EMMA LEWELL-BUCK: Not ‘build, build, build’, more ‘repeat, repeat and repeat’

However, it was far from what was billed; it was his usual rambling and a reduction of the biggest hit our economy is going to take in my lifetime, down to empty rhetoric.

He promised to bring forward infrastructure spending of £5bn, this amounts to just 0.2% of current UK GDP. Roosevelt’s New Deal was estimated to be worth about 40% of the US national income of 1929.

In short, Roosevelt fully understood the challenges facing his country and was able to put plans in place to mitigate further damage.

Boris Johnson does not rendering him incapable of leading our economic recovery.

The schemes within the £5bn spend include capital for our hospitals. Yet, thanks to repeated cuts from his Government, there is a backlog of over £6bn needed just to fix our existing NHS buildings.

The promised road and railway projects were a re-announcement from the Spring Budget. The money to build houses was also a re-announcement, as was the pledge of school building programmes.

There is a way out of this and we do indeed need an infrastructure spending programme that will create jobs and stimulate the economy.

The problem is that the Prime Minister is utterly incapable of delivering it. We need more homes, hospitals, schools, better road and rail links, but for these to be delivered, investment far beyond these re-announcements is needed.

He also promised no return to austerity. Yet right now, millions are struggling locked in the nightmare of our welfare and benefits system, which bore the brunt of the cuts under austerity: austerity for many people hasn’t ended.

One of his first acts should be to stop the dehumanisation of our welfare state.

People are dying from coronavirus. My constituents are losing their jobs, businesses are closing. The Prime Minister insults all of us with this package of re-announcements.

Far from “build, build, build” it was a case of repeat, repeat, repeat.