§ Motion made, and question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Cope.]
10.25 pm§ Mr. Stephen Dorrell (Loughborough)I begin by thanking you, Mr. Speaker, for selecting this subject for debate tonight. It is very much appreciated in my constituency that you have selected the construction of the Castle Donington section of the A42 on the day that you select the subject for the Adjournment debate.
The immediate cause of my raising the subject in the House tonight is the tragic death of a girl on the existing road—the A453—through the village of Measham in November of last year. Nicola Harrison was a 4-year-old schoolgirl out with her mother in the village centre going round the shops when she was run over and killed on the main road that goes through the middle of Measham. That was a tragedy for her family and a tragedy which, in a remarkable way, affected the community in which she lived. It is important that the House should be aware of the strength of feeling that has been stimulated by the tragic events of November last year.
Nicola Harrison's death was the latest in a long line of incidents on the road in Measham which have caused the strength of feeling that is now evident. The way in which the community has expressed its concern about her death symbolises the threat that hangs over everyone living in the village—the threat to their families, their pets and themselves—because of the unsafe condition of the road at that point.
It should be placed on record not only that the feeling in the village is deep but that the manner of its expression has been dignified as it has been eloquent. There has been deep-seated unease and anger at the delays, procrastination, excuses and the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo with which successive generations in that village have been confronted when they have asked for improvements to the road.
I wish to recount to the House the way in which that has been expressed in recent weeks. Immediately after Nicola's death, there was a demonstration in Measham. Eighty mothers from the village crossed and re-crossed the road. They did so not to break the law or to obstruct the peace. They spoke first to the police and demonstrated within the framework of the law in a dignified and quiet way. It was much the more eloquent for that.
At a meeting in the village which I attended, there were 400 people present on a cold and wet November night to express their anger at the way in which the village has been treated. I am not sure whether I am allowed to put it on the record, but it is significant that 40 people from the village have come 100 miles to hear the subject debated at 10.30 pm in the House. I do not believe that there can be any more eloquent expression of public unease than that series of events. That has been the immediate cause of my asking for this debate.
I have so far described the inadequacy of the road in Measham, but, of course, the issue that I asked the House to consider is much wider than that—it is the provision of the A42 road, the effect of which would be to steer traffic away from Measham. There is a wide recognition in Measham and other villages along the length of the road that that is the only long-term solution to their traffic problems.
1100 The offending road, on which Nicola Harrison met her death and which has been the scene of other serious accidents all along its length, is the A453 which joins Birmingham and Nottingham. My hon. and learned Friend the Under-Secretary of State knows the road well, because he travels along it regularly between his home and his constituency. When I describe the various shortcomings of the existing facilities, I know that I describe something that he experiences on a regular basis.
Just as the roads in Measham are totally inadequate to deal with the needs imposed on them, so are the roads in Ashby and the village of Breedon on the Hill where there have been repeated near fatalities, and serious accidents. Those roads are a continuous danger to the physical environment of the village and the town of Ashby.
The traffic on the A453 is much heavier than the road was designed to cope with, and the existing facilities are totally inadequate to deal with the volume and extent of the traffic that travels along that road.
The House is entitled to ask why the position has become so bad. As my hon. and learned Friend well knows, the answer is simple when one looks at a map, because the A453 is a main link between the East and West Midlands. The missing-link in the Midland motorway system is the A453 corridor. When the M6 was built, it was a north-west south-east link. We have never provided the south-west north-east link which was always envisaged as a complementary part of the Midlands' motorway pattern. It is to complete that motorway that the case for the A42 is so strong.
The case that I put is not simply to improve the environment in the three main centres of population in my constituency. It is a major case in the national interest for completing the area's motorway system so that business and commerce can be carried on more efficiently and effectively with the minimum impact on the local communities.
The reality is that the motorway has been envisaged for 20 years to my certain knowledge, and the fact that Governments have repeatedly delayed building it is now causing havoc in my constituency. My constituents are paying the price for successive Government's delay and inactivity on this subject.
Having filled in the background, I shall put some specific points about the progress of the case to my hon. and learned Friend.
The first and by far the most important issue which has caused concern in the constituency is the delay in the process of building the road. The Government's White Paper on roads made it perfectly clear that they wanted to proceed with the building of the A42. Therefore, we were pleased when, after the Government were elected, initial proposals were published in July 1979 and the public inquiry opened in January 1980. The House will, therefore, well understand why the people of the area are angry that, having opened an inquiry in January 1980, we still have not had the inspector's report which, as yet, has not ever been delivered to the Government.
