HC Deb 29 June 1973 vol 858 cc1973-92

3.29 p.m.

Mr. Frank Judd (Portsmouth, West)

Perhaps it will be convenient if at the beginning of the debate I quote, with the leave of the House, at some length from the preface to the Lorry Parking-Ports-mouth, Southampton and Area Report which was prepared by the regional working party set up by the Department of the Environment.

The preface is important because it sets out the historical background to the subject of the debate. It says: The Department of the Environment published the report of the Working Party on the Parking of Lorries on 8th October 1971. Subsequently the Department issued a circular—Roads 53/71—drawing the report to the attention of local authorities. In paragraph 12.2 of the report, the Working Party recommend:… 'that regional study groups should be set up to prepare plans and suggest sites for their areas which can then be fitted in to an overall national network … Regional plans will in turn need to be co-ordinated to form the national network and we consider that this might be done most effectively by the Department of the Environment.' It then continues to describe how this working party was brought into existence. It concludes: Our terms of reference were as follows:—… 'to investigate as a regional study group the principal problems of overnight lorry parking in the Portsmouth and Southampton areas, to prepare plans and consider sites for strategic lory parks with the object of fitting these into an overall national network, and to make recommendations accordingly.' The area covered in our study is shown on the plan annexed to this report. The recommendations in this report"— I wish to emphasise this part of the preface— are submitted to the Department of the Environment and to the local authorities in the area reviewed. I shall now quote from paragraph 4.3 of the report referring to the Portsmouth area. It says: It is estimated that, having regard to the facts described in paragraph 2.2 and to the proposed development of Mile End Quay, it will be necessary to provide initially a strategic lorry park for 150 lorries, with overnight accommodation. Ultimately it is estimated that the overall requirement will be for between 250 and 400 lorries and accommodation, not necessarily all at one site. The existing lorry park in Burrfields Road, together with its accommodation, will be retained but not extended. A draft local plan for the Tipner area of the City has been agreed by the appropriate committee of the City Council to be used as a basis for discussion with local residents, industrialists and other members of the public. This area offers an excellent opportunity to provide a strategic lorry park on a site of approximately 6 acres on the north side of the Tipner Link Road east of the North-South motorway. The site is within a well defined area of industrial and commercial development and is well suited to accommodate the associated ancillary works and distributive trade warehousing. The report unfortunately does not stress that the site is also uncomfortably close to existing residential areas.

The paragraph continues: A lorry park in this location would meet the immediate need for long distance lorries, and an additional 4 acres of land could be allocated to meet anticipated demand. The site is situated close to the proposed urban motorway into the City, which is connected to the national road network, in particular the M.27, A.3 and A.27. Access to the lorry park would be directly off the City distributor road linked to the motorway at the Tipner Interchange. It is expected that the urban motorway and the M.27 Interchange will be open by the end of 1975. The final report of the working party refers to the Tipner local plan draft report which has been prepared by the city council as a basis for discussion. It would be appropriate to quote briefly from that report to show how the city is taking the proposition of the working party into account in preparing its proposals for this area within the city of Portsmouth. Paragraphs 5 and 6 on page 8 of the council's draft policy state: … if the Secretary of State for the Environment considers the Tipner Area acceptable for the development of a long distance lorry park, as proposed in the Draft Plan and recommended by the Regional Working Party on lorry parking as part of a National Network, it be accepted in principle that, subject to suitable conditions, the Department of the Environment would wish to purchase the land, including that in Council ownership, the costs of land acquisition being met entirely out of Central Government Funds that the Public Works and Traffic Committee be requested to bring forward the proposed North/South Road-Twyford Avenue link road in the City's future road programme to coincide with the programming of the proposed lorry park and associated development, both of which are likely to be in advance of the current programme for this road which is 1975/80. There are three reasons why we need to examine the situation in this House. First and foremost, there are the totally unacceptable implications for the people of Portsmouth of these proposals, especially for those people living to the north of Portsea Island in the Tipner area. Secondly, there is the direct ministerial responsibility, which is clearly established in the preface to the report of the working party. Thirdly, there are lessons to be learnt for national transport and social policy as a whole from this situation.

