§ Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wills.]
§ 11.28 p.m.
§ Mr. Farey-Jones (Watford)This is the first time since I became a Member of this House that I have introduced a subject on the Adjournment. I like to say that however many times it may happen again, I shall never raise a matter with greater anxiety or more concern than I do at the moment.
The matter to which I wish to direct attention is that of the lack of a pedestrian crossing in the St. Albans Road, south of Garston Lane, Watford. This is a matter of extremely grave anxiety and concern to the Borough of Watford as a whole, and it has caused anxiety for the last four vears.
From 7th July, 1954, to the present time, and especially during the last few weeks, the Borough of Watford has made five separate representations to the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation on this matter. The operative dates of those applications are 7th July, 1954, 21st June, 1955, 28th January. 1957, 30th August, 1957, and now there is this latest application.
This St. Albans Road in and out of Watford is well known not only in and about Watford but in Hertfordshire as a whole as a black spot, and the point at which we want the crossing is probably one of the blackest of all the black spots on the roads of the whole country. It is at the most critical danger point on this road, with its long and extremely black record.
Repeatedly over the last four years the Ministry of Transport has consistently refused to grant a crossing. The Ministry has applied a rough rule-of-thumb method of refusing the application for the crossing, based purely on the alleged traffic at a given time of test. The matter has now become one of such grave public anxiety as to produce a petition signed by more than 1,200 parents of children who are daily compelled to cross this extremely terrifying road. The petition is supported by the Town Council, its Highways Committee and its Road 393 Safety Committee, and all the other public bodies; and even the Chief Superintendent of the Police is 100 per cent. with the Corporation. One must bear in mind that the councillors on these committees give freely of their spare time in public service. They are completely unanimous on this matter.
The only support which my right hon. Friend the Minister has been able to obtain is from outside the town, and that is the support of the Chief Superintendent of the County Police, who is, from the point of this argument, entirely remote from this subject as he does not dwell in the division and cannot possibly be familiar with the problems of the local populace.
Since this matter was first mooted the Garston estate has come fully into being and the new Meriden estate is now two-thirds constructed. The situation grows steadily and daily worse. We therefore have the position that the entire body of responsible citizens of Watford, the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, the aldermen and councillors, all their freely elected representatives on both sides, all the citizens who give of their best mentally and physically to the common good have been for at least four years of one single mind, that this pedestrian crossing is not only necessary but vital.
Furthermore, a few days ago the Mayor and Deputy Mayor and the aldermen of the Council, the Town Clerk and the Member for Watford had the unique responsibility of presenting to the Minister a petition signed by a vast number of local residents signifying the extreme fear and apprehension of the local population and stressing that the provision of this crossing should no longer be delayed. I should like to convey to the Minister the Council's appreciation of his courtesy in receiving the deputation and thanks for such consideration as has since been given to the purport of the delegation's representations.
Now I come to the essential gist of this matter. In spite of all these years of continuous effort, propaganda, toil and research the Minister in his letter dated 4th March has once again turned down this application, and that has caused complete dismay and consternation not only to the Council but the citizenry of Watford as a whole. It is particularly regrettable that the Minister has seen fit once again to endorse his divisional road engineer's decision that a pedestrian crossing is not 394 wanted and has followed the time-honoured, bureaucratic device of saying that the matter will come up for consideration again in twelve months' time. The situation is so unbelievably ridiculous that it is almost fantastic. It is almost impossible to believe, that in 1958 some little tin god of a bureaucrat, however eminent, can set at naught the considered and justified opinions of the responsible bodies and citizens in a proud and worthy borough such as Watford.
As has been stated week after week in the local papers, and even in the county Press, this is bureaucracy and bumbledon gone mad. It is the very negation of modern democracy and is completely contrary to the established principles of British public life. The Minister will know only too well that it is the little things which control our lives and which are of paramount importance. It is inconceivable to me that some unknown official in Whitehall, provided that he can retain the support of his Minister, can bring about this state of affairs.
No one realises more than I do the urgent desire of a Minister to be loyal to his staff, but when a matter reaches such a state of perversity and foolishness as this, surely loyalty to principles for which we all stand, and to which a Conservative Government in particular are supposed to adhere, and on which the Tory Party is built, should come first. Is it not utterly foolish for the Government to give greater responsibility and power to local authorities in other ways while at the same time an anomaly such as this is allowed to survive even for five minutes longer than is necessary?
I have never been a subscriber to the idea that "the gentleman in Whitehall knows best." I am deeply aware that in this instance the unknown gentleman in Whitehall daily causes increasing fear to hundreds of parents. The record of this road is so disastrous that I will not weary the House at this late hour by quoting it. The situation is almost impossible at week-ends. In order to assess the situation, I have frequently visited the spot and have there been held up for as long as twenty minutes or a half-hour, particularly at times when the factories open or close for the day and the traffic sweeps out onto the St. Albans Road.
