HL Deb 13 February 1958 vol 207 cc723-60

4.5 p.m.

LORD DERWENT rose to call attention to the amount of time taken to acquire land for new road construction works in urban and rural areas, and to move to resolve, That, having regard to the views expressed at the recent Conference at the Institution of Civil Engineers, this House is of opinion that a road programme much larger than that at present proposed for the period to 1961–62 will be required to relieve industry of the present high burden of cost imposed by congested and inadequate highways; that action should now be taken in consultation with the appropriate local authorities to draw up a more comprehensive programme of new road construction and major improvement; that the line of route of new roads included in such a programme should be designated forthwith and steps taken during the course of the current road programme to acquire the land needed for such additional roadworks, so that when a further share of overall capital investment can be allocated for new roads, their construction can be commenced without delay and the assets thus created brought into the service of the nation as rapidly as possible.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like to start by making one thing clear, so that my noble friend Lord Mancroft, when he comes to reply, will be under no misapprehension. By this Motion I am not asking that large additional sums of money should be provided now for new road construction. In fact, the situation and the procedure are such that if this afternoon the Minister of Transport were given a large extra sum of money, he would not be able to spend it, or any part of it, for many years. All I am asking is that, when more funds are available, the Minister of Transport shall be able to spend these funds on construction as soon as he receives the money. As things are at present, the preliminaries to the actual construction of new roads not only take too long but, in my view, take place at the wrong time. Underlying all my arguments is the certainty that a much larger road programme than the present one will be necessary in future, and it will have to be carried through at a much greater speed, as I hope to prove to your Lordships this afternoon. Therefore I do not think it inappropriate if I go in some detail into the actual problem that faces us. I will try not to use too many figures, but I must use a minimum of figures so as to paint the picture.

Last November an important conference was held by the Institution of Civil Engineers, and among the many papers that were read and discussed were two which I should like to mention. The first was presented by the Director and Deputy Director of the Road Research Laboratory, Dr. Glanville and Dr. Smeed. As your Lordships know, the Road Research Laboratory is probably the most efficient of all Government organisations; and as one would expect, coming from that source, their calculations and estimates were on a very conservative basis—of course, I use that word not in its political sense. In their paper, the two speakers calculated that the cost of improving rural trunk, Class I and Class II roads to make them conform within the next ten years to the official standards recommended by the Ministry of Transport would be £1,600 million over the ten years.

The second paper I would mention was presented by the City Surveyor and Engineer of Manchester and the County Surveyor of Somerset. They made their calculations on a slightly different basis. They included the rural roads which were in the paper by Dr. Glanville and Dr. Smeed, but added also urban requirements, plus major works, such as tunnels and bridges, plus improvements, plus minor repairs. In other words, they included practically everything that is necessary at the moment to bring the road system of the country, both in and outside the towns, up to the standard laid down by the Ministry. They estimated that that would cost £3,500 million; and that calculation was on the low side, as it was spread over twenty years. In both these papers the calculations were made on the design standards laid down by the Ministry for a traffic capacity of 1.75 times the 1954 capacity. In many parts of the country this traffic capacity of roads, of 1.75 times the 1954 capacity, has already been exceeded. So, in fact, what is happening is that the traffic is increasing more quickly than the construction of new roads.

In the first paper, Dr. Glanville and Dr. Smeed also calculated the cost of delay, (and, as I have said, they were dealing with rural roads) in not having the rural trunk, Class I and Class II roads. They calculated that the current annual cost of delay is £155 million per annum. I am sorry to have to give these figures, but I must do so in order to paint the picture. As this shortage of roads we need continues, the cost of delay increases at a rate (this is their formula) equal to twice the percentage annual increase in the number of vehicles. They balance the cost of delay against the increase in the number of vehicles, and what it means, in effect, is that the cost of delay increases at a rate of 14 per cent. per annum. In addition to this cost there is the economic cost of road accidents, which they put at £110 million per annum. They did not try to assess in pounds, shillings and pence the cost of the appalling tragedies caused by road accidents.

That, my Lords, is the problem. It is a vast problem, and I think we must congratulate Her Majesty's Government on being able to carry on their present road programme on the scale that it is carried on. But if the economic life of this country is not to stagnate, with the number of vehicles increasing at the rate it is increasing now, it is obvious that a much bigger road programme is inevitable in the near future.

I should now like to deal with the question of delay in construction. The actual construction period of a new road is not vital. It has been speeded up, and it may well be speeded up more, but it is not a vital factor in delay. For instance, the other day a contract was placed by the Minister of Transport for fifty-three miles of the Birmingham motorway. He speeded up the contract time, and it has been arranged that this fifty-three miles will be completed in nineteen months. That is quite good going. But the preliminaries to construction have taken seven years. It is the time taken by the preliminaries, the preparatory period, that is causing such great alarm at the present moment. I am certain that a good deal of red tape could be done away with, but the real trouble lies in the preparatory period required—the period before construction takes place.

I think I should give your Lordships a definition of what I mean by the "preparatory period," if only for the record. Ideally, it is the period between the moment when a forecast can be made that a scheme will undoubtedly be required and the time of the actual construction. But owing to the backlog of works that have not been done, and other delays, I do not think for the moment that that is practicable. I would suggest that when we are talking about the preparatory period (it sounds even more technical, but I will explain it in a minute in case any noble Lord does not understand) we should have in mind the period from the date of the dispatch of Form TR 113 B to the appropriate local authority and the date of the actual start of construction. That form, of course, is the form sent by the Ministry to the appropriate local authority asking them to act as agents in the scheme that has been set on foot. It has been shown already that a period of three years is all that is necessary for the preparatory period, if the work is done in the proper way: the constructional period conies afterwards.

Last July, the programme of new construction was announced by the Ministry for the period up to 1961–62. The position at the moment is that if the Government this afternoon said that the scale of the present programme was to doubled or trebled, it would still be 1961 or 1962 before noble Lords, or anybody else saw any noticeable construction taking place. The preliminary work for the programme after the present one has not been started. My submission is that now is the time for all the preparatory work, such as the laying down of the line, the acquisition of the land and so on, to be done for the programme that starts in 1961–62. This is not the proper time to be doing the preparatory work for the present programme. Otherwise, what is happening now will continue to happen; and with the volume of traffic increasing more quickly than the roads which are designed to carry that increased volume, we shall never catch up. As a result of the work done by the Road Research Laboratory and by engineers all over this country, it is now possible—it was not previously—to assess accurately the major road needs of the future for quite a long time ahead.

When it comes to the question of land, the circumstances are rather different for rural roads and town roads. In the case of rural roads, the actual cost of acquisition of land represents a very small proportion of the total cost. On a new motorway it is something like £3,400 per mile, whereas the construction costs of that same motorway are £350,000 per mile. So it is a small proportion of the whole. If the Minister, out of his present road programme, which is calculated to cost £240 million, were to put aside now one per cent. of that sum for the acquisition of land and other preparatory work, he would be able, by 1961, provided that the funds were available for construction, to start straight away on 700 miles of new roads. That is, in fact, what I am asking Her Majesty's Government to do: to put aside 1 per cent. of their present allotment in preparing for the next programme. I am rather expecting to receive the answer from my noble friend who is to reply that the professional people in the Department are so fully occupied in dealing with the preparatory work for the present programme that they could not possibly take on anything for the next programme. I hope that I shall not be given that answer, because it is quite unacceptable. What it would mean is that no future road programme could ever be bigger than the present one; and that really is not acceptable.

