29. The UK has the bodies and processes in place to identify and scope, as well as procure, infrastructure projects. It has also recently acquired a professional lending capability. The costs and benefits of integrating these into a single organisation as envisaged in the Dodd-Hagel proposals would need to be assessed very rigorously before any decision on implementation.
30. We believe that there could be a beneficial (but not necessarily critical) role for an infrastructure bank funded by long term institutional investors, with a focus on refinancing operational projects. We think this would increase liquidity and thus allow other banks to finance short-term infrastructure construction, which is less attractive to institutional investors. We believe that this concept merits further investigation and development.