our shared goals of growth, fairness and a better future for the next generation.
That means doing three things. First, push the frontier of innovation. Create the conditions where highly productive firms can scale.
Second, take the best to the rest. Spread new practices to the tail of the economy, where competitive forces will incentivise adoption. It may be counterintuitive for a politician on the left to say, but British capitalism suffers from a lack of competition.
Third, we need to invest in the resilience of our core strategic industries. Britain will remain an open economy reliant on global supply chains, but we can no longer assume that critical capabilities will always be available. Energy, defence, and data infrastructure offer opportunities for re-industrialisation. They have both economic and national security importance.
Anyone can make the pro-growth choice when there are no downsides. This country needs a government unafraid of taking on vested interests and doing controversial things in the national interest.