Before I make some specific observations about the proposals, I applaud without qualification one aspect of the working party's report as it affects Portsmouth—the notion that somehow or other the haphazard parking of lorries in the streets and residential areas of the city, as is happening at the moment, must be stopped. That is something on which we would all agree for environmental considerations but also, of course, for reasons of safety, because parking of this type can present considerable dangers, particularly to young children.

Portsmouth is, of course, an island—an overcrowded island desperately short of open space. It has in parts what can be regarded as one of the highest population densities in the country. Taking this into account, I submit that it should be unthinkable that a monstrosity of the sort suggested in the report should be inflicted on the island community of Portsea. We have to understand that, once established, the lorry park would inevitably attract, like a magnet, still more heavy traffic to the city. This is recognised in the observations of the working party, which said that the original number of lorries to be accommodated would quickly escalate by more than 100 per cent.

It would also necessitate beyond a doubt the construction of the link road between the new north-south urban motorway and Twyford Avenue, something emphasised both in the local council's draft report—the Tipner local plan—and the working party's report. This would completely isolate a sizeable residential community which would find itself in the centre of a triangle of fast-moving heavy traffic.

Paradoxically, the city's first improvement areas have lain within this triangle, so while we have been spending considerable amounts of public money—quite rightly—in trying to improve the life span of the housing and the general environment in the area on a tactical basis, preparations have been continuing on a strategic basis to create what might be described as a hell on earth for the residents of that part of the city.

The opposition to the proposals is widespread and strong. The local community in the immediate vicinity is in absolutely no doubt about its views on what is at stake. Councillors of both main political parties have come out categorically in opposition. The Portsmouth and South-sea Ratepayers Association has also declared its unqualified opposition to the scheme. Other local organisations have joined in the chorus of opposition, and only today I have heard from my agent in the constituency that the Portsmouth branch of the Road Haulage Association has also come out against the proposition.

It might be helpful now if I were to quote briefly from the report upon the Tipner draft local plan, prepared by the Portsmouth and Southsea Ratepayers Association. In a paragraph headed "The Human Element", the association describes the nature of the community to be affected. It states: Firstly consider the character of the Tipner estate. It is a very tightly knit community based on the green concept. This concept allied to the well defined geographical limits of the area has produced a very definite village atmosphere which is enhanced by the close affinity between the residents. This plan, as it stands, will destroy the character and community spirit of Tipner. Instead of providing for a human need it will add to the price of human misery and suffering already paid by the people of the City who found themselves in the path of the planners pencils. The only acceptable solution is a General Improvement Area, tailored to the needs of Tipner, which excludes the lorry park, link road or any further non residential development. In the same report the association puts its case even more strongly: We consider that if the proposed lorry park and link road, which are an integral plan, are constructed they will in fact give the 'kiss of death' to the area. Why has this strategic lorry park been seen as necessary? The working party set up by the Department of the Environment has made the point quite clearly that it is seen as necessary because of the expansion of the civil docks in Portsmouth and the increasing volume of traffic associated with that development. All of us in the city welcome the development of this new flourishing small civil port because it helps to bring a balance to the economic life of the city which for too long has been highly, almost exclusively, dependent upon the Services for its well-being.

But what I find most interesting about the development of this civil dock is that, stopping some few hundred yards short of it, there is a branch railway which runs from Portsmouth and Southsea station down into the Royal Dockyard. Along this branch railway track little more than one freight train per day passes in each direction. With a small extension of this branch line it would be possible to extend the railway into the civil dock area enabling goods to be taken in and out of the civil dock by perhaps not very many but certainly several freight trains per day.

With this possibility in mind I recently wrote to the Chairman of the British Railways Board, Richard Marsh, putting the idea to him, and he replied spelling out certain difficulties in the way of development of this kind. His letter concluded with a most uncharacteristic display of impotence on his part: When the possibility of introducing this extension was previously examined it was decided that, within the terms of our present wholly-commercial remit, sufficient regular business would not be attracted to make it a worthwhile proposition. This is still the position. I replied that I found the limitations of his position hard to accept, and I then received a further letter from him in which he said: I note you propose to pursue the matter of the role of the railways in reducing environmental damage and pollution, in which as I am sure you know, you have my full support. I am heartened by the knowledge that the Chairman of the British Railways Board is fully behind me, because, not only in connection with this scheme, but also in the far wider dimension of transport policy generally in the country, we have a most extraordinarily distorted form of accounting when we come to compare the cost of railway services with those of road services for any commercial enterprise such as the civil docks at Portsmouth.