On successive occasions, we were told that the inspector's report was about to be received by the Government. On other successive occasions we were told that it would be delayed for another one month, two months or three months. Recently, we were told that one of the reasons for the delay was that the inspector had been taken off the case altogether for 12 months to carry out an inquiry into nuclear bore holes in the Cheviots. No doubt, 1101 nuclear bore holes are important to constituents in the Cheviots, but I cannot for the life of me understand why bureaucratic incompetence should run to such an extent that inspectors are not allowed to complete one report before starting another.
I therefore seek two assurances from my hon. and learned Friend about the mechanics which have led to the delay in the publication and processing of the inspector's report on the route for the A42.
First, I seek the assurance that when the inspector's report is finally received—it is now promised for the end of March—the Government will move with all possible speed to reach their own conclusions. We have been told that it will take six months for the Government to reach final conclusions after the report has been published. In view of the long history of delay, bungling and procrastination that has marred the whole project, I ask my hon. and learned Friend to seek ways to shorten the delay between receipt of the report by the Department of Transport and publication of the Government's final conclusions. I cannot believe that a Government who attach the highest importance to building a particular road need six months to process their own conclusions when an inspector's inquiry into all the details has already been carried out.
The second assurance that I seek will not directly help the people of Measham, Ashby or Breedon, but it should help others in future cases. I seek an assurance from my hon. and learned Friend that the inspectorate has been tightened up and that its procedures are now such as to prevent this kind of bungling ever happening again. It is intolerable that the Government's own policy—not my policy or my constituents' requests—for the building of a road should be held up by the incompetence and bungling of the inspectorate.
I seek those two assurances arising from the delays in this case—first, that the Minister will process this matter as quickly as possible and, secondly, that steps will be taken to ensure that this kind of mistake never happens again.
The second specific point on which I seek a reply from the Minister is the timing of the building of the Castle Donington section. The House will appreciate that we are dealing with a road which will replace the existing A453, which is already totally inadequate over the stretch in my constituency. The one thing that my constituents in Measham, Ashby and Breedon fear more than almost anything else is that the Tamworth section will bring four lanes of traffic to the border of my constituency and disgorge them on to a road which is already inadequate to deal with the traffic that it is at present required to carry.
My hon. and learned Friend wrote to me on 15 December as follows:
The Tamworth Section is at a very much more advanced stage of preparation than the Castle Donington Section and its construction…is bound to be possible before work could start on the section to the north.If anything, that is an even worse blow than the news of the further delay in publication of the inspector's report. Referring to the fact that one section could be built and the other delayed, my hon. and learned Friend continued:Present indications are that this could be done without the traffic increasing appreciably north of Appleby Magna"—the section that we are dealing with in this debate. If my hon. and learned Friend believes that, he should come to Leicestershire and see whether he can find one person in the county who agrees with him. None of my constituents 1102 believes that assurance. In addition, the north-west Leicestershire district council and Leicestershire county council do not believe it. It flies in the face of all motorway experience. It defies common sense to say that two-thirds of a motorway route can be built—leaving one-third uncompleted—and that the two-thirds will not generate traffic and make the position on the incomplete one-third even worse.My constituents and I believe that building the road as far as Appleby would generate substantial traffic, which would have a serious effect on the environment. If that went on for any length of time, it would probably have irreperable effects, particularly on the towns of Measham, Ashby and Breedon on the Hill. None of my constituents and none of the local authorities can accept that the completion of the Tamworth and the Castle Donington sections of the road should be separated by anything more than a couple of months. The public inquiries were started at the same time, so the Government will have their work cut out to produce a convincing reason. My hon. and learned Friend said in his letter that the completion of the Tamworth section would not have an effect on traffic on the existing A53. However, that defies experience and commonsense.
It would be wrong of me not to mention two other small points. I have mentioned three places, but there are two other sources of concern. First, there is the problem of traffic passing through the village of Long Whattorn, particularly during the construction phase of the motorway. I do not expect my hon.and learned Friend to reply tonight, but I should be grateful if he would consider the matter and write to me. I hope that he will assure me that all possible steps will be taken to ensure that construction traffic will be channelled on to roads that are better able to carry the load.
Secondly, when my hon. and learned Friend considers the final route at the northern end, I hope that he will look into the problem of Diseworth. If he puts the road to the South of Diseworth, as originally suggested, Diseworth will be enclosed in a noise box between the A42, the Ml, and the east Midlands airport. I should be grateful if my hon. and learned Friend would consider those two points.
