Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander desperately revamped his pie-in-the-sky list of promised major infrastructure projects yesterday to hoots of derision from Labour MPs.

The shameless Lib Dem minister also announced a bargain-basement sale of Britain's last remaining publicly owned assets - despite anger over the recent cut-price sale of Royal Mail.

Labour shadow minister Chris Leslie accused Mr Alexander of simply issuing repeat press releases promising big projects, while in reality work on such schemes had fallen by 15 per cent under this government.