Gordon Brown is today to throw his weight behind an expansion of Heath-row and an increase in nuclear power as he vows to press ahead with controversial decisions.

The Prime Minister will promise a streamlined planning system to provide an increase in airport capacity and the building of new nuclear stations; measures to combat climate change; and proposals to require those on benefits to enter training, to tackle the skills shortage.

He will seek to brush aside difficulties such as Northern Rock and the loss of data on 25 million people as “short-term fluctuations”. By highlighting challenges that lie ahead he wants to present himself as a leader prepared to take difficult decisions and who will not buckle under pressure.

Ministers rallied to Mr Brown as he returned from the Commonwealth summit yesterday. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said that there had been a deepening of Cabinet government and that it was nonsense to compare current circumstances to the Tories’ “Black Wednesday” of 1992.

Mr Brown will tell the CBI in a speech that the Government is prepared to make the long-term choices on transport, planning, energy and welfare that will help Britain to withstand shocks in the world economy.

After a torrid time since the conference season, he will seek to compare his readiness for tough choices with what he claims is the Conservatives’ short-term populism. His speechwill harden the expectation among Labour MPs that Mr Brown may not go to the country until 2010. His speech will also be seen as an answer to internal critics who have doubted his modernising zeal. “Long-term reforms will intensify,” he will say.

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