HC Deb 28 June 1973 vol 858 cc1872-84

10.15 p.m.

Mr. David Crouch (Canterbury)

The matter that I want to bring before the House of Commons tonight has been brought before it on many occasions—unfortunately tragic occasions. I am talking about the situation on the A2 for the 27 miles before it reaches Dover, commonly known in Kent as the A2 from Brenley Corner to Dover.

The House knows that for the last seven years I have been fighting a campaign to have this road properly improved to the equivalent of motorway standards, to be dual carriageway, and to bypass the city of Canterbury and the villages all the way to Dover. I have seen Ministers, I have taken delegations to Ministers, I have asked Questions in the House, I have written letters to Ministers, I have appeared on radio and television on many occasions, and taken part in a protest march, but I have got practically nowhere. However, my hon. Friend's predecessor did me a great favour and a great service to my constituents by listening to me one day, overruling his officials, and granting the people of Kent a bypass for the city of Canterbury. For that I am grateful to him and his Department. It may be that because of his enthusiasm, energy and courage on that occasion he was translated to be Minister for Aerospace and Shipping.

Now I reach another milestone in my campaign and have this Adjournment debate. Adjournment debates, by tradition, get publicity, but I want more than publicity. Tonight I ask the Minister for some action. My constituents and drivers on the A2, whether they be freight lorry drivers, domestic, tourist, or other drivers using private cars, want the A2 brought up not only to motorway standards or the equivalent but to the standards obtaining in Europe today.

I am no longer content to take my place in the queue and be patient. I confess that I am impatient and that my constituents are very angry. In past years when I have protested I have accepted the argument often advanced by Ministers in what was the Ministry of Transport, now the office of the Minister for Transport Industries, that I must take my place in the queue as the A2 did not merit any high priority for development to dual carriageway or motorway standards. I cannot accept that any longer as an excuse. In my opinion, the A2 today must command top priority, above all other roads in Britain.

I am not making a plea just for my constituents. I am making this plea because this stretch of road is on one of the most important highways leading, as it does, to Britain's busiest port.

I shall be curtailing my remarks a little to allow my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees) to make a contribution to this debate. It is only right that he should.

Last year, the number of heavy vehicles passing through Dover increased by no less than 43 per cent. This is a staggering increase. Our entry to the EEC has caused an even greater increase in this lorry traffic. A technical journal, the International Freighting Weekly, of 28th March said: Already, more than 100 extra lorries are passing through the harbour, which had an increase of 30 per cent. within less than a month of January 1st. Within less than a month of our entering Europe there was a dramatic change in the volume of freight traffic attracted to the A2, both into Europe and into Britain.

Last August a 24-hour census carried out in my constituency along this road in the village of Bridge, where there have been a number of serious and tragic accidents, counted 1,699 heavy goods vehicles —one every 50 seconds. In this village a year ago a TIR vehicle smashed into a house in the middle of the night killing the driver instantly and nearly killing a child sleeping in an upper room. It is a mercy that no one else was killed.

This week a lorry demolished a bus shelter in that village, according to a telegram I had yesterday. Another lorry crashed into a shop. Two weeks ago a lorry left the road at another village, Harbledown, and ended up in a cottage garden, narrowly missing the children who had been playing there shortly before. Three weeks ago three soldiers died in a frightful collision with a Belgian TIR lorry in Watersend in the constituency of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover.

The Press described this road as the "road of fear" or the "killer road". One local paper reported: Fear of the A2 has forced a couple with four children to abandon their cottage. It is an outrage to have monster vehicles pounding through these villages night and day. People are already paying with their lives for our failure to build a better road into Europe.

This road in the part of my constituency that I am talking about stretches 27 miles, from Brenley Corner to Dover, and only five miles have so far been made dual carriageway. The rest is almost unchanged from what it was at the end of the first world war, except for slight modifications—an English country lane wandering through the Garden of England.