I will make certain suggestions. If, as may well be the case, the Ministry is at full stretch, why not decentralise matters like the acquisition of land? This could be done without infringing the rights of property owners, tenants or anyone else. There are two suggestions I would make. Either you allow the local authorities to act as agents in the acquisition of land and other preparatory works, as they do in other matters, or you set up advisory committees for each case, composed of the legal profession, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and people such as those to carry on the work for the Ministry. There is a good precedent for that: it is exactly what happened in the case of the War Damage Commission. Those professions acted for the War Damage Commission in settling claims, and some committee of that kind could perfectly well act in each case in each locality in the acquisition of land.

In so far as the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation are concerned, this question of the buying of land is the old question of willing buying and willing seller, and if the willing seller is not quite so willing you have to pay a little more; but in the hands of that Ministry it seems to have developed into a sort of mysterious cult. It is something which private people do every day, which businesses do every day and which local authorities do every day. The buying and selling of land is a perfectly normal transaction. If it were decentralised, it could be carried on without any difficulty, under safeguards, of course, laid down by the Minister.

I am suggesting that the land should be acquired in advance, and in so far as the purchase price of the land was concerned, that would be paid, of course, at the completion of negotiations. In addition to the purchase price, there is money to be found for accommodation, works, loss of amenities, and that sort of thing. The amount of that money would be settled at the time of the acquisition of land but, of course, would not be paid over until the work actually started. The land thus acquired could, in most cases, be leased back on an annual basis to the tenant or the owner, who would have an indication as to when it might be finally required.

I have been dealing largely with rural roads, and I should now like to come to urban roads, which are a different problem, because in the case of new urban roads the acquisition of land represents a much higher proportion of the total cost than it does in the case of rural roads. The case for paying in advance is just as urgent. The traffic is far denser in our big cities, and it is no good just putting the problem off until one day we hope to be able to buy particular land. What is essential is that in redevelopment, the laying down of the line of the road, the buying of the land on the line of the road and the construction of the road must follow in stages immediately one after the other. I will go a little more fully into that matter in a moment.

The present programme in urban areas and in cities like Birmingham and London certainly will give, and in some cases has given, great relief, but in every case, I think I am right in saying, these works form a very small part in any comprehensive plan. May I give a quotation from another paper given at another conference on this matter of urban roads? It was a paper by Dr. Glanville presented in conjunction with Mr. Baker, who is the chief engineer of the Ministry of Transport. In this paper they said: Any attempt to relieve congestion in our towns either by localised improvements or by a proliferation of restrictions on traffic can only be a limited solution.… We are driven to the conclusion that a comprehensive solution to the problem must include new roads and there is evidence to show that the greatest benefits are likely to come from building such new roads as urban motorways.

Any of your Lordships who have not studied this question may not understand what is meant by an urban motorway. It is a new road construction to carry quickly either through-traffic or traffic that is, at any rate, going a long way across a big city. For that reason there is limited access to traffic coming on to the road or limited opportunities for getting off the road. Accordingly that motorway is largely kept clear of local traffic. That is in fact what an urban motorway is. There are certain other advantages in providing such roads as compared with trying to improve existing roads. Because such a road has this limited access it can take a "backyard line", which means it avoids what are now the main streets, with the high expense of buying land and buildings, and high rateable frontage. Urban motorways can take a "backyard line" through what is normally, in most cities, property that is less expensive to buy.

At the present moment a committee has been set up—I think it is already sitting—under the chairmanship of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, Mr. Nugent, dealing with London. It is trying to evolve a programme of road works covering the next twenty years. This is a wonderful opportunity to review the County of London Development Plan. Whatever the recommendations of the Nugent Committee turn out to be, they will be quite useless unless the Government can tell the L.C.C. within the next year or two what money is to be available for new road construction in their area during the next twenty years. I know perfectly well the answer I am going to get from my noble friend Lord Mancroft—at least I am pretty certain—and it is this: "How can that possibly be done? How can a Government today say what future Governments or future Chancellors of the Exchequer will do?" The fact remains that it must be done. It is the whole essence of the problem. It has been done in other countries, and it can be done here.

I will not go into the details of road loans, and so on. The Minister is fully conversant with my views on the subject, and I am hoping that my noble friend Lord Hampton will say something about the method of financing loans. But unless the L.C.C., in this particular case, are told pretty accurately what funds will be available in the next twenty years, they cannot possibly produce their new plans, including roads which have never yet been included in a development plan on a big scale. They cannot possibly get ahead with that.

To translate Dr. Glanville's and Mr. Baker's paper into facts, the L.C.C. will have to think in terms of entirely new limited-access roads. If they do not know about the money, what will happen all over London—I am dealing with London at the moment—will be exactly the same as has happened in the Notting Hill Gate area. If a line of road is protected by the L.C.C. as part of their general plan, and the L.C.C. have no knowledge of when the money will be forthcoming, we shall have what has been termed "economic blight". You get an area like the Notting Hill Gate area, which is now going ahead and is a flourishing and quite rich shopping area. The line of the road was designated, but the work did not take place. It became virtually a shopping slum and the rateable value, so far as the L.C.C. were concerned, fell continuously. I repeat again that the making of the line, the acquisition of the land and the start of construction must follow on each other, and that can never be done unless the local authority knows what money is likely to be available over quite a long time.

I am not going into further details—I have kept your Lordships long enough—except to say this. The past policy of attempting to hold up long overdue redevelopment in cities and other areas, in the hope that funds will be forthcoming to allow road schemes to be incorporated, with luck, in a development plan, has been hopelessly wrong and has been proved wrong in every case. Road schemes must form part of every development plan, and the revision of the County of London Plan, as I say, provides a wonderful opportunity for getting on with this work. These new roads we must have; they are vital to the economy of the country. The position will get worse unless the new construction is speeded up. It may interest your Lordships to know that a serious calculation has been made—it is not a wild guess; it has been closely reasoned and worked out—that if traffic congestion could be eliminated all over the country, a 2 per cent. reduction in the selling price of every item produced in this country could at once be put into force. That shows the economic need for these things.

My Lords, I imagine, as I have not moved for Papers, that my noble friend Lord Mancroft will accept my Motion without any difficulty, but may I, finally, leave this thought in your Lordships' minds? I have explained the problem: if we do not overcome that problem, we shall be the only country in the world to be defeated by the motor vehicle. I beg to move.

Moved, To resolve, That, having regard to the views expressed at the recent Conference at the Institution of Civil Engineers, this House is of opinion that a road programme much larger than that at present proposed for the period to 1961–62 will be required to relieve industry of the present high burden of cost imposed by congested and inadequate highways, that action should now be taken in consultation with the appropriate local authorities to draw up a more comprehensive programme of new road construction and major improvement; that the line of route of new roads included in such a programme should be designated forthwith and steps taken during the course of the current road programme to acquire the land needed for such additional roadworks, so that when a further share of overall capital investment can be allocated for new roads, their construction can be commenced without delay and the assets thus created brought into the service of the nation as rapidly as possible.—(Lord Derwent.)

