Knowing the details of £22bn pipeline is vital

摘要

Politicians don't tend to like being called "brave" - it tends to mean everyone thinks they are an idiot. But we can assume that when Paul Morrell used that word to describe the government's announcement on Tuesday of a £22 billion three-year pipeline, he meant it (see pages 2-3). What will matter to the industry is not the big number from Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude but the detail behind it. The difficulty is that government departments often have an amazingly poor grasp of their own budgets and how they are spent - getting a grip on that will be crucial to delivering the numbers in reality.