In parts the road is only 17½ feet wide. I do not exaggerate; I quote from the Press release of the Department of the Environment. The width of a juggernaut is 8 feet 2 inches, not including an allowance for the wing mirrors, which could be another foot. There is no room in parts of this road for two juggernauts going in opposite directions to pass. I was speaking to some of the drivers on Sunday. One of them said "You just pray you will not meet anything". Another said "This is the worst stretch of any major road in Britain. There is nothing like it on the other side of the Channel."

We made a great mistake in 1963 in not continuing the M2 into Dover. If only we had done that we should not be debating this problem now and trying to produce a piecemeal solution. Dover needs two motorways in the near future —the M2 or the enlarged A2 continuing from the M2, and the proposed M20—to serve this great volume of traffic.

The A2 development programme is a second-rate programme and is proceeding at an even slower and lower rate than that. There seems no urgency about it, which reflects the lack of understanding of our anxiety and anger.

I know that the majority of the proposed developments are due to be completed in three or four years, although I understand that the Canterbury bypass cannot be completed in less than seven or eight years. But why cannot we have these improvements sooner, perhaps in half the time? Why cannot we have a crash programme to show the people of Kent and all those who use this road that we mean business now that we are in Europe? Why, for example, has the Minister sat on the consultant's report on the line of route for the Canterbury bypass for six months? Why are there great stretches of road where work has begun three or four years ago since when we have never seen a man at work? I am referring there to the situation at Barham Down.

There is a lack of urgency about the whole thing on the part of the Government and by the Kent County Council.

It is there for all of us to see and suffer. I know the Department's programme. It is not good enough. It must be speeded up. I want to sec more drive, too, from the Kent County Council to speak for Kent rather than to act as a mouthpiece for the Minister.

I must warn the Minister that if he will not recognise the danger on this road and its inadequacy to cope with modern freight traffic and if he will not institute an urgent new programme, some preventive measures must be taken. We must consider limiting the flow of heavy vehicles on this road until it is fit to carry them. The powers to do so already exist within the county council.

The people of East Kent would be within their rights to demand such protection. They would be right to show that much more is expected of the Minister for the protection of our environment in the future.

10.26 p.m.

Mr. Peter Rees (Dover)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch), who has already done so much for conditions on the A2, on securing the opportunity for raising this crucial subject for us in Kent. I am very grateful for the opportunity of intervening, and I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) for allowing me to intervene ahead of him.

My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury has outlined the general situation, and it needs no further gilding or emphasis from me, but I should like to ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary four specific questions. I hope I shall get straight and clear answers from him.

I refer first to the Watersend Bridge in my constituency where the tragic accident occurred only a fortnight ago, when a Belgian TIR lorry overturned and killed three soldiers. This is not by any means the first accident at that point on the A2. My first question to the Minister is: will he arrange as a matter of urgency for the road at that point to be straightened out?

Secondly, will the Minister arrange for bigger and more effective signposts to be placed on either side of the bridge so that drivers, particularly continental drivers with, perhaps, a limited command of English, will appreciate just what a death trap it is unless they slow right down?

The long-term solution is the building of the eastern bypass to Dover Harbour, so my third question is: can the Minister, as a matter of urgency, accelerate the building of the eastern bypass? I have been told only today that Kent County Council has withdrawn its formal objection to the line proposed, so that there are no constitutional or legal reasons why work should not start at once. It is not sufficient to say that work will start in 1974 and be finished in 1976. The people in and around Dover need, as a matter of urgency, the decision that this road should be given the highest possible priority.

Finally, once, twice and, perhaps, even three times in high summer and the holiday season the whole of the traffic in Dover seizes up and the line of waiting cars stretches back from the dock to Lydden and even beyond. The high point was reached last summer when cars were waiting throughout the night in Dover, preventing people even from crossing the road. Will the Minister coordinate measures with his Department and the police and Kent County Council to ensure that this kind of thing will not happen this summer?

