Road building will not benefit from £400m infrastructure spend

Chancellor Alistair Darling’s claim that £400m of his fiscal stimulus package will increase capacity on motorways has been dismissed as spin.

The Department for Transport has revealed the only road building project that will be brought forward under the package will be a £100m scheme to duel the A46.

The government admitted the rest of the £300m would be spent on “more managed motorways schemes to make best use of our existing motorway capacity”.

According to the Independent, that means opening up hard shoulders.

Critics told the newspaper that such a plan would not create jobs or boost the economy in the way the government’s infrastructure spending programme was designed to do.