Mayor of London Boris Johnson has stirred up support on the Conservative backbenches with his call to the government to "stop pussy-footing around" and kickstart the economy by a mixture of infrastructure projects and deeper spending cuts in other areas.

David Ruffley, conservative member of the Treasury select committee, said the "composition of the spending cuts perhaps should be looked at".

"We should be reducing expenditure on non-productive public programmes," he told the Today programme and said that the government should "start closing down bits of non-productive activity".

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