4.32 p.m.

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, I think we must all admire and, if I may say so, applaud the sustained pertinacity with which the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, brings to the notice of this House, whether by Motion or speech, the serious deficiencies and inadequacies of our present road system—if, indeed, it is entitled to the dignity of being termed a "system," for many parts of it are more in the nature of vestigial remains of a system built for horse traffic. No one can complain that this Motion is not comprehensive: dealing, as it does, principally, indeed wholly, with roads, it is perhaps not inapt to refer to it as an omnibus Motion.

Before dealing with the four questions which the noble Lord raises in his Motion, and which he has so admirably elaborated in his speech, I should like to make one or two general comments upon the question of transport as a whole in this country, not only transport by road but transport by railway; for I think we must look at the problem of transport or transportation as one general overall problem. In this small congested island, with its increasing population, a population which is dependent largely upon industry, we must in some way or another devise a transport system which will economically, efficiently and expeditiously move people and goods from one place to another. My Lords, I do not think we can any longer consider this problem in terms of the two systems, the road system and the rail system. Both are essential. We could not carry on the economic and social life of this country without both: we cannot dispense with either. What we must do in proper relation, the one to the other, is to bring transport, both rail and road, up to date and make it efficient for the purposes we have in mind. We must secure the maximum contribution from each form of transport, avoiding waste of labour, time and materials.

I do not wish, in discussing this matter this afternoon, to revive Party disputations with regard to the intention of the Labour Government in regard to transport as expressed in the Transport Act of 1947. But having regard to the integration proposals, purposes and objectives embodied in that Act, and embodied in the structure which was set up at the time to give effect to that Act, I cannot but feel that it is a great pity that structure was dislocated and dismantled in 1953. I believe that, if that had not occurred, we should now, ten years from the coming into operation of the Act, be gathering considerable beneficial and profitable fruits.

That is even more graphically so with regard to the dismantling of British Road Services. I believe it to be undeniable that one of the results of that step is that an increasing quantum of ton-miles of transport is being wasted every day on our roads. I believe that sooner or later the country will be bound to return to the implementation of the purposes of the 1947 Act, and that ideological doctrinaire objections will have to give place to the public interest and the public need. It is a sad commentary that we in this country, profiting most energetically and most assiduously from developments of technology and the application of scientific techniques to industry, from automation, benefiting from all those, yet are wasting in a large measure the results by an inefficient system of transport.

The noble Lord had some very wise things, I thought, to say with regard to the preliminaries and the planning of road works. It is undeniable that what relatively little has been done to our roads since the end of the war has been further diminished and, in my submission, made more costly by the absence of proper planning and proper effective co-operation between the highway authorities and the Ministry. For reasons which we can appreciate, perhaps, whenever a programme has been devised it has been a programme for too short a period; and no programme can be effectively planned and carried into effect if it is for a period of less than ten years. Indeed, it may well be that, having regard to the magnitude of some of the projects, that period ought to be extended.

The county highway authorities are themselves becoming increasingly disturbed at the absence of programmes and of plans. I should like, in support of this comment, to read one or two excerpts from an article appearing in the County Councils Gazette of January of this year. It is headed "Speeding the Road Programme" and is written by a county surveyor. Referring to the lack of plans it says: It was inexplicable that the routes of new trunk roads were not already defined by the Minister when the road programme was first announced, and the reluctance of the Ministry to commit themselves to those routes was the undoubted cause of the delay in launching the programme at the speed which the public clearly anticipated. There is, however, no reason why that situation should repeat itself, if the administrative procedures required are put in hand sufficiently well in advance of the authorisation of the scheme"— which is precisely what the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, said in his speech. The article goes on: The time is overdue for a complete assessment of the ultimate main road pattern in the country, so that at every point where statutory orders are necessary plans can be brought forward in due sequence to ensure an orderly programme. No such plan emerges from the Government's present programme; neither have local authorities been invited to submit one in respect of their areas. Until this work has been done, it cannot be said that the programme has an aim, nor will the motorists find any logic or satisfaction in what emerges. How the Ministry can expect local highway authorities, who may be also agency authorities for the Ministry in respect of trunk roads, to get on, in an orderly, planned, administrative way, with the immense work necessary in connection with normal road improvements for the construction of new roads, I cannot imagine.

The position in London is no easier. Before the war, the London County Council used to secure powers for road improvements by way of special Acts of Parliament; they promoted that legislation at the time when they were satisfied that they would have the resources of manpower and of money to carry out the intended improvement. Before the war, the London County Council always had a plan and, by and large, it kept to its plan. But since the war, the London County Council, despite continuous efforts, has been unable to agree a programme with the Ministry, with the result that projects have been dealt with, not as part of a programme but as individual and isolated projects. It might be fortunate that they did form part of a limited programme, but it was only fortuitious if that was the case.

The noble Lord has referred to the London Roads Committee which is now sitting under the chairmanship of Mr. Nugent, the purpose of which is to see whether a programme for London cannot be evolved. I devoutly hope that there may be some positive result from the work of that Committee, and that the London County Council may be able to proceed with its highway works according to a plan. One of the unfortunate and unsatisfactory results of the absence of plan for London since the end of the war has been this. In the Development Plan of the London County Council there were provided for the five years from 1952 to 1957 projects in respect of which the gross cost would be in the region of £4 million a year. In the result—I think, largely, though I will not say wholly, due to the absence of plan—the London County Council has been able to spend no more than about £2 million a year, which is about half of what it intended to spend, with the result that projects which should have been dealt with remain undone.

As I have said—and the experience of the London County Council goes to show that it is correct—the period for a programme ought not to be less than ten years; and the preparatory work which falls on a highway authority is so heavy that no time should be wasted before consultation with the highway authority in order that they may get on with the job. As I have said, the burden on the staff is immense. It is the view of the county highway authorities (and I believe there is every foundation for it) that there is an urgent need to improve the procedures for consultation and co-operation between the Ministry and the highway authorities.

The County Surveyors' Society recently examined the delays and the causes of such delays in connection with major schemes of improvement, including the trunk road programme, and this Society has issued a report dated January of this year. It makes these comments, among others, with regard to schemes which have been dealt with under the Special Roads Act or orders under the Trunk Roads Act: The lapse of time between the date when plans were supplied to the Ministry by the Agent Authority and the making of the draft scheme or order averaged 16½ months in the cases examined, with the minimum 3 months. It goes on to say: In almost every case examined the delay was attributed in some degree or other to difficulties in obtaining possession of the land required. In some cases it was alleged that there was delay between the submission of land plans to the Ministry and instructions to the valuer, whilst in very many cases it was reported that at a late stage resort had to be made to compulsory purchase orders due to abortive negotiations. The Society gives two examples. One is that of a scheme which was estimated to cost something in the region of £200,000. The order documents were sent to the divisional road engineer in December, 1949, and the job was started in June, 1955. The second example is a scheme estimated to cost £1¼ million. There the order documents were sent to the divisional road engineer in February, 1950. In March, 1957, Form T.R.113.B was issued asking for land plans and contract documents by January, 1958. Those statements, I think, give substance to prove the period of time which was indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent. I should say that there was the following note in regard to the second example which I read out, which said: In this instance delay could have been obviated and a more efficient use of staff been possible had the Agent Authority been given a definite indication at an earlier date that the scheme would be proceeding in 1958. Requests for this information were made by the Agent Authority but it was not received until January, 1957, after which suggested changes in design had to be investigated, involving additional delay. That is really a lamentable state of affairs as between two authorities, one local and one ministerial, and the sooner steps are taken to remedy it the better it will be for the improvement of our roads.

