HC Deb 08 March 1968 vol 760 cc934-44

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

4.01 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Price (Birmingham, Perry Barr)

I am very pleased to have this opportunity of raising the question of the effect of urban motorways upon the local community. Although, at my request, my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government will be replying to this debate, as I see no representative of the Ministry of Transport present, I very much hope that my hon. Friend will make sure that representatives of that Department study this debate carefully.

I feel that many of the problems which I wish to raise spring from a serious lack of co-ordination in this matter between the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. Over the past 10 years, the motorways which Britain has built have been built largely through rural countryside. The Ministry of Transport has done a very good job not only in building the motorways but in landscaping them and fitting them into the community. At all events, the Ministry of Transport has a landscaping department which takes the job seriously.

Over the next 15 years, however, the real problem of motorway development will concern our cities. The motorways have reached the outskirts and they will now go plunging through the middle of our big cities, not simply Birmingham and London, but other cities, too. I do not believe that the resources of the Ministry of Transport are sufficient to deal with the problem of planning on and around these motorways as they are built.

I particularly want to discuss both the general problem of what happens when an urban motorway is built and the particular problem of the M6, which is coming through the middle of my constituency of Perry Barr. Towards the summer of this year, the development of this motorway will be started, for the very first time in the Birmingham area, not through an old housing estate, but through a comparatively modern estate. It is in no way a slum and about 30 perfectly good houses will be demolished to make way for this important link which is to carry the M6 on to the M1 and which will link Lancashire to London.

I do not object in any way to the motorway being built in the area. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) wishes to say something about the way in which motorways are developed in London but from my experience of Birmingham the Ministry of Transport has taken great care to avoid built-up areas wherever possible. The area in question in Birmingham is the only point where an established estate is being demolished and a motoway run through the middle of it.

What I feel, however, is that we must get some better procedure to make sure that when a motorway runs right through the middle of an estate the land in and around is used properly, and not simply left to become derelict, to become squalid, and to accumulate litter and junk and all that sort of thing. This makes the problem primarily a planning one, and that is why I feel that the Ministry of Housing ought to be in on it, not late, not after the problem has arisen, but at the planning stage, while the Ministry of Transport is actually planning the building of the motorway.

This motorway in Perry Barr was originally planned to be on an embankment, but I am very pleased to say that now it is to be on a viaduct. It is to run right through the middle of Beeches Estate. The estate is typical of estates developed in the 1920s and 1930s. It was put up not by the Council, but by a housing trust in Birmingham. It was put up with very little regard indeed to the sort of community who would live there. Hundreds and hundreds of semidetached and terraced houses were put up one after another, and by the time they were finished there was no room to put in the sort of community facilities which the area ought to have.

My submission is that this motorway provides an absolute godsent opportunity to put in these community facilities, if the land is used properly, and I would make a plea that that should be done. What I should like to see on this site—sites vary, but on this site what I should like to see—is a sports hall—there is nothing of that kind in the vicinity and there is a shortage of facilities for youth—and a community centre, of which there is nothing of the kind, although there is a desperate need for one, and real play space for children, so that, associated with the community centre and the sports hall there should be nursery school facilities and youth club facilities which simply do not exist in this piece of north Birmingham urban sprawl. I feel that if this opportunity could be seized we could go a long way to improving things.

Thankfully, as the result of a good deal of pressure from the local vicar, many councillors and myself, Birmingham City Council has zoned this land, not totally for car parking as it originally proposed to do, but for amenity use, and that is a start.

Elsewhere more ambitious plans have been made. I think many hon. Members will have seen the plan in The Times for the North Kensington scheme. The motorway is going to run right the way through North Kensington and there is a very ambitious plan for putting in not only community facilities but for putting in shops and laundries and all sorts of things which a community likes and should be put in. I am very pleased that this week agreement has been reached by the Greater London Council and Kensington Borough Council in principle to do this.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary turns round and says, "Hear, hear". I would have liked the Ministry of Housing to have taken a good deal more initiative in the earlier stages, because I think the reason that this north Kensington scheme has gone through is that the local people foresaw the terrible results of what was to have happened and got together and put up this scheme.

I feel that we have reached a crucial point at which the Ministry of Housing ought to intervene in some way or other. In the nineteenth century, the railways came along and built viaducts which split our communities in two. Far worse, because of the complete apathy about planning, the use to which the viaducts was put was nearly always for light industry of one sort or another which produced the most appalling squalor and untidiness round about. Over the next 15 years, we have a tremendous opportunity, if only we will grasp it. But, unless we have the positive intervention of the Ministry, I do not think that we shall do it. Recently, I have been to the United States of America, where I saw a little of how the opportunity has been lost in many of the big cities there. If we leave this simply to the local authorities, we shall lose the opportunity here in Britain.

I suggest to my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that his Ministry should send a circular to all local authorities pointing out the community and amenity uses to which areas round motorways and urban road developments can be put and giving examples of schemes like the North Kensington one, which produces the tremendous sense of enthusiasm and leadership for which a lot of our cities are waiting.

