HC Deb 30 July 1980 vol 989 cc1693-704

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr. Cope.)

12.1 am

Mr. Peter Emery () Honiton

It is with considerable pleasure that I raise, even as the first minute of the new day strikes, the largest single traffic and road problem in my constitutency, namely, the need for a bypass to the town of Axminster. It is no new idea or scheme. I have had correspondence during the past 13 years with different Ministers of Transport. I had hoped that the idea was enshrined and certain from the time of the 1978 White Paper, but it has been fought for since it was first predicted in 1949.

Axminster is a bustling, small in modern terms, town serving and connecting East Devon to parts of West Dorset and South-West Somerset. Its population in electoral terms is about 4,000, out of a total population of 5,500, but it has a trading catchment area of four times that amount. It provides a massive service to the agriculture community and industry in my constituency and its surround.

In a recent White Paper the Government set out the priorities governing the policy for roads in England in 1980. The White Paper stated: The first priority of the Government is national economic recovery. The road programme has to be judged in that context. We have to strike a balance. New road schemes can bring undoubted economic advantages. Exports can reach their markets more quickly; goods can be distributed more efficiently; traffic can flow more easily and fuel can be saved. At the same time substantial environmental benefits can be gained. I was surprised to find little, if anything, in that paragraph about road safety and the saving of lives. Why I find that worrying will become more evident as I press on with the case for a bypass at Axminster.

I presented a petition to the Minister on behalf of my constituents, signed by more than 2,500 residents in East Devon and more than 25 different organisations. I shall not bore the House with all that it says, but it points out that those who live in Axminster and in the immediate countryside surrounding Axminster humbly do Petition that—

  1. 1. In order to relieve the danger to life and limb.
  2. 2. In order to lessen the traffic congestion.
  3. 3. In order to stop heavy traffic and juggernaut lorries passing through the 14½ ft main street of Axminster
immediate action should be taken by the provision of a bypass for the town of Axminster. The problem in the town is that, coming down a steep hill from Lyme Regis, one comes into the centre of the town, round a bend where on one side there is no pavement, the road itself is 15½ ft wide and the pavement, according to the county engineer, is 3 ft 6 in wide. This is to transport all the people from one side of Axminster to the other—from the main shopping area up to the Co-op, or, if one does not like that simile, up to the post office or to many of the other shopping areas in the town. The wheels of two out of three juggernaut lorries which go round this corner mount the pavement. I have been all but crushed by a lorry turning that corner, avoiding traffic coming in the other direction, because the driver had no alternative but to mount the pavement. To make things worse, as one proceeds, having just come round the bend, one meets a pelican crossing, and having moved off from that crossing, 200 yards further down the carriageway narrows to 15 ft 9 in.

I have before me the Leitch report. In the references in that report, nowhere can it be shown that the widths of these roads are anything other than completely inadequate. Even the S73M recommendation, on page 15, would have, as the very minimum of any type of rural road layout, a 24 ft wide road. I believe that Axminster would probably qualify for a 33 ft road, if one were starting from scratch.

What I am saying, therefore, is that there is no other place in the constituency where there is such a need, on grounds of road safety and congestion, for traffic to bypass the town.

I accept immediately that in the White Paper the Government have stressed the need to deal with the problem of bypasses. Therefore, I find it most disappointing that Axminster has been struck out from the preparation pool to be dealt with "at some time", when it is convenient in the future. That is not good enough.

If we had all the money in the world—indeed, if there was a fairly reasonable level of capital expenditure—I believe that the Minister would immediately accede to my demands. I realise and accept the Government's problem in reducing public expenditure. I support the Minister and the Government in carrying through that policy. Therefore, for me to be able to demand that the Axminster bypass is restored immediately into the preparation pool, not only must I prove that this is the most important road improvement necessary in East Devon, but I must be willing to give up something in the Minister's financial programme to provide the finance with which that could be brought about.

In pages 39 to 57 of the White Paper setting out the scheme, East Devon is mentioned five times, I think. It refers to the A35 Honiton link and states that it constitutes 1–4 miles and will cost £1–5 million. It refers to the Honiton to Marsh link and states that it is 8–4 miles long and will cost £13 million. It refers to the Honiton to Exeter stretch of road which is equivalent to 22 miles and will cost £11–3 million. It says that Wilmington bypass will cost £1 million and is 1–3 miles long and the Axminster bypass is 2–7 miles long and will cost £4–6 million.

