Chancellor George Osborne has announced plans for investment in capital spending to ensure the ‘infrastructure needed to win the global race' in 2015/16.

According to Mr Osborne's spending commitments, the Department for Transport will see a 9% reduction in resource spending – mainly seeing reductions through the administration of Transport for London and rail.

Tories on the London Assembly have already outlined how TfL could save cash, by freezing recruitment, banning strikes and introducing and independent mediation process and bringing down the pensions bill.

But the DfT will also see a £9.5bn increase in capital spending – which will continue every year until 2020.

Mr Osborne said this forms part of the government's commitment to ensuring the biggest rise in roads expansion for half-a-century and the largest ever investment in the railways since the Victorian era.

He said: ‘As a result of the legislation put before this House today, this will give the green light to HS2, which will see a transformation of the economic geography of this country.'

Mr Osborne also detailed plans to take forward the second stage of Crossrail – which will see London linked from north to south of the River Thames more effectively – with an additional £9bn offered to the mayor until the end of the decade to take capital spending forward.

Other capital commitments related to infrastructure include new borrowing powers of almost 13% more in real terms for Scotland, and ensuring a new collection of flood defences to be planned for the next decade.

For the Welsh budget, some £13.6bn has been set aside by the Treasury – including cash for the rebuilding of the M4 relief road in south Wales that has been lobbied for by local politicans.

Whitehall support for the new M4 road was expected, but concern has arisen that the new stretch of road around Newport could be tolled, although the Assembly government has assured this is not the case. Cash would be offered by the Treasury for the road to the Assembly as a loan, which will then be repaid to Whitehall.

Mr Osborne said of the capital spending plans on infrastructure: ‘This means £50bn will be spent in 2015 and it will amount to over £300bn by the end of the decade.

‘This government will spend more in this decade than in the previous decade when government spending was being wasted in industrial quantities.'

Details of the specific infrastructure projects due to be given cash will be outlined tomorrow by chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander.

Earlier, during prime minister's questions, David Cameron was quizzed by opposition leader Ed Miliband on the success of the government's infrastructure pipeline to date.

Mr Miliband claimed that only seven out of the 576 had been completed, and 80% had even been started, as well as five of the finished projects starting under the previous Labour administration.

Mr Cameron did not confirm or deny the statistics, but claimed the coalition government was spending £33bn annually on infrastructure, a figure considerably more than the Labour administration had spent during its 13 years in power.