In built-up cities, of course, much longer time is inescapably taken, as the noble Lord has said, because of the nature of the property, the complicated property interests which exist and the time which its acquisition involves. In London the acquisition of property under compulsory purchase orders is, at best, about eighteen months to two years. Many cases, however, have required some three years or more; and when, as frequently, there is a serious rehousing problem and a resiting problem for industry, then the time occupied can be from four to six years. In the meantime the dead hand of no development has fallen upon the particular property and the particular area. It is fair that the interests of private owners should be properly considered, but I believe we should all agree that they must not be allowed unreasonably to prejudice or injure the public need and public interest.

I should like to return to the question of roads and passenger transport in London. I am not unfamiliar with either. The position in London at the present time is becoming more desperate with every day that passes. We are proceeding steadfastly and resolutely to a state of near immobility—that is perhaps the one direction in which we are being successful on our roads. I should like here to interpose one or two comments with regard to the situation of railways. Anyone who has any experience of the Southern Railway serving the southern suburbs knows that the situation there is almost desperate. The overloading which takes place during the peak hours—and the peak hours are no more than four to four and a half out of, say, eighteen—is really most serious; and if there be the slightest mishap or interruption of the service, something very near chaos at once supervenes. There is a piling up of dislocation and delay, not from any fault of railway administration but because the traffic required to be carried in those few hours of the day is immensely in excess of capacity. And the delays and interruptions which take place mean a loss of millions of hours of work, vastly exceeding in total the loss of hours of work through all the strikes and disputes in our industry and commerce put together.

The situation with regard to Tube and road passenger traffic in London is no better. Here we have this increasing overloading of facilities in the peak hours and a fall in traffic during the off-peak hours, with the result that. London Transport is finding it difficult, and indeed is failing, to pay its way, because of the increasing cost of the provision which has to be made to meet the peak-hour demand; and that can be offset only if there is a sufficient traffic during the off-peak hours, which, as I have said, is not the case. It is a common belief among the uninformed that, because of the overcrowding during peak hours, peak-hour traffic is profitable to London Transport. My Lords, it is not, because of the provision which has to be made by way of vehicles, coaches and other means and facilities to carry the peak-hour traffic, a good deal of which equipment (roughly 25 per cent.) remains idle for the rest of the day.

I should like here just to interpose to say that I do not wholly agree with the view expressed by the Road Research Laboratory (I think it is called) in regard to new roads through urban and built-up areas. I believe that it is now generally recognised, perhaps not so much in this country as in America, that it is worse than useless to build large through-ways and parkways and trunk roads which have the effect of delivering traffic into a city already congested and full of bottlenecks. There must be parallel development, so that the city into which the additional traffic is to be delivered—and good facilities always attract more traffic—is in a position to provide such improvements as are required.

I think also that we shall be bound to give more attention to the question of parking. I do not mean attention in a punitive sense, but the problem of curbside parking has now become a major one. I understand that it is the estimate of the police that there are 40,000 cars or other vehicles parked in the streets of London each day. The result is that the capacity of traffic lanes is reduced in many cases to one line of traffic each way. Any noble Lord who has observed the Embankment will realise the truth of what I have just said. After the departure of the trams the Westminster City Council made a first-class job of that roadway, and now both sides of it are used by vehicles for parking, with the result that (except when vehicles, as it were, group themselves at the lights) the traffic lane is large enough to take only about one line of traffic. We must, therefore, in connection with our in-town street improvements, consider the question of providing garages or open sites"lots"—as they are called in America—for garaging such cars as find it necessary to come into town. Whether these could be made self-supporting is a matter of grave doubt. Nevertheless, it may well be that even some subsidy would be justified if expenditure that would otherwise be required on road improvements could be avoided.

My Lords, I should like to make a suggestion, having regard to the very high cost of road and street improvements in London. In that connection, may I say that it is estimated by the London County Council that, of the total cost of a road improvement, roughly 70 per cent. represents acquisition of property and the compensation to the interests involved, and about 30 per cent. the actual works carried out. Those are general figures. I am wondering whether the really effective way in which, in London, at all events, this question of congestion on the streets and roads can be met is to seek to take the traffic underground. I do not mean necessarily by the construction of under-passes, similar to that which we are told is to be embodied in the Hyde Park scheme, but by way of building new Tubes, which would not only relieve the congestion, a very acute congestion, in the peak hours on the present Tube railways, but also give some appreciable relief to road traffic. The Minister, I understand, has approved Route C, a new Tube from North-East London, initially to go as far as Victoria, and later beyond. I am not quite sure whether London Transport has yet obtained legislative powers for this scheme, but a Bill was to be promoted. However, that is a project which ought to be pressed forward with all possible speed.

The real difficulty is the high cost of building the Tube. I think it is clear that, on any calculation of potential income, or potential fares, the Tube would not pay its way if London Transport had to bear the very considerable cost of its construction and the provision of the initial equipment, trains and the like. If we build a new Tube it is no more than building a new road, except that it is not on the surface. It is a road limited to one type of traffic, but I think there are grounds for the belief that the cost of road improvements on the surface that would give to the road problem a relief and easement equal to the relief and easement that would be given by a new Tube, would almost equal the cost of a new Tube.

If it is proper for the Minister of Transport to give a grant in respect of new roads, such as the Cromwell Road, at the rate of 75 per cent., why should the Minister not contemplate making a grant in respect of an underground road? True, it is to be used only by one type of traffic; but there is this to be said in respect of it: that when the Tube is built the local authority would not have the responsibility and expense of its maintenance, its lighting and policing, or the repair of its surface from time to time. If the Minister were prepared to make a grant up to the amount normally made for major street improvements or, whichever were the less, to pay the service on the debt incurred in building the Tube, I think that that would be a solution which would be preferable and more effective than building a large number of new roads in London.

It may well be that other big cities could deal with their equally difficult and pressing problems in this way. I have never taken the view that nationalised industries should be subsidised nor that they should subsidise private industry, as the Coal Board is doing at the present time; but I do not think that this suggestion of a grant is, in fact, or could be regarded as, a subsidy. I should like the Government to consider whether something on these lines could not be done. In 1950 a programme for a number of new Tubes in London was published. I have referred to only one—Route C—as a pattern, but to build not all of the Tubes included within the plan but a certain number of them would bring, I believe, that relief to the congestion in London which is needed. They would provide for the potential development of traffic in London. They would enable traffic on the roads to be speeded up with much economy and avoidance of waste. In the result, I do not believe that it would necessarily be that the total cost of the grant for the construction of these Tubes would be larger than the total which will ultimately have to be incurred on large street improvements, especially if the idea propounded by the noble Lord of having specialist roads with limited access is adopted.

