HC Deb 26 November 1971 vol 826 cc1814-26

4.0 p.m.

Mr. Ernie Money (Ipswich)

I am glad to have the opportunity to raise at last a matter that is causing the most acute distress and anxiety among my constituents. Ipswich has long been a commercial and communications centre for a wide surrounding area of East Anglia. It is a manufacturing town of importance, particularly in connection with heavy engineering, and it is also the apex of the three haven ports—Ipswich, Felixstowe and Harwich—which together are the fastest developing dock complex in the country. In terms of container traffic, Felixstowe is becoming one of the most significant centres in Europe. When we enter the Common Market all three ports will become even more important, due to their position directly opposite to Rotterdam. Every container and other heavy vehicle which leaves the port of Felixstowe has to go either via the A45 for the Midlands or en route for the A12, for London, through my constituency.

Traffic from Harwich for the Midlands and the North also goes through the borough in the opposite direction, and there are serious considerations at the present moment for the extension of vehicle ferries to the Continent from both Felixstowe and Harwich. Traffic movement in Ipswich dock itself has steadily increased, and at the moment there are 1,400 movements a day from the dock area alone. This is certainly bound to increase out of all proportion in the immediate future. Many of the major factories and installations are situated in the same area, because the river runs right into the middle of the town and there is at present no proper system of ring roads round Ipswich.

The only existing capacity to meet the fast flow of traffic through the borough or going from it is the untrunked bypass running through what is now an almost entirely built-up area on the northern side, and the old narrow residential streets on the south. The banning of heavy lorries from the centre of the town has done some good, but has only led to continued use of other routes throughout the day and night, and to the fact that most sensible motorists take a short cut through the middle of the borough. The result is chaos. A leading timber merchant in the area says, Over the past years the situation has got increasingly worse, for exemple, a lorry can often take between 20–30 minutes to cover approximately half a mile from our Dock Yard to our Sawmill in Grey Friars Road, which to say the least is in my view a disgrace. The traffic goes by the northern route, through Chevalier Street, Colchester Road, Valley Road, Heath Road, and Bixley Road, or by the southern route through Burrell Road, Ranelagh Road, or through Wherstead Road. That is indicative of the nature of the problem. These are all the names of ordinary residential streets which are carrying a constant flow of major and heavy traffic

As one of my constituents wrote to me from the Colchester Road area: As a resident £ I am naturally concerned about difficulties caused by the enormous growth of heavy goods vehicles and other traffic using this so-called by-pass. Here is a residential area beset by noise, pollution, and vibration for 24 hours a day, and it is a hair raising experience to join the traffic stream from one's driveway. The hazards for motorists and pedestrians are equalled only by the miseries of people living on these involuntary throughways.

Another correspondent dealing with Chevalier Street wrote to me: I am writing on behalf of the older terraced householders of Ipswich, who have no front garden to lessen the roar of traffic or to deaden its vibrations. The old people are afraid to venture out, yet they are scared indoors. I have hundreds of such letters dealing with wide areas of the town, and there is no doubt that the people of Ipswich feel that the port is being gradually strangled by the onrush of traffic over which they can have no form of control. This is a question of trying at present to put a gallon into a quite insubstantial pint pot. The loss to the whole of East Anglia and to the economy generally is obvious, as the improved network of road arteries in the area is being blocked by the holdup at its very centre.

I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Dr. Stuttaford) hopes to talk about this shortly. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Eye (Sir H. Harrison) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sudbury and Woodbridge (Mr. Stainton), neither of whom can be here owing to long-standing constituency engagements, have indicated that I have their urgent support, as have a number of other Members from the region.

In addition to the letters from private citizens, to which I have referred, I have been sent communications supporting my case from various bodies, including the East and West Suffolk County Councils, the Suffolk Preservation Society, the Ipswich Dock Commission, the Ipswich Chamber of Commerce and Shipping, the Ipswich Trades Council, the Freight Transport Association, the Automobile Association, the Ipswich Society, local churches and numerous residents' associations, which I will pass to my hon. Friend the Minister.

The Ipswich Borough Council and the local Press, the East Anglian Daily Times and the Evening Star—to which I pay tribute for their regular and lively interest in this issue—are unanimous in their concern.

