Welcome to a special edition of a Spectator podcast on the future of infrastructure the challenges and opportunities ahead.

I'm Fraser Nelson and I'm delighted to be joined by Sir John Armit, who's the chair of the National Infrastructure Committee, by Walmer, a spectator, writer who's just finished a book about Crossrail,

and by David Barwell, who's the chief executive of ACOM, who are kindly sponsoring this podcast.

Welcome all.

Now, it's always a bit of a mystery to outsiders why Brits have a problem with infrastructure. I'd like to

start the discussion by referring to a conversation I had recently. I was in a plane going to Sweden,

and the plane was delayed, as tends to happen in Heathrow, and the Sweden next to me says,

do you know why this has happened? You guys haven't spent a penny on infrastructure for 30 years.

Now, it was an exaggeration, but not much of one, because Britain, if you look at the G7 other international countries, we do tend to spend less on infrastructure, which is odd, given the links between that and our economic productivity.

So what is going on?

How good or bad are we?

And so, John, I'd like to start with you.

The National Infrastructure Commission is a relatively new organisation.

Is it your job to try to stretch or make out like we're doing a lot more than we are?

Because when you look at the amount of fair money being spent on transport,

in 2010 we had something like 3.2% of GDP.

The government was being spent in infrastructure.

By the end of his decade, it's going to be something like 1.4%.

So that is quite a decrease, the amount of government money going into infrastructure.

So is your job trying to make little go a long way?

No, I don't think so.

Our job primarily is to try and make sure that we identify what we need to do.

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