TRUNK ROADS BILL. (Hansard, 19 February 1946)

§ LORD WALKDEN

My Lords, I beg to move that the Report of this Amendment be received. In doing so, I should like to say a few words which I hope will prevent any misunderstanding which might possibly arise from what I said, or rather what I omitted to say, on the Committee stage. I said rather impetuously from my love of Scotland that the work with regard to the Forth Bridge would be put in hand as soon as labour and materials were available. I ought to have explained that before that could possibly be done certain preliminary procedure must be instituted and approved by the House of Commons.

Before work can be put in hand on a very large proposition like the Forth Bridge, which runs into something like 702 £6,000,000 or more, it must go on the Estimates for the Ministry of War Transport and be approved by the House, and to put the matter where it really should be, and to remove any doubts from the mind of anyone concerned in this matter, particularly the associated local authorities, I hope that the House will allow me to read a letter sent by the then Minister of War Transport, Lord Leathers, to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who was acting as correspondent for the associated local authorities, on the 26th July, 1945. It runs: I am directed to refer to your interview with Lord Leathers on 1st May and his letter of 2nd June about the preparation of the necessary legislation for the construction of the Forth Bridge. I am to inform you that it has been agreed that a grant of 75 per cent. of the approved expenditure to be incurred, up to the stage of Royal Assent, in the promotion of a Provisional Order or Bill to authorize the construction of a road bridge over the Forth at the Mackintosh Rock site, shall be made. It is further agreed that the Order or Bill may be prepared on the basis that a grant of 75 per cent. of the approved cost of the scheme will be made at such a time as Parliament may approve the inclusion in the Road Fund Vote of the necessary financial provision. I am to request that an estimate may be furnished of the expenditure to be incurred up to the stage of Royal Assent, and to enquire whether should this Assent be forthcoming it is the intention of the promoting authorities to instruct the consulting engineers to prepare the constructional plans, etc., for the bridge in a form which would enable a contract to be let when the appropriate time arrives. It is assumed that the consulting engineers will take steps to obtain the approval of the Admiralty, as well as of other interested authorities, to the proposals to be embodied in the Order or Bill I hope the House will be good enough to receive that statement and to approve the reception of the Amendment.

§ THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Walkden, that we in Scotland have had enough disappointment without adding to it what he said the other day. We were not in the least uplifted by his statement, which we took exactly as I am sure he meant it, that when the Forth Bridge was ready to be built, and when the Government would allow it to be built, it would be built from the Mackintosh Rock and from nowhere else, and 703 those other roads will join on, one from Perth, one from Inverkeithing and the other one from Edinburgh. The only thing we do regret at this stage, and I may add that is regretted everywhere in Scotland, is that the noble Lord was not able to add to the statement he has just read that he would make a trunk road of the seven miles from Edinburgh to South Queensferry, which is more used by foreigners and Englishmen than it is by Scots.

I know, because I live on the road, and during the war the local inhabitants were unable to get a seat on any of the buses because they were full of sightseers from the Dominions, from America and also from England. Ninety per cent. of the traffic on these buses, certainly in the summer, consists entirely of people outside Scotland. I accept the noble Lord's explanation, which I can assure him was quite unnecessary. I have been to Scotland since he made his speech and there were no flags out! But I would ask him to get the Government to reconsider the question of making that a trunk road. We are very unfortunate in this House because the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, is not here to back us up. I can assure your Lordships I am speaking for the local authorities who are concerned in the district and indeed for Scotland. There seems to be no suitable reason why we cannot have that seven miles road.