Black Country Spine Road

HC Deb 30 January 1992 vol 202 cc1187-94

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

10.42 pm

Mr. Peter Snape (West Bromwich, East)

I am grateful for the opportunity to bring before the House the problems that the proposed black country spine road will cause my constituency of West Bromwich, East and the constituency which is represented with such distinction by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromwich, West (Miss Boothroyd), who regrettably, for understandable reasons, cannot be here tonight.

The original black country spine road proposals were to link junction 1 on the M5 at West Bromwich to junction 10 on the M6 near Wolverhampton and to open up considerable areas of the black country for regeneration. The road, which was to be dual carriageway, with grade-separation at all junctions, passed through the boroughs of Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Those authorities have, since 1988, been working with the Department of Transport and the Black Country development corporation to design and construct the road.

The speed with which the design of the scheme progressed to the compulsory purchase order stage was unprecedented and a public inquiry was held in September 1989. Indeed, since then, a dozen or so houses on Billhay street in West Bromwich have already been acquired and stand derelict, although I understand that they will not now be required, given the truncated version of the scheme.

In May 1990, the Department of Transport embarked on a review of the black country spine road following an escalation of the estimated costs of the original scheme. On 18 July 1991, in a written reply, somewhat surprisingly to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Bevan), the Government announced that they could not support the full scheme as proposed. They were willing, they said, to support an at-grade dual carriageway running from Carters green, West Bromwich, to Leabrook road, Wednesbury, at an estimated cost of £93 million. The northern section of the scheme would not be supported.

I said that I was surprised that the decision has been announced in the form of a written reply to the hon. Member for Yardley. That reply came within a few clays of a letter that I had written to the Minister for Roads and Traffic, asking what progress was being made on the scheme. It is rather sad that the present Government are so partisan that even a road scheme in my constituency, and that of my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West can be announced only through the medium of what I regard as a planted question from a Conservative Member. I do not really see the point of subterfuge.

The current proposals are as follows. The road is now to be built from Carters green, in the West Bromwich, East constituency, to Leabrook road, Wednesbury, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West. As I have said, there are now no proposals to build the northern section through Walsall and Wolverhampton. The road will be built as a dual carriageway with at-grade junctions, at an estimated cost of £93 million. It will not be trunked on completion. As far as we know, the project will be managed by the Black Country development corporation, with Sandwell metropolitan borough council as the agent.

The objectives of the original proposals have not altered from its inception, and were comprehensively addressed in the evidence given to the public inquiry. The present proposals fall far short of the objectives, as I shall attempt to show. The objectives of the original scheme were set out by the Black Country development corporation in 1988, as follows: To promote a high quality dual carriageway through the Black Country as an extension to the national and regional network…To provide access to land for regeneration purposes…To provide overall relief to existing routes and accident blackspots…To create jobs, both directly and indirectly…To reclaim land, both directly and indirectly.

I have mentioned some of the shortcomings of the current proposals. The strategic nature of the road link, as forming part of the national and regional highway network, will be seriously affected. Traffic relief to existing routes, as originally envisaged, will be considerably diminished. The regeneration role of the new road will not be fully met, because of the more limited junction capacity and the exclusion of the northern half of the scheme.

The reduced scheme will mean that some of the existing highway network will be used for quicker alternative routes. Particular traffic problems will occur at the A41/A46 junction between Holyhead road and High Bullen, Wednesbury, and the A461 Wood Green road to junction 9 of the M6. Deletion of grade separation at All Saints junction means that that point will be overloaded immediately after the spine road is opened. In a moment, I shall try to show just how overloaded the road is at that point now.

The development of the Patent Shaft site in Wednesbury, and the reclamation and development of other sites along the route, will be hampered by the reduced scheme, which will obviously be much less attractive to developers. The exclusion of the route to the north will have a similar damaging impact on job creation.

The Government continually lecture us about the need to save money. Any proposals from the Opposition are greeted with the parrot cry, "Where will the money come from?" It is interesting to note that this aborted scheme has already cost about £15 million—according to the local authority estimates—and there are further costs of house acquisition and so forth still to be calculated.

When the original proposals were first published, I campaigned on behalf of my constituents for proper grade separation at the two junctions in my constituency—one at the expressway with All Saints way, and also at the end of the expressway at Carters green in the centre of West Bromwich. As for the first junction, there is already a considerable problem with traffic tailback at the expressway, particularly in the evening rush hour. The extra traffic that will be generated by the new road proposals will not only cause chaos at this point; it will mean considerable environmental damage and pollution for the residents of All Saints way, Grafton Street and surrounding areas. The additional traffic will also have an environmental and health impact on the children and staff at Cronehills school, which is adjacent to the junction X.

I should not have to remind the Minister, but I do, of the already high levels of pollution caused by motor vehicle exhausts in Birmingham and the black country generally. I also remind him that one regularly reads of people committing suicide by inhaling car fumes, and this scheme will result in thousands of extra vehicles standing in traffic jams and polluting the atmosphere next to a major primary school in my constituency, and a school in the constituency of my hon. Friend.

The proposals at the next junction along are just as damaging, if that is possible. Instead of the two existing roundabouts in the Carters green area of West Bromwich, there will be one massive roundabout, with a cris-cross system of subways through which local residents from Old Meetings street, Garratt street and the Tantany area of West Bromwich will have to scurry to get to and from the town centre. I can describe these proposals only as a mugger's paradise. I ask the Minister to remember what it was like to use subways in the days before he acquired his ministerial limousine. Does he seriously think that the people of West Bromwich, particularly women and school children, and especially at night, will be happy to be treated like moles while motor vehicles remain on the surface, just so that a few pounds can be saved?

My opposition to the scheme is based on the fact that, once again, a great deal of money, around £93 million, is being spent on what I and my hon. Friend can describe only as a road to nowhere, to which must be added the minimum of £15 million for house purchase and other acquisitions.

Mrs. Maureen Hicks (Wolverhampton, North-East)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Snape

No, I will not. The hon. Lady knows the tradition with Adjournment debates. Had she told me that she wished to participate, I would have made allowances for that. Furthermore, the scheme does not affect her constituency.

This scheme has come from a Department that has so far refused to give the go-ahead for worthwhile public transport schemes, such as the Midland metro. Virtually all of line 1 of the metro could be built for the same cost as these disastrous proposals, and if the Minister is really anxious to relieve congestion in West Bromwich and the surrounding areas, his Department can give the go-ahead for loan sanction for the Snowhill-West Bromwich-Smethwick rail line opening. Those two projects are environmentally acceptable, and will be much better value for money than this scheme.

I have mentioned the impact of this scheme on the environment. Does the Minister intend to see that an environmental impact assessment is carried out before work starts? I remind him that the United Kingdom is a signatory to EC directive 85/337 of 28 June 1985, and annex 1 of that directive says that all motorway and dual carriageways must be subjected to an environmental impact assessment. I have today written to Commissioner Ripa de Meana to ask whether he has been notified as to whether such an assessment has been, or is being, carried out by the Government and, if not, whether he will ensure that this environmentally disastrous project is properly evaluated before the go-ahead is given.

The original spine road was worth doing only in its entirety, with underpasses at the two junctions that I have mentioned, terminating at the junction with the proposed black country route, connecting with the M6 at junction 10. This half-baked and disastrous alternative is not worth doing, and the Government should put up the money for the original scheme or divert scarce resources to the other economical and environmentally acceptable alternatives that I have outlined.

I ask the Minister to look again at this scheme. There has been considerable local opposition to these proposals in both the West Bromwich constituencies. Terminating the route at the Patent Shaft site will divert thousands of extra vehicles along Wood Green road in Wednesbury, in my hon. Friend's constituency. Already, a new entrance and exit, to the new Ikea furniture showroom next to the motorway, has been opened in that road, and if the steel terminals in the west midlands are combined in Bescot sidings, it is intended to build another carriageway into Bescot sidings.

Not surprisingly, my hon. Friend has asked me to point out that the residents of Wood Green road feel that what was a comparatively tranquil town road is being turned into a major highway against their wishes and, indeed, without their views being heard.

If the Minister is serious about alleviating congestion and about regenerating the black country, he will carry out the scheme properly. I appeal to him even at this late stage to think again, because what he proposes is not merely expensive but environmentally disastrous.

10.54 pm

The Minister for Roads and Traffic (Mr. Christopher Chope)

I have listened with interest to the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape), having read some of the advance local press comments which anticipated the debate. Those comments highlighted the fact that he was going to say that the spine road—the £93 million scheme—should be abandoned and that the money should be spent on other transport infrastructure projects.

Apparently, the hon. Gentleman did not mention to the press the fact that he wanted to spend not £93 6million but more than £250 million on the road. He also emphasised to the press the fact that he thought that the Black Country development corporation, which has done so much to revive spirits in the black country, should be closed as soon as there was a Labour Government. Of course, that means that it will never be closed, but it was an amazing example of the hon. Gentleman making Opposition policy on the hoof. If there was to be a policy to close any development corporation, one would have expected it to be announced by an environment spokesman rather than by a Front-Bench transport spokesman.

It appears that the hon. Gentleman's position on this project has much to do with his embarrassment about the fact that, as a transport spokesman of a party committed to reducing investment in roads, he should be arguing the logic of attaching to the road a cost of more than £250 million rather than £93 million. As a result of the logic of his party's position, he is forced to say that it would be better to abandon the scheme altogether rather than to proceed with the two and half miles of road which has the support of industrialists, the chambers of commerce and many people in the black country. His comments in recent weeks were designed—at least, this was their effect—to undermine confidence in the project, although, now that it has become clear that the Government will be re-elected, that confidence will return.

Mrs. Hicks

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister has been so perceptive. That will be welcomed by the majority of business men in the west midlands and by the majority of the colleagues of the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape). There seems to be tremendous confusion and conflict which my hon. Friend has picked up. I draw his attention to the fact that some Labour Members of Parliament and Labour councillors have supported the road—we have seen headlines such as Labour in protest at spine road cutback and

New bid to save Spine Road". Those Labour Members and councillors share my bitter disappointment that the Government could not allocate the funds for the complete road.

Having expressed my disappointment to my hon. Friend so clearly on many occasions, I invite the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East—if he is as united with his colleagues as he appears to believe—to join me in pressing the Government to say that, as soon as finance can be made available, we shall continue the regeneration of the black country and complete the road. He appears to be taking a mealy-mouthed attitude and saying, "Let's back down."

Mr. Speaker

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but she should direct her remarks to the Minister.

Mr. Chope

I accept that my hon. Friend has been commendably consistent in her support for the black country spine road. She is right to draw the House's attention to the inconsistency in the hon. Gentleman's attitude. If he wants a longer and more expensive road, he should have the courage of his convictions and should argue for it openly, saying that it would be his party's policy to spend more than £250 million on it. Instead, he is saying that that would not be his party's policy—his party's policy would be to abandon the scheme. That displays a rather bizarre sense of reasoning, and I am sure that the people who depend upon the benefits brought by the revival of the black country for their future employment will find it bizarre, too.

The black country was intensively developed by extractive and manufacturing industries for more than a century. Over the past 20 years, it has suffered from the decline of its traditional engineering trades, but the resilience of the area and its people has seen its fortunes gradually improve through the 1980s. In order to give the core of the area a major boost on the path back to prosperity, the Government set up the Black Country development corporation in 1987. The corporation's principal aims are to encourage new economic initiatives, to foster innovation and to facilitate regeneration.

Right from the start, the development corporation recognised that the building of a new spine road through the area was crucial to the success of its strategy for regeneration as a means of opening up the area and securing better access to the national road network. Consultants looked at various options and identified a feasible route. That would be a 4.5 mile long dual carriageway road linking the black country route—and thence junction 10 of the M6—with junction 1 of the M5. At that stage, the estimated cost was £50 million. On that basis, in early 1988 the Government agreed to provide 100 per cent. funding. The scheme was to be promoted jointly by Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton metropolitan borough councils.

The three local authorities, working together with the Department and the development corporation, made quick progress. Within 18 months, planning permission had been obtained and highways orders made in time for a public inquiry to be set up in September 1989. By that time, however, it was already apparent that the costs of the scheme were escalating alarmingly, and the review of the project was carried out.

As a result of the review it became clear that the scheme in its original form, far from costing £50 million, would cost between £245 million and £290 million—a staggering amount for a mere 4.5 miles of new road. So, although the Government were very much aware of the importance of the spine road to the regeneration of the black country, it was clear that substantial savings would have to be made to enable the road to be built within the time scale required for the delivery of the development corporation"s programme.

The outcome is that the road will run for about 2.5 miles, and will thereby serve the largest single development site in the development corporation's area. It will provide access to more than 500 acres of redundant and derelict land. Apart from the significant environmental improvement that that will represent, there will be major development and employment benefits for the black country as a whole.

The new road will still be built to dual carriageway standard, with at-grade junctions, at an estimated cost of £93 million. At £36 million per mile, the scheme is still expensive, although it represents a worthwhile investment.

The hon. Member for West Bromwich, East has complaints about individual aspects of the design of the road, which is now subject to consultation on the basis of a planning application. He is aware that there is still scope for detailed revisions to the design, and I hope that what he has said about the impact on his constituents of certain aspects of the design can be accommodated as far as possible by the developers.

However, the fundamental issue whether it is wise to build the road is at the heart of the hon. Gentleman's argument. My view and that of the Government—and that of almost everybody in the black country, including the development corporation, the chambers of commerce, and businesses in the area—is that it is much better for the black country to have the spine road as proposed than to have no spine road at all.

That is why I am sure that people will come out in droves to support the Government's policy when they have the opportunity later this year.

Mr. Snape

When the Minister said that people would come out in their droves, I presume that he was referring to the forthcoming general election. Is he interested in the fact that people came out in their droves in West Bromwich and Wednesbury to express their unanimous opposition to the present proposals?

Mr. Chope

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Hicks) says that that is not the case. The information before me shows that there is substantial support for the scheme. As with every road scheme, some people who live close to the proposed route make detailed observations and representations.

If the Black Country development corporation, which is at the heart of the project and which has promoted it so effectively, were to be closed down, as the hon. Gentleman says a Labour Government would do, the consequences would be dramatic for the black country. Future Government investment of £109 million would be lost in the next three years, and substantial further investment beyond that would also be lost. Some 1,200 acres of developable land could not be developed. The corporate plan, which includes proposals for the development of some 10 million sq ft of industrial and commercial floor space, could not be realised. Some 3,000 houses in the corporate plan would not be built, and some 18,000 new jobs that would be generated under the corporate plan would not be generated. Furthermore, some £780 million of private investment resulting from the development corporation's work would not take place. That is dramatic stuff.

The other day, Labour Front-Bench spokesmen were in Birmingham saying that they favoured a west midlands regional development corporation. Why did not they take the opportunity to announce that their policy was to close down the Black Country development corporation, which offers so much prospect of improving employment opportunities, investment and regeneration in the black country?

The Government have committed themselves to improving the black country, and I have pleasure in commending our policy to the House. Although the hon. Gentleman may be concerned about the detail of the road, in substance he is wrong to suggest that it would be better for the black country to have no road at all than to have this £93 million road.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at six minutes past Eleven o'clock.