Let’s get UK moving with 4G windfall says Ed Balls

The £4bn windfall from the sale of the new superfast 4G mobile phone network should be used to fund a massive house-building programme across the country, Ed Balls will say today as he calls for Britain to “build its way out of recession”.

The Shadow Chancellor will tell the annual Labour Party conference in Manchester the Government must “cut through the dither and rhetoric, and actually do something” with the billions of pounds it is expected to net when it auctions off the next generation of network licences to mobile phone operators later this year.

The previous Labour government secured £22bn in the year 2000 when the last mobile phone network auction took place, using it to pay down the national debt.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

While the new 4G auction will only deliver an estimated £3bn to £4bn, Mr Balls believes the money must this time be used to kick-start house-building across the UK. He wants 100,000 affordable homes to be built and a stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers.

“In the good times, Labour used every penny of the £22bn from the sale of the 3G licences to pay off national debt,” Mr Balls will tell delegates. “But in difficult times, we urgently need to put something back into the economy. So with this one-off windfall from the sale of the 4G spectrum, let’s cut through the dither and rhetoric and actually do something. Not more talk, but action right now.

“Let’s commit that money from the 4G sale and build over the next two years: 100,000 new homes – affordable homes to rent and to buy – creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and getting the construction industry moving again

“Add to that a stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers, and we can deliver real help for people aspiring to get on the property ladder.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“A clear and costed plan to kick-start the economy and get people back to work. Building our way out of recession and re-building Britain for the future.”

His words will follow a bitter row on the first day of the conference that saw Mr Balls and his party leader Ed Miliband come under sustained fire from union bosses for backing Government plans to freeze public sector pay.

Mr Miliband hit back yesterday, insisting unions would not govern his own policy and describing Labour as “the party of the private sector” as much as of the public.

There would be “tough settlements right across our public services”, Mr Miliband warned. “We are not going to spend money that we don’t have. ”