HC Deb 21 May 1981 vol 5 cc550-8

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

1.24 am
Mr. Edward du Cann (Taunton)

I much appreciate the presence of my hon. and learned Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport in the Chamber at this hour to answer the debate. Like the whole House, I have great admiration for his competence and conscientiousness, and I am glad that he is here to comment on the important matters that I wish to raise.

Hatch Beauchamp in my constituency is a delightful village on the A358, which bisects the village. The peace and safety of the village and its inhabitants are in jeopardy because of the tyranny of the heavy traffic that assails it day and night.

Let me paint a brief word picture of conditions. The road is narrow where it goes through the village; and footpaths, where they exist, are also narrow. Houses abut the road. One was seriously damaged three weeks ago—fortunately, by a mercy of Providence, without injury to the occupants—when a lorry jack-knifed. There are bends, one right angled, S-bends and three narrow bridges with widths varying between 5.5 and 5.95 metres between parapets. In places, there is barely room for two vehicles to pass.

The road is wholly unsuited for modern traffic. It is, in the traffic engineers' jargon, substandard horizontally and vertically. The A358 between junction 25 on the M5 motorway and Horton Cross, a distance of 15½ km, carries traffic flows of 8,450 on the southern portion. On the northern portion of the road the flows are about 50 per cent. higher. My hon. and learned Friend will know the statistics.

It is a very busy road. The accident statistics between 1 August 1977 and 31 July 1980 are four fatal accidents, 24 severe and 40 slight. Near misses are never included in the bald recital of figures, and the statistics also cannot reveal the hazards—constant and frightening—to users and local inhabitants alike.

The position has deteriorated sharply in recent years. The volume of traffic has heavily increased since the A358 became a feeder route for the M5. Every year there are more vehicles and lorries get bigger. The Armitage report suggests that they may get bigger still.

The village must have a bypass. There is no difficulty or argument about the proposed route, and the need for a bypass is universally accepted. It is accepted by the inhabitants, of course. So keenly do the villagers feel about this matter that I receive constant representations from representative bodies, including the parish council, the women's institute and so on, and from many individuals. I have here a petition signed by 540 people which I will present to the House formally on another occasion.

The need for a bypass is also accepted by the Department of Transport and by the Somerset county council and its most competent and conscientious officials. The Somerset county draft structure plan recognised the need, and the annual transport policy and programme envisages a start on construction in 1985–86. Design work will start in the county as soon as resources can be allocated from other schemes with a higher priority. But the bypass will depend on the Government. The A358 may be a county road, but the Government are the arbiters.

My first question to my hon. and learned Friend is to ask whether he will undertake that funds are available and that Government financial policy towards local authority highway expenditure will not involve any further cuts and thus a delay in the starting date of the Hatch Beauchamp bypass. There has been a drop of 40 per cent. in local road programmes in England and Wales between 1975–76 and 1981–82. The Somerset programme is much lower than it was some years ago.

I support economy and value for money. I hope that this is proved by my record as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and the Treasury Select Committee. However, parsimony on roads is a false economy. Good communications are vital to Britain's economic prosperity, especially, as hon. Members privileged to represent the West Country will argue, in our part of the world. Roads have been a Cinderella for too long. At the very least, the county, the villagers, the road users and I, as local Member of Parliament, want to be sure that the projected date is kept. I do not want my constituents to continue to be disappointed.

The bypass must keep its place in the list of county schemes in the face of the ever-tightening screw on capital projects. The relief and the environmental improvement when at last the bypass comes will be incalculable.

An even more important question is whether the date can be improved. If that is possible, it should be done. There are important reasons. In past years, emphasis has been placed nationally on the improvement of east-west routes through the West Country. That was right. I had the honour from the Back Benches to lead a campaign for better roads for the South-West some years ago. We made good progress. I wish to pay tribute to the work done by my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton), when he was Minister of Transport.

I know that I have the support of my right hon. Friend, as the constituency Member for Yeovil, in the remarks I am now making. Good progress was made. However, the north-south routes and those providing access to the Channel ports have been neglected. This is a serious matter and a mistake. Sixty-five per cent. of our export trade goes to the EEC and EFTA countries. One can appreciate the ever-increasing significance of the Channel ports to the British ecomomy.

In the absence of a single adequate route, movements of traffic take place along a variety of unsatisfactory roads. Some of these links, in Dorset as well as in Somerset, are virtually unchanged in vertical and horizontal alignment since the turn of the century. It is remarkable to reflect upon this fact. It is nevertheless true. There is an urgent need to improve capacity for traffic from the coastal areas into the national motorway network. It is not fair that the burden should fall so heavily upon the counties.

