It’s roads announcement day. Patrick McLoughlin, the transport secretary, and Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, have announced a £15bn road investment strategy, with details of more than 100 road schemes that are now scheduled for attention sometime between now and 2021. The £15bn figure is not new - it was set out in an Action for roads plan published in 2013 (pdf) - but 84 of the projects are being published for the first time.
The Department for Transport’s news release, with a summary of the projects, is here, and there are links at the bottom to separate news releases listing all the projects on a region by region basis.
And, as the Guardian reports today, the projects include a plan to build a tunnel on the A303 under Stonehenge - a plan that people have been talking about almost since Neolithic man first lugged those enormous stones over the Wiltshire plains to erect Britain’s first national monument.
I’ll be covering reaction to the announcement today.
Otherwise, it looks a bit quiet. Here’s the agenda.
Morning: Ed Miliband gives a short speech in Nottingham.
11am: Number 10 lobby briefing.
3.15pm: Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, and Vince Cable, the business secretary, give evidence to the Commons committees on arms export controls.
3.30pm: Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, makes a statement in the Commons on the government’s response to the NHS chief executive Simon Stevens’ five-year plan.
As usual, I will be also covering all the breaking political news from Westminster, as well as bringing you the most interesting political comment and analysis from the web and from Twitter. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
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