HC Deb 17 April 1961 vol 638 cc928-38

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Finlay.]

9.59 p.m.

Mr. John Farr (Harborough)

In the course of my studies for this short debate on the motorway it has puzzled me to find that apparently since the M.1 was opened, twelve or fifteen months ago, there has been no debate on the subject. I have searched all the records. There have been numerous Questions on the subject, but no debate. It has struck me many times that the motorway is a new conception in travel. It is a difference which can be compared with the difference between the stage coach and the motor car of sixty years ago.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]

Mr. Farr

I was saying that just now is as good a time as any, after the motorway has been opened for a year, to examine some of the effects that it has had on the national economy, possibly, some of the defects in the motorway itself, and, moreover, what a vast benefit it would be if it were carried on northwards from Crick, where it stops at present.

I ought to explain, before going any further, what qualifications I have for initiating a debate on the motorway. My chief reason for being here tonight, and speaking on this subject, is because as soon as it starts to travel northwards from Crick, for over 20 miles it will be in southern Leicestershire and in my own constituency. I know what a vast difference it will make to people who live in or near the route which it will take.

Nationally, in my opinion, the extension of the motorway is vital, but it would also have its personal effect on those people who live in and near the villages which it will by-pass. Some of them will be helped, and some will be hampered, but all of them are convinced that if Britain is to have the road system which is due to her the motorway must be pushed forward as soon as possible.

What are some of the facts and figures which, in the very short time available tonight, may be usefully given about the M.1? It cost, for its 72 miles, £24 million, or £330,000 a mile. How has the nation benefited, apart from the abolition of traffic jams on that road and speedier travel from point A to point B? Today, my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has been good enough to inform me that about 18,000 vehicles a day use M.1 when the weather is fine. That figure has increased from 15,000, which was the daily average only three or four months ago in January, and it shows that the figure is rapidly increasing all the time.

Another factor which, I think, well deserves attention by the House is the fact that the accident rate on the M.1 is only half that of the best type of other roads in the country. Moreover, heavy goods vehicles can make the round journey in about 50 minutes less than in the old days, and a motor car making the round journey on M.1 can do it in up to two hours less.

The benefit does not end there. It spreads to the adjoining roads, like A.5 and A.45. If we look at the very valuable statistics which we have, we find that in the year since the M.1 was opened, the accident rate on these subsidiary roads fell by no less than 60 per cent. The journey time on these roads—A.5 and A.45—has been reduced by 20 or 25 minutes, and I am told that in terms of economic benefit to the nation the whole of the construction cost of £24 million will be repaid in about eight years.

There are one or two other points of benefit which the M.1 has had for us. One is the point which has been brought to my notice by the manufacturers of heavy engines and vehicles. For the first time in this country, they have a long-distance road on which to test their vehicles in working conditions, not for a day of a few hours, but repeatedly. We all know that if British exports, particularly motor engines and chassis, are to stand up to competition, it is absolutely essential for them to be able to do these daily journeys up and down the autobahnen of Germany, or the main highways of the United States; and for the first time we have a first-class road which can be compared with any in those two countries.

Another saving is in the carriage costs of goods from what is probably the industrial centre of England, Birmingham, to the coastal ports. They can get there quicker and cheaper; moreover, they can be guaranteed to get there on time far more than they could in the old days when the vehicles had to weave their way through the maze on the A.5 or the A.45.

The sun is not altogether shining on the picture which I wish to put before the House. There are certain disadvantages. In the limited time available to me I want specifically to examine one big disadvantage. Thus trunk route goes through the heart of England, and then it is suddenly cut off dead, right there. This may be compared to the blocking up a river in midstream, or the blocking up of a drain; the water seeps out and permeates through the channels and, finally, finds its way to its destination. Exactly the same thing is happening in southern Leicestershire today.

