HC Deb 31 March 1965 vol 709 cc1806-16

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

11.30 p.m.

Mr. Richard Wood (Bridlington)

The subject I wish to raise is one which will be familiar to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. It concerns the question of roads in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Some of them are in my constituency. Others are in the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) and for Howden (Mr. Bryan). 1 believe that if I can curb my verbosity on this occasion either one or both of them will try to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, before the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport replies. I also understand that the hon. and gallant Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Commander Pursey) is interested, particularly in the road which connects Hull with South Yorkshire and Lancashire.

There are three points that I wish to raise. The first relates to the allocation of grants, the second to safety, and the third to the effect of railway closures on the roads in my constituency between Hull and Hornsea and Hull and Withernsea. I understand that the maintenance and minor improvement is arrived at by the Minister of Transport dividing the national grant between his divisional road engineers, and the divisional road engineers then allotting the available money to the counties and the county boroughs in their own divisions.

It is the intention of the Ministry of Transport, I believe, to put this grant on the basis of a 10-year programme in order to bring existing roads up to a reasonably modern standard. Whether or not the annual average for the East Riding, which is just under £338,000 for the next 10 years, is adequate—the comparable figure for this year is £319,000—depends on the additional grants which are likely to be available for the major improvements.

Therefore, I come to these major improvement grants. Of those at the bottom and the top of the scale there is little that I need say. As to the grants up to £25,000 I understand that it is the responsibility of the highways committee to choose the schemes to be carried out within the sums which have been made available, and that no specific Ministry approval is necessary. At the other end of the scale—schemes costing more than £500,000—at present the county has no such schemes in view. But when one looks at the middle range—first of all, schemes costing between £25,000 and £100,000, which need the approval of the divisional road engineer—only four of these schemes in the East Riding were given approval between 1960 and 1964. Of the schemes costing more than £100,000 which have been put forward by the East Riding, not one has so far been accepted for execution before 1969.

I have no need to go into the details of the schemes because the right hon. Gentleman no doubt has them all, but it is clear that delay for all the schemes which are going to cost more than £100,000 is not only serious in itself, but it means that no consideration can be given to a number of other improvements which are further down in the queue, many of which are already urgent. If a start is not made very soon with the schemes to which the county council has given the highest priority, I think we shall not see other schemes which are clearly necessary completed in my lifetime.

For instance, the county council has not included in its "top ten"—its 10 highest priorities—the whole stretch of a road in the north-eastern corner of the county, about which, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows, I have already written to his right hon. Friend. This road is narrow, it winds, it is blind and it passes a very busy entrance to one of the Butlin camps. It carries very heavy traffic during the summer months and it has been the scene of a number of road accidents.

The latest available accident figures show that in 1963, on 2,250 miles of roads in the East Riding, just under 3,000 accidents were reported, or an average of about 1.3 accidents per mile. In the general area of Filey and Bridlington, in the north-east of the county, there was about 1 accident per mile, but over the stretch of road which I have in mind, which runs from a place called the Dotterel Inn to the turning to Filey, the accident rate in 1963 was not 1 or 1.3, but 5.8 per mile.

I am, naturally, aware of the strength of the case for giving higher priority to improvements to roads which carry heavy traffic throughout the year than to roads which are busy only during the summer months, but I hope that I have said enough to illustrate the danger—I speak literally about the danger—of pressing that argument too far and of ignoring the seasonally busy roads which happen to contain a high proportion of accident black spots.

One further and most important consideration is the extra burden which is being thrown upon some of these roads by the decision of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples), when Minister of Transport, to consent to certain railway closures. I supported those decisions taken by my right hon. Friend, both during my election campaign and since, because I was convinced that the railways were being speedily and increasingly deserted for the roads. But it was this very conviction that led me, in turn, to be quite certain that substantial road improvements were necessary, because parts of each of the roads between Hull and Hornsea, and also parts of the main link between Hull and Withernsea, were already wholly inadequate last year for the traffic which the railways were not carrying. Now, new demands are to be made upon these already inadequate roads by the conditions imposed when the lines were closed.

Therefore, I should like the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to answer three questions. First, will he consider with sympathy the immediate inclusion of improvements proposed by the East Riding County Council in the rolling programme, so that progress can be made with the most urgent of them? Secondly, will be pay particular attention to the frequency of accidents on particular roads, even if they occur mainly during three or four summer months, because it is just as uncomfortable or distressing to be killed or maimed in July as in January?

Thirdly, will the hon. Gentleman agree that the hardship which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey denied would result from the railway closures in my constituency is, indeed, avoidable, but that it can in many cases be avoided only by substantial improvements to existing roads? If he agrees with this possibility of avoiding this hardship by substantial improvements to existing roads, will he, in his reply, undertake to do everything possible to see that the necessary funds are made available so that the county council can start to tackle this work, which has already become very urgent?

