PM Johnson demands Britain 'Build, build, build' to beat COVID-19 slump

[June 30, 2020]  By William James

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to shake Britain's economy out of its coronavirus-induced crisis on Tuesday by fast-tracking infrastructure investment and slashing property planning rules.

As Britain emerges from lockdown, Johnson is looking to move past criticism of his government's handling of the pandemic with a plan to repair the economic damage and reshape the country.

"We cannot continue simply to be prisoners of the crisis," Johnson said. "We must work fast because we've already seen the vertiginous drop in GDP and we know that people are worried now about their jobs and their businesses."

His message, delivered at a college in the central English town of Dudley, was overshadowed by the announcement of a new lockdown in Leicester, just 50 miles away, where COVID-19 infections are surging.

Nevertheless, with an exhortation to "build, build, build", Johnson announced plans to speed up government infrastructure spending and cut through the red tape around planning to make property development easier..

"We will build the hospitals, build the schools, the colleges. But we will also build back greener and build a more beautiful Britain," he said.

Promising not to cut spending, he compared his plan to former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1930s "New Deal" programme, which included job-creating public works projects to help the United States recover from the Great Depression.

"It sounds like a prodigious amount of government intervention, sounds like a new deal...If that is so, then that is how it's meant to sound," Johnson said.

Tuesday's headline spending announcement of 5 billion pounds ($6.13 billion) amounts to around 5 percent of gross public sector investment last year. Most had already been announced and is only being spent sooner than planned.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he visits the Speller Metcalfe's building site for The Dudley Institute of Technology in Dudley, Britain, June 30, 2020. Jeremy Selwyn/Pool via Reuters

Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, was among those questioning the size of the investment.

"Germany announced a stimulus package of 4% of its GDP. The equivalent for the UK would be £80bn. So, not only is £5bn eye-wateringly short of a 'New Deal', it falls short of other countries too," she said in a tweet.

The 5 billion pounds of accelerated investment will be made up of projects including hospitals, schools and roads. Finance minister Rishi Sunak will announce further details next week.

Britain's recent history shows that big infrastructure projects are difficult to deliver.

A new underground train line in London is over budget and late, as is a north-south high speed rail link. After decades of discussing airport expansion at London Heathrow, the project remains mired in legal challenges.

"The key now is to ensure that these projects get off the ground as a matter of urgency," manufacturing trade body Make UK said.

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Guy Faulconbridge and Andy Bruce, editing by Stephen Addison, Nick Macfie and Michael Holden)

[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.