I do not claim that there is any novelty in the proposal I have put forward, but I think, having regard to my former association with the London Transport Executive, that I should say here that this idea has not been in any way inspired from outside. I hope that in his reply the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, may be able, if not to give an answer on the point I have made about grant, at all events to give some assurance to your Lordships that a matter of this kind will receive proper attention from the Government.

5.15 p.m.

LORD HAMPTON

My Lords, I shall not delay your Lordships much longer. I seek only to reinforce some of the points brought out by my noble friend Lord Derwent in what I thought was a very interesting and instructive speech. When first I read my noble friend's Motion in the Notices and Orders of your Lordships' House, I cast my mind back, in imagination, to the spacious period of the Roman occupation of this country and compared the task of the then Ministers of Transport with what the right honourable gentleman in another place has to face now. Presumably in those far off days all his Roman forbears had to do was to take a stylus, a wax tablet and a ruler, rule a straight line from A to Z, and then say, "Now get on with the job." The result of this was the foundation of some of the finest stretches of road that we still have in the country, though now sadly inadequate to bridge the gap between chariots and heavy lorries. But what a Ministerial paradise that must have been, compared with the cumbrous requirements of the present day! Then there was no question of the purchase of land; no flood of suggestions for alternative routes from outraged landowners; no necessity for public inquiries; above all, no interference with existing amenities or competition with the small amount of land we still have left to us; and, presumably, no need for the Exchequer blue pencil—just a straight line from A to Z.

I do not know whether that is an historically accurate description of what really happened in those days, but, be that as it may, I am supporting my noble friend, because, to my mind, what he says on the face of it appears to be plain common sense. It is obvious to us that the problem of roads which is present with us now and which is certain to grow in urgency—I think I may say, in desperate urgency—in the very near future, is one which affects the whole nation, in its safety, in its purse and in its speed of movement, to a rapidly growing extent. Let me take an example of this which should have pride of place. It has been more than once pointed out, both in your Lordships' House and in another place, that much of the money spent on road improvements comes back eventually to the Exchequer in relief from the bill for the terrible casualties and the Health Service; while in regard to the consumer's purse and further economy of traffic movement, an adequate road system would mean a substantial fall in the cost of living and therefore a rise in the standard of living of the people.

Only last week much was being said in your Lordships' House about the urgency of saving fuel in the factory and in domestic use. We have only to go through London or any other built-up area—so well described by the noble Lord, Lord Latham—or even along a main road in the country at a holiday period, to realise the colossal waste of petrol, diesel oil and lubricating oil, which is so perfectly apparent. Coal we can produce ourselves, but oil we cannot. If I state the obvious, it is only to underline the point that this form of waste, going on clay and night, is one which hits the national purse perhaps even more surely than the waste of coal. Good roads in other countries have proved themselves over and over again as one of the best internal investments any coun- try can make. But, as my noble friend Lord Derwent has pointed out, under our present top-heavy and prolonged system, essential though it may be at the present time, the time-lag in getting the roads we want is a heavy brake on ministerial desires for improvement.

No doubt it will be pointed out by the noble Lord who is to reply that there are difficulties inherent in the solution which my noble friend Lord Derwent suggests; and possibly there are. But are they insoluble? The Minister may not be able to rule a line from A to Z and say: "Now get on with it"; but surely it can be done in the way of, first, removing the undergrowth of preliminaries to actual construction before the order to get on with the job is given. If not, it may well be that a future Minister of Transport will have the money available for modern road construction, will be faced with the road system grossly overburdened and will be unable to use the money paid to him until a further period of five or six years has elapsed.

In conclusion, this problem of the roads is so urgent, the time-lag built up over the last fifty years is so great and the consequent complexities of the situation now so numerous that the burden on the Minister is not an enviable one. Although perhaps it is not strictly relevant to the Motion before us, while I should like to pay a tribute to the enthusiasm and achievements of the present Minister I return to the suggestion made more than once in your Lordships' House: that the time is now rapidly approaching, if not already here, when this matter of roads should take its place with the other great utilities and that there should be the appointment of a road authority, with borrowing powers, and, of course, under the authority of the Minister. I am no economist, but if this were done I believe—and I am not alone in this belief—that much of the preliminary work referred to by my noble friend could be undertaken now by such an authority throughout the areas where future road construction is under forward planning schemes. This would result in the speeding-up of new road construction and, in the final analysis, in a great saving of public funds.

5.22 p.m.

LORD SOMERS

My Lords, I had not meant to intervene in this debate, because I felt that it was in far abler hands than mine, but I want to emphasise one point which, if I understood him aright, has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hampton—namely, the question of how much influence a local authority has in the construction of a road. I am not speaking with any authority here, because I do not know what the legal position is, but I understand that a local authority has a good deal of say as to whether money shall be spent on improving a road, which road and what form the spending shall take. If that is so, I feel that it is one of the first problems that must be tackled. What would be thought of a railway which had a different code of signalling in one county from that in another because the local authority so decreed? We must to-day look at roads as we look at railways, as a major means of transport. They are not the possession of one county, but pass from county to county and affect the entire population.

There are many cases where a local authority has decreed that a certain road shall be improved. I know of a road near me, the Newbury-Andover road, which has had a considerable amount of money spent on it, and certainly it has been improved. On the other hand, it is not an important road; there is little traffic on it, and that money would have been much better spent on some of the roads which really are crying out for improvement. There is a ludicrous example quite near to me of a disparity in road signs. There is a cross-roads, and one of the roads happens to be a county border. As you approach the cross-roads from one side you have the ordinary cross-roads sign, but as you approach it from the other side you have the sign: "Halt. Major Road Ahead". I grant that there is nothing very dangerous about it, because they happen to be country lanes, but that is an example of what can happen. I am not in favour of having things under a centralised control any more than is essential, but I feel that in the case of roads it is highly necessary. I consider that the first word as regards expenditure and improvement, the type of improvement and everything else, should be with the Ministry and not with the local council.

5.28 p.m.

LORD FARINGDON

My Lords, I think all of us, since we are all road users, are deeply indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, for the extremely interesting presentation he has made to-day of this particular problem and for his suggestions for dealing with it. I would part company with him in one respect, although perhaps I do him a wrong in so doing. It seemed to me, if I may say so with respect, that he was too satisfied with the plans of the Ministry for our future roads, because I feel that those plans are already obsolete. He spoke, I think, on one occasion of motorways, but he spoke far more of the importance of trunk roads. My own view is that to deal with our traffic problem new motor roads, of the type referred to by the noble Lord as roads of limited access—and he spoke of such roads only in connection with urban roads—must be extended and constructed all over this country. Merely to improve and widen trunk roads is, I feel, practically nothing but a waste of money.