I have raised this Adjournment debate primarily to express the frustration, anger and feeling of hopelessness as a result of the tragic events last November in Measharn. Those feelings are also held in Ashby and Breedon. People feel that their lot has not been sufficiently considered in the corridors of power of the Department of Transport. In the past few weeks people have expressed their frustrations in a copy-book way, through the democratic institutions that have been set up for that purpose. If we are to maintain their confidence in those institutions, we must show that they respond to pressure. That is what I ask my hon. and learned Friend to do.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Kenneth Clarke)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Dorrell) on his success in obtaining this debate. I am not surprised that he has raised the subject of the A42, because he has pressed it on me since becoming a Member of Parliament for that constituency. I know the great concern felt by my hon. Friend and his constituents about the need to build the new section of road.
1103 As my hon. Friend said, I know that section of road well. I correct him in only one respect. I used to be a regular user of the road between my home and my constituency—Rushcliffe, which adjoins Loughborough—and I used to drive regularly through Breedon, Ashby, Measham and Tamworth. However, I no longer do so, because the road is so dangerous, inadequate and unreliable. I make a rather enormous diversion using the motorways via Leicester and Coventry to avoid that road. I appreciate the frustration felt by my hon. Friend and his constituents, who live on an inadequate and dangerous stretch of road. I was very sorry to hear about the recent tragic death in Measham, which is only the latest in a series of very unfortunate accidents on that road.
The road has a long history. When I was first elected in the 1970s it was known. As early as 1972, the Department published proposals for a dual three-lane motorway between the A445 and Stanton by Dale. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed) also asked questions, and we took part in discussions about whether the motorway should go near Trowell in Nottinghamshire—all to no avail.
Those orders were withdrawn in 1976, because the Department had gone through one of its periods of revising its traffic forecasts and design standards, altering the basis upon which it did the economic appraisal of roads. There followed a prolonged period of further investigation before the then Minister decided that an all-purpose dual carriageway should now be promoted, and that it would be preferable for the new road to join the M1 at Kegworth, which is where I and other Nottinghamshire Members had always insisted it should go, rather than Stanton by Dale, and the promotion of the road began all over again.
The Department then began to get on with it. It asked the public for their views in a process of public consultation in 1978. I was in my present post—the present Government had just been elected—when in June 1979 we announce our preference for a route which had been described as the blue route, and we published the statutory orders which the law requires for the new road in the following month.
The choice of route was finely balanced—there are problems in one or two villages in my hon. Friend's constituency—so we also published a route known as the red route as an alternative route of considerable merit, so that the two routes and the proposals for the road could be fully discussed at a public inquiry.
That was one of the very first decisions in which I was involved when the new Government were elected. I assure my hon. Friend that I believed that we would get on with a serious public discussion, as indeed we have, but also that we would move towards decisions about whether we would have the road and where it was to go, to do something to deal with the traffic problems in his constituency. I am as disappointed as he is—as are quite a number of my constituents—that matters have still not come to a point of decision, and that he had to initiate this Adjournment debate because his constituents no longer know when there will be a conclusion. The Government will do their best, within their powers, to bring the matter to a decision as soon as possible.
The public inquiry took place, and we are now awaiting the submission of the inspector's report on it. The inquiry into the Castle Donington section of the A42, together with 1104 orders concerning the neighbouring M42 Tamworth section, was held between 8 January and 11 June 1980. Site visits continued until 27 June 1980. The inquiry was conducted by Mr. Richard Spain. Sessions were held in both Measham and Tamworth, and there were 60 sitting days, with nine days of site visits. In other words, one must concede that it was a long and complex inquiry.
At about the time that the inquiry was coming to an end, the planning inspectorate, an organisation forming part of the common services of my Department and of the Department of the Environment, was also faced with the need to find an inspector to conduct an inquiry later in the year into the proposals for nuclear waste storage boreholes in the Cheviots. That inquiry also needed an inspector of a suitably high calibre, which had made Mr. Spain suitable for the A42 inquiry. I am assured that at the time the inspectorate had no reason to believe that Mr. Spain would not complete his report on the A42 inquiry in time to move on to take on the second one.
Officials in the inspectorate acted on the nomination of the Lord Chancellor in allocating the work of the nuclear waste inquiry to Mr. Spain, and they announced his appointment to the boreholes inquiry on 2 July 1980. After a time the inspectorate realised that Mr. Spain would not be able to finish his A42—M42 report in time, but by then it was too late to appoint a different inspector to the boreholes inquiry, and the arrangement had to stand.
