MOTORWAY NOISE (INSULATION) (Hansard, 17 January 1978)

§ Mr. Robin Hodgson (Walsall, North)
I beg to move—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. If the hon. Gentleman will wait a moment until hon. Members leave the Chamber he will not waste his sweetness on the desert air.

§ Mr. Hodgson
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for changes in conditions of eligibility for compensation under the Land Compensation Act 1973 in connection with the occupants of dwellings adjacent to motorways affected by noise; to empower local authorities to provide additional assistance to such occupants; and for connected purposes. The purpose of this proposed Bill is to provide a remedy for some of the more idiosyncratic results arising out of the choice of a fixed cut-off date contained 251 in the original Land Compensation Act. Briefly, Clause 1(8) of the Land Compensation Act removes any assistance with insulation—

§ Mr. Russell Kerr (Feltham and Heston)
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not know whether it is the fault of the amplification system, but I for one am finding it impossible to hear the hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton)
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I appeal to hon. Members for silence, so that those who wish to hear the hon. Gentleman introduce his Bill may do so with ease. Perhaps it would be best if the hon. Gentleman began again. There is now peace.

§ Mr. Hodgson
I hope that I get 10 minutes from now.
The purpose of this proposed Bill is to provide a remedy for some of the more idiosyncratic results arising out of the choice of a fixed cut-off date contained in the original Land Compensation Act.
Briefly, Section 1(8) of the Land Compensation Act removes any assistance with insulation from those people who are affected by noise from motorways where those motorways have been opened on or before 17th October 1969.
The results of the arbitrary selection of that date are twofold. On the one hand, assistance with insulation is linked to the chance of the date of the opening of the motorway and not to the level of real need of inhabitants in the locality. On the other hand, it has the extraordinary effect of refusing help to those sections of the community which have been in need for the longest time.
I shall show how unfair this is by describing a specific example in the Walsall area, though I know that other similar examples exist elsewhere in the country. Sections of the M6 motorway north of junctions 9 and 10 were opened on 20th December 1968 and 15th September 1966 respectively. So, people affected by the opening of these two sections have not been eligible for insulation assistance because those dates are prior to October 1969. In fact, in the early years the level of noise in these areas was low. Why?—because the motorway was not then fully opened; it came to an end at these 252 two junctions, which are located in the middle of a built-up area, so motorists were in the habit of avoiding the conurbation by turning off earlier and joining the A5 as a means of skirting the whole West Midlands conurbation.
Only with the completion of the system on 24th May 1972, when the Gravelly Hill interchange—more familiarly known as Spaghetti Junction—was opened did the volume build up. Unhappily, despite this latter date being within the qualifying period, my constituents and others in the locality have remained disqualified from any assistance.
It is hard for me to explain how bad the situation now is. A traffic survey carried out by the Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council on 4th May 1977, over the 18-hour period from 6 a.m. to 12 midnight, showed a traffic flow equivalent to 126,200 passenger car units. I ask right hon. and hon. Members to consider what this means. It means 7,000 vehicles an hour, 117 vehicles a minute, or two vehicles a second, passing within a few feet of these houses, on and on, night and day, 365 days a year. The effect on marriage, on social and family life, can be imagined.
The purpose of the proposed Bill is simple. It will not seek to alter the original qualifying date, since, quite apart from the philosophically and constitutionally unsatisfactory nature of retrospective legislation, such a change would only recreate at another date the idiosyncracies to which I have already referred. What the Bill will seek to do is to link eligibility for assistance with the amount of noise and the level or volume of traffic. Thus, under my proposal, when the level of noise rises above 68 decibels, or the volume of traffic exceeds 61,500 in an 18-hour period, local inhabitants will be eligible for assistance with insulation. The level of noise and of traffic flow have been selected because they correspond precisely with the Government's own figures contained in the Noise Insulation Regulations 1975.
The problem of motorway traffic noise has affected the inhabitants of the Walsall area for many years, and I wish briefly to pay tribute to the work done on the subject by two former Members of the House—Mr. William Wells, who formerly represented Walsall, North, and the 253 late Sir Harry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, who formerly represented Walsall, South. I hope that their work will now begin to bear fruit.
In conclusion, let me say that anything that the House can do will be only second best, for people do not want their houses turned into double-glazed, sound-proofed, barricaded fortresses. They want to live in their houses as homes. They want comfort, peace and quiet enjoyment of their homes and equally of their gardens. However, we cannot give them that. The motorway has been completed and there it will stay, with all its consequent noise and vibration. What this modest measure will do is something to improve the lot of those who must inevitably suffer from its effects.