LORD DERWENT

Perhaps I might explain. I was trying to cut down my remarks to a reasonable length of time. When I referred to motorways, which I did for much of the time, I was referring to limited access roads made under the Special Roads Act.

LORD FARINGDON

I thought that probably the noble Lord would agree with me, but he gave a slightly different impression. If he is talking about roads of limited access, I should be interested to know whether, for example (I can think of no other road of limited access in any urban area), he would consider the new 'Western Approach road, on the way from London Airport, a road of limited access. He may do so, but I do not. Frankly, of all the side roads which that particular road crosses, only one has had its access to the new main road limited. That is no road of limited access. We must have motorways which are roads of limited access in the fullest sense. I may say that we are practically the only country in the world to-day without such motorways. Certainly Spain, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy and France all have these motorways which are capable of carrying modern traffic. To my mind, it is deplorable to see money being spent on the mere widening of roads, which either should be replaced by motor roads or at least be made dual carriageways.

In connection with the remark made by my noble friend Lord Latham about the accommodation of the traffic which is bound to be decanted into the centre of urban areas by these motorways, may I suggest that it is well worth while studying the experience of such a city as Chicago, where special parking buildings have been constructed, and where the economics of such buildings have proved to be most unexpectedly profitable. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will be prepared to accept the noble Lord's Motion, and that in accepting it they will also take into consideration the fact that the roads we want are not the roads we are getting.

5.31 p.m.

THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD MANCROFT)

My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Derwent for having initiated an interesting debate. I personally am also grateful to him for having put his Resolution on the Order Paper in such fine and literary detail that none of us could possibly have been surprised at what he said or in the dark as to what points he wanted to raise.

The first point that strikes one's eye in his wording is that a road programme much larger than at present will be required—and none of your Lordships seems to have differed from him in that respect. The Government have announced, as your Lordships are aware, a programme of £240 million expenditure on roads for the period 1958–59 to 1961–62. I am not going to try to dazzle your Lordships with science or confuse you with figures. I will content myself by saying that this is a big increase on what we have previously done. Is it enough? No, my Lords, of course it is not. Everybody is agreed that it is not enough. What figure is enough? We can all put up any figure increasing upon that and argue it, and I should not disagree with any one of your Lordships who did so. Of course we want to spend an enormous amount more.

My noble friend Lord Derwent was quite realistic about this matter, and said that to put up an astronomical figure will not do. He made the point fairly, because from the roads point of view any reasonable figure might possibly be argued. We have to keep within our resources, not only of cash, but of manpower—engineers and technicians. I would suggest straight away that what we are doing now, and what we are planning, is a good start; and of course it will continue, after the four-years period, at some level which we shall then have to determine. I hope that it will be possible to expand it. Your Lordships will, I trust, note, from an optimistic point of view, that there has been no cut in this programme in the recent financial difficulties through which we have been passing. Your Lordships will also remember that in our road programme we are competing against such equally important capital expenditure as atomic energy projects, and so on. I will not labour this point, but I want to ask your Lordships to accept that this increase constitutes a pretty good slice of the national "cake".

May I turn for a moment to the present situation, because, although your Lordships have rightly looked to the future and the planning for the future, as the terms of my noble friend's Resolution encouraged the House to do, a good deal of the direction that planning will take can be shown in the present programme. There are two problems. There is the problem of clearing up the twenty years' lack of work, arising from the war and from other causes—the immediate problem which cannot be escaped, for which planning is hardly necessary because the problem is self-evident—and there is the advance programme of twenty more years ahead. Merely by driving round the country at the moment I think we can see what considerable progress is being made.

I should like to give your Lordships a few details and a little bit of news here and there, because I felt that, in their eagerness to think twenty years ahead, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, and the noble Lord, Lord Latham, were a little unkind or forgetful of the size of the achievements of the present. Some rude noises have been made about the Great North Road, which has for long earned the unfortunate nickname of, "the Little North Lane". I hope that it will not earn that nickname much longer. By the end of the current financial year there will be about forty large projects authorised on the Great North Road, and on many of them work is already in progress. There are more to come, and this particular task is being given a high priority. Take the Lancaster by-pass. Work has now started on eleven miles of new road, built to motorway standards and costing nearly £4 million. That work is due to finish towards the end of 1959.

LORD FARINGDON

Will that be a limited access road?

LORD MANCROFT

If the noble Lord wishes, I will give him the complete details of all these roads, but I was not going to weary the House with the technical details.

First, there is the Kingsferry Bridge, in the Isle of Sheppey. Work is in hand there, and that will provide much-needed improvement in the communications between the Isle of Sheppey and the Kent mainland. That will cost us over £1 million. There is the northern approach to Blackwall Tunnel, where demolition is now under way. That is going to cost nearly £2 million, and will do much to relieve congestion to and from the docks. There is the Birmingham inner ring road. Work is proceeding on the first section of this four-mile dual-carriageway round the main business centre of the city. The whole scheme will cost about £15 million, and we hope to finish the first stage by the end of this year. Then there is the London-Yorkshire motorway. Work starts on that on March 24 next. The motorway will cost £15 million, and it will be fifty-three miles long. This project will take nineteen months to complete. The St. Albans bypass links on to the south end of that road, and will work to the same timetable.

Work starts on March 3 on the Ross Spur. This will take two and a half years, because there is a major bridge task to be carried out in constructing that road. I mention this fact to emphasise the point that we are doing our best to speed up all these roads and to work to as fast a time-table as we possibly can. This one will take a little longer because of the work on the bridge. Finally, there is the Cromwell Road, with which your Lordships are probably most familiar, which will include the first road in this country to be a double-decker. All these roads, I can assure my noble friend Lord Somers will have the same standard signs down the length of the road as they should throughout the length and breadth of the country on these main roads.

We can all ask: Why is not more being done? Why is not more being done, particularly, on our own pet piece of road? This is the same as traffic congestion in London, to which the noble Lord, Lord Latham, devoted a good deal of his speech. If he will cast his mind back to the discussions on the Road Traffic Act he will recall that we discussed this matter in great detail then, and everybody said, "Why do not the Government do something about it? The traffic is grinding to a standstill." On every single suggestion which was put forward in that debate—and there were a number of sensible and concrete suggestions—about half a dozen of your Lordships got up and said: "No, I did not actually mean that one." There was a perfectly good reason for every proposal put forward, and in just the same way there can be a perfectly good reason for giving priority to any particular scheme. But I would suggest that the programme which at the present moment is in progress, and of which I have given your Lordships only three or four of the major items, is a pretty ambitious scheme. It is a formidable programme; and, moreover, work is in progress on the ground, not just on paper.

There are other equally ambitious schemes still in the planning stage, such as the Medway Towns motorway and the motorway leading into the Midlands from the southern end of the Preston bypass—keeping well away from Rochdale—which itself is being built to motorway standards, and on which constructional work is well advanced. This will be finished towards the end of the year. My noble friend Lord Hampton, in the course of his interesting speech, mentioned the Romans. I have been doing a little historical research myself. Your Lordships may be interested to know that by Midsummer Day of this year there will be more work in progress on the roads of Great Britain than at any time since the Romans. That, I think, is something in which Her Majesty's Government may well ask for a little praise.

