London businesses yesterday urged Gordon Brown to find the money for infrastructure projects in the capital after new research showed the London and south-east economies had a budget surplus larger than almost any country in the world.

Oxford Economics, the consultancy, calculates that Londoners on average pay £1,700 more to the Treasury than they receive in public expenditure, while people in Northern Ireland, Wales and the north-east of England get over £2,500 more on average from the exchequer than they contribute.