The M.1 stops at Crick. There are 18,000 vehicles using M.1 on a fine day. Half of them get to Crick and then enter southern Leicestershire, and the result is that the whole county is on some days, especially at weekends, absolutely congested. I hate to bring in the foreign tourist here as a gimmick, but what a shock it must be to a foreigner bowling along Britain's fine new motorway in the space age and then suddenly getting to Crick and then having to enter and grope along the narrow lanes and bypasses of Leicestershire. If one enters Leicester City in the middle of any working day one will find it choked. If one enters Rugby, a little further to the west, on any working day one will find it choked.

In my constituency we have the town of Blaby, of which we are very proud. Blaby—I worked this out on the map tonight—is about 15 miles north of the horrible bottleneck at Crick. In Blaby the other day a 12–hour census was taken of road traffic outside the social centre, and it was found that no fewer than 10,400 vehicles passed that spot in that period. If one compares that with the 18,000 vehicles using the M.1 on a fine day, one appreciates that through the narrow streets of rural Leicestershire passes an impossibly heavy load of traffic daily.

There is also Lutterworth, which is about seven miles north of Crick. I had the pleasure of spending many months in Lutterworth about two years ago in a hotel room over Lutterworth High Street. The rumble all night kept the residents awake. During the daytime I, a fairly agile person, sometimes had to wait nearly five minutes before I was able to cross the narrow High Street, and I think that some hon. Members might have to wait up to half an hour before they could cross it on certain occasions.

That is the position at present. What specific reasons have I for initiating the debate? I will deal with them very briefly. It has been said before in the House, and I repeat it, that M.1 has proved itself an undoubted success. It has been estimated by the Minister of Transport that it saves the nation about £3 million annually. Let us look at it in another way. What does it cost the nation annually not to go forward with the other half, running from Crick to north of Doncaster? That is a little more than 72 miles, which is the distance of the present M.1, and it is costing the nation annually at least £3 million for every year that its start is delayed. It is a thousand pities that the work was stopped at Crick when it was.

Why is there such a delay in restarting the motorway? I have considered all the usual reasons that are given to hon. Members seeking to find out the answers to awkward questions, and two reasons occur to me most. These are that the delay is because of shortage of money, or because of shortage of materials. If it is the farmer, then I suggest that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be asked if he will allocate to this work the £25 million which he is to get this year by the increased Excise Duty licences which he announced today. That £25 million would meet the cost of the extension of the M.1 northwards to Doncaster almost exactly.

I am very loath not to use British materials, machinery and workmen wherever we can, but if it is shortage of material that is holding up construction, and we really are stuck for material and the vast complicated mass of heavy machinery that is necessary, then I suggest that the Minister should hire them from abroad on Government account and so get cracking with the job.

As a regular weekly user of the M.1, there are one or two points about it which I should like to bring to the Minister's attention. Why must the two carriageways run together parallel the whole time? I agree that, generally, this is the best thing to do on grounds of economy, but it has many serious disadvantages. I beg of the Minister that, when extending the motorway north from Crick, he makes use of alternative roads, enlarging them and widening them to provide for the north or south-bound lane, and then allowing the other lane to take an alternative course, perhaps diverging by as much as a mile.

My reasons for making this request are threefold. In the first place, it tends to relieve monotony. The second reason is far more important, as any hon. Member who has travelled at night on the M.1 will know. One gets a terrific lot of dazzle from approaching vehicles. Diverging roads, with a field or wood between them, would mean that that would not happen.

The third reason is that it has become noticeable in the—thank goodness—relatively few accidents on the M.1 that very often an unfortunate driver's tyre bursts. He skids across his carriageway straight into the path of traffic from the opposite direction. Many deaths are caused, especially at high speed, by vehicles crossing the narrow verge between the two carriageways. With diverging carriageways that danger would be removed.

I also ask my right hon. Friend to use his powers to ensure that no licensed premises are allowed on the motorway. While travelling at 45 m.p.h. it is possible to get away with missing a vehicle by a hair's breadth even if one's judgment is slightly impaired by one or two drinks, but one will never get away with it at 90 m.p.h., when the slightest mistake may be fatal.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister and his Ministry for what they have done about the construction of this fine motorway. The Parliamentary Secretary was good enough to see me last December and then promised me an early start of the motorway in Leicestershire. I asked him now to be more specific and to promise to start the motorway within a year and to start it due north from Leicestershire.