We must ask ourselves something else, something which the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, has asked: whether the preliminary processes are causing delay in the start of constructional work. Even if more money were available, it still takes time to launch a new scheme. Before constructional work can start on any road scheme, there are numerous inevitable processes that have to be undergone. I appreciate fully the need for speed. I hope we shall be able to look at all our processes to see whether in the light of the suggestions your Lordships have made we can speed up some of those processes. But, my Lords, some cannot be speeded up. One or two of your Lordships, if I may say so, have over-rated the need for speed and under-rated the need for care. Some preliminary work can take as much as three years or more for a large scheme. Many of these processes are statutory processes which are designed to protect the rights of individuals, and the time could be shortened only at the expense of those rights. I would ask your Lordships to bear that in mind. A number of the suggestions your Lordships have made might result in speeding up the process but undoubtedly would result in hardship to those who have the right to have their interests considered, even in the face of opposition from the road users.

A great deal of detailed work is involved in the preparation needed for the acquisition of land for road schemes. All the work has to be done to a high degree of accuracy, because any mistake may lead to serious legal consequences causing a great deal more work to put it right. We are trying to speed it up. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, that we must do all in our power to do away with unnecessary delay. But I would ask your Lordships not to overlook the difficulties and objections. I will promise the noble Lord that we will look at his proposal and study carefully the papers—which I do know a little about myself—from which he gave extracts.

Let me say a word about the present arrangements for the preparation of classified road schemes. It is already open to authorities to buy land in advance in case at some time it is required for a road scheme, into which it can then be taken, to rank with the works for grant. However, grant is not paid in advance at the time the land is bought. The Development and Road Improvement Funds Act, 1909, which is the Act under which the Minister makes his grants, does not permit him to pay towards the cost of land that might not end up in the highway at all. Even apart from the legal consideration, it would not be sound for the Minister's grant funds to be diverted towards encouraging authorities to buy more land in advance. They could not be expected to do this without such assistance.

In earlier years my right honourable friend has been able to advise local authorities about their schemes only one year ahead, but I hope that in future it will be possible to provide them with a programme agreed in principle for three or four years ahead. I hope that will meet with your Lordships' approval. It will enable the local authorities to work out the details of the scheme and acquire property in time for the Minister to authorise the grant in the year in which he originally expected to make financial provision. I think it is essential that all these programmes should be kept as flexible as possible. For example, a proposal to build a length of motorway or trunk road might well alter the expected traffic pattern in the area and then render abortive a classified road scheme for an improvement on an existing road, on which time and money have been expended considerably in advance for land acquisition and preparatory work.

The noble Lord, Lord Latham, touched on this matter. He talked about modernisation of the railways. It may be that modernisation of the railways and increased facilities for heavy goods traffic will bring some traffic off the roads on to the railways. It may be that development of atomic energy in this country will change the pattern of traffic demands to a certain degree. We cannot tell that far ahead. We must always have flexibility to meet these problems. The noble Lord talked about the London Tube. That is a little outside the problem I am discussing at the moment. There is surely a principal major difference in that the passengers on the Tube pay for tickets to go on it and are in a different class from ordinary road users.

LORD LATHAM

They also pay for their tickets on the buses.

LORD MANCROFT

But they are travelling in that particular vehicle. The problem is not quite a parallel one. I accept the validity of the argument that it will relieve the congestion on the roads over the top of the Tube.

The point I am making is, that there is a valid objection to acquisition far in advance of road works. I am not talking about planning, but acquisition. Any change in plans would mean that expenditure on acquisition had been wasted. The Minister would risk owning land which he does not require for roads. Landowners might have been—I think would have been—dispossessed unnecessarily. Less money would be available for current road works. Money spent on acquisition reckons against the total cost of the road programme as much as money spent on works. To spend this money to best effect, I should have thought it preferable to build roads for immediate use rather than buy land against long-term requirements. The interest on the purchase price of land is lost unless it is let at a full economic rent until the road works start. If land was bought long in advance of the starting of road works, Her Majesty's Government would be criticised unless (which is most unlikely) prices remained stable throughout the whole waiting period. The criticism would be either that we forced a landowner to sell unnecessarily early when prices were rising, or, conversely, that the Minister had caused the taxpayer to pay an unnecessarily high price on a falling market. The management of land acquired far in advance would present many difficult problems, particularly where living accommodation or agricultural land was involved.

The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, raised a question which has been ventilated quite often before: the possibility of a national highway authority. I wonder whether that is really the answer. I do not think the country would favour removing from Parliament the right to criticise the Minister responsible for the road programme, even assuming some method of financing a national highway authority could be worked out which did not involve using taxpayers' money.

What is more, I do not think the local highway authorities would welcome an arrangement whereby grants were made not by a Minister responsible to Parliament but by an independent organisation. The removal from the Minister of responsibility for the various statutory processes involved before road work can start would, I think, be equally open to objection. I wonder whether the country would actually stand for the making by a national highway authority of trunk road orders and presumably of compulsory purchase orders without Ministerial control.

If the rights of the individual are to be preserved, all these statutory processes, I am afraid, must be gone through. We will go through them as quickly as possible, commensurate with justice and efficiency, but they must be gone through. Even if a national highway authority were entrusted with this task, the processes would still have to be gone through and I do not think they would take any shorter time. If the control of the statutory processes remains with the Minister, then the interposition of a national highway authority would only add an extra step in the ladder, and it would be bound to consume more time than under the present arrangements. Unless my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport was completely freed from all responsibilities for the road programme, and unless at the same time the local authorities were to lose much of their present responsibilities—and I can assure my noble friend Lord Somers that they have plenty of responsibilities—the creation of a national highway would increase the demand for that already far too rare commodity, the civil engineer. What about the feasibility of a long-term programme?

THE EARL OF LUCAN

Before the noble Lord leaves the question of preparation, can he say what steps are being taken under the present system to safeguard the amenities of the land through which the roads will pass; what consultations there are, and with whom?

LORD MANCROFT

Yes, I will come to that in a moment because that is very much in point on the question of long- term planning. I was going to say a word about the feasibility of a long-term planning programme.

As I think most of your Lordships know, for planning purposes my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport is already looking far into the future. I would emphasise that. There is no question of my right honourable friend studying his road programme through the wrong end of his binoculars. Arrangements allow for detailed preparatory engineering work and land acquisition to be related only to a programme for which the financial basis has been agreed, at least in principle. This has meant. in effect, that detailed preparatory work and land acquisition is undertaken only for schemes on which it is proposed to authorise constructional work not more than, say, four, or possibly five, years ahead. Efforts are thus naturally concentrated on what has to be done within the next four or five years.

