£80m for Crossrail 2, £60m for HS3, £700m for flood defences. Just some of the money chancellor George Osborne found for infrastructure in last month's Budget. In these austere times, it was another good Budget for the sector. But within hours it was the resignation of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith over disability benefit cuts that was dominating the headlines, along with Osborne's subsequent U-turn over the weekend. At the launch of the National Infrastructure Delivery Plan at the ICE's HQ in Whitehall last week, fellow Treasury minister Lord O'Neill was quick to admit that his department's infrastructure announcements "had been somewhat lost because of the focus on other issues". Oh, how they must hate IDS in the Treasury.
展开▼
