Former Labour cabinet minister Andrew Adonis is to head a new independent commission on Britain's infrastructure needs, George Osborne has announced.
As the Conservative Party conference got underway in Manchester, the chancellor said Lord Adonis – the architect of both the academy schools programme and High Speed Rail 2 under Labour – would lead the National Infrastructure Commission as it "calmly and dispassionately" considered "what the country needs to build for its future".
In what will be seen as a blow to the Opposition, now led by the left-wing Jeremy Corbyn, the Blairite former minister will resign the Labour whip and sit as an independent peer in the House of Lords.
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The new body will be modelled on the independent Office for Budget Responsibility watchdog, established by Osborne in 2010 in a bid to take the politics out of economic forecasting. Osborne said the National Infrastructure Commission would be able to hold government's "feet to the fire if it fails to deliver".
Commenting on his appointment, Adonis said: "Without big improvements to its transport and energy systems, Britain will grind to a halt. I am pleased to accept the chancellor’s invitation to establish the National Infrastructure Commission as an independent body able to advise government and parliament on priorities."
He added: "Major infrastructure projects like Crossrail and building major new power stations span governments and parliaments. I hope it will be possible to forge a wide measure of agreement, across society and politics, on key infrastructure requirements for the next 20 to 30 years, and the assessments which have underpinned them.”
Adonis is also the former director of the Institute for Government think tank.
A recent report by the IfG honed in on the apparent inability of successive governments to take big infrastructure decisions, including ensuring an adequate housing supply, and warned of "persistent policy problems to which existing institutions and processes seem unable to produce adequate long-term solutions".
The IfG's current director, Peter Riddell, has welcomed the creation of the new commission.
“The government should ensure that the commission is designed to be as effective as possible," he said.
"It is encouraging to see suggestions that the new commission will directly recommend specific infrastructure projects, rather than simply identifying a more generic 'need'. This was one of the weaknesses in the previous Armitt [independent review of infrastructure] proposals."