I ask that this matter be treated essentially as a matter of local responsibility. 395 The Joint Parliamentary Secretary may reply with the futile argument which the Minister has already submitted to me in writing. I appreciate that the Minister and the Joint Under-Secretary have done and are doing a wonderful job in the Ministry, but I beg them not to allow established principles and rule-of-thumb procedures to lead this situation to continue in being any longer. If my hon. Friend's reply to me is inclined to be negative, I hope that he will not reply at all. I beg him to survey this whole position again in order that the section of his Department concerned shall not fall into contumely and contempt or, even worse, in order that this sad and sorry matter shall not result in a tragedy which none of us would be able to forgive.
§ 11.39 p.m.
§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. G. R.H. Nugent)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Farey-Jones) on securing the Adjournment debate tonight so that he could raise this important matter affecting his constituency. Although I am afraid that I am unable to agree with a good deal of what he said, I congratulate him upon the eloquence and strength with which he made out his case. Certainly his constituents can have the comfort that their case has lacked nothing in the way in which it has been put over tonight.
I hope that the arguments which I must advance to justify our position will not strike my hon. Friend's ears as being completely futile. There really is weight in them. I sympathise with the feelings of the people of Watford, as I often have to sympathise with people's feelings in other constituencies when we are not able to agree with requests for pedestrian crossings, 30 mile-an-hour limits, or other regulations for the use of the road. Naturally, the local people know their local conditions best, and they think that they know, therefore, where these regulations should best be applied.
The fact is that, even with such a simple device as a pedestrian crossing, there is a national aspect of policy for which we are responsible. This, indeed, is why Parliament has charged my right hon. Friend with that responsibility and not passed it to local authorities to deal 396 with. We must have regard to our responsibility in the matter if we are to look after the general interests of road safety throughout the country. I beg my hon. Friend not to write off our resistance to his requests as being bureaucratic, wooden or unsympathetic, or think that our official, the divisional road engineer, has been unimaginative or unreceptive. He is carrying out our policy, and, as I shall explain in a moment, it is a policy which, in this particular context, is a sensible one.
Pedestrian crossings are only markings on the road. They do not physically divide pedestrians from vehicles. A pedestrian crossing is a device to improve the safety of pedestrians crossing the road. The conflict in the problem of road usage—which we were discussing last night—is with us all the time, and there is no complete solution to it except segregation at different levels, pedestrians crossing the road by a bridge or an under-pass so that they cross at a level different from that used by the traffic. If people are to cross on the surface by pedestrian crossings, one must accept that such crossings will work effectively only if the conditions are right. By hard experience, we have learned during the last quarter of a century in which conditions pedestrian crossings will work and in which conditions they will not work.
However much local opinion may demand that there should be a pedestrian crossing in some particular place, if we agreed to put them down against our better judgment we should not be doing a good service to the people in the locality or to anyone else. We should simply be debasing the currency of pedestrian crossings. There are certain minimum conditions which must be satisfied, both in the flow of traffic which must be such as to justify a pedestrian crossing on the road, and in the amount of pedestrian use necessary to ensure reasonable observance. Those are essential conditions precedent to our establishing a pedestrian crossing on a road.
The history of pedestrian crossings fully bears out the point I am making. When they were introduced by Leslie Hore-Belisha in the early 'thirties, they started by being rare; they quickly multiplied all over the country until, finally, by the end of the 'forties, there were 397 simply thousands of them everywhere. The more there were, the less were they observed. A state was reached when there was precious little safety for pedestrians who decided to use them. Motorists found the crossings everywhere; they felt frustrated; they found many which were hardly used at all. The result was that observance became worse and worse.
The Government of the day, our predecessors, took their courage in their hands and. in 1951, introduced an Order which drastically reduced, by two-thirds, the total number of pedestrian crossings throughout the country. Of course, there was an outcry. Every local authority said that it must have this or that crossing, but, in the event, the crossings had to go, until their number had been reduced to one third of what it had been, and the new zebra markings were then introduced.
The result has been that in the past eight or nine years we have had very much better observance of pedestrian crossings, particularly now that the crossings are limited to those which are really needed and which are heavily used and which motorists know will be in fairly continuous use throughout the day. I do not justify every single one. Inevitably, in the process of cutting down the numbers to one third, local authorities had to be allowed to take their choice of which crossings they would keep, and they have not always been the right ones.
However, in the main, those which exist today are heavily used and far better observed. Motorists watch out for pedestrians on them and give right of way to pedestrians who start to cross on them. The result is that the crossings give a valuable measure of safety to the individual pedestrian when he is crossing.