Obviously, Tory Ministers favour Tory Members. I should therefore like to ask how much of the programme that affects my constituency will be left in. If my hon. and learned Friend does not know the answer, I shall not ask him to work it out. In fact, the answer is £1–5 million, and that is only 3–5 per cent. of the amount that my constituents know is necessary. The Honiton link has been approved, and will cost £1–5 million. I know that some people in Honiton will blame me for my next remarks, but I say this openly and to their faces. There is nothing as important as an Axminster bypass. If the Honiton link had to be postponed, I would ask the Minister to spend the money on the Axminster road.

I have had conversations with my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Spicer). In the 1984 reserve list there is a bypass for Bridport. My hon. Friend has informed me that the expensive part of the scheme has been left in—under the approved reserve list—but that a simpler scheme could be applied. That could mean a saving of 40 to 60 per cent. of the amount estimated. In other words, there could be a saving of about £3 million. Together with the Honiton Jink, that would provide the £4–5 million necessary for the Axminster scheme.

Will my hon. and learned Friend seriously consider this matter? I do not want him simply to accept the offer of putting these programmes back. I shall be after his tail if he does that and does not give me Axminster in their place. I have known Ministers who would do such things. However, I should not for one moment suggest that my hon. and learned Friend would think of doing such a thing. Will he consider whether Axminster could be reintroduced into the programme?

I stress that the Axminster bypass will have to be built. I beg the Ministry not to find itself being forced to take action because lives have been lost. Within the next 24 months, I believe, that lives will be lost. The lorries are so big that they have to back up to get round. When two lorries meet head-on, it is impossible for them to pass each other. Once lives have been lost, the scheme will be brought forward. Surely it is nonsense to defer such an important scheme which would cost so little until lives are lost.

I hope that the Minister will give way and accept my plea to restore the bypass to the programme. In addition, if the Minister is unable to restore the Axminster bypass to the programme he must ban all vehicles that weigh over 10 tons from entering Axminster. They must be routed via the other part of the A35, from Lyme Regis to Exeter on the southern route. Traffic from Bournemouth to Honiton could be routed on to the A30 and the A303 before it reached Axminster. I realise that that may add an extra 12 miles to the journey to Honiton and that it will add about 4 miles on to a journey to Exeter. However, local emotion is higher than I have ever known.

I think that my hon. and learned Friend will agree that I am not given normally to exaggeration. However, I shall have to restrain people from lying down in the street and disrupting traffic if there are not positive answers from the Department. I shall do everything in my power to stop such action because I believe that it does no one any good. I must inform my hon. and learned Friend of the strong feeling locally. My constituents feel that they have been promised a bypass for years and years and that the project has been postponed permanently. Surely I am not asking too much, especially when I am willing to provide the necessary funds so that my hon. and learned Friend does not have to go outside the budget to bring Axminster back into the scheme.

I conclude by asking which it will be: will the Axminster bypass be put back in the programme, or are we to have a ban on heavy vehicles in the town? It has to be one or the other.

12.16 am
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Kenneth Clarke)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Mr. Emery) on his good fortune in obtaining the Adjournment debate and on the way in which he has pressed Axminster's claims.

I hope that my hon. Friend will dissuade his constituents from allowing their frustration to take any foolish forms. I assure him that I do not approve of direct action of any sort. It does not have the slightest effect upon any decisions on the roads programme, whether it takes place at public inquiries or on the roads of any town where people feel aggrieved. One is more impressed by cogent argument, and that is what my hon. Friend has produced. I realise that he feels strongly about the issue and that he and his constituents are disappointed by the decision that we announced in the recent roads White Paper to suspend preparation work on the Axminster bypass for the time being. I am sorry that that decision was taken. It was taken in the full knowledge of the fact that many in Axminster would be disappointed, especially because my right hon. Friend had received a petition, presented by my hon. Friend, from Axminster residents pressing for the bypass.

I know that there is a considerable claim for a bypass around Axminster. It is no part of my position to try to deny the need. I do not know the town intimately, but as part of my job I do quite a lot of driving in various parts of the country. I last drove through Axminster—I did so anonymously in the course of a personal visit—during Easter. I find that in my present job I look in a way that I did not do previously for potential bypasses and trouble spots when driving I recognise fully the description that my hon. Friend gave of conditions in the town.