Secondly, I want to ask my hon. Friend if in future there could be a great deal more co-ordination with the Ministry of Transport at the planning stage of urban motorways so that the whole matter can be gone into before the Ministry of Transport contractors come on the scene and local residents suddenly feel that something must be done.

In conclusion, I would like to quote from last Wednesday's Guardian. There has been a great deal of interest in this matter in the last week, and I felt that the Guardian summed it up very well. Referring to the policy of building urban roads and motorways without regard to their surroundings, it's leading article said: The blind ignorance of this policy is the stuff that creates race riots. It is a twentieth-century version of that casual disregard for human beings that was characteristic of the Victorian railway builders as they blasted through Camden Town. The solution is to study the surroundings of future urban motorways and arrange for their protection and improvement. The needs of local people are just as important as those of travellers who hurry by. I will listen with great interest to what my hon. Friend has to say on these points.

4.14 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Jay (Battersea, North)

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Christopher Price) and with what The Guardian said this week about the problems raised by proposals for running huge motorways through thickly populated urban areas.

In my own constituency, it is not just a case of improving the surroundings and making use of opportunities for amenities, and so on. Battersea is a far more thickly populated area, and my view and that of very large numbers of my constituents—I can probably speak for my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Ernest G. Perry) as well—is that no case has yet been made out for pushing right through the area the so-called Inner London motorway box proposed by the Greater London Council.

I entirely accept the need for outer ring roads round London. There are two proposals for outer ring roads in much less thickly populated areas. We contest the need, in addition, to build a six-lane motorway, to a large extent on viaducts, right through these densely populated areas of inner London. In Battersea, this would go a long way to complete the wreckage started by the railway viaducts in the 19th century, which my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr described. It would not merely plough through housing estates built in the 1920s and 1930s, but housing estates built since 1945, and it would destroy housing plans in the area.

According to my estimates—and I ask the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to correct me if I am wrong—this so-called Inner London motorway box would cost about £500 million, an enormous sum, apart from the cost in lost housing and the destruction of housing space in London for about 30,000 or 32,000 people who would have to be rehoused elsewhere.

In our view this proposal is far too big, both in cost and in its effect on housing plans, to be decided by one local authority, however large. This is a matter for joint decision by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Transport, and the proposal should not go ahead until the Government have thoroughly examined it and made a decision. A public inquiry should also be held before damage of this extent is done to housing, schools and other amenities in local areas.

Therefore, I conclude by asking the Joint Parliamentary Secretary whether my estimates are approximately correct about the total cost of this motorway box, whether I am right in thinking that it would displace about 30,000 people, not allowing for those who have to live near these motorways in future, whether the Government will examine the scheme and reach a decision on it from the national point of view, taking into account the effect on housing, schools and other amenities including the cost of transport, and whether it is proposed, before plans are embarked upon, at any rate in the area for which I speak, to hold a public inquiry at which objections can be put forward both by local authorities and individuals. I hope that my hon. Friend can answer those questions. If not, I shall be coming along to see him and his Minister very shortly to get the answers.

4.17 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Arthur Skeffington)

First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Christopher Price) for raising the general topic and my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) who has spoken specifically about the problems of the proposed inner London road system and its effect on his constituency.

I am in the position of being an agent, as it were, for the Ministry of Transport in some respects, though not altogether, as I hope to show.

The specific points raised by my right hon. Friend concerning Battersea, North I shall want to convey to the Ministry of Transport for an authoritative answer, particularly on the estimates. The estimate that he has given about the expense of the schemes is a high one, but these schemes are bound to cost a great deal of money. To that extent I confirm what he said. However, this is a departmental matter upon which I should get precise confirmation about the cost of the schemes and about the effects which are bound to arise from proposals of this magnitude on the displacement of houses and other social amenities. I think that we are all grateful that my right hon. Friend has raised these points so that the matters can be thought about, and we can convey to him the information that we have. He is right in thinking that when we come to the actual proposals there will have to be perhaps more than one public inquiry at which objections can be put forward.

Mr. Jay

Can my hon. Friend tell me why this scheme is proceeding in other parts of London, apparently in advance of public inquiries?

Mr. Skeffington

If that is so, I shall be interested in it, because there must have been an inquiry at some stage. That is how these matters proceed. I do not know whether inquiries have taken place in other areas, but I suppose they have. Sometimes these are joint inquiries. Sometimes they are conducted on behalf of the Ministry of Transport. This is so in the normal way. At any rate, I shall ensure that the points made by my right hon. Friend are brought to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, who can communicate with him.

In view of what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr, I think I ought to say that in general there is close consultation between the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, as the planning Ministry, and the Ministry of Transport, which is charged with the actual provision of the thoroughfares. This is so at all stages. It happens not only when the plans are being developed, but once the plans have been decided, and the matter has gone to a public inquiry. The Ministry is in close contact, through the local authorities, and indeed from its own advisers on matters on which the Ministry of Transport seeks our advice—matters outside its own field, such as landscaping, and all that goes with it. It would be wrong for the impression to get about that there is not this close link.

