the biggest U.K. investors want to put billions into infrastructure, creating jobs in an
economy that is smaller than in 2009. The government is stopping them, they say.
Legal & General would invest more than 5 billion pounds to build houses, airports and
toll roads if the government committed to long-term projects and eased regulation, CEO
Nigel Wilson said. Prudential and Standard Life and the London Pension Fund Authority
also say they want to invest more in U.K. infrastructure.
“We would like to own less international financial assets and more U.K. physical assets,”
Wilson said. “We just need regulatory, planning and tax certainty.”
While Chancellor George Osborne says he wants to spur spending on infrastructure,
investors say a lack of policy, planning approvals and regulation prevent them doing so.
“Planning and regulatory decisions have not been made,” Wilson said. “After the war,
the Labour government built many houses in the U.K. despite the country’s problems,
and in the 1960s new town expansion and building in the North East were hugely successful.
We don’t have any of that anymore.”