What are the factors that we take into account when considering road transport? How far do we undertake a probing examination into the social costs of development? For example, do we take into account the rape or elimination of living communities in order to facilitate the movement of vehicular traffic? How far do we take into account pollution by noise and by poisoning of the atmosphere? I wonder, in our rather overcrowded community in Portsmouth, how much searching research has been done into, for example, just one aspect of the poisoning of the atmosphere, namely, the increasing lead poisoning caused by the increased amount of heavy traffic. We know that scientists and medical experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the cumulative effect of lead poisoning and the long-term brain damage that it can do particularly to young children.

To what extent is that kind of social consideration taken into account? How much has the consequent physical and mental stress been taken into account? Indeed, how much has the health bill that is necessary to deal with that mental and physical stress been taken into account when comparing the costs of a road building programme with the extension of an existing branch of the railway by a few hundred yards? I believe that we must look at this lorry park, and perhaps lorry parking policy in general, in the context of so much anti-planning that has gone on in some of our main urban centres, to which Portsmouth is no exception. What we have seen in Portsmouth is commercial development in the centre of a city attracting still more traffic from outside. People who should be able to live in the city centre nearer their work are forced to move outside the city perhaps a distance of several miles to impersonal housing estates even outside the city boundaries, thus aggravating the problem of transport into the working area at the centre.

The problem of Portsmouth is not exclusive to that city. It is a problem which was imaginatively tackled in the Report of the Select Committee on Public Expenditure dealing with urban transport. It shows that a social and economic transport priority must be to put every disincentive in the way of traffic coming into our city centres.

But if one puts it in a wider social context, what one is faced with—and again Portsmouth is an example, but not an isolated one—is the classic confrontation between those who live in the city which is their home and those who want to use the city as a facility and who, coupled with impersonal commercial interests, have little consideration for the cost in terms of hardship for the people in the city community itself. The commercial interests are too often only worried by how profits are secured.

Now is the time for us in Portsmouth to cry "Enough". The ordinary people of the city have paid too high a price already for road building. The Secretary of State, in answer to Questions by me, has suggested that if there is any truth in the case that I am putting forward this afternoon it is up to the local authority to take action, but I put it to the Minister—and I appreciate his waiting until the end of a Friday afternoon to reply to the debate—that the working party reported direct to the Secretary of State as well as to the local authority.

Therefore, the Secretary of State has an immediate responsibility. I also put it to the Minister—I know he has a great deal of experience of local government and that he is sensitive to the problems of people within areas of local government —that, as he knows very well and as we all know, the treacherous dimension of schemes like this is that they are apt to gather what becomes an irreversible momentum as time slips by. The Secretary of State could so easily act now to avoid much of the heartache, delay and inevitable anxieties involved in embarking on the course of public inquiries and the rest.

The hon. Gentleman may say that this is all very well as negative criticism, but what positive alternatives have we to offer? I know that I am speaking for a wide cross-section of the people of Portsmouth on this issue in saying that if there has to be a strategic lorry park at all it should certainly be altogether off Portsea Island, which is already too overcrowded and too deprived of open space and room in which to breath.

If the Department insists that it is impossible—and if that were to be done it would be necessary to provide effective transport for drivers from the strategic lorry park to the city to reach their sleeping quarters, their relaxation, their homes and so on—the only alternative which should be considered is that the lorry park must be completely away from any existing residential areas. The only alternative, it seems to me, on Portsea Island, as it is at the moment, is to put the strategic lorry park where the Ministry of Defence firing range is located at Tipner. That is an extensive area on the west side of the new north-south urban motorway.

As an Opposition Front Bench defence spokesman, I respect the special problems of the Services and the need for their firing practice, which is obviously important, but when one looks at the needs of Portsmouth and compares relative priorities one sees it is totally unacceptable that there should be this considerable area of land for firing practice out of sight, when the motorway is built, of the existing residential communities, with, as a consequence, this ugly lorry park being thrust upon the community side of the motorway, depriving the people of the area of potential open space.

