§ 7. Mr. WardTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what the response has been to the future road building programme as announced in the autumn statement.
§ Mr. MacGregorThe 41 new scheme starts, costing over £1.3 billion, which I announced last Thursday have been widely welcomed by the construction industry and road users, as were the 41 local road schemes that I announced in the transport supplementary grant settlement last December.
§ Mr. WardIs my right hon. Friend aware that he is correct in assuming that the construction industry will welcome the increase of thousands of jobs? We hope to hear a welcome from the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), too. Above all, will my right hon. Friend ensure that the replacement for Poole bridge, which is desperately needed in my constituency, maintains its place in the programme and goes ahead as promised?
§ Mr. MacGregorMy hon. Friend is right about the importance of my announcement last week for jobs in the construction industry. Next year, the programme will involve as many as 30,000 jobs in the industry. I was not surprised that there was hardly a welcome from the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) when I made the announcement. There is no doubt that 671 the record programme is good not only for jobs, but for the economy in terms of improving our road communications.
On the Poole harbour crossing, I can confirm to my hon. Friend that there will be public consultation in the spring. Following that, we shall press ahead with the scheme, although the completion date will depend on satisfactory progress through the statutory processes and, of course, on the availability of funds when those processes are completed.
§ Mr. HarveyIs the Government's objective in proposing a Green Paper on road tolling to alter patterns of road use for environmental reasons or to raise revenue for the Treasury? If the objective is to raise revenue, is not it a bit steep to charge taxpayers to use roads for which they have already paid? If the objective is environmental, should not the revenue go to public transport?
§ Mr. MacGregorWe are pursuing environmental purposes in many ways in the road programme. As I said last week, next year we shall spend £2.2 billion in terms of capital investment in public transport. Given that 90 per cent. of passengers and freight now go by road, the figure compares favourably with the £2.9 billion of capital investment in roads.
One of the key issues in the Green Paper is that, to ensure that by the end of the century and beyond we do not have congestion on our motorways and principal roads, we may need to consider additional sources of finance to get the programme completed as quickly as we can. Even given the record programme of road building through taxpayers' funds, the main purpose of the Green Paper is to see whether private finance can augment public finance. I stress that it will be a Green Paper.
§ Sir Anthony DurantDoes my right hon. Friend agree that this programme is both helpful and exciting for the construction industry? I hope that he will continue with the programme beyond the present proposals. Will my right hon. Friend concentrate more of the effort in urban areas? In towns such as Reading there is major congestion. Will he also ensure that the planning process does not slow the development of such roads?
§ Mr. MacGregorOn the first point, if my hon. Friend looks at the public expenditure programme announced last autumn, he will see that we are maintaining a high level of road building in years two and three. There is a concentration on the urban question—I know that this does not affect my hon. Friend—both in the considerable expenditure in London in next year's programme and in the substantial number of bypasses that are now included in the road programme.
On planning inquiries, I share my hon. Friend's concern about the amount of time that we take to go through the public consultation and public inquiry processes before we can start building a road. I am studying the issue carefully to see whether we can speed up the process in a way that is compatible with maintaining the rights of individuals.
§ Mr. PrescottWill the Secretary of State offer any experiments on road pricing and tolling? Does he accept that the Government raise three times more in road tax than is spent on road transport? Does he accept that that 672 means a double whammy, in that he is trying to find a new tax to pay for the debt that the Government have imposed on this country and on its economic development?
§ Mr. MacGregorThat has to be nonsense. The hon. Gentleman knows that we do not have hypothecation of taxes in this country. If the hon. Gentleman is arguing that we should put more money into the road programme without considering the questions that will be raised in the Green Paper, does that mean that he has now abandoned the charge that he sometimes makes that we do not have a level playing field between road and rail?
§ Mr. BurnsMay I suggest to my right hon. Friend a way in which his Department's budget on road building would be saved and in which expenditure could be diversified to please many of my constituents? If my right hon. Friend would be kind enough to cancel the appointment of the consultants who are studying the proposed new M12, for which nobody has asked and which no one wants, and if he used the money for other more important road projects, such as upgrading the A12 from the M25 to Chelmsford, he would kill two birds with one stone. He would please my constituents and improve road communications to the hinterland of East Anglia and to Chelmsford.
§ Mr. MacGregorI note what my hon. Friend has said. That point of view has been pressed on me by other hon. Members from the same part of the country. My hon. Friend the Minister for Roads and Traffic will be visiting Essex shortly to consider those issues and I am sure that he will also take into account what my hon. Friend has said.