Conservatives vow to increase infrastructure investment and eliminate budget deficit

The Conservatives today pledge to increase capital spending in line with the growth in national income, at the same time as eliminating the budget deficit by cutting day-to-day spending.

The Conservatives' manifesto contains a pledge to "roll out our high-speed rail network with High Speed 2 and High Speed 3," and also commits the party to extending electrification of the railways to East Anglia and South West England.

The party also declares it wants to - following the Lib Dems - make almost every car and van to be zero emission by 2050, and will invest £500m up to 2020 to achieve this, and wants to double the number of journeys made by bike, and will invest £200m to make roads safer to cycle on. It also reaffirms its commitment to a £15bn investment in the road network. It makes no commitment on fuel duty, despite attacking Labour on this, merely pointing out it has been frozen for this Parliament.

The party goes further than Labour on HS2, which is also silent on HS3. The Green Party today says that HS2 should be scrapped and extra money pumped into local transport instead as part of a plan to reduce the amount of travel.