10.16 p.m.

Mr. Albert Roberts (Normanton)

I am very glad that the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) has initiated his debate about the London-Yorkshire motorway. I have asked many Questions about the motorway, and I am glad to have the support of the hon. Member. I appreciate that we cannot have a motorway in Yorkshire for at least three and a half years, but the blame for that must be laid on the Minister of Transport. When a motorway is first planned, it must be planned to serve the whole of the United Kingdom and I agree with the hon. Member for Harborough that for the motorway abruptly to end at Crick is not to get full benefit for money expended. I come from Yorkshire, which has 4½ million acres and 4 million people. The soonest that we can expect the motorway is in four years.

I well remember the Minister's predecessor saying that that was because the authorities in Leicestershire could not make up their minds and that what was Yorkshire's loss was Lancashire's gain. It is an insult to the industrialists and other inhabitants of Yorkshire that we should be left like that. It should be brought to the attention of the public that hon. Members are doing their best to serve the needs of the area east of the Pennines.

The Minister of Transport must realise that if we are to make the best of these motorways and get the greatest economic advantage from them, they must serve industry where industry is situated. It does not need me to say what industry there is in South Yorkshire, with its heavy engineering, steel, its prolific coal fields, but it is a part of the country which is neglected just because the County of Leicester could not make up its mind, although at that time the Minister had power to deal with the problem. If the debate has done anything to expedite the construction of the motorway to the extent now planned, it will have been well worth while.

There is some bias in these matters. I know that it is history that we had to fight for a ship canal in Yorkshire, but when one was wanted in Lancashire it was constructed. We are now fighting for a bridge over the Humber. Yorkshire is one county which, with its industries and agriculture, could maintain itself; and we are paying our share towards the nation's wealth. We have had a raw deal and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give us a little comfort in response to the appeals which I have made to him about the London-Yorkshire motorway.

10.20 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay)

I welcome the opportunity which this brief Adjournment debate gives me to say a little about the progress we are making towards the completion of the London-Yorkshire motorway which lies to the north of Crick.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) began by emphasising the importance to this country of the motorways and the very substantial economic benefits which we can obtain. On 25th January last, in answer to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke), I gave the House a little information about the results of the operation of that part of the M.1 which goes from London to Crick. The House might like to know that the Road Research Laboratory published at the beginning of this year a technical paper, No. 46, which gives a survey of traffic and economics of the motorway thus far. I believe that a copy is available in the Library. It is a most illuminating document.

We are in no doubt that motorways are an excellent investment for the nation. A motorway saves time, money, and laves. As my hon. Friend said, the accident rate on the motorway so far is about half that on the best of the other roads which we have. We therefore want to press on with the extension of motorways, not just this one, but the others throughout the country, as quickly as we can.

May I come now to the principal point raised, which is the extension of the motorway from Crick to Doncaster, and how quickly we can get on with it. My hon. Friend urged that we should speed the process as much as we can. We are in no doubt as to the desirability of this stretch of motorway. We are under constant pressure from hon. Members on both sides of the House, from the local authorities, and from many others to get on as quickly as possible.

This was originally one of our main projects, but, as the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. A. Roberts) reminded us, we met considerable difficulties in finding an acceptable line for the motorway. I hope to say something later about the statutory processes through which we have to go, but the first stage is to draw a line and decide where the motorway will go. I would refer the hon. Member for Normanton to the Adjournment debate on 11th November, 1959. During that debate I gave a full and comprehensive account of exactly what had happened in connection with drawing the line. It was certainly no fault of the Ministry of Transport that a line could not be found and established more quickly than it was.

There was certainly no bias against Yorkshire. On the contrary, the very fact that we were unable to get on as quickly as we would have liked with the Crick to Doncaster section of the M.1 required the Minister to find some alternative. In fact he produced some additional assistance to Yorkshire and made one of his five main projects the improvement of the Great North Road and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, this is going on fast. Yorkshire has not completely suffered from this delay.

