The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has suggested that the Treasury should use record low interest rates to fund housing and infrastructure projects. Mr Cable wrote in the New Statesman: “The more controversial question is whether the Government should not switch but should borrow more, at current very low interest rates, in order to finance more capital spending: building of schools and colleges; small road and rail projects; more prudential borrowing by councils for house building.” He adds that such a programme would inject demand into the weakest sector of the UK’s economy – construction – and would target two significant bottlenecks to growth: infrastructure and housing. 

From LGIU Daily News, 7 March