If the Secretary of State cannot find a way—I believe that he should find a way—of putting the lorry park off the island altogether, he has no alternative but to argue it out with the Secretary of State for Defence to ensure that the strategic lorry park is put where the firing range is.

Next Monday evening there is to be a meeting of the community of Tipner organised by Portsmouth city council at which they will be discussing the city's draft report on a plan for this vicinity. A great deal of the anxiety which I have described and of the worry which I know will be expressed at that meeting could be alleviated if the Minister were able to say in categorical terms this afternoon that he is determined that, if a strategic lorry park there must be—I hope he will look, with the Chairman of British Rail, at the proposition I put about the branch railway line—it cannot be anywhere near the existing residential communities and it cannot be on the east side of the north-south urban motorway.

3.55 p.m.

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Portsmouth, West (Mr. Judd) on raising this topic. He has been pursuing it with some diligence with me and with my right hon. and learned Friend for some considerable time. He has invited me—both in the House at Question Time and by correspondence—to visit the area for myself. As a former naval officer and a present member of the Royal Naval Reserve, I am not unacquainted with Portsmouth, Tipner and Whale Island, where I have spent many happy hours doubling round the parade ground. I therefore know the area fairly well.

Although the hon. Gentleman is primarily concerned—and rightly—with the proposed park within his constituency, he raised several matters of more general significance. He referred to Portsea Island and the city of Portsmouth and to the effect that people coming in from outside could have. He referred to people making profits out of the city, but if they are they may be contributing to it by paying rates. But it goes further than that. No town now is an island, if I may misquote Donne. In Portsmouth, which has large defence interests, with the best will in the world not all the ratings and officers of the Royal Navy can live inside the city and be completely identified with it. Many of them have to live in Hampshire. We therefore have to con- sider this in a less parochial and broader context.

The Government are increasingly concerned about the problems created by the indiscriminate parking of lorries in streets and open places of towns and villages. Many areas in my constituency, situated in the suburbs of Birmingham, have the same problem.

Complaints have been received from members of the general public in ever-increasing numbers resulting in the former Ministry of Transport launching in 1969 an investigation into the problem to ascertain how best it might intervene to find a solution. At that time there was little evidence of co-ordinated thinking on the subject, and there were many diverse and conflicting views about the action that was needed.

The then Ministry's Working Party on Parking of Lorries started work in March 1970. It decided that the vehicle it should be concerned with was one which by virtue of its size and weight could cause a visual and audible intrusion into the environment"— a very wide-ranging description.

The working party—which spanned both administrations—published its report in October 1971. Its main recommendation was that a national network of lorry parks should be set up for long-distance vehicles, paying special attention to security and to drivers' needs for a good standard of overnight accommodation. In 1971 the circular "Roads 53/71" was issued which drew the attention of local authorities to the report and its recommendations.

As the hon. Gentleman outlined this afternoon, study groups reporting in each region to the regional controllers (roads and transportation)—who are officers of my Department—were set up by early 1972 to prepare plans and suggest sites in their areas suitable for lorry parks. The programme is being co-ordinated from my Department's headquarters so as to avoid overlaps and inconsistencies between regions. The intention is that sites will be acquired by negotiation, and the normal process of obtaining planning clearance will be gone through in each case.

The Government have earmarked £10 million to acquire lorry park sites which would then be leased to operators to develop and operate them. The first site is at Stretford, near Manchester, where tenders from operators are being invited in advertisements in the Press this month. The advertisement of sites at Warrington and Bootle will follow soon thereafter.

Apart from their rôle in running lorry parks, private operators also have a part to play in finding sites. Plans are well advanced in respect of seven other sites, either wholly private enterprise developments or in combination with local authorities.

The need is seen for between 50 and 60 sites in the national network, and negotiations or searches are at present taking place in about 70 locations in England. This figure excludes the Greater London Council area where similar but separate action is being planned.

To complement the national network there must also be parks designed to meet local needs, for which the responsibility rests with local authorities.

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

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

Mr. Speed

Authorities have been asked to review their plans for local lorry parks and to let the Department know what action they propose.