Axminster has an old-fashioned road system. It is an old town which is unsuitable for modern traffic conditions. The worst of the traffic conditions occur in the middle of the main shopping centre. I well understand the frustration of those who live there that has been expressed by my hon. Friend.

The Government have to decide how best to progress the various claims for bypasses around many towns such as Axminster and how we can fit them into a realistic budget. That was the problem that my right hon. Friend and I faced when it came to producing the roads White Paper this year. We inherited the previous Labour Government's plans for about 400 trunk road schemes of various sorts throughout the country. We inherited plans that appeared to be based on the notion that there would be a steadily increasing sum available for building trunk roads, although the previous Government had severely cut the trunk road programme in 1976. However, they left us plans on paper that appeared to envisage the steady restoration over the next few years of that which they had taken out of their plans. Unfortunately, they left us not the slightest idea of where the funds were supposed to come from.

It is plain in the present economic position that there was no room for growth. We have therefore decided to stabilise the level of expenditure on trunk roads each year at about £300 million, which is the level of spend achieved by the previous Government. We are not intending to cut that expenditure, but within that realistic budget we have had to go through the entire programme and try to draw up a list of priorities and decide when schemes can be managed.

What we have decided is when roads can be built and not whether they will be built. The Axminster scheme has retained its place in the trunk road programme, and we are merely deciding whether it is possible to get on with the scheme in the next few years. The decision in the White Paper was to defer the bypass and its preparation for the time being. It was not a decision to abandon the proposal. We are merely deferring it to a time when we feel resources may be available to do more work on it.

In the light of what my hon. Friend said, that still seems a hard decision. We drew up priorities based on the stated principles set out in the White Paper. The first schemes must contribute most to the industrial revival of the country and be the large key schemes that link our major industrial centres and the ports. We have to make room for major routes of industrial importance, like the M25 motorway box around London and the Al-Ml link between the Midlands and the East Coast ports. Those schemes are vastly expensive compared with modest schemes such as the Axminster bypass.

My right hon. Friend and I have also been anxious to make room for as many bypass schemes as we can around older towns with old road systems but modern traffic. We are alive to the problems of road safety that are posed in those towns facing most difficulty. We are led to the conclusion that we can allocate funds for a number of schemes between now and 1984. We have to decide thereafter what to do about the substantial number that will have to be deferred. Unfortunately, there is a possibility that a number of schemes in our road programme cannot be built until at least the end of this decade.

We inherited a situation where some kind of preparation—engineering work and economic analysis—was under way for most schemes. There is a point at which it is no longer possible to justify expenditure on all the preparation work, including schemes that cannot be built until the next decade. The expenditure on preparation work was at the expense of present construction. We therefore decided that we would halt work on about 100 schemes until a later stage, which would be shortly before there was a realistic chance of finding the money to build them.

The Axminster bypass fell into the category on which, for the time being, we would suspend preparation work. However, as I said, that does not mean that the scheme has been struck out of the preparation pool. It is intended to build a trunk road scheme to bypass Axminster, but we have decided that we will suspend preparation until we are nearer a realistic date for building.

I hope that I have underlined the fact that we have made that decision knowing that there are serious problems of congestion in Axminster, although the A35 to the west of Dorchester does not carry a great deal of through traffic compared with many other roads in the country. A bypass will eventually provide substantial environmental and road safety benefits. However, looking at the country as a whole, there are large numbers of competing schemes. We have decided therefore that others are more urgent, including the Dorchester bypass, which is on the same road and not far from my hon. Friend's constituency.

Although we feel that the bypass cannot be built for some time, we realise the problem, and have decided to look at measures to bring short-term relief. My Department's officials at Exeter have been working with the Devon county council and the town council to try to improve the situation, pending the construction of the bypass. I am told that the restrictions on parking and waiting and the traffic circulation system at the George hotel have helped give relief. However, there are limits to what can be done without diverting traffic into residential areas. Now that we have announced our decision on the bypass, it is intended to ask our officials to consider whether anything further can be done to offer short-term relief, pending a proper solution.