There is a paradox in the present situation. On the one hand, various economic developments contribute to the misery suffered by local inhabitants en route to the M5 at junction 25, not least in Hatch Beauchamp. I welcome, for instance, the Portland and Weymouth harbour developments. However, the vast majority of freight from these ports bound for the Midlands and South Wales has to pass through Somerset.

There are also the defence establishments, especially the RNAS at Yeovilton and the expanding industrial estates at Yeovil, including Westland's, an admirable firm that is so important to the British ecomomy and our defence effort. Other factors are the search for oil and tourism, always important economically in the West.

On the other hand, it is undoubtedly the case that the lack of a satisfactory road system has been a disincentive to future industrial investment, which is so badly needed because of the new employment opportunities associated with it. Somerset's strategic route network, as defined in the structure plan, links the M5 motorway at junction 25 via the A358 to Horton Cross and then along the A303 to Ilchester and finally via the A37 at Yeovil to Dorchester in the south. This complete route is defined as a national route—that is, a route of the highest national strategic importance.

There are six proposed improvements in the various plans and programmes in the county of Somerset and others in Dorset. Among them is the Hatch Beauchamp bypass, which is scheduled to cost £2.4 million.

A broadly north-south route from Portland and Weymouth to the M5 is obviously of economic and strategic importance to our nation. It would also be of immense environmental benefit, not only to Hatch Beauchamp but to the urban areas of Weymouth, Dorchester, Yeovil and Ilminster and for historic villages such as Hatch Beauchamp and Montacute. Whether the road works are done depends on one thing only—cash, and when it is made available. The lack of finance so far means that a large number of schemes cannot be completed within the next 10 or 15 years unless additional finance can be found.

Let me be plain. Some say that we cannot afford any more. I say that we cannot afford not to provide an adequate north-south route. The reason for raising the matter tonight is that the Government have a duty to provide the infrastructure in our economy. New roads and the north-south route are a crucial part of that, and the Government must either provide them from their own resources or negotiate for them from the EEC. Funds from the EEC can go only to the deprived areas. Until we have the north-south route, my area is a deprived area. We should qualify for help.

My third question is simple. Will my hon. and learned Friend undertake that the whole route, including the Hatch Beauchamp bypass, which is so important to my constituencies and to me, will be accorded a new and deserved priority?

1.37 am
The Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Kenneth Clarke)

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) on his fortune in the ballot. I admire his persistence in pursuing the cause of his constituents by raising, even at this hour of the morning, the important matter of the proposed bypass for Hatch Beauchamp. Having heard at first hand what my right hon. Friend described as his word picture of traffic conditions through the village, I can understand and appreciate his concern. He painted a vivid picture of the intolerable conditions for the inhabitants.

I accept my right hon. Friend's description of present conditions, which are intolerable for modern times. The road is relatively narrow, with several sharp bends as it winds its way through the village. It also has an inadequate system of footpaths. The quality of life in this historic village will be much improved as soon as a bypass can be provided to take the traffic round it.

I realise that conditions have greatly deteriorated in recent years. Following the opening of the Taunton bypass section of the M5 in 1974, the character of the road—the A358—underwent an appreciable change. After the opening of the M5, it was no longer a country road between centres of population. It became an important link with the motorway system. Traffic volumes increased considerably. By 1975, 6,700 wehicles a day were passing through the village. Traffic has continued to increase and has settled at about 8,500 vehicles a day. On Saturdays in the summer, 10,000 vehicles per day is frequently exceeded. The figures, on any reckoning, represent very heavy traffic indeed on a road which was a comparatively quiet country road only a few years ago.

Fortunately, the personal injury accident record in the village is comparatively low. I use the word "fortunately" in all its senses, because it probably contains something of an element of luck. Only six personal injury accidents have occurred during the past three years, although damage-only accidents are somewhat more frequent. I realise how great are the risks. I share my right hon. Friend's concern about the recent accident to which he referred. I understand that a lorry crashed into a house and ended up in a kitchen. It was pure chance that no one was hurt, because the lady of the house had been in the kitchen only moments before.

