By Tim Montgomerie
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A week ago I feared the Budget was going to be a cautious affair but it doesn't look that way today. It looks like it might be the kind of supply-side Budget that Britain needs if it is to compete in the world. Allister Heath of City AM and Janan Ganesh of The Economist are also hopeful.
The new news today is that David Cameron will announce a big shake-up in how roads are maintained and financed. The Prime Minister will honour his promise not to introduce tolls on existing roads but (a) new roads might be built with private money and for profit and (b) there could also be express lanes on widened motorways which would be pay-as-you-go.
He will also suggest that existing roads could be run by private sector companies and if they meet performance and improvement targets they will receive a share of Vehicle Excise Duty as a reward. The model is apparently the 1989 privatisation of the water industry through which private companies have steadily renewed Victorian-era sewerage systems, financed by water rates.
The details will be put out to consultation but at least three things are clear:
If the Government is to make road-pricing, abolition of 50p and decentralised pay bargaining fly electorally it needs voters to look beyond their immediate interest and see these measures as part of a larger project of national economic renewal. It needs to start to frame the next election as a choice between politicians who'll pursue the uphill road to prosperity and Labour politicians who prefer a gently declining path to stagnant wages and unemployment.
Cameron makes a good start today in framing the roads reform in terms of Britain falling behind our global competitors. In advance extracts from the speech he will deliver later this morning he will say:
"The truth is, we are falling behind. Falling behind our competitors. And falling behind the great, world-beating, pioneering tradition set by those who came before us. There is now an urgent need to repair the decades-long degradation of our national infrastructure……and to build for the future with as much confidence and ambition as the Victorians once did. Infrastructure matters because it is the magic ingredient in so much of modern life. It is not secondary to other, more high profile elements of economic strategy. It affects the competitiveness of every business in the country; it is the invisible thread that ties our prosperity together. It gets power to our lights, water to our taps, workers to their jobs, and food to our shops. It enables factories, offices, warehouses, workshops to function, to trade, to grow."