As the national and local system takes shape, so authorities will be able to impose the restrictions on indiscriminate parking which are so clearly needed, and which must come if the heavy lorry is to be kept to those places where it will do least harm.

The Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Controls and Regulations) Bill, which is at present before Parliament and is being sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes), will be a further step forward in controlling heavy lorries. The responsibility will rest largely with the new local authorities—the new counties.

I should like to say a word about the rail links to the docks. The situation has been correctly stated by the Chairman of British Rail, Mr. Marsh, and stems from various Acts of Parliament, including he 1968 Transport Act, which provides that railways have to act in a commercial sense. It is not for me this afternoon to anticipate the situation since next week we are to have a debate on the railways and my right hon. Friend has said that he hopes to produce proposals which can be discussed in this House on the future and the viability of British Rail. The House may be assured that questions of freight traffic, environment and the future of the railways will be closely considered, as will be seen when the document is published.

On the question of the planning of roads, it is not only the economic arguments that are taken into account—far from it. Whether or not there is a public inquiry, social and environmental factors are taken very much into account by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State when he is considering road schemes. I have no doubt that highway authorities also take similar factors into account.

I should like to say, as an earnest of our intentions, that the new procedures which we are now envisaging for earlier public participation in road planning matters should have some effect. There is also to be borne in mind the Land Compensation Act, which for the first time gives much greater compensation to people affected and enables road planners to design more civilised roads and to take account of all important factors. These are big problems, and on the rail side the situation will be a little clearer in a few weeks' time.

It goes without saying that the planning merits of each site chosen for lorry parking will have to be gone into with great care. The initial choice of sites for the national network is being carried out with this in mind. But this is not enough. The full planning procedure must be gone through before a site can be regarded as ready for development; and if the outcome is unfavourable the site will be dropped and the search will begin again. In considering planning proposals, it is the duty of authorities to have regard to the environmental advantages to be gained by the establishment of properly designed and sited lorry parks as well as any planning disadvantages a site may possess.

I should like now to turn to lorry park policy in South Hampshire. The regional working party on lorry parking in the Portsmouth and Southampton areas reported to the Regional Controller (roads and transportation) in December, 1972. The study group comprised senior officials of the county and district councils and was chaired by an official of Southampton City Council. Its terms of reference were: to investigate as a Regional Study Group the principal problems of overnight lorry parking in the Portsmouth and Southampton areas, to prepare plans and consider sites for strategic lorry parks with the object of fitting these into an overall national network, and to make recommendations accordingly. The working party, whose report has been accepted in principle by the Minister, took a comprehensive look at lorry parking in the area. It made recommendations for both local and national parks. For the national network it recommended that two parks in the Southampton area should be established, the first at Nursling to cater for 300 lorries, and the second to the north or north-east of Southampton, preferably in the vicinity of the proposed Stoneham Interchange, to cater for 200 lorries. In the Portsmouth area it proposed a park at Tipner initially for 150 lorries.

I believe that the Nursling site has been or is about to be acquired by the Hampshire County Council and that plans for its development are well advanced. Details of the exact location of the second site in the Southampton area are not yet available.

The site at Tipner could be provided with access from the M275—the north-south road being built at the moment—with only minor works, and a junction is already partly under construction. The land at present contains a greyhound stadium and a scrap metal yard together with some houses which are said to be below standard.

Mr. Judd

The hon. Gentleman said that the junction is already under construction. Does not this illustrate my point about the irreversible momentum that gathers on an issue of this kind? On Monday there is to be a public meeting to discuss what people in the area want and what they think of the proposals.

Mr. Speed

I will come on to participation by the public later. I have already taken the hon. Gentleman's point. I think that his fears are, to an extent, without foundation. The M275 is being built.

I turn now to the question of resiting the lorry park on Tipner Range. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned this in the House before and has raised it again today. As he knows, this is Ministry of Defence land. I have been into this matter in great detail with my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. I am advised that the range is an essential establishment and there is no possibility of its removal. Nevertheless, I will draw the attention of my right hon. and noble Friend to the hon. Gentleman's remarks. I am advised at the highest level—I have been into this matter in detail following Questions and correspondence that we have had—that that is the situation.

