Boris Johnson today warned that the UK must ‘work fast’ on a Roosevelt-style ‘New Deal’ to stop coronavirus plunging the UK into a Great Depression.
In a rallying cry to the British people, the PM said he would turn on the spending taps and ‘build, build, build’ to kickstart the economy.
Defying mounting fears about spiralling government debt, he hailed a massive programme of public works, upgrading key infrastructure including schools, hospitals and roads.
He said that is the way the UK can ‘not just bounce back, but bounce forward – stronger and better and more united than ever before’ in the wake of the coronavirus.
To facilitate the construction drive – modelled on massive scheme pushed through by Franklin Roosevelt in the US in the 1930s – the planning system is set to be radically overhauled, including making it easier to turn newly-vacant shops into homes.
Mr Johnson said he was determined to ‘change the country for the better’, admitting that ‘mistakes’ had been made in the response to coronavirus. In a hint at major overhaul to the civil service, the premier said some parts of government had been ‘so sluggish’.
‘We need to be able to move with levels of energy and speed that we have not needed for generations,’ he said.
The intervention, in a speech in Dudley, comes after official figures showed that the economy shrank by even more than thought in the three months before lockdown – with worse to come.
Some 9.3million jobs are now being propped up through the government’s furlough scheme, with costs already topping £25billion.
The continuing threat from the virus has also been underlined as fresh curbs are imposed on Leicester after cases surged in the city.
Speaking in Dudley today, Boris Johnson said: ‘We need to be able to move with levels of energy and speed that we have not needed for generations.’
Boris Johnson, pictured at a construction site in Dudley today, is pledging to ‘build, build, build’, bringing forward a massive programme of public works
Today’s speech is being accompanied by billions of pounds of investment in building and refurbishing schools, hospitals and roads, as well as new spending on transport and local growth projects.
A new unit, dubbed Project Speed, will be led by Chancellor Rishi Sunak this summer to identify projects that can be fast-tracked.
Reform of the planning system to remove ‘blockages’ is also under consideration. And a new National Infrastructure Strategy will be published in the autumn.
Mr Sunak will put the ‘infrastructure revolution’ at the heart of a mini-Budget expected on July 8.
In his speech in Dudley in the West Midlands today, the PM pledged to ‘build back better and stronger’, with a programme designed to reach all parts of the country.
‘Too many parts of this country have felt left behind, neglected, unloved, as though someone had taken a strategic decision that their fate did not matter as much as the metropolis,’ he will say.
‘If we deliver this plan together, then we will together build our way back to health.’
The PM offered an ‘opportunity guarantee’ to young people and those who have lost their jobs because of the lockdown, with major investment in apprenticeships and further education.
He said: ‘We must work fast because we have already seen the vertiginous drop in GDP and we know that people are worried about their jobs and their businesses and we are waiting as if between the flash of lightning and the thunderclap with our hearts in our mouths for the full economic reverberations to appear.’
We must use this moment – now – this interval to plan our response and to fix of course the problems that were most brutally illuminated in that Covid lightning flash.
Chief aide Dominic Cummings is shaking up the Whitehall machine, which saw the departure of Britain’s top civil servant Sir Mark Sedwill on Sunday night.
Mr Johnson directly referenced the famous New Deal programmes led by Franklin D Roosevelt, which are widely credited with rescuing the United States from the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Yesterday he confirmed there would be not attempt to ‘go back to what people called austerity’, saying that would be a mistake.
He said today: ‘It sounds positively Rooseveltian, it sounds like a New Deal. All I can say is that if so, then that is how it is meant to sound and to be, because that is what the times demand.
‘This is a government that is wholly committed not just to defeating coronavirus but to using this crisis finally to tackle this country’s great unresolved challenges of the last three decades.
‘To build the homes, to fix the NHS, to tackle the skills crisis, to mend the indefensible gap in opportunity and productivity and connectivity between the regions of the UK.
‘To unite and level up. To that end we will build, build, build. Build back better, build back greener, build back faster and to do that at the pace that this moment requires.’
Among the projects unveiled by the PM today are:
- An extra £1.5billion for hospital maintenance this year, enabling the scrapping of mental health dormitories, improving A&E capacity, enhancing infection control and laying the groundwork for a wave of hospital building;
- A £1billion down payment on a ten-year strategy to fix Britain’s crumbling schools, which will pay for 50 school rebuilds, and an extra £760million will be released for school and college maintenance this year;
- Some £900million for ‘shovel-ready’ local growth projects, including investment in town centres;
- Funding for 29 road projects, including an upgrade for the A15 in the Humber region;
- More than £200million for maintenance and upgrades to courts, prison and young offenders’ facilities.
Ministers will spend the summer trying to identify a much larger programme that can be fast-tracked.
This will include the first of 40 planned new hospitals, along with energy projects, road and rail schemes and flood defences. A commitment to plant 75,000 acres of trees each year by 2025 will be confirmed.
In a further bid to ‘build back greener’, some of the first new jobs to be created will be 3,000 in local conservation projects protecting wildlife habitats such as rivers and meadows, according to the Telegraph.
Privately, ministers acknowledge that the Government has made mistakes in its handling of the pandemic, particularly over testing and care homes.
But Downing Street believes it has the chance to rebuild public confidence by demonstrating it has a strategy for rebuilding the country afterwards.
The total capital investment figure is believed to be around £5bn, which suggests the package includes existing commitments that have been re-nosed as well as new cash, according to the Times.