Here are four simple, straightforward questions to which the people in my constituency demand straightforward answers. The A2 is the jugular vein of the South-East. The pressures on that vein have really reached intolerable proportions. We look to the Minister to give us some relief.

10.29 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Keith Speed)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) on the diligence and persistence with which he has pursued a problem in which he has been concerned to represent his constituents' interests. There are many letters on the file from my hon. Friend, he has asked many Questions in the House, and he has met both myself and my predecessor on more than one occasion, leaving us in no doubt about the serious view which he takes of the urgent need to improve the A2 from Brenley Corner right down to Dover.

I say at once that I do not accept all the strictures which my hon. Friend laid about a lack of diligence in my Department in dealing with the problem. For some years work has been proceeding on a plan for the comprehensive improvement to dual carriageway standard of the whole of this length of the A2, and, except for the Canterbury bypass, it has been the firm intention for some time that all these improvements should be completed by 1976.

I think that people sometimes overlook the progress we have already made on the A2, although I appreciate that it is certainly not as fast as my hon. Friends would like. Perhaps it would be helpful if I were to run through some of the schemes which have been completed in the last few years.

Just to the east of Dunkirk a dual carriageway was provided between Gate Inn and Denstead Lane in November 1970. From Denstead Lane to Staines Farm the dual carriageway was completed in May this year. The second stage of the Canterbury ring road was completed in June 1970, and further down to the south-east a second carriageway has been provided between Black Robin Lane and Barham crossroads.

The stretches of the A2 between Ropersole Farm and Shelvin Lane and on to Oak Pollard were dualled in April 1971 and August 1972. On from there to Lydden Hill dual carriageways were provided early last year. The dual carriageway from Lydden Hill to Swanton Lane had already been completed in July 1970. From Stonehall Road to Skew Bridge, Lydden, and from Skew Bridge to Templar Road, Temple Ewell, the road was improved to a 24 ft. carriageway in October 1970 and March 1971, and, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees) will know, in Dover itself the new dual carriageway road between Folkestone Road and Snargate Street was completed in January this year.

I think this demonstrates that we are concerned to press ahead with what still needs to be done for the improvement of the A2 between Brenley Corner and Dover. There are, of course, a number of remaining problem areas. No one can pretend otherwise. I assure the House that I am as concerned as anyone to see the momentum kept up. I know that many people are as anxious as I am to read in our newspapers of yet another accident or near-accident on a stretch of the A2. My hon. Friend has referred to some recent accidents tonight.

It is invidious to suggest that any one area is substantially worse than another, because any accident anywhere is to be regretted, and those involving injury or loss of life are particularly to be deplored. But, if I may single out one place for extra special treatment, I mention the village of Bridge, which, I believe, is well known to the entire House.

I know, hon. Members know, they are always telling me, and the newspapers are always telling me, that something must be done about Bridge. Those of my hon. Friends with constituency interests along the A2 will know that a scheme for a bypass at Bridge is included in the firm roads programme and that a public inquiry was held in May this year. I should have liked the programme for the Bridge bypass to be accelerated even more than we have managed to do. But, in spite of the fact that people have been clamouring for a bypass, we had to have a public inquiry because some of those with interests in the land that we should need for a bypass objected to it. We have not reached the stage—and I hope that we never do—when we can ride roughshod over legitimate land interests, even if it means a delay of precious months in getting on with a road which we all know we desperately need.

I can now tell the House, however, that the inspector's report has just been received. If the Secretary of State decides, in the light of that report, that the bypass can go ahead, then, provided that there are no hitches in land acquisition, the bypass could be started by the middle of next year and be completed by the middle of 1976. This is the price we have to pay for democracy, and I could not advise the House, or my right hon. and learned Friend, that we ought to ride rough-shod over people who have legitimate interests and who object, and whose objections result in a public inquiry, although, as my hon. Friend knows, it may have delayed this scheme by nine months. This is, as I say, part of our democratic process.