11.40 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Wall (Haltemprice)

I should just like to add two points to the excellent speech by my right hon. Friend and Parliamentary neighbour the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood). The first one concerns the county town of Beverley, which is an ancient town with many historic buildings. A lot of the traffic which proceeds to the coast in my right hon. Friend's constituency passes through the town, and what is really most important is that a ring road or by-pass should be constructed round the town. I know that this is under consideration, and it may depend in some degree on the new trunk road from Hull to Beverley, but I hope that something will be done about it before the historic beauties of Beverley are destroyed by the ever-increasing traffic.

The second point is the need for better east-west communications. Here again, I think the need is acknowledged by the Minister of Transport. The point I particularly want to make is that it is no good improving east-west communications unless consideration is given to the scheme for the Humber bridge. It would surely be crazy to build new roads if we were then to find that the new roads are in the wrong places when the Humber Bridge is built. These two schemes, better east-west communications and the Humber Bridge, are, I suggest, not alternatives to each other but are complementary.

11.41 p.m.

Mr. Paul Bryan (Howden)

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) for allowing me two minutes of the time he has used so well. Of course, I very much support what he has said about East Riding roads, and I would use my two minutes just to ask two questions. They are questions about two chronically festering traffic sores in my constituency, Selby Bridge and the traffic jam on the Malton road.

The Selby Bridge problem is something like 100 years old and the only thing I want to do now is to bring it up to date. The last report I have had on this subject was from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary's predecessor, and that said that the Department had received a report from the consulting engineers who were appointed to carry out a survey of the future trunk road requirements of the East and West Ridings between Hull and the Great North Road. That had been received some time before October. What I should now like to ask the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is whether that report has been considered and what conclusion has been come to about it, because it is on the conclusion which the Ministry comes to that the future of any Selby by-pass must depend.

My second question, which is about the Malton by-pass, is slightly less old. I suppose that this problem is 25 years old, and you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, know more about it even than I do. The reason why it is 25 years old is that each Minister has regarded it, in the words of the last Minister, as relatively unimportant in comparison with roads which take more commercial traffic. What I should just like to underline tonight is that whether or not it was relatively unimportant or comparatively unimportant in the past, that situation has changed, in that the type of traffic has changed.

First of all, whereas in days gone by this was a holiday traffic jam which occurred at weekends, now in the summer we get traffic jams during every single day. There is far more traffic. What I am concerned about is that in addition to holiday traffic we now get quite a bit of commercial traffic, because both Scarborough and Whitby, being fairly busy little ports in their own right, are drawing and attracting commercial traffic, and, indeed, a lot of traffic goes along this road to Hull as well.

Other elements come into this. For instance, there is the Kirby Misperton Zoo, which probably the Minister does not know about, but this, again, is drawing enormous crowds along this road and increasing the traffic. The closing of the Malton-Whitby railway line is another factor which draws just that much more traffic along the road. So we are getting a scene different from and an argument different from the scene and the argument of 25 years ago. It is a different argument now.

The question about the Malton traffic jam is this. What is the earliest date when we may expect to see the completion of the present east arm by-pass scheme, and, secondly, how soon will we see the complete by-pass scheme included in the Government's programme?

11.45 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Stephen Swingler)

I thank the right hon. Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) for his customary courtesy in giving me detailed notice of the points that he wanted to raise. I may not be able to cover all the points which have been raised by the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends, but I assure them that any which I fail to cover will be dealt with in correspondence as soon as possible.

First, I should like to deal with the question of the inclusion of East Riding schemes in the rolling programme of the Ministry of Transport. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, here we are dealing with two programmes. The first is a new one for maintenance and minor improvement of trunk and classified roads. We are now in the course of getting under way a 10-year programme for the allocation of money for this work, and what the right hon. Gentleman said about the handling of this programme and the money for it is quite correct.

We felt in the Ministry of Transport that there was a need to supplement the work done by the divisional road engineers in allocating funds for this purpose by providing a national programme within which to work. So, in 1964, we got under way a 10-year programme. The East Riding was originally allocated £319,000 for the financial year 1964–65, but I am glad to say that in January of this year we found it possible to allocate an extra £6,000.

In the 10-year programme a sum of £3,377,975 has been approved for the East Riding; that is an average of £337,798 per annum. The benefits of the new programme for the East Riding will be quite clear when I say that this is the highest annual figure for maintenance and minor improvements in any year recently, except for 1963–64.

This is a developing programme of maintenance and minor improvements. I should make it clear that this whole programme is flexible and is designed to take account of how the major improvements programme may alter during its currency.