That little history is indelibly marked in our minds and hearts and any Minister of Transport or Parliamentary Secretary who allowed pedestrian crossings to proliferate again after that experience, would not be worth the ground he stood on. We must be extremely restrained and economical about allowing any fresh pedestrian crossings anywhere. Although there is a local interest and we always pay close attention to what local people say, we must have regard to national considerations as well. If we do not do so, not only will the worth of many 398 pedestrian crossings go down, because they would not be properly observed through not being used at all times, but, because of the proliferation, we would be back in the position in which we were before where we would have debased the currency so that the value of pedestrian crossings would be lost to everybody.
I have to confirm what my hon. Friend has said, that there has been a long and unhappy history to this matter. The Watford Borough Council has made plea after plea that it should be allowed a crossing. As my hon. Friend said, he recently brought a delegation to see my right hon. Friend and he also produced a petition with 1,200 signatures. Despite that, my right hon. Friend felt that he could not agree.
I admit straight away that the St. Albans Road carries a fairly heavy volume of traffic, on average, 700 vehicles per hour as well as 120 cycles per hour. There are frequent bus services and bus stops on both sides of the road at the point at which it is sought to put a pedestrian crossing.
The pedestrian traffic from the main residential area is on the same side as the shops, but I accept that there is a small estate on the west and that residents there have to cross the road to get to the shopping side. Despite that, our observations are that pedestrians do not cross at this point in sufficient numbers to justify a pedestrian crossing. I recognise that the traffic volume is growing and is approaching the level at which, if there were a sufficient volume of pedestrians crossing, we would accept that a crossing should be considered.
The whole matter turns on the volume of pedestrians crossing and we find that that is not enough, although there may be a heavy volume of pedestrians crossing at certain periods. It is necessary to have a fair volume of pedestrians crossing throughout the day if we are to have crossings reasonably observed by motorists.
The Divisional Road Engineer for the Metropolitan area, who is a very experienced official, has given a great deal of care and thought to this matter, and we have therefore rested on his advice that it really is not justified. Nor do such features as the fact that the church and church hall are on opposite sides of the 399 road—regrettable though that is—alter the balance of the situation.
All that I can say is that as soon as I studied the case, when I saw that my hon. Friend had raised it, I recognised that it was near the borderline, that the local people felt very strongly about it and that there were obvious difficulties. I therefore had a further word with my right hon. Friend about the matter, and in the light of that and the fact that I have been impressed by what my hon. Friend has said this evening, and in recognition of his own strong convictions about the situation and the long duration of the requests of the borough council, I will ask our Divisional Road Engineer to put his engineers to work to make a special observation of this place over the next three months and give us a report as to the pedestrian movement there. I will undertake that when we receive that report we will review the position and see whether there are sufficient grounds for altering the conclusion that we have reached.
I can say that quite objectively and sincerely, because I want my hon. Friend and his constituents in Watford to feel that the matter is not being considered in an unimaginative and bureaucratic manner, but as a human problem. Nevertheless, we have to consider the simple road safety device of the pedestrian crossing in its national context, and however much I should like to be able to agree to this local request I must say that unless we are satisfied that it will match up to the national standards which we have been convinced by experience are the right ones to apply we cannot agree to it. I certainly give my hon. Friend that undertaking, however, and if he is satisfied with that, in three months' time, when we have our report, I undertake to look at the matter again.
§ 11.53 p.m.
§ Mr. Gilbert Longden (Hertfordshire, South-West)I endeavoured to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, in order to intervene before the Parliamentary Secretary replied to my hon. Friend. Perhaps it is just as well that I did not succeed, 400 because the final words of the Parliamentary Secretary have greatly modified what I intended to say. I had intended to intervene for two reasons; first, because I know this place extremely well, since it is on the fringe of my constituency, and, secondly, because there is a similar case within my constituency, in the neighbouring village of Bushey.
A few weeks ago I was astonished to see, in the Harcourt Room, the Mayor, Town Clerk and apparently half the Corporation of Watford having tea with my hon. Friend. I was delighted to see them, because although they are not all of my political pursuasion, they are all friends of mine, but I was astonished that, busy public servants as they are, they should have to spend half a day and perhaps more in travelling to this House in order to discuss the question of a pedestrian crossing.
However noble a public servant the Divisional Road Engineer may be—and I am sure that he is an admirable public servant—I cannot think that his views on the matter could possibly outweigh those of the Corporation of Watford and everybody to whom my hon. Friend has referred as being in favour of this crossing. It is quite monstrous that when the Conservative Party talks about "town hall; not Whitehall" we should cavil at a small matter like a pedestrian crossing in a town or village.
We are not concerned with the fact that there are thousands of other crossings all over the country. The fact is that in this particular place one is badly needed in the opinion of the local inhabitants, who should know. If it is a borderline case as my hon. Friend has said, surely it would be better to give it the benefit of the doubt rather than that there should perhaps be a fatal accident at that spot. However, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his concluding remarks and I hope that on reconsideration the Ministry will grant this pedestrian crossing to the Borough of Watford.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Twelve o'clock.