‘Build, build build’: UK’s Johnson unveils plan to beat Covid-19 slump
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to shake Britain's economy out of its coronavirus-induced crisis on Tuesday by fast-tracking infrastructure investment and slashing property planning rules.
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As Britain emerges from lockdown, Johnson is looking to move past criticism of his government's handling of the pandemic with a plan to repair the economic damage and reshape the country.
"We cannot continue simply to be prisoners of the crisis," Johnson said. "We must work fast because we've already seen the vertiginous drop in GDP and we know that people are worried now about their jobs and their businesses."
His message, delivered at a college in the central English town of Dudley, was overshadowed by the announcement of a new lockdown in Leicester, just 50 miles away, where Covid-19 infections are surging.
Nevertheless, with an exhortation to "build, build, build", Johnson announced plans to speed up government infrastructure spending and cut through the red tape around planning to make private sector property development easier..
"We will build the hospitals, build the schools, the colleges. But we will also build back greener and build a more beautiful Britain," he said.
Promising not to cut spending, he compared his plan to then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1930s "New Deal", which included job-creating public works projects to help the United States recover from the Great Depression.
"It sounds like a prodigious amount of government intervention, sounds like a new deal … If that is so, then that is how it's meant to sound," Johnson said.
Spent sooner
Tuesday's headline spending announcement of 5 billion pounds ($6 billion) amounts to around 5% of gross public sector investment last year. Most had already been announced and is only being spent sooner than planned.
"It's not enough," Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer told the BBC. "The prime minister promised a new deal — well there's not much that's new and it's not much of a deal."
Kate Forbes, finance secretary for the devolved Scottish govRead More – Source
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