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Nick Clegg has raised the prospect of a boost to infrastructure investment in the forthcoming budget after conceding that the coalition government cut capital spending too deeply when it came to power.

In an interview with House magazine, the deputy prime minister said the government needed to mobilize more public spending on infrastructure in a bid to drive the economic recovery.

The admission comes as the showed the UK economy shrunk by 0.3% in the final quarter of 2012, raising fears of a triple-dip recession.

He said: 鈥淲herever we can we鈥檝e got to mobilise more capital investment into productive capital because the economic evidence is overwhelming. It helps create jobs now, people go onto construction sites, it raises the productive capacity of the economy in the longer run.鈥�

Clegg added that he believed the government had cut capital spending too deeply.

He said: 鈥淚f I鈥檓 going to be sort of self-critical, there was this reduction in capital spending when we came into the Coalition Government.

鈥淚 think we comforted ourselves at the time that it was actually no more than what [former chancellor] Alistair Darling spelt out anyway, so in a sense everybody was predicting a significant drop off in capital investment.

鈥淏ut I think we鈥檝e all realised that you actually need, in order to foster a recovery, to try and mobilise as much public and private capital into infrastructure as possible.鈥�

Clegg also hit out at his 鈥渇rustration鈥� over the Conservative Party鈥檚 failure to push ahead on the green agenda.

He said: 鈥淚鈥檓 not going to hide the fact that I found it quite frustrating that all the talk about green politics sometimes has proved harder to actually put into practice - because of a reluctance on behalf of my coalition partners to really do what they said they would do on the green issues.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 regard green issues as an add-on. I think it鈥檚 an absolute vital strand in the re-invention of the British economy.

鈥淲e have a huge opportunity to, to be a world-beater in offshore wind, in renewable technologies. I think [former energy secretary] Chris [Huhne] and [energy secretary] Ed [Davey] have done a great, great job, and it鈥檚 really important that we now invite investors to come in and make the multi-billion pound investments they need to in our new, diverse, renewable energy mix.鈥�

He added that he was 鈥渇rustrated鈥� with the Conservatives failure ot sign up to a decarbonisation target in the Energy Bill. 鈥淚 was frustrated. Because of Conservative reluctance to sign up to decarbonisation target we sent quite mixed signals to investors in a way that can jeopardise jobs in the energy sector over a period of time.鈥