Hon. Members will, naturally, not expect me to be satisfied solely with the alleviation of problems for those living in Bridge. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) may well take me to task for not having mentioned the Boughton and Dunkirk bypass, for which he has been campaigning so vigorously. We are already further forward on this scheme than we are at Bridge, and we hope to start work this autumn, with a completion date some two years later.

As to Harbledown and Upper Harbledown, my officials are working very hard on the inspector's report into the inquiries which were held in April. Again, I hope that, if all goes well, work can start on these two scheme by the middle of next year, and that the bypasses can be opened to traffic by the spring of 1976.

Once we have got the go-ahead for the Bridge bypass, the adjacent scheme from Bishopbourne Road to Black Robin Lane can be started, probably in the summer of next year, with the road opening to traffic a year later.

For the scheme from Barham crossroads to Ropersole Farm the Department will be inviting tenders within the next few days. This means that the scheme will start this autumn and be completed by autumn next year. Subject to the satisfactory completion of the statutory processes and to adequate funds being available—I must enter that caveat—all these schemes, including the LyddenDover diversion, will be completed by the end of 1976 at a cost of about £9 million.

As my hon. Friend knows, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Development made an extensive tour of the A2 between Brenley Corner and Dover as recently as last September to see for himself the work in progress and the conditions on the existing road through the villages which it is proposed to bypass. He found this most worth while and acquired a very clear picture of the conditions along the road. He concluded that as many as possible additional resources should be devoted to the bypass schemes so that what could be done to speed up the programme should be done.

As a result of a review following that visit it was found possible to forecast somewhat earlier start-of-work dates for the Harbledowns and Bridge bypasses provided that no unforeseen difficulties arose. I am pleased to be able to assure the House that so far it has been possible to keep up to the accelerated programmes for these schemes. As I have said, all the improvement schemes should be completed by 1976. A further speeding up of the processes is not possible consistent with democracy.

It has been suggested, particularly by my hon. Friends in correspondence with me, that nothing less than extending the M2 to Dover will deal with the expected growth in traffic travelling to and from the port. I must tell my hon. Friend—I gave him all the figures when I wrote to him last year—that both present and predicted flows of traffic are well below the levels necessary to justify motorway standards. It is most unlikely that future flows will justify another motorway parallel to the M20 after this is opened to traffic later in the 1970s. I have said that it is our intention to complete the improvement of the A2 from Brenley Corner to Dover, except for the Canterbury bypass, by 1976.

As hon. Members know, expenditure on roads is to be reduced by £100 million a year as part of the saving in public expenditure of £600 million a year which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced recently. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State is now carrying out as urgently as possible a review of schemes in the road programme to decide which can proceed without interruption and which will have to suffer some deferment to enable us to achieve the planned reductions in expenditure. He hopes to make an announcement about this fairly soon. I know that my hon. Friends will not expect me to anticipate this announcement this evening, but until that announcement is made I cannot say that the A2 schemes will not be affected. I hope very much that they will be allowed to proceed without delay but until the review has been concluded I must ask my hon. Friends to be patient.

As to the provision of a bypass for Canterbury, I confirm that there has never been any dispute over the eventual need for such a road. The difficulty here arises over the timing and standard of construction. Canterbury is served by a ring road and will benefit from the development of the M20. Between one-third and one-half of the traffic on the A2 north and south of Canterbury has its destination in the city area and would not wish to use a bypass. Independent consultants were commissioned in 1971 to conduct a feasibility study to assess the priority and possible alignments for a bypass. We have now had that report for six months and it has been subject to considerable study.

Last year my hon. Friend was prominent in pressing the urgency of the bypass scheme for Canterbury and was supported by local interests. Not surprisingly, Kent County Council is most anxious that the uncertainties should be resolved. To this end, as recently as May my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries met representatives from the county council and agreed that joint discussions should be held between the county and the Department to try to resolve the present uncertainties relating to future road provisions in the area. The object of these discussions will be to ensure that an announcement may be made later this year of future road plans in and around Canterbury.

