London, July 8 (EFE) – Britain’s new economy minister, Rachel Reeves, from the Labour Party, announced on Monday that she will impose targets for new housing construction and lift the effective veto on onshore wind power in order to boost growth in the United Kingdom.
Reeves declared that promoting sustainable economic growth was now a “national mission”, in his first speech in office after Labor’s July 4 election victory.
The minister said that in addition to reducing bureaucracy to facilitate operations, she will launch a new national sovereign fund that will attract private investment into new housing and infrastructure projects.
He revealed that former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney – whom he knows after working at the institution – is heading the working group that will promote the fund.
Reeves said that during the past 14 years of Conservative rule, “difficult decisions” on urban planning had not been taken so as not to generate opposition and “by vested interests”, which had, for example, made it difficult to build wind turbines in England.
The so-called “treasury secretary” (the title given to the head of the economy) detailed the target of building 1.5 million new homes in five years and announced that mandatory quotas would soon be set for city councils, which would be able to count on a greater number of urban planning technicians.
The politician explained that she had asked Treasury officials late last week to conduct an analysis of how much the British economy would grow if it followed the OECD average.
He said: “If the UK economy had grown at the average rate of OECD economies since 2010 – when the Conservatives came to power – it would have been £140bn (€165bn) larger.”
“This could have generated an additional $58 billion (around €68.7 billion) in tax revenue last year alone to support our public services,” he added.
According to Reeves, it is up to the new Labour government to “fix the foundations of the economy so that it can rebuild” the UK and ensure the growth of its four constituent parts, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Evie
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