Responding to the Chancellor's Spending Round 2019 statement to Parliament, Jerry McLaughlin, Executive Director of Economics and Public Affairs at the Mineral Products Association (MPA) said:   

"The MPA welcomes the Chancellor's statement that "rebuilding national infrastructure" is his number one economic priority, but we remain frustrated that such positive statements over a number of years are still not leading to fast enough project delivery on the ground. MPA members supply the bulk of materials used in construction and infrastructure development but industry sales volumes have stalled and are in danger of going backwards. There seems to be an inverse relationship between high profile political statements of support for infrastructure and what is actually happening on the ground.

Whilst looking forward to the new national Infrastructure strategy later in 2019, it is disappointing that the Chancellor has missed an opportunity to embed additional funding to allow local authorities to start addressing the £10 billion backlog of local road disrepair in the spending plans for 2020/21."

Ends.

Notes for Editors:

A link to HMT can be found here.