We have in mind sympathetic consideration for major improvements and development in the East Riding. All schemes put forward by local authorities for inclusion in the road programme are, of course, given the fullest consideration, but the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends will appreciate that the whole programme is based on a national assessment of priorities and upon the needs of national planning. Even with the rising road programme which we have inherited—the Government are at the moment committed to an expenditure of more than £1,000 million during the period 1965–70—we still cannot keep pace with the rising amount of traffic.

First, we have to give attention to providing from our trunk road and motorway funds an adequate inter-urban network of through routes, and the problems of urban congestion need a very large slice of the classified road programme. The right hon. Gentleman will know of the work that has already been done to improve the trunk road A.63 westwards from Hull. We are not excluding work on other roads in this part of the country. We can, for example, sometimes fit in a scheme for a road which is used seasonally rather than all round the year, as we are doing on the A.64 at Malton, with the development of the eastern arm of the by-pass. At the moment East Riding schemes cannot be given higher priority, but I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that we are doing the best we can for the county in relation to the national programme, to which we have to apply very strict criteria.

I turn to the second point raised by the right hon. Gentleman about the Filey-Bridlington Road on which he has carried on considerable correspondence with my right hon. Friend. We agree that the road between Filey and Bridlington is narrow and winding and that the accident rate on it is bad. But the point is that proposals for improvements of this road must come from the Fast and North Riding authorities. Both these authorities, I understand, have schemes for providing virtually a new road, but these schemes are fairly low down on the councils' list of priorities. We have not had any proposals specifially for the improvement of particular parts of the road which are regarded as accident black spots. Indeed, we have no evidence that there are black spots on these roads.

Naturally in assessing the priority of road schemes we take road safety in account to a very considerable extent, and schemes are programmed just as much on account of bad accident records as they are on account of an increasing volume of traffic. But the fact is that roads carrying heavy traffic throughout the year generally have higher accident rates than seasonally-trafficked roads, such as the Filey-Bridlington road. While I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that a fatality or injury is just as distressing in July as it is in January, surely even more distressing are the injuries and accidents which take place in both months. I must say emphatically that at the moment we are dependent upon the priorities which are put forward by the local highway authorities, who are responsible for this road in considering the proposals which we should approve.

Thirdly, I turn to the point raised by the right hon. Gentleman about the effect of rail closures. We realise that this is a difficult point. I do not wish to press this, but it may be that had a more enlightened policy been operating when these railway lines were being considered for closure, the right hon. Gentleman might not have had to raise the question of the effect of closures. But we inherited this situation, and we have no power to rescind the decisions which were taken.

We have to consider what the consequences have been. I have to say that at present the county council has not brought forward any schemes for the improvement of roads as a consequence of the closures of the railways to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. Of course there has been only a comparatively short experience, and we know that the local authority has taken the view that any improvements necessitated by a Government decision should warrant special financial help. At the moment we cannot agree to this. Road improvements benefit all road users and Government grant rates reflect the recognised division of expenditure between local authorities and the Government for the class of road concerned.

It is, therefore, up to the local highway authority to bring forward any schemes it feels are needed, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should try to impress on the council the urgency of drawing our attention to any road improvements which are felt to be necessary as a result of the rail closures, to which the right hon. Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples) gave consent.

I should make it clear that, according to our present information, the roads in this part of the East Riding are adequate on the present criteria on which we operate, but I enter this qualification. It is many years since a traffic census was taken—indeed. I believe over a decade—on these particular roads and we in the Ministry of Transport would certainly look favourably at any proposals which the county council might wish to make for a new traffic count in the area this summer, during the height of the tourist season

We appreciate that this is an important point. The statistical data which we have is obsolescent, dating back many years, and I repeat that we should look favourably at a proposal by the local highway authority to take a traffic census on the roads to which the right hon. Gentleman has drawn attention so that we would have a better factual picture of the position from which to judge the priority which should be accorded for improvements there.

I will, finally, reply to the point raised by the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall), who is only too well aware that my right hon. Friend yesterday received a deputation about the question of the Humber Bridge. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not expect me to add anything to the communiqué which was issued on that occasion. We will give very serious consideration to the representations which were made by the Humber Bridge Board and will consult a number of local authorities; the County Councils of Lindsey, the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire, and the Hull City Council as well as the Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Economic Planning Council.

I realise that very important problems are raised, not only in connection with the crossing of the Humber, but about the whole road network in this part of the world. We are extremely anxious to arrive at a decision on these matters—which will be expensive schemes—as soon as possible. We will, therefore, seriously consider them, as well as the representations made by the hon. Member for Howden (Mr. Bryan), who raised a matter related to this question about which we have received reports from consulting engineers, and as soon as possible—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Twelve o'clock.