Bridging the Tories’ infrastructure gap | Letters

Larry Elliott notes (Ten years after Blair, the old problems remain, 15 May) that social-democratic ideas for infrastructure investment will seem more mainstream if there is another crisis. We surely face such urgency today, with not a moment to lose.

The Tory record is woeful: the weakest recovery on record, the deepening risks born of a foolish drive to Brexit, and the devastating gap in infrastructure spending brought on by years of failed austerity. Labour are right to propose badly needed large-scale capital spending to boost our economy and fill the void left by uncertainty in the private sector.

It is exactly at such times of economic malaise that the state must do its part, as exemplified by Macron today in France, and Blair and Brown in the years when the evident benefits of an active government were demonstrated for all to see. Without it, the hardening image of the UK as perennially passive and in debt will not shift, and the hollow Conservative claim to stability and security will be the real fantasy, as Larry Elliott so eloquently explains.
Nick Mayer
Southampton

• It is understandable that the Institute of Directors (Report, 15 May) should call on the next government to build two more runways: it is lobbying for further public subsidies for the aviation industry. The vast majority of aircraft passengers are tourists: only about 11% of travellers are on business. The problem with this is that there is an enormous tourist deficit, and this is rising. In 2015 UK tourists spent nearly £17bn more abroad than incoming foreign tourists spent in the UK.

In 2008 the Treasury produced an estimate of part of the tax subsidy received by aviation. It said that if the UK charged a fuel duty and VAT on tickets, it could result in revenues of around £10bn. Since then there has been a large increase in VAT. The next government should raise much more tax from aviation and spend this on social provision which is so badly needed.
David Packham
Bath

• Dan Lewis of the Institute of Directors is correct about sensitivity outside London to building Crossrail 2, when the two metropolitan areas of Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire are linked by a winding two-lane road that’s a national embarrassment. Fully funding and accelerating the recommendations of the trans-Pennine tunnel strategic study – and a linked HS3 route – must be a higher priority for national infrastructure spending than Crossrail 2.
Martin Lewis
Wakefield

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