My hon. Friend is trying to persuade my right hon. Friend and I to reconsider the decision to postpone preparation work. I assure him that we shall ponder on everything he has said to see whether there is anything we can do. It is not possible, even when my hon. Friend is fortunate enough to get an Adjournment debate, to concede that we should restart preparation work on this scheme. Eventually, if we were not careful, we would be making the same concession to many disappointed communities up and down the country and would find that we were carrying out a lot of work on preparation of schemes at the expense of immediate construction.

My hon. Friend accepted frankly the constraints upon the Government. He was not making an idle claim for increased public expenditure or imagining that it was easy to find the funds for which he asks. He realised that funds for Axminster meant finding resources at the expense of other schemes. He suggested that the scheme to improve the A35 and the A30 at Honiton—the so-called Honiton link scheme—is less important than a bypass at Axminster. I shall consider what he says. In trying to draw up priorities, we are influenced very much by the opinion of our colleagues who know their own constituencies and advise us that we may have made the wrong distinction between competing traffic claims in their areas.

The Honiton link is a smaller scheme from our point of view than the Axminster bypass. It is designed to deal with a difficult hill by building a "crawler" lane and making some realignment to the road. Most importantly, the Honiton link that has found a place in the reserve scheme with a definite date in the White Paper will cost only about a third of the amount that would be required to build a bypass round Axminster. We are using out-of-date figures in the White Paper, but those figures show £1–5 million envisaged for the Honiton link, as against £4–5 million for the Axminster bypass.

I shall discuss further with my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Spicer) the position at Bridport where, again, we have retained a scheme in the reserve list in the White Paper, intended to give relief to that town. If we have chosen an expensive and unpopular route, that is plainly a matter that we must reconsider. I do not recollect playing any part in choosing a preferred route for that bypass. I suspect that it was my predecessor. I shall, however, reopen the matter and see whether it is possible that some resources are being used that may not be needed. That, I am afraid, is all I can offer. I shall reconsider the matter and I shall allow myself to be influenced heavily by what my hon. Friend has said about his judgment of local needs and priorities to make sure that such resources as are available to use in Devon are being devoted where the local population will benefit most. I can make no offer beyond that.

I do not think that there is any realistic alternative. My hon. Friend suggested that a possible alternative, demanded by him and his constituents, was a lorry ban, with traffic being diverted on to other roads. It is not suitable, I suggest, to have a lorry ban on a trunk road. The road is designated as a trunk road in order to be a national arterial route. It may not be very suitable to be designated as such, but there are not many alternatives for heavy traffic to follow without making enormous detours.

My hon. Friend mentioned the possibility of diverting traffic on to the A303. I shall not bore him with the list of schemes for improving the A303, relieving considerable congestion along that road. I could refer to a number of hon. Members, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton), who would be somewhat alarmed at any proposal to divert more lorries through villages in his constituency on the A303 if a lorry ban was imposed at Axminster.

I am sorry that I cannot promise to bring any immediate relief of through traffic at Axminster. I can promise that we shall reconsider our priorities to see whether we can divert resources from other schemes so that we can at least resume some preparation work at Axminster. That preparation work may take a long time. There are geological problems, and a survey will probably be required before we can even get down to examination of a definite scheme for a bypass. We have looked at various routes to the south of the town, but there is a great deal of work to be done.

If we were to resume preparation work on the Axminster bypass, it would be only as a reserve scheme. It would be more expensive than the Honiton link. When it comes to fitting reserve schemes into spare resources, there is less chance for a £4–5 million scheme than for a £1–5 million scheme. There is a risk that we would finish by doing nothing for my hon. Friend's part of Devon.

I appreciate how strongly my hon. Friend feels. He has expressed the strongly-felt opinions of his constituents. I promise to review the decision and eventually to let him know my conclusion. I would not want to be too encouraging. Perhaps the most optimistic note on which I can conclude is that the difference between us, which I shall reconsider, is simply when we will build the bypass at Axminster. The fact that there will be a bypass has not been placed in doubt. We are simply trying to find a realistic place for it in the programme and to devise a timetable that will not raise false hopes in the locality.

Mr. Emery

With the permission of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to thank my hon. and learned Friend for listening so carefully to my remarks and for dealing in great detail with the points that I raised. He has made clear that he will consider the arguments that I put forward. My constituents can ask for no more than that. We hope that when his consideration is completed the conclusions will be favourable to us.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at half-past Twelve o'clock.