Unfortunately, the inspector, Mr. Spain, found that he had another equally complex inquiry. The boreholes inquiry ran from 28 October 1980 to 28 November 1980 with 19 sittings. When it was complete, the Government and various Departments of Government faced the problem of which report should be given priority. My hon. Friend will know that disposal of nuclear waste is extremely controversial. The boreholes issue required urgent treatment. It was therefore decided that Mr. Spain should be asked to give priority to dealing with the nuclear boreholes inquiry. He completed his report on the boreholes first and signed it on 15 July 1981. That left the A42—M42 report outstanding with the inspector unable to start drafting his report.
Since that time, we have been waiting for Mr. Spain to produce his report on the important inquiry that he had been holding in Leicestershire. Unfortunately, Mr. Spain tells me that he has not been able to complete his report as quickly as he had once hoped. I have received a variety of estimates of dates by which the report might be received. He now tells me that he expects to submit his report to the Government in March. My position and that of the Government has been exactly the same as that of my hon. Friend and his constituents. We have been waiting for the report for a long time. There have been difficulties. An error was made in giving Mr. Spain a second and difficult inquiry in mid-stream. We have been waiting for Mr. Spain to complete his report since July 1981 when he submitted his last one on the boreholes inquiry.
Those are the facts. They are no consolation to anyone in the village in my hon. Friend's constituency or anyone else who believes that this is quite an important road proposal in the Midlands. In saying it is "quite an important" road proposal, I am using minimal language, It is, as my hon. Friend says, a missing link in the road network of the area. I am as disappointed as he is. I am anxious to make progress with the scheme. Apart from my hon. Friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) is equally agitated about the need 1105 for progress on the section of road in his constituency. Tamworth contains many people who feel that there is desperate need for a bypass.
There is little that I, as a Minister, or the Government, as a Government, can do to speed up the writing of the report of an independent inspector. There is nothing that we can do to begin to consider our decision and to come to conclusions in the light of the evidence and the inquiry until we have received a report written by the inspector we appointed. The inspector, who is nominated by the Lord Chancellor, is genuinely independent—contrary to the belief of some of the lobbyists in this sphere. The writing and the submission of the report is a matter for him. Ministers cannot be seen to be influencing him. Making inspectors clearly and genuinely independent was one of the changes that flowed from the review of highway inquiry procedures in 1978. The independence of inspectors is rebuilding confidence in the inquiry system.
As my hon. Friend will understand, there is a certain delicacy in the relationships between Ministers and the inspector. We can ask for the report and stress the urgency of the matter. We have to wait for the inspector to write and submit the report. I have not been wholly passive in the face of this unfortunate turn of events. I have already made arrangements to ensure that never again—I stress "never again"—is an inspector appointed to hold a new inquiry before it is clear that he will finish in time any outstanding work on a previous one.
This will be little consolation to the inhabitants of Breedon and Measham and everyone affected in the A42 case. I hope it means, however, that we shall never end up in this predicament elsewhere again. Once we receive Mr. Spain's report, we shall work to announce our decision on the schemes as fast as possible. How long this takes will depend on the contents of the report. This is a 1106 complex and controversial matter. We have set down a general policy that decisions on inspector's reports should be produced within six months, at the maximum, of receiving it.
That sounds a long time, but, as I have explained in other debates, there is more to be done than to read the report and reach a decision. Complex and difficult drafting has to be carried out to make sure that the decision is fully considered and is defensible.
My hon. Friend, like my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle), may feel that this is a long time to wait. The inquiry lasted 60 sitting days and covered 16 draft orders. It dealt with the Castle Donington and Tamworth sections of the road and also the need for a new route at all between the M1 and the M6. There are therefore difficult and important issues to settle and many smaller items to look at. It will take us some; time to reach the right decisions.
Because, if I may say so on behalf of the Government. I feel a certain sense of guilt about the delay in this case we have made special staffing arrangements to deal with the report when it arrives. I can assure my hon. Friend that no effort will be spared to deal with it quickly, whether or not we build the road and no matter which route we follow. All those are matters on which I must reserve judgment completely because we have to await the inspector's advice and reconsider the matter. We will make every effort within our power to deal with the matter promptly once we have the inspector's report to work on. We—
§ The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
§ Adjourned at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.