I quote from the letters I have received. The Secretary of the Suffolk County Branch of the National Farmers' Union wrote to me in the following terms: There is absolutely no doubt that the inadequacy of the present road systems in Ipswich is of major concern to the farming industry in the county generally. Not only is Ipswich the centre of much of our grain and feedingstuffs trade, but it is also the site of a large sugar beet factory which takes some 400 loads of beet daily during the campaign season. Ipswich is also the site of a thriving fatstock market on either one or two days each week. In attempting to transact their business at either the docks, the cattle market or at the sugarbeet factory, our members suffer considerable delays on most of the surrounding roads. The whole road system is completely incapable of dealing with an ever increasing volume of traffic and anything you can do to impress on Government the paramount need for a vastly improved road network in and around Ipswich will certainly be in the national agricultural interest I quote another letter I have received from the District Officer of the Transport and General Workers' Union: We have many hundreds of members in this district employed as road transport drivers, and we can assure you that the frustration and time wasted at present can only continue to worsen, and unless something is done about the road system the wastage of vehicle time and man hours is going to continue to increase. What can be done? First, we can take great comfort from the presence of the Parliamentary Secretary today and from the continued sympathetic interest he is taking in our difficulties. He has been good enough to indicate that the transport study at present in hand has been broadened to enable consideration of the urgent need for a bypass solution.

I make four cardinal points. First, on the need for urgency. Ipswich has been fobbed off far too much in the past. Under the previous Government, the Minister announced proposals in the House for the planned expansion of Ipswich on 3rd February, 1965, and finally withdrew these after a period of total inertia only on 19th June, 1969. As a result of this, almost every issue of importance for the town, including housing, land use development and, above all, employment, has suffered severely.

Second, the only answer is to think big—by "think big" I mean a southern bypass which would cope with the problem, including the new issue of the South Bank Dock Development, and which—through a bridge across or a tunnel under the Orwell would enable the problem to be solved once and for all. This would entail the maximum of efficiency and the least loss of amenity and, in the long run, I believe, be undoubtedly the most economical solution.

Third, there is every need to encourage the use of the rail freight system from Felixstowe to draw existing traffic off the roads and, in particular, to save the country villages round about in East Anglia.

Fourth, time is not on our side. With the advent of the Common Market, it is becoming a national problem and not one which bedevils just my constituents. One has only to compare the situation as one lands at the great ports of Rotterdam or Antwerp and sees the impressive road network which leads off from those places to see what is needed for what is to be the major expansion area in Britain.

The advent of the Department of the Environment shows how determined the Government are to deal with these problems as a whole. It will, however, be a vast relief when nearly every Minister who comes to speak in my constituency does not have to apologise for his late arrival owing to being stuck in a traffic jam.

4.11 p.m.

Dr. Tom Stuttaford (Norwich, South)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money) for allowing me some time in this debate. I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister for allowing me slightly to broaden the question by discussing the problem as it affects the rest of East Anglia, and more particularly Norwich and Norfolk. My hon. Friend realises that it is a regional problem and not just a problem affecting his own constituency.

We in our part of the region are concerned, not only because of the difficulty of getting our goods to the ports which will enable us to take advantage of the Common Market. We who have been a depressed area—in fact, if not in name—since the war see that at last there might be some opportunity for expansion and we see this opportunity to a certain extent being nullified by the lack of transport facilities and transport infrastructure.

We are pleased that the A45 is to be improved. However, we fear that much of the money for the roads of East Anglia will go on A45 and that in the north of the region the roads for Norwich and for the rest of Norfolk will be further neglected just as they have suffered from neglect for years. The City of Norwich is the largest city in the country to be the furthest from any motorway. No other county than Norfolk has so little dual carriageway. Indeed, we have an accident rate on A11 leading to the city some 40 per cent. higher than the average on trunk roads in rural areas in other parts of the country. We have discussed this question on frequent occasions. I have tabled a Question to the Minister once a month on average since I have been in the House. Despite that, Norwich still feels that it is not getting the Ministerial attention that it needs.

The case has been well put for Ipswich by my hon. Friend. Every word which has been said about Ipswich can be said for Norwich. We need a bypass. We are in the paradoxical situation where the traffic both chokes and bisects the city. We need a southern bypass so that the traffic to the coast can avoid the ancient historic part of the town and leave it for all to see as a monument to the past as well as an example for the future.