My right hon. Friend described the traffic going through the village as heavy industrial traffic. Much of it is, and it is vital to the economy of the West Country. He described the large lorries that are an especially unpopular feature of modern traffic. He slipped a little in his choice of language when he said that the Armitage report suggested that they would get even larger. The Armitage report points out that our lorries might become heavier, but not larger. Sir Arthur Armitage is urging that environmental benefits might result if there were fewer lorries carrying heavier loads while retaining the present dimensions, but that is a mere gloss because the present heavy lorry traffic is unpopular and the Government have not decided what to do in the light of the Armitage recommendations.

We have a picture of a village that has far too heavy traffic running through it, an old road system that is inadequate and conditions that are unattractive for residents. There is no dispute that something needs to be done to improve the quality of life for the long-suffering inhabitants, to improve the road safety prospects and to improve traffic conditions along a substandard section of what is now an important road link.

Those aims, which will be served by the construction of a bypass for Hatch Beauchamp, are entirely in line with the Government's aim in their trunk road policy and with the assistance that they give to local authorities for local roads by means of transport supplementary grant. A proper prorgramme of road building is an important contribution to the industrial infrastructure of Britain. At a time when one of our firm aims has to be to revive our industrial economy, it is important that we should relieve transport bottlenecks and improve the ease and convenience of travel, especially for important industrial traffic.

By building bypasses, which are advantageous to traffic flows, we can at the same time take heavy traffic out of old, sometimes medieval road systems in our towns and villages and do a great deal to improve the quality of life for our population. As far as is possible, we try to exempt key capital programmes, such as road building, from the consequences of the inevitable cuts in public spending that must be made across the field by a Government at a time of economic crisis. It is impossible to exempt all transport spending, even capital spending. Transport must take its fair share. We try to maintain the level of our trunk road spending to the level that obtained before we came into office. We are also doing our best to find the resources for essential capital spending by local authorites where they are prepared to press on and give priority to their road programmes.

We all hope for the prospect of new funds, but, as my right hon. Friend with his experience in that area knows, they are hard to find until the economy shows signs of upturn. Looking further afield, as he did, we would welcome the prospect of greater assistance, perhaps in the long term, from the European Community for road building in Britain. At the moment, there is no adequate transport infrastructure fund. The Government encourage work towards producing an adequate fund, but I fear that there is little hope of a rapid conclusion in Europe on the rules for such a fund. Indeed, the whole problem will probably have to wait until larger budget problems are resolved. We must wait until there is some alteration in the place of agriculture within the European Community funds to find space for other important subjects such as transport spending.

In any event, I accept my right hon. Friend's case for a bypass for Hatch Beauchamp. I accept that the improvements that a bypass would bring are in line with Government policy. I therefore turn to his questions about what we can do to hasten the construction of a bypass.

My right hon. Friend rightly said that this is not a trunk road but a local authority road. My Department is therefore not the highway authority concerned, and the responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of the road rests in the first place with Somerset county council. I am pleased to be able to comfirm, as my right hon. Friend knows, that the county council also readily accepts the need for a bypass at Hatch Beauchamp. A proposal for a bypass is included in the Somerset structure plan. The scheme is also included in the Transport policy and programme documents that the counties submit to my Department. These show the bypass in the county's policies, aiming for a start of work in 1985–86.

I recognise, as my right hon. Friend explained, that that date is disappointing to him and to his constituents and that they would like to see it accelerated if possible. But the programming of road schemes on non-trunk roads in the county is entirely one for the county council in the first place. It is obviously much better placed, in Somerset, to judge the priorities of different schemes in its county than we in Westminster and Whitehall can possibly be.

Each year, the counties approach the Department for their allocation of the grant that we give to assist them with their capital programmes. We give such grant as we can, distributed between counties on the basis of the TPPs that all the counties submit. We also give grants to counties such as Somerset to enable them to proceed with their road building, following the priorities that the counties will have chosen.

Somerset's TPP shows that it has some difficult and competing priorities. For the reasons that my right hon. Friend has given, there are a number of routes that could well do with improvement in various parts of the county, and, therefore, the county faces no easy task in placing them in the correct order of priority. The council also has to recognise the need to cut public expenditure and that, therefore, limited funds are likely to be available for highway improvements over the next few years. It cannot, therefore, carry out all its improvements, however desirable, at once. It has drawn up a policy which, although it is not for me to say so, seems highly sensible and commendable and seeks to concentrate its resources on routes carrying through traffic or those that are necessary to assist industry or encourage development. Applying that policy, I understand that a Hatch Beauchamp bypass is rated at No. 4 in the priority list for the county, and that gives a clear indication of the importance that the county council attaches to the scheme because it is high in the list of competing schemes.

