Miliband to step up pro-business message in front of senior figures

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/03/miliband-step-up-pro-business-message-senior-figures

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A host of senior business people, including Barack Obama's most trusted economic adviser, will hear Labour leader Ed Miliband step up his pro-business message by promising to set up a new independent national body to fast track and plan infrastructure investment in the UK.

The idea has been put to Labour by Sir John Armitt, the former director of the Olympic Delivery Authority, and is designed to end the short termism that has bedevilled major capital spending in the UK, leading to delays in Cross Rail, airport expansion and power plants over decades.

On Thursday Miliband will publish a draft bill on how the national infrastructure commission will work and call for cross-party support for the idea.

It will look 25-30 years ahead to identify the country's infrastructure needs from climate change, schools, energy and transport, as well publish a 10-yearly assessment of progress.

A parliamentary vote on the evidence-based infrastructure priorities would have to take place within six months of their publication, to avoid delays. Within 12 months of this vote, government departments would have to form detailed 10-year sector plans of how they will deliver and fund work towards these priorities. Parliament would then vote on these 10-year plans.

The aim is to make it easier for politicians to take complex long-term decisions without them being questioned by a new government years later.

Speaking at a policy network conference, Miliband will say: "We cannot succeed by carrying on as we are or with big spending by government. But with reform – reform of the way governments work and reform of the way markets work."

The theme of shared prosperity that will dominate his speech derives from The Pro-Growth Progressive, a book written by Gene Sperling, the key Clinton and Obama economic adviser.

Sperling quit his job as White House national economic adviser in the spring, but has spent almost 20 years at the heart of Democratic party economics, advocating policies to share economic prosperity, including in the Clinton-era a tight deficit reduction programme.

Sperling is speaking at a conference that will also be addressed by the chairman of Standard Bank, the chairman of Weir group and the boss of Jaguar.

Miliband has been accused of alienating business by his relentless calls for a more responsible capitalism and his demands to regulate broken markets in energy, transport and banking. But he will argue Britain can only share the prosperity if it has a pro-business approach that allows wealth creators to succeed operating in genuinely competitive markets.

He will promise the next Labour government will be pro-competition: reforming markets that don't work, not defending them. He will say his purpose behind his market reforms is to help "the great, dynamic businesses of our country being enabled to build the wealth, create the jobs and make the profits that will help them succeed".

On his call for a renewed drive on infrastructure spending he will argue the UK needs affordable clean energy, modern communication systems, flood defences that can cope with the effects of climate change and a transport system that can cope with ever-growing demand and which links business with markets and people with families, leisure and job opportunities.

The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, has already said that he will exclude most capital spending from his fiscal rules, so giving him room to spend more on infrastructure than the government plans. He will again argue Britain needs to tackle deep-rooted problems that began before the recession and will not be solved simply by a belated return to growth.

He will say in the past fortnight he has called for creating a skilled workforce with gold standard vocational education, a welfare state that encourages young people to sign up for training not sign on for benefits, and a leading role for business in deciding how funding for skills is spent.