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries announced on 5th June that an order had been made fixing the route of a bypass of the A2 trunk road between Lydden and Dover Docks. The bypass, which will be about 7½ miles long, will generally have a single two-lane carriageway, but some short lengths of dual two-lane carriageways will be provided for safety reasons, and from the A258 to the A20 at the docks entrance a crawler lane will be provided because of the relatively steep 1-in-20 gradient.

My information is that the objection from Kent County Council to the order has not yet been withdrawn. Either I am right or my hon. Friend is right. All I can say is that if it has not been withdrawn the order will be subject to special parliamentary procedure, which means that it must be before Parliament for six weeks. That period began on 12th June. Subject to completion of the remaining statutory processes, availability of funds and the completion of the compulsory purchase order, it is hoped to start work on the scheme early in 1974 for completion by the spring of 1976. If the order is challenged, that could delay the scheme, but both my hon. Friend and I must hope not.

The House heard with regret of the fatal accident earlier this month at Watersend. I join my hon. Friends in their expression of sympathy to the relatives of those who lost their lives in that unfortunate and tragic accident.

The road in the area runs nearly parallel with the railway and passes under it by means of an "S" bend. The approaches to the bridge were both widened and realigned in 1970–71 to provide better visibility for drivers of vehicles, and footways have been provided on both approaches to the bridge. The road under the bridge is 24 feet wide, and there are no footways. A scheme to provide a pedestrian subway is on the regional programme, and should be carried out early next year.

The accident record at the bridge, which lies on the section of the A2 to be superseded by the Lydden-Dover scheme, is not particularly bad. Over the past three years there have been four accidents, including the recent fatal accident. In two of them only one vehicle was involved. I understand from the evidence available that the drivers failed either to observe the warning signs or to recognise the effect of prevailing weather conditions.

The existing signs and road markings are of standard size, in good condition, and very obvious to drivers. There is no indication that larger signs would have any greater effect. But after the inquest, which has been adjourned until 4th July, if there is any evidence to suggest that other measures could contribute to greater safety there we shall certainly give them the most urgent consideration.

Mr. Crouch

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. I have had it represented to me by lorry drivers that as it is a route used at night they would appreciate it if there could be many more illuminated signs of dangerous areas, speed restrictions, and so on.

Mr. Speed

I note that point, and shall bring it to the attention of my regional controller.

The construction of the mid-Kent motorway, M20, which is to be the subject of an inquiry later this year, will further relieve the A2 of heavy through traffic. In these circumstances, the reprovision of the railway bridge at Watersend, which would be expensive and would take a considerable time to plan, acquire land and construct, could not be justified, certainly not at present.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover has raised a number of particular points which it would be difficult for me to deal with adequately in the time available. I can tell him that I am asking my regional controller, in conjunction with the local police authority, to look into the points he has raised. They are very valuable points which are important for his constituents, and I shall be in touch with him on them as soon as I have a report from my regional controller, as a matter of urgency. I hope my hon. and learned Friend will understand that time constraints, combined with the perhaps rather strategic nature of the debate, make it difficult to deal with them in more detail now.

Mr. Peter Rees

As the holiday season is about to begin, and nearly always the last two or three weekends in July provide a sort of crisis, has my hon. Friend's Department made any plans to meet the kind of situations we encountered in Dover last year?

Mr. Speed

I understand that there are plans. In addition, I wish my regional controller to go down in the next few days to discuss the matter with the police and make the plans more public.

The A2 has been neglected in the past by various Governments because of all sorts of constraints on funds. I believe that by 1976 the present Government will have improved the A2 the whole way from the M2 to Dover. That will be for the relief of residents, who have had much to put up with during the past few years, and for the relief of traffic. It should reduce fatal accidents. I am taking a close personal interest in the scheme, and I am well aware of the factors which I have described.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at a quarter to Eleven o'clock.