My hon. Friend spoke about the ports. It must be realised in any discussion of his ports—Ipswich, Felixstowe, Harwich—that these are not merely the ports of East Anglia; they are the ports for the East Midlands. The A45 can take the traffic from the south Midlands, but the A47 will still have to take the traffic from the northern Midlands which now winds its way via King's Lynn, through to Norwich and then on to Great Yarmouth. It will have to take, not only the traffic which we hope will come from what will be the new prosperity from the Common Market, but also all the holiday traffic to the coast. It is these two types of road user, holiday traffic and heavy goods vehicles, which create the long queues which block our roads each weekend.

Like my hon. Friend, we want urgency. We want some definite announcement quickly. Such an announcement will tie in with our unemployment problem. In Norwich, we have the highest level of male unemployment of any urban area in the South-East. We have the lowest urban wages. In the surrounding countryside, we have the lowest rural wages. These situations can be alleviated only if we have an improved infrastructure.

My hon. Friend has done a great service in drawing attention to the problems of Ipswich and in allowing me to couple them with those of Norwich and East Anglia.

4.15 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine)

Perhaps I might first say a word or two about the general matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Dr. Stuttaford). Looking, as we did, at the road pattern of East Anglia and the improvements which have been made in recent years, we felt that the time was long overdue for the injection of a higher level of expenditure. All hon. Members representing constituencies in the area have paid tribute to the consequences of the June announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment which, while not creating miracles, will do a great deal to modernise the East Anglian road pattern.

Certainly I shall look at the points that my hon. Friend has raised. No one could have greater sympathy for the general environmetal case that he pleads.

As this is a debate concentrating upon the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money), perhaps I might content myself by saying that on the more detailed points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich. South, I shall be in correspondence with him in the near future.

On a personal note, I could not be a Minister in the present Government without being aware of the remarkable personal attention which my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich has given to the pursuit of the interests of his constituents and their transportation and road problems. He has taken immense care to keep me in the closest touch with the views of his constituents. As time goes by, and we are able to catch up on some of the problems that we inherited, I hope that my hon. Friend will feel that his personal attention has not been in vain. However, I know that he understands the real problems of trying to make necessary decisions which are part of the ability of the Government to move forward in this matter.

I begin by setting this matter in the context of the Government's national policies. In June of this year we announced the extra road programmes that we see between now and the early 1980s. Effectively this is to double the first thousand miles of motorway which we expect to complete by the end of next year. By the early 1980s, that will have doubled. It will enable us to ensure that the country as a whole has a comprehensive network of strategic trunk roads, which are highly important in terms of generating the economic growth that we regard as being so important.

No doubt it is a fair claim to make in regard to the comments of economic commentators, regional councils and hon. Members in all parts of the House that the strategy that we laid down in June was widely welcomed.

The consequences of announcing a network of this sort is to put us in a position where we can move forward to planning and building roads. The fact remains, however, that the public must have a real opportunity to discuss and object to specific proposals as we put them forward; otherwise we shall be accused, quite rightly, of overriding the interests of individuals whose personal lives may be affected adversely if we adopt too flexible and Draconian an approach.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich concerned himself about the effect on his constituency of the increasing flow of heavy traffic which is now going to and coming from the docks at Felixstowe. My hon. Friend will draw great comfort, as he has told me already, from the way in which my right hon. Friend framed the objectives we set out in June when we announced our strategic road network for trunk roads. The first one quoted to the House by my right hon. Friend was: to achieve environmental improvements by diverting long-distance traffic, and particularly heavy goods vehicles from a large number of towns and villages, so as to relieve them of the noise, dirt and danger which they suffer at Present".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd June, 1971; Vol. 819, c. 288.] This objective readily admits of the existence of the problem posed in this short debate.

Many of our towns and villages still suffer from the unpleasant effects of intrusion by heavy traffic. Trunk road proposals announced by the Government cannot alone solve the problem. Inevitably the economies of scale and distribution may well dictate more and more bulk deliveries. Heavy lorries must be accommodated for travel on local roads. Here we must look to our partnership with local authorities for thoughtful planning and the development of road and traffic management schemes to bring environmental benefits. These schemes can divert traffic away from town centres, particularly from areas of historic interest, which is very relevant to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South.

Another aspect is the control of the size of lorries. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries has been much concerned with this problem. Last December he refused to allow any increase in the maximum length or weight of goods vehicles. We can control not only their size but the access which they have. Local authorities have powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act, 1967, to make traffic regulations for amenity reasons. Ipswich has pioneered a scheme which began last May which bans heavy lorries over three tons in weight from the central areas of the town except for direct access.