The result was that the Crick to Doncaster section could not be included in the five main projects, and it must now have a rather lower place in our order of priorities. The completion of the project and its prospects of speedy completion have to be viewed first in the light of the present road programme, and, secondly, the state of preparation of the various schemes which will be required to complete it.

As regards the first point, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has already announced that the funds available for long-distance improvements on our routes during the next five to six years must principally be devoted to the completion of these five main projects, but there is no doubt that funds should become available to enable a start to be made on the Crick to Doncaster section within the same period.

I cannot make any greater promise than that at the moment, because the second point comes into play, namely, that there are these statutory processes to complete and the detailed engineering designs to be prepared. Since the first stage of establishing the line fell back for the reasons which I have mentioned, the other processes which are contingent on that had to fall back too.

May I say a brief word about these processes, because we are frequently accused of dragging our feet and of being slow in the construction of motorways—indeed, in carrying out most major works on roads—but the fact is—and I have said this at Question Time and I must repeat it—that Parliament has laid on our shoulders obligations to carry through certain statutory processes in a certain time with certain time lags built into the system. We are therefore obliged to work to that time-table.

The first stage on which we always engage is preliminary consultation with the various planning and agricultural interests owning or concerned with the land over which the road will run. That takes a considerable time, but we find that it pays, because if we can settle objections at that preliminary, early stage we save much more time later.

The second stage is the making of the scheme which establishes the line of the motorway, and once the scheme is made in draft and is published there is an objection period of three months which must expire before we can take any further steps. Following that, once the scheme is made and the line firmly established, there is a further Order which has to be made, again in draft, to deal with what are called the side roads—the roads which cross the line of the motorway—and things such as junctions. Here again Parliament lays down an objection period of three months which must expire before we can move another step. When we have completed the third stage we proceed to the acquisition of land, either voluntarily or, if need be, by compulsory purchase order. Here again there is an objection period, in this case of six weeks.

One further point which I must stress is that if at any of those stages an objection is made by a local authority and it cannot be resolved by negotiation, then we are obliged to hold a public inquiry, with all the consequent further delay which that entails.

Turning to Crick-Doncaster, the first big step, the making of the scheme to determine the line, was taken last October. The House will be interested to learn how we are getting on with the further statutory processes which I have mentioned in order that we may get on with the construction. By January of this year the consulting engineers had let us have their proposals for the necessary alterations for the side roads and the accesses in the two counties of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. By the end of March we had completed all the detailed discussions with the local authorities and the other interests. The Northamptonshire draft Order will be published next week and the Leicestershire draft Order by mid-May. I assure the House that we have lost no time on this, in spite of our other commitments for motorways elsewhere. We could not have gone any faster than we have.

That is only the start of this task. The proposals for the remaining counties along the road are promised by the consulting engineers very shortly. The first of the land plans to enable the district valuers to start negotiating for entry will be with us by June, and throughout the rest of this year we shall keep this programme rolling along as fast as the engineers, the authorities and we in the Ministry can make it go.

Having said this, I may be expected to say when we shall start building the road. Alas, that is something which I am afraid that I cannot do, for this reason—that objections can be made to our proposals at any stage from now on and these must be considered. Property owners and tenants have rights about which we must negotiate. We may have to hold a public inquiry. I should be rash if I tried to hazard a guess when all these processes, which affect 86 miles of new motorway, will be completed. But I assure the House that although we are not prepared to bulldoze our way through the rights of individuals—and the House would not support us if we tried—we shall start bulldozers along the motorway itself as soon as we can and we shall keep them moving quickly until this and many other motorways are completed.

Mr. Farr

Is it possible to telescope some of the processes? We realise that they are all essential, but is it possible to telescope them?

Mr. Hay

We have carefully considered that in recent months, because we were anxious to see whether there was some way in which we could expedite this procedure. I am afraid that we literally could not. Not only would fresh legislation be required but if we tried to do so we should lose more time than we should gain. There are all these bodies and all these interests which have to be safeguarded, and these people are only too anxious to complain and to object to what we want to do. We try to settle their problems as best we can. Our problem is to get on as quickly as we can, and I assure hon. Members that we intend to do that.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock.