§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Thomas Cox.]
§ 4.4 p.m.
§ Mr. Jonathan AitkenI wish to raise the requirement for improved road and motorway signs to the Channel port of Ramsgate. The need for this debate arises because, after a long exchange of correspondence with the Minister and his predecessors, going back about five years, and after several parliamentary questions, I have, to the 1724 considerable regret of my constituents, so far been unable to persuade the Minister and his advisers that the town of Ramsgate deserves better signposting.
I believe that this refusal to give Ramsgate improved road signs is an uncharacteristic aberration of judgment by the Minister and his Department. I therefore welcome this opportunity to develop my case in an attempt to persuade the Minister of the illogicality of his present approach.
I want to begin with a few words of general description of the town of Ramsgate, because I have a suspicion that some of the Minister's advisers may have an outdated view of the town and may not be fully informed of the important developments which are already affecting its present and will certainly affect its future still more. As lately as seven years ago, Ramsgate could be characterised perhaps as a miners' town, perhaps as a seaside landladies' town, perhaps as a retirement town. Behind its elegant Regency facade it was, at least in economic terms, quietly running downhill—and, alas, there are today still rather too many corners of shabbiness and decline about which Ramsgatonians feel unhappy.
However, as we approach the 1980s, Ramsgate is undergoing an exciting status change. Already, it is Britain's busiest Channel port and it looks all set, by the 1980s, to become a major communications base for Europe, with its own busy hoverport, its own freight and passenger air services and its own cross-Channel ferry service.
Ramsgate's international hoverport at Pegwell Bay, which operates services to and from Calais, handled a traffic volume during 1978 of 233,000 cars and lorries and 1,266,000 passengers. That total alone gives Ramsgate the position of Britain's second busiest Channel port, with Dover in first place and Folkestone a somewhat distant third, with traffic of 71,000 vehicles and 700,000 passengers.
But, looking ahead to the 1980s, there is lying on the desk of the Secretary of State for the Environment a planning application from Hoverlloyd, the operating company at Ramsgate, for a medium-sized extension of the existing hoverport, which will allow two new hovercraft to 1725 operate from Ramsgate. Since that application has been approved by the Thanet district council and the decision has been unanimously endorsed by the Kent county council, there is every likelihood that the Secretary of State will in turn give his approval swiftly.
That expansion will mean not only a £30 million order for the British Hovercraft Corporation, not only £3 million-worth of building works in and around the terminal buildings, not only 200 permanent new jobs in Thanet, but, above all—this is its significance for this debate—an increase in today's already substantial cross-Channel hovercraft traffic to projected figures by 1983 of 448,000 vehicles and 3.1 million passengers annually.
But the hoverport will not be the only embarkation point for cross-Channel travellers from Ramsgate in the 1980s. There is also Manston airport, situated within the boundaries of Ramsgate, which already carries 20 million kilos of air freight a year and is expected, subject to final Civil Aviation Authority approval, to start an Air Kent scheduled passenger service to Brussels and Rotterdam later this year. Air Kent has announced that it expects to fly 37,000 passengers on its scheduled services from Manston in 1979–80.
In addition, there will be in the early 1980s a cross-Channel ferry operating from the West Rocks reclaimed area at Ramsgate harbour. There is a proposal from the Olau Shipping Line now before the National Ports Council which foresees a traffic of 250,000 passengers on a Rams-gate-Dunkirk service by 1981. It is predicted that that total could rise to a throughput as big as that of the present hoverport by the mid-1980s.
While on the subject of Ramsgate harbour, I should mention that, just over two years ago, the Thanet district council launched a highly successful marina, with 400 permanent berths, on which 6,000 transient yachts moored for one or more nights last year. That brings at least 20,000 nautical visitors to the town every year, and that total is increasing annually.
There is also a car shipping facility at Ramsgate harbour that accounted for the import of about 44,000 Volkswagen 1726 motor cars in 1978. I mention those statistics to demonstrate to the Minister that Ramsgate is on the verge of a spectacular boom in cross-Channel traffic growth. I hope that the figures will weigh heavily in his calculations.
Growth prospects in the industrial economy of the town are also most promising. Thanet district council pursued a vigorous policy of encouraging companies to come to the airport site, which is now an industrial estate. About 38,000 sq ft of council-built factory space was let to companies last year. The council is about to embark on the next section of development in which some 80,000 sq ft of new factory space will be built, much of it having been pre-let.
While on that subject, I ask the Minister to draw the attention of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to an urgent matter that has today come to my attention. There is a planning application with the Secretary of State for the Environment from a company called Steelrad, which is a subsidiary of the Metal Box Company. It wishes to open a factory that will create 245 new jobs in Thanet. In a community that has over 3,000 men unemployed, half of whom are under 35, an injection of 245 new jobs is nothing less than manna from heaven. Because of certain complicating factors, these jobs will be lost and the factory will go elsewhere unless the go-ahead is given by 31 March. The planning application has been approved by the county and district councils. It needs only the additional approval of the Secretary of State for the Environment within the next few days. Delay could be fatal, and the fate of 245 new jobs is in the hands of the Secretary of State. I appeal to the Minister to speak with his right hon. Friend to make sure that everything possible is done to process the application and ensure that the jobs are not lost.
I hope that I have indicated that the town is moving ahead industrially as well as being on the verge of a massive expansion as a communications centre. There is also the traditional seaside holiday appeal of the town, with its fine beaches and Regency buildings, which attracts at least 40,000 holiday visitors a year. Expansion is also expected in this sector of the economy, not least because of a new four-star 150-bedroom hotel develop-men near Ramsgate harbour.
1727 So I hope that it is evident that Ramsgate is undergoing a status change. Instead of being just another sleepy South Coast town, with its summer visitors, fishermen, pensioners and perhaps a little boating activity around the harbour, it is moving into the big league. On the projected figures, by 1983 at least 5 million passengers and 600,000 vehicles will be going through the hoverport, airport and seaport. Together with the industrial and touristic activities, that puts Ramsgate in the big league, and in that context I return to road signs.
Ramsgate is badly treated regarding road signs on the M2 and A2. Alone of the cross-Channel ports in Britain, it is not signposted anywhere in central or Greater London. There is a remarkable and unhappy contrast with the road signing of Folkestone, which is well signposted from within two miles of Hyde Park Corner and for the next 70 miles to Folkestone town centre. One wonders Why Ramsgate is discriminated against, because it is already the bigger Channel port. Ramsgate has its first mention on road signs 54 miles from London and 26 miles before Ramsgate, at the end of the M2 and A2 and just before the start of the A299.
That unfairness is more striking when compared with the signposting of the adjacent Channel town of Margate, which is not a Channel port and does not have the same inflow of visitors or the same importance. Margate is signposted all the way down the M2 and A2 as well as the A299. Signposting begins only 25 miles out of London and 55 miles before Margate's town centre. My plea this afternoon is simply "equal road signs for Ramsgate"—equal, that is, to those given to Folkestone and Margate. Ramsgate is much more important on any test of present traffic volume and future predictions. The discrimination looks all the more unfair when one looks ahead into one's crystal ball.
As a result of the correspondence, I am only too familiar with the Minister's sole credible argument to justify his unfair treatment of Ramsgate. This can be summarised as the public expenditure argument. He has said in correspondence with me that road signs are not cheap and that the country cannot afford them.
There are two estimates on this matter. One is from the RAC, which says that 1728 it can perfectly well alter or put up road signs for approximately £24 a sign. Since we are talking about the need to alter some 22 signs, the public expenditure involved, on the RAC's figure, which I admit is at the low end of the scale, would be £528.
The Department of Transport's estimate, which was given to me yesterday, in apparent seriousness, is that the new road signing would cost £86,000, or £3,800 per sign. If that is the real figure, it should be reported to the Public Accounts Committee immediately. I cannot see how altering one road sign could conceivably cost £3,800.
I urge the Minister to think again and work out these figures afresh, if the figures are as I have quoted. There can be no economic justification for denying a busy Channel port proper signposting. There is certainly no geographical justification. I hesitate to say that Ramsgate has Cinderella status, because that might imply that the neighbouring towns of Folkestone and Margate are its ugly sisters.
Ramsgate today is the belle of the ball among the new cross-Channel ports. It has a bright future and it has bad road signs. I urge the Minister this afternoon to take on the mantle of Prince Charming and to give Ramsgate the road signs that it deserves.
§ 4.17 p.m.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. John Horam)I may not be a Prince Charming, but I shall try to expedite matters in the Steelrad project by having a word with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, as the hon. Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) has asked. I shall ask my office to contact my right hon. Friend's office this afternoon to ensure that there is no slip-up along the way.
I am aware, from past correspondence, of the hon. Member's desire to see Ramsgate signed from an earlier point on the route from London than it is at present. His raising the subject today gives me the opportunity to explain how the situation that he has fairly described first arose, what we have done to meet his wishes and whether it would be sensible to do more.
1729 Requests for place names to be added to direction signs are not infrequent Nor, as the road programme develops, are the occasions when we have to decide which names to put on direction signs when they are first erected. We therefore think it right to have some guiding principles. The main one is not to have so many names on any one sign that the attention of drivers is distracted when they try to select from too much information at speed. Too many names can simply be dangerous.
As a generally fair and practical way of limiting numbers, therefore, the place names mentioned are normally restricted to those classified as primary destinations. The second principle that we try to follow is that once a name appears on an advance direction sign it should appear on all subsequent signs until the destination is reached. It is not always possible to do that, but we regard it as a principle of considerable importance to the motorist which should be met wherever possible.
My Department's responsibility is for the trunk road part of the London to Ramsgate route, namely, the A2 from central London, and the M2 as far as Brenley Corner, just east of Faversham. From Brenley Corner, the route both to Ramsgate and Margate follows the A299 up to some six or seven miles short of the towns, and then into Ramsgate via the A299 and the A253. These are local roads, for which Kent county council is the highway authority. Being local and close to destination they have been provided with frequent signs to Ramsgate, so I intend to limit my remarks to the route from London to Brenley Corner.
The hon. Member is right in saying that, down from London, Margate first appears on the direction signs 25 miles out at Three Crutches junction, where the M2 starts. Ramsgate first appears at Brenley Corner, about 50 miles out, and about 26 miles from the town, where it was added only recently following representations from the hon. Gentleman. The opportunity to do this was presented in 1977 when it became necessary to renew the sign gantry there. The origin of this different treatment goes back to the opening of the M2 in 1963.
1730 I was interested in what the hon. Gentleman had to say about the development of Ramsgate because, as he agrees, it all post-dates 1963. None of the dates he mentioned were as early as that. Both these towns were, and still are, classified as primary destinations. The same applies to Dover and Canterbury. On the principle of limiting the number of place names, choices had to be made. Dover was shown from the start of the route in central London because of its importance as the major cross-Channel port and the fact that it was the terminal destination of the route as a whole. Signing Margate as early as the Three Crutches junction was perhaps, in itself, unusual but was done as a way of showing that the motorway provided a connection to the Thanet area generally and that it was not necessary for traffic to remain on the A2 through the congested Medway towns which the motorway was intended to relieve.
Margate was chosen for this purpose because, in 1963, it was larger in population than Ramsgate. I think it is still larger in population though I fully accept the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the comparative industrial and commercial development of Ramsgate in the intervening years. At the time we are talking about, it would clearly have been perverse to choose Ramsgate rather than Margate as the sign for this route.
That choice, at the time, from which all this springs, was an attempt to be helpful to Thanet, and I believe that it probably has been helpful. I think that the decisions made originally were sound and reasonable and I was glad also that the opportunity occurred to add Ramsgate at Brenley Corner as a logical and helpful step in answer to the hon. Gentleman's request.
The question, therefore, is whether we should go further. Looking at that question, one has to balance the question of need against the question of cost. On the question of need, I am bound to say, despite what the hon. Gentleman has said, that I do not consider the case strong as yet. I think it is reasonable to expect anyone setting out on a journey from London to Ramsgate first to consult a map if he does not know where Ramsgate is. From a map he cannot fail to spot that Ramsgate and Margate are very close to each other and that the best 1731 route is the A2 and M2 to Brenley Corner, where he will find himself happily picking up a sign to his destination.
That this happens seems to be supported by the fact that we have no evidence of people having serious difficulty finding their way to Ramsgate. We have had no volume of complaints from ordinary motorists. I understand the hon. Gentleman's case about the development of the hoverport—I have used it myself and have admired the speed and efficiency there—and I have also been told this afternoon of other developments taking place in Ramsgate.