Portsmouth City Council has published a draft informal plan for Tipner in which provision is made for the park and also for a local lorry park on adjacent land. I understand that an exhibition has been held and that this is the last day. As the hon. Gentleman said, a public meeting has been fixed for 2nd July at which the plan will be discussed. At this point in time, therefore, I would not want to go into the planning merits of these two parks for a reason I will give in a few moments. The council has this well in hand and is seeking public comment. Again, there are formal planning procedures to be gone through before development of either could begin, always assuming that the proposals do not have to be reconsidered as a result of the public participation on 2nd July.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about the irreversible momentum. The M275 scheme now has an irreversible momentum. There is no difference between us on that. Regarding the overall redevelopment plan for the area and these two lorry parks, from my Department's point of view—I cannot speak for the Portsmouth City Council, but I have no reason to doubt that it concurs—there is at this stage no irreversible momentum. It would be wrong to say that a lorry park is not needed if the committee, having gone into it in great detail, believes it is the best site and there are many advantages on that site. However, it would not be a complete disaster if, at the end of the day.

the lorry park is not provided there. Lorry parks must be provided somewhere, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged.

The hon. Gentleman asked: why cannot the Department of the Environment step in straight away and do something about it? Why must we work through the local authority system since it is the Department's development?

It is true that that it is our development, just as motorway service areas and various other matters are our developments. But the whole basis of our Town and Country Planning Acts and of local government is that, in the first instance, this is for the local planning authority. If we were to ride roughshod in some way over the views of the local planning authority—the hon. Gentleman said that both political parties on the council have reservations—we would not be doing local government, which we have just reorganised, any good, and it would he contrary to the spirit of the Town and Country Planning Acts passed by both administrations.

Mr. Judd

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I think he will agree that he is probably unintentionally distorting the situation. This is a proposition which is being put by his Department to the people in Portsmouth for their consideration. What I am saying is that if there is to be a meeting on Monday to discuss what they want in the way of improvements in the general area, the situation could be a great deal more constructive and better informed if the Department said "Yes, we see the difficulties now. We are going to put up another proposition. Do not be worried about this nightmare."

Mr. Speed

There are two sides to this. There are the views of the local people at the public participation procedure which is in the course of taking place in the form of the exhibition and the meeting. There is also the situation where the local people, apart from making individual representations, are also represented by their councillors and their city council. The two are not necessarily incompatible. The city council has to look at the interests argued by the residents of Tipner and the residents of the constituency of the hon. Gentleman. It has to look at the interests of the city as a whole. It has to make its decisions on the planning matters and the redevelopment of this area, bearing in mind the interests of the people most closely concerned, but it must also take a slightly broader view as well. Otherwise one would never do anything in any ward if a particular ward council were against it.

It is a difficult balance, but the city council has gone about this with the draft plan—I have seen the information which it has put out—as well as the exhibition and the meeting next week, and this is the sort of thing which we would all applaud and would want to see happen. There are various ways in which this whole concept may be subject to a public inquiry, which is what the hon. Gentleman and his constituents certainly desire.

As the hon. Member already knows—we have corresponded about this—if in any adopted plan there are substantial departures from the approved city development plan it will be necessary for the council to advertise the planning applications and refer them to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State under the Town and Country Planning (Development Plans) Directions 1965 and there will be an opportunity to consider whether they should be called in for decision by the Secretary of State and a public local inquiry arranged.

What I can tell the hon. Gentleman and his constituents is that my Department would proceed with the provision of a lorry park only after consultation with the council, and here again the council might well decide that the development constituted a substantial departure—this is just on the question of lorry parking—from the approved development plan which should be advertised and dealt with like a statutory planning application of the same nature. This again would mean that it could come before my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and a public local inquiry arranged in exactly the same way.

There are these two important fallback provisions on the overall plan and the individual lorry parks. That is why I have to be careful in what I say because it could well be that these proposals might come before my right hon. Friend for his decision, and the House will appreciate that in that case it would be wrong for me to discuss the merits in detail of the particular sites which have been mentioned today because my right hon. Friend and the Department might be acting in a judicial capacity at a later stage.

