Inward Investment in Wales

Supplementary written evidence submitted by Milford Haven Port Authority

I would like to thank you and your committee for the opportunity to appear before your committee earlier this week.  I found it a very useful and informative discussion, and hope you found us strongly supportive of the work you are doing to investigate the issues relating to Inward Investment into Wales

I would like to offer one final thought for the consideration of the committee.  Infrastructure underpins everything.  It ultimately is what drives growth in productivity and provides the ability for individuals and commercial operators to link to service providers, customers and job markets.  There was nothing wrong, in my view, with the policy of Predict and Provide as it led directly to continuous investment in infrastructure in an entirely constructive way.  This point was emphasised in the discussion by the various comments that it is incredibly difficult to make a commercial justification for investment, as commercial criteria require there to be a guaranteed or nearly guaranteed demand.  Predict and Provide on the other hand leads to investment which at that point in time cannot be wholly justified, but requires something of a leap of faith.  However the inevitable consequence is that it stimulates productivity growth and consequently boosts the economy in a very broad and fundamental way.  This encapsulates the core driver of economic growth in the entirety of the post war period, whether you are talking about roads, railways, Telecoms and IT and, indeed, ports.

There could be no better use of sparse funds than to put them into infrastructure.  Other issues such as skills are quickly sorted out and addressed by companies once they have taken a decision to invest, but the one thing companies cannot deliver and look to government to provide is the core infrastructure to support their trading.

In any event, it was a great pleasure to have the opportunity to participate in the discussion, and I look forward to the final report with great interest.  Please pass on my thanks to your committee colleagues, and allow me to extend an open invitation to come and find out for themselves what Milford Haven is about whenever time allows.

May 2011