The question whether people are finding it difficult to find Ramsgate is as important as the new developments, and we have no evidence that this is so. If it is a question of comparative civic pride, which is an understandable concern, that really is not a matter for which I am responsible or which can be taken into account—I see the hon. Gentleman shaking his head—in dealing with this matter. It is simply a question of helping the traveller as sensibly as one possibly can.
§ Mr. AitkenThe Minister is being helpful. He says that the whole policy of his Department is to be helpful to the motorist. But the point that is perhaps overlooked is that those who most need help and who receive it when they are going to the other Channel ports are the foreign travellers who do not find it so easy to have English maps to consult and do not so easily grasp them. Every other Channel port is graced with signposting from London. Ramsgate is not. That is the crucial point, not only for today but for the 1980s.
§ Mr. HoramWhen I am travelling abroad—in France, for example—I make a point of having a map. I am more likely to have one when I am travelling abroad than when I am travelling in England. Therefore, I do not consider that to be a logical argument, although I well understand the hon. Gentleman's point about Ramsgate's growing importance by comparison with Folkestone and Margate.
When we consider what could be done, we find that there are a number of options. The main option, the full-blooded treatment, as it were, is to have Ramsgate signed at the Three Crutches 1732 junction and, following the principles I have enunciated, at the 11 other points along the way to the end of the motorway, which are known as route direction signs. That would cost £86,000, because it would mean replacing two enormous gantries at the junction, which in itself would cost about £60,000.
Following that option would also break all the rules, because then there would be four names on that direction post, not three. We usually try to stick to one or two at the very most. It would also certainly upset Canterbury, which is also a primary direction. It is considerably larger than Ramsgate and would still not be on that sign, even though Ramsgate were. I think that the hon. Gentleman can see the cost and other difficulties of adopting the full-blooded treatment.
The second option is to have the name on the first large gantry at Three Crutches and not thereafter, but that also goes against our rules, because we do not like to have a sign at one point and not follow it through. That leads to confusion, certainly for the foreign traveller, who may feel that he has missed a turning if he is not continually reminded at appropriate points that the way forward is to Ramsgate. Moreover, that option would be very expensive, and we rule it out.
The third option is simply to eliminate Margate from all the sings and substitute Ramsgate. The only likely result would be that in a future Adjournment debate the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) would protest violently at the unfair treatment of Margate, with its historic traditions, its larger population and all the tourists who wanted to visit it. Therefore, I do not think that even the hon. Member for Thanet, East would advocate that method. It would be simpler and much more economical, costing only about £5,000, but because I do not wish to inflame any rivalry that may exist between Ramsgate and Margate I must rule it out.
However, there is a fourth option. I have said that to put Ramsgate on all the large gantries and main route direction signs would cost an estimated £86,000, for the reasons that I have given. The gantries are very expensive, because they must be highly wind-resistant. Being very large, they must be very strong to withstand the force of the wind. That is why 1733 the cost is so high. I am reluctant to incur that expenditure, because I do not believe that the taxpayers' money should be spent lightly. This Government have taken a firm line on public expenditure and, in the interests of the taxpayer and the ratepayer, as much as for any other reason, I would not wish that to be relaxed. Given what one sees as the case for the need to put a proper sign to Ramsgate, I do not feel that I could justify that expenditure.
However, there are other signs along the way, known as route confirmation signs. At present Canterbury appears on these, but Ramsgate does not. To add Ramsgate to those signs which follow the whole way along the M2 from Three Crutches roundabout to Brenley Corner could be helpful as an addition to the signing to Ramsgate. That would cost about £2,000 to implement. I am prepared to authorise the addition of the sign "Ramsgate" to all the route confirmation signs. They are the smaller signs that indicate so many miles to a particular town. I repeat that the name "Ramsgate" could be added at a cost 1734 of £2,000 to all those signs along the M2.
That would not give the hon. Gentleman the full treatment of a sign at the Three Crutches roundabout where all the other places are mentioned. For the reasons that I have given, that would be unfair to Canterbury, it would break all the rules, and it would be highly expensive. I hope that this less expensive option will show that so far as we possibly can we wish to help. We are prepared to move, but there are severe problems in moving any further than that.
§ Mr. AitkenI thank the Minister for his constructive and helpful reply, which is a step in the right direction. It will not provide everything that I wish, but it has certainly made this Adjournment debate worth while. May I ask when the work will start?
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Five o'clock.