I am asked by my right hon. Friend what are the prospects of grant being available as the Somerset county council gets on with its policy and gets nearer to No. 4 in its priority list. Again—and I describe the county council's policy with respect as someone who looks at it but is not responsible for it—it appears to take a realistic view of the level of resources that are likely to be available over the next few years. It has not slipped into the error of making over-optimistic forecasts of when it can get on with roads, and it has tried to set out a realistic programme. It is not an over-ambitious aim for its share of the resources.

This bypass is expected to cost £2.4 million at November 1979 prices, and it is fitted into its present position in the programme on that basis. Having seen where it is at the moment, the TPP and the present likelihood of the levels of resources over the next few years, I can say that, provided that that level of resources is maintained, and provided that the council can complete the various other procedures such as the acquisition of the necessary land, there would seem to be no reason why the present start-of-work date could not be achieved.

That means that there is a large measure of agreement between all the parties on this matter. Neither the Government nor the county council disagree with my right hon. Friend's claims on behalf of the bypass. Certainly the present date that has been submitted—1985–86—is realistic and comes a long time after the bypass was first proposed. I gather that it was first mentioned in 1936. I cannot be too encouraging about the prospects of building it before the 1985–86 date that is pencilled in for it. The prospects of getting extra expenditure into local road building in the next few years cannot be very great. Somerset county council has already taken a reasonable and realistic view of the funds likely to be available, and it has other roads in preparation which are currently ahead of this one in its list of priorities.

There is also the question not only of finance but of the work which remains to be done in the design and preparation of the scheme. I understand that when there was an inquiry into the structure plan and the order of priorities for its roads, the question was raised whether this scheme for Hatch Beauchamp might change places with the No. 2 in the county's list, an improvement of the A3088 between Cartgate and Yeovil, which is down for a 1983–84 start. One of the county's points was that the Cartgate-Yeovil road was in a much more advanced stage of preparation than Hatch Beauchamp, but in the end there is nothing to prevent the county from promoting the latter in its list of priorities. I am assured that the county is getting on with the design and preparation work to get the road ready on time.

I know that the county will be anxious to help. We shall do everything possible to support the road when it is No. 1 in Somerset's priorities and the county is asking us for grant to build the road. We shall be delighted when Somerset lets us know that the road is ready, and the design, the stautory processes and the land acquisition have been completed, that it is the county's first priority and it is asking for grant.

One can never guarantee that in two or three years a set sum of grant will be given to any county for any one scheme, but I hope that I have dealt with the matter sufficiently sympathetically and shown that there is no difference of aim between ourselves and the county on the construction of this bypass to give some hope to my right hon. Friend and his constituents. I cannot conceive of any circumstances in which the Hatch Beauchamp bypass will be turned down by the Government when the time comes. If Somerset can accelerate it, we will do our level best to help.

Mr du Cann

I am most grateful for the way in which my hon. and learned Friend has replied to the points I made. Although I accept that the priority is a matter for the county, does he not agree that the need for this north-south route is more important than something which can be left entirely to the county? It is a matter of national economic significance to see that we have an adequate north-south route. Does he not think, therefore, that additional funds should be made available on that basis alone?

Mr. Clarke

This road falls into a pattern of roads which cut across the grain of traditional transport links. The pattern includes north-south routes in Somerset and east-west ones in the Midlands, with which I am more familiar. They are no longer adjusted to modern industrial traffic. My right hon. Friend's question suggests that perhaps we should divert, say, trunk road funds into an important route such as this or perhaps even take this road into the trunk road programme instead of leaving it as a county council responsibility.

That is certainly an attractive suggestion in the light of the national importance of this road, with its contribution to traffic to Weymouth and so on, but I am not sure that even if we considered that step it would make much practical difference to my right hon. Friend's constituents. As I said, we are maintaining progress on the trunk road programme and we have not dropped the level of spend, but at the moment we have huge schemes to get on with which are high national priorities—such as the M25 motorway box around London, the motorway boxes around Manchester and Birmingham and the M40 between Birmingham and London.

That means that, in the trunk road programme, there are many villages on busy national roads which will have to wait a few years until the last of the motorway system has been finished. To put Hatch Beauchamp into the trunk road programme might still leave it struggling with giant multi-million pound schemes, trying to find its place in the queue. My suspicion is that it will get on as quickly as possible, with Somerset county council already giving it the existing priority in its schemes, and the Government promising to give it sympathetic consideration for grant when Somerset has finished its work.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at six minutes to Two o'clock.