DR UK has co-signed an open letter to Government, calling for a rethink in how the term infrastructure is used in the Budget.
The letter reads:
We welcome the government’s commitment to level up disadvantaged areas of the UK in this week’s budget. We also welcome suggestions that the Chancellor is considering including spending on social infrastructure such as health, education or care as a form of infrastructure investment.
Most of the time when we think of infrastructure we think of physical infrastructure like roads, railways and hospital buildings, but a broader definition of it would include social infrastructure like NHS salaries, training, personal assistants for those with disabilities and childcare workers. The government has promised to spend in these areas, but is restricted by its own rules about what it can and can’t borrow money for. It can borrow to invest but not to “just spend”.
As with physical infrastructure, spending on health, care and education have benefits for wider society that continue into the future. Such spending should therefore be seen as a form of infrastructure investment. Changing the rules to reflect the multiplying effect of investment in the NHS, schools, policing and care would enable the chancellor to truly boost productivity and wellbeing.
Research by the Women’s Budget Group has shown that investment in care services would create millions of jobs and that much of the initial investment is recovered by increases in tax revenue and consumption from direct and indirect job creation. Investment in care would also address the social care crisis and the shortage of affordable childcare, and free up people with caring responsibilities to enter the paid workforce.
For those most in need of levelling up – including women, ethnic minorities and other marginalised groups – changing the spending rules for next week’s budget would be a step in the right direction.
Signatories:
Sophie Walker, Young Women’s Trust
Patrick Allen, Progressive Economy Forum
Alison Garnham, Child Poverty Action Group
Christina McAnea, Unison
Ali Harris, Equally Ours
Sam Smethers, Fawcett Society
Kamran Mallik, Disability Rights UK
Robert Palmer, Tax Justice UK
Ann Pettifor, Prime Economics
Laurence Jones-Williams, Rethinking Economics
Wanda Wyporska, Equality Trust
Neal Lawson, Compass
Zubaida Haque, Runnymede Trust
Sarah McKinley, Democracy Collaborative
Sarah Bedford, New Economics Foundation
Miriam Brett, Common Wealth
Eleanor Lisney, Sisters of Frida
Helen Walker, Carers UK
Mary-Ann Stephenson, Women’s Budget Group
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