This brings me to the specific problems of Ipswich which were raised today. The ban on lorries going through Ipswich may have pushed more traffic on to the present ring road. Undoubtedly the principal contributing factor must be the growing scale of traffic on the road going to and from the developing Felixstowe docks. Nobody will do other than to welcome the growth and success of Felixstowe. My hon. Friends are right to point out that with our coming entry into the Common Market this is a growth for which the weather signs are set very fair indeed.

The Government also announced their intention to provide very efficient access to our ports. This, too, was one of the objectives of the plans in the strategic trunk road network. These plans have already included the comprehensive improvement of the A12 south of Ipswich and the A45 on either side of Ipswich.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich dealt with the delays under the last Government up to 1969. There is no doubt that there was a hiatus and it does not need me to add to my hon. Friend's graphic comments. When that hiatus came to an end in 1969 with a final decision on the policy, Ipswich commissioned a transportation study to help determine what the road network should be within the town. It then seemed unlikely that a bypass could be justified before 1981, which was the target date for the plans to emerge from the study to be completed, so a bypass was not included in the original study.

It was then that the influence of the present Government upon the situation came to be felt. When we made our road programme anouncements in June we made it perfectly clear that we saw a through network, particularly giving access to the ports, as a very important part of the strategy which we eventually put forward. Therefore, following the change in emphasis in the road programme by this Government, the Department agreed with the Ipswich Council that the consultants whom Ipswich had already employed on the study should be asked to consider whether a bypass was justified. That was an additional dimension which the Government introduced to the forward looking that was going on.

So the investigation now requires a study of whether a bypass is to be built, whether it would be justified, whether it should go north or south—which my hon. Friend favours—and if the decision is in favour of it, when it should be built. It is true that the southern route would be more expensive because of the crossing of the River Orwell, but I make it clear that we all realise that there are genuine problems to be examined and urgent issues to be solved in relation to the fundamental question posed by the Government of whether there should be, at an earlier date than recognised, a bypass of Ipswich itself. I think my hon. Friend will be glad to hear that we have today informed the authority of Ipswich that the additional work which the Government are instrumental in requesting in respect of the bypass will be the subject of 100 per cent. grant to the cost from central Government.

The difficulty of asking that this extra work should take place is that one immediately throws forward the time taken to do the work, and I realise the dilemma that confronts all those—I am one of them—who would like an early answer to these problems. The latest information I have is that by the middle of next year we should have the results of the complete study. This would suggest that the future internal and bypass road pattern for the town will be carefully analysed and areas of decision can be made public. Indeed, the local authorities and all interested parties as well as my Department will then have a total picture of all the issues.

However, I have asked that there should be an interim report on the two issues which I think are of prime concern arising from this debate. The first is the need for the bypass itself and the second is the desirability of the bypass going either north or south. I hope to be in possesion of the interim report by spring next year. I am sure that my hon. Friend welcomes that as an initiative which will do everything possible to speed up the process of this essential part of the project. No time is being lost in effect by the additional time which the consultants are taking. The work now being done would still have to be carried out even if the decision were taken here and now as to the existence of a bypass. We would still have to have a detailed examination.

Mr. Money

I appreciate what my hon. Friend is saying and share the feelings of many people regarding the importance of protecting environment and amenity. But the boot is on the other foot in Ipswich because if we do not speed up this project, the environment and amenity in the town will not be protected. In relation to both long-term expenditure and the amount of land which will be involved, together with other expenditure, I think it may well be that the southern bypass will be the cheaper course in the long run.

Mr. Heseltine

This is one of the matters to be contained in the interim report. It will go into all these factors. While one might say that any time taken is too long, the work being done by the consultants is necessary in the planning process whichever route we choose. I cannot possibly demur from my hon. Friend's remarks about the environmental situation. Of course it is an unpleasant situation, and it is because I am so aware of this that I am trying to bring such pressure to bear on the problem myself.

My hon. Friend's arguments for a new bypass are very persuasive. I have every sympathy. Without wishing to anticipate any conclusive decision, I would refer him to the letter which my right hon. Friend has arranged to have sent to the local council regarding the urgency of the matter. I hope that my hon. Friend will have patience a little longer.

Question put and agreed to.

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