spending review

Spending Review: Energy and transport to get share of £100bn

The government has unveiled what it claims is the most ambitious modernisation of the UK's national infrastructure in a generation.

Between, 2015-2020, £100bn will be spent from on projects including road maintenance, new homes and boosting new sources of energy, including shale gas.

Treasury Minister Danny Alexander said it was putting "long-term priorities before short-term political pressures".

But Labour says investment was needed sooner to turn round the economy.

The announcement of the government's infrastructure plans came a day after Wednesday's Spending Review, in which £11.5bn of cuts to Whitehall departments were announced.

The first £50bn will be committed to infrastructure projects starting in 2015-16 and the rest for 2016-20.

The main funding commitments include:

• £3bn to build 165,000 new affordable homes
• £28bn for road improvements
• £10bn to clear "backlog" of school building repairs
• 850 miles of railway to be electrified as part of £30bn rail investment
• £250m for extended super-fast broadband to rural areas
• £370m for upgrading flood defences
• £150m for health research including into dementia

"This is an ambitions plan to build an infrastructure that Britain can be proud," he said.

Mr Alexander said the road building programme was the largest for 40 years and the support for new homes the most substantial for more than two decades.

He said unused government-owned land will be sold to facilitate home building, while there will be new guarantees to help the building of new nuclear plans and tax incentives brought in for shale gas projects.

His speech came as a report was being published showing that the UK's shale gas reserves were much greater than previously thought.

The transport plans focused mainly on roads and railways.

Mr Alexander said £10bn would be spent on dealing with the UK's "decaying" road network with 21,000 miles of roads to be resurfaced and new lanes to be added to

Among to the roads which will be upgraded the A14, which runs from Catthorpe, in Leicestershire, to Felixstowe, in Suffolk.

Mr Alexander said the spending on roads was the same as the cost of filling 19m potholes.

On rail, he restated plans to electrify large parts of the network and increased the budget for the proposed HS2 line connecting London and seven of the largest ten UK cities, to more than £42bn.

He also confirmed that £2m feasibility funding would be provided for London's proposed Crossrail 2 project, but said Mayor Boris Johnson's challenge was to work out how the private sector could meet half the cost of the scheme.