The hon. Gentleman asks—and this is one big question—"Why Portsea Island?" I can say without hesitation that I support wholeheartedly the general conclusions of the regional working party on the need for lorry parking provisions in the area. At present lorries are free to park more or less at will in streets or on vacant land, or where they can find a space virtually. The hon. Gentleman may know that a survey of the area was carried out in 1971—no doubt, the situation has got worse since then—and it showed that there were 112 longdistance away-based lorries—the type that should be in a lorry park on the national network—parked in the Portsmouth area, and 196 in the Southampton area; 214 lorries of the type that should have been in a local lorry park—not strategic lorries—were in the Portsmouth area in 1971 at the time of the survey, and 280 in the Southampton area.

Lorries in such considerable numbers parked in that way in Portsmouth and Southampton at any given time are, for the reasons which the hon. Gentleman gave, environmentally bad. They are very bad for a safety point of view for children, and they do no good whatever for the people living in the area. That is why the working party's recommendations had regard to this matter and at the same time took into account the likely growth in South Hampshire generally, which I do not imagine any of us would wish to underestimate.

The working party not only called for the setting up of lorry parks to which I have referred but urged local authorities to use their powers to ban indiscriminate lorry parking. I can only applaud this approach, which is fully in line with the Government's policy of civilising the lorry and making our towns and villages better places to live in. As I have said, there is a Bill before the House now which will further strengthen these powers. But I do not think that we can ask our city councils and county councils to take these powers to themselves and make them effective unless we give them places where the lorries can go.

Whatever happens in the railway review or anything else, there will inevitably be a considerable portion of our goods and freight in this country carried by heavy lorry, whether the hon. Gentleman and I like it or not, and, that being so, one must try to cater for the heavy lorry. One must try to cater for its parking, for all the environmental reasons which are so familiar to us.

Mr. Judd

Why is it inevitable?

Mr. Speed

To start with, there are 200,000 miles of road in England and Wales, and 11,000 miles of rail track. Second, one has to bear in mind the number of factories or commercial premises which are directly rail-linked compared with those which are not. Again, therefore, there is an inevitability about it. Even if one can transfer a considerable portion of traffic to rail, that traffic still has to get from the warehouse, the shop, the factory, or whatever it may be to the railhead. It is then transported by rail, but then it has to be delivered at the other end. This means, in some cases—there is no doubt about it; we have done a great deal of research, and we are continuing it now—that transporting goods by rail may occasionally lead to an increase rather than a decrease of road congestion, although it may well ease the inter-urban problem because the long hauls go on rail track.

With the proportions of freight being carried by rail compared with the proportions being carried by road, even diverting a substantial amount of freight carried by road to rail would lead to a relatively small diminution in the number of lorries on the roads. There is, I regret to say, an inevitability about it, and I say this as someone who is in no way hostile to our railway system.

From all the information I have, I have no doubt that Portsmouth City Council is taking the participation process extremly seriously. I can give the hon. Gentleman the legal assurance for which he asks, that if the council regards these various developments as departures from its plans, which it may well do, there is no question but that this would be referred to the Secretary of State, and there is a strong probability in those circumstances of a local public inquiry.

I must, however, be firm in what I say about the local authorities, which are in the front line of local planning. They are the people, and we cannot ride roughshod over them, although in many cases local authorities themselves might sometimes wish us to take decisions which they themselves find not easy to take. But, having reorganised local government, and having our powerful and important Town and Country Planning Acts, passed by both administrations, we should do wrong if we tried to short-circuit the law. These developments here are being treated as matters which must be dealt with in the context of our planning laws.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that everything he has said today will be noted and borne in mind. I have no doubt that it will be looked at carefully by the Portsmouth City Council. I shall be interested to know the results of the meeting to be held next week. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that an official from my Department who is well versed and expert on the matter of lorry parks will be at that meeting to answer questions and to give what information he can, so that I shall have a first-hand account of it.

There is certainly the possibility of public inquiries, and it cannot by any means be taken as a fact that the momentum is irreversible if the city council has thoughts about a public inquiry or whatever it may be. I hope that the hon. Member will accept my assurance that the matter is by no means cut and dried. This long-standing problem has been identified by the working group and we all wish it to be solved, not least in the interests of the hon. Member's constituents. I look forward to seeing what happens at the public meeting next week and I hope that ultimately it will be possible to get an acceptable solution to the problem, which is a difficult one.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes past Four o'clock.