A few years ago it was true to say that there was very much more isolation between the Departments. There was the Department over which my right hon. Friend presided with distinction for so many years, the Board of Trade which before his time worked more in isolation in industrial expansion. There was the Ministry of Transport working very much more in isolation, and then the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and local authorities, doing their work. No one had a greater share in bringing about co-ordination between the Departments than did my right hon. Friend, although we have some further distance to go before we get the kind of machine which is capable of considering all the new developments. This is why this debate is important. Nevertheless, the picture is not a discouraging one at the moment.

We have also to face the fact, certainly from the point of view of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, that the growth of our population, and the growth of the motor car, are putting before us problems which the country has never had to face before. There are now 9 million private motor cars. Within a matter of a few years this figure is likely to reach 20 million. This poses for everybody, the Ministry of Transport, the local authorities, and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, entirely new problems. We have to see to it that the hearts of our old cities are not torn out in the interests of the motor car. We have to see, as we are trying to do in the, Measure now in another place, the Countryside Bill, that the country is not destroyed by the indiscriminate use of motor cars.

At the same time, it is an instrument of tremendous convenience for which we want to cater as well as we can. Freedom to move in comfort is very precious to a developing community, but there is no doubt that this provides us with problems which before never had to be solved in the way that they have now, with all the continuing commitment of expenditure. These problems are extremely difficult to solve in terms of finance, let alone in terms of physcial planning.

As to the future, I want to indicate some of the matters which we are considering. The question of the use of land either under or near viaducts or motorways is something which can be considered within normal development plans. In future perhaps there will be better opportunities, because the strategic plans under the new planning proposals before the House will pay particular attention to communications. That is one of the great things. There will be a chance, where new major communications are part of the strategic plans, for inquiry and objection in relation to the broad principle. In respect of the local plan—the second line under the planning legislation—there will also be opportunities for detailed consultation and objection.

At the same time, my hon. Friend probably knows that I have been asked to take the chair of a committee which is to give advice and guidance to local authorities as to how we can secure greater public participation on the part of people who may not have a direct legal interest under planning law but who may be greatly affected by the developments that he has in mind. This will be a difficult task, but I shall be aided by an expert committee and I hope that we can think of ways of making these schemes generally known so that the public do have an opportunity to voice their objections and put forward their suggestions.

As for the specific use of land under motorways, we shall be prepared to issue such guidance as we can to local authorities when we have completed some studies that we are making in consultation with the Ministry of Transport and other bodies.

Where we are dealing with land directly under viaducts or elevated motorways, difficulties arise. The land may be in the dark; it may be a noisy place. The Ministry of Transport must be satisfied that such developments would be safe and that there would not be risks to those using the land underneath or to those on the highway. We are closely considering that and are getting information as to the sort of requirements for social purposes that arise in the case of land of this type and other types in urban areas. We have sponsored a study through the Social Survey Unit of central Government into the requirements, so that we can arrive at some kind of pattern which we can interpret to the local authorities, with suggestions how this and other types of land may be used, particularly for community developments of one kind or another—for recreational use, youth centres and so on.

Mr. Christopher Price

Will the Minister ensure that there is adequate cooperation with the Department of Education and Science, since there is a good deal of misunderstanding whether it is the responsibility of that Department or the Minister of Housing and Local Government and housing authorities to provide community halls.

Mr. Skeffington

I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that point. I should have said that the study is being carried out jointly by the two Ministries. We have initiated this investigation jointly.

As for the North Kensington Play-space Group proposals, my hon. Friend and I are delighted that there has been a solution. He seemed to indicate that the Ministry of Housing and Local Government had been a little lacking in not taking the initiative. I am not sure that he is right about that. I do not want to defend the Ministry if it has not done something that it should have done, but we are dealing here with experienced local authorities, including the G.L.C., and the initiative in this matter was taken, after representations, by the G.L.C. There is a working party consisting of all the interests involved, which is being chaired by a member of the Chelsea Borough Council. That is a satisfactory solution.

Although we are always pleased to take the initiative, sometimes a balance has to be observed, and we have to judge how much central Government should be used and how much we should leave to local authorities, who know the details of a situation much better than we do. In this case there has been a satisfactory solution.

We shall consider all the points that have been made. This is a new development, with the growth of these new motorways. How far this is the right way to proceed in all parts of London is a matter for the Ministry of Transport and not the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. We shall be consulted, and we shall have continuing conferences with the Ministry of Transport and other agencies, because the consequences of this development are profound.

I appreciate the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North whose constituency, through development communications, has suffered revolutions on two occasions in the last 100 years. I am sure that his constituents will be grateful to know that he has raised this matter.

As I have said, I shall consider all the points that have been raised—referring to the Ministry of Transport those matters which are its concern. I shall be in touch with my hon. Friend about the developments in the survey that we are initiating and about any guidance that, in due course, we feel that we can give to the local authorities. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this subject.

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

Adjourned at twenty-nine minutes to five o'clock.