The local authorities, who act as my right honourable friend's agents have recently been given details of what they will be asked to do in the preparation of major trunk road schemes, each costing over £100,000 up to contract letting stage, during the years up to and including 1962. It is, of course, my right honourable friend's intention to seek from the Chancellor of the Exchequer each year an extension of this authority for preparatory work so that there may always be four years' worth of such work (with perhaps some additional reserve to cover changes in the programme) left in the "pipeline." This is not to say that the surveying of routes and the making of orders establishing these routes for new trunk roads or trunk road improvements that are to be constructed more than five years ahead are ruled out—far from it. Work of this kind is going on all the time; but naturally it is not given such a high priority.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend but I want to get this matter quite clear. Do I understand my noble friend to say that as regards the next programme, which is the work beyond 1961–62, the preparatory work and land acquisition are beginning to be done now; that every year there will be a year tacked on, so that by 1960 the land will have been acquired for work up to 1964?

LORD MANCROFT

That is so. I am not sure that I would go so far as to say land acquisition; but certainly preparatory planning work will be going on the whole time, so that there will always be four or five or, I hope, more years in hand.

LORD DERWENT

But no land acquisition?

LORD MANCROFT

I should not like to say there will be no land acquisition, but I should not like to be more specific in saying exactly at what time land acquisition is planned ahead. The question of amenities comes very much into this aspect. The noble Earl, Lord Lucan, raised this question. The county development plans also provide, or will provide, the public with a sufficient indication of longer-term proposals for new trunk roads and they, of course, serve to protect the proposed lines of the route. In addition, they enable the county views to be heard loudly and clearly.

My Lords, planning for the immediate future is one problem; planning for the mid-distant future, and planning for the far-distant future, is yet another, because all this has to be done. I said at the beginning of my remarks that there was the problem of action now—things which had to be done inevitably, owing to the delays due to the war and other matters. Now I come to planning far ahead. Naturally, having met the most obvious and urgent needs of the highway system, future planning must take into account the distribution of industry, the growth of traffic and the potential for improvement in the present system. My right honourable friend the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, as the House knows, has set up a special planning section to think far ahead. I submit that the mere existence of this planning section is an earnest of the Government's endeavour to think as far ahead and to plan as far ahead as they possibly can.

I hope that the setting up of this Committee will meet some of the objections of my noble friend Lord Derwent. I am sure that the Committee will take careful note of what he has said, because they are preparing a twenty-year to thirty-year master plan for roads. Obviously, that is going to be a lengthy job, and it is unlikely to be completed for some time. I end on this note because I want to let the noble Lord know how much I agree with him upon the necessity for thinking and planning far ahead. I want to let him know how much I agree with him upon the necessity for doing away with obvious blocks, obvious obstructions and obvious handicaps to the preparation of plans. But I suggest to the House that the evidence shows that work is not really being held up or handicapped by lack of policy or power to plan or to think or to purchase ahead.

I cannot, I am afraid, accept the actual wording of my noble friend's Resolution. For reasons which I have explained, there are one or two points in it where I could not go with him the whole way. I differ very little in principle, and I can assure him that such advance plans as are possible will be carried out, bearing in mind the difficulties which I have just mentioned. We are making at all times plans for further expansion of the road programme if and when that expansion becomes possible. My Lords, I hope that I have said enough to illustrate how seriously the Government take this problem, and how energetically and, may I say, how successfully they are tackling it.

5.58 p.m.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, may I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and my noble friend, Lord Mancroft, for the full answer he has given. I shall have one or two comments to make on it in a moment, but I shall not keep your Lordships long. I was very pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Latham, taking part, because of his great knowledge of this subject in urban areas, particularly in London. His questions have been dealt with by my noble friend, but there are just one or two things I should like to say with reference to what the noble Lord said.

He will not, of course, expect me to agree with the words used against noble Lords on this side of the House about the "ideological and doctrinaire point of view," because, as he knows, we always use that phrase in regard to noble Lords on that side of the House; so we cannot possibly agree on that count. But I am entirely in agreement with him that transport must be looked at as a whole. Where I differ from him is, perhaps, in the solution, because he believes in some portion of the road transport being nationalised and I take the view that it is better if only the roads are nationalised—in other words, the permanent way. That is really an arguable point. Though I know that he did not mean to do so, I think, with great respect, that the noble Lord may have left some others with a slightly wrong impression.

LORD MATHERS

My Lords, surely in the remarks which he is now making the noble Lord is taking a doctrinaire point of view from his side.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I said that I could not agree with the noble Lord calling me doctrinaire because I always call him doctrinaire; therefore we could not possibly agree. I was not saying that I was not being doctrinaire. I believe that, without meaning to do so, the noble Lord gave the impression that these urban motorways with limited access would slow down a large amount of traffic into the busy streets. In fact, the object, is for them to have very limited access, and to take out of the busy streets the long-distance traffic and put it on special roads. I know that the noble Lord is fully aware of that fact, but I believe that one or two noble Lords may have misunderstood him.

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, would it not be fair to say that experience in the large cities of the United States of America has shown that those expectations are not realised, and that, in fact, large volumes of traffic are thrown on to congested areas in the big cities?

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I believe the noble Lord is right but is referring to earlier motorways. On those planned later access is more limited. With regard to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Hampton, I never quite know whether I am in favour or not in favour at any given moment of a special board to run roads. It has its points and can be argued against. But the particular point I mentioned, on which I was glad to have the noble Lord's support, was the question of possibly having special loans raised for building roads, particularly in connection with the cities; and that matter will have to be looked at again. I believe that everything said by my noble friend Lord Somers has been answered by my noble friend Lord Mancroft.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, understands what I meant about limited access in connection with motorways. In fact I mean exactly what he means. I agree with a great deal of what was said by my noble friend Lord Mancroft in his reply, and he gave me some comfort, although I knew, of course, that long-term planning was well in hand; but he failed to answer the two questions which I particularly wanted answered and which were really the whole point of my original speech. He was unable to tell me whether the acquisition of land in connection with rural roads could take place one year or two years earlier. I believe three years earlier is a sufficiently long period before construction starts for the scheme to be approved.

The noble Lord admitted that he was unaware whether preparatory work, including the acquisition of land, is now being clone for the future programme. Unless that is included we shall still get exactly the same delay in the preparatory work. There was no suggestion that land should be bought a long way in advance—and whether in town or in the country it is essential, if the value of the land is not to deteriorate, that the stages should follow quickly one after the other: the line of the road, acquisition of the road and the beginning of construction. I thought I had made clear that I hoped that that is what would happen. Unless the land can be purchased a little earlier we shall not be able to get the stages following sharply upon each other.

The other point to which I had no answer was a question on which I had hoped the noble Lord, Lord Latham, would dilate more than he did, as he knows so much about it—the question of informing local authorities long in advance of how much money would be available: for without knowing that, a local authority in a city area cannot, as I see it, have any real development plan. The planning is done a long way ahead and that is right; but how can a local authority plan far ahead if they do not know what money is to be available over a long period for that part of the re-development which is being done by the Ministry with the local authority as agent? I received no answer to that question and probably will raise it again in some form, for I believe it is vital.

For the rest, I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Mancroft. I believe that the Minister and the Ministry are doing extremely well with the present programme and getting ahead of their time. It is the future that makes me a little uneasy. In view of the fact that my noble friend is not going to accept my Motion, I will not press him to do so and shall ask leave to withdraw it.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

House adjourned at five minutes past six o'clock.