SPECIAL ROADS (CLASSES OF TRAFFIC) ORDER, 1961 (Hansard, 26 June 1961)

§ THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM)

My Lords, I beg to move that the Special Roads (Classes of Traffic) Order, 1961, dated May 15, 1961, a copy of which was laid before this House on May 18, be approved. Your Lordships will have noticed that the Special Orders Committee reported that the provisions of this Order "raise important questions of policy and principle" and that "it cannot be passed without special attention", but I think that the formal words used to draw the attention of your Lordships to them may perhaps rather over emphasise the importance of the policy and principle involved. This I hope to show in an explanation which I shall 836 try to keep as brief and simple as I can, because it is the explanation, rather than the matter itself, that is a little complicated.

The Order is concerned with the Fourth Schedule to the Highways Act, 1959. That Schedule lays down nine different classes of traffic which may or may not be allowed to use "special roads", which are, to all intents and purposes, at the moment, motorways. The effect of the Order will be, quite simply, to allow us to permit invalid carriages and mopeds to be used on cycle tracks where they are provided alongside a motorway and to permit pedestrians to use any footpaths which are similarly provided and take with them their perambulators, pushchairs and other kinds of baby carriages and dogs held on a lead.

Your Lordships may think the Order for which I seek approval seems rather elaborate for such a simple thing. So it is, and I should therefore explain that it is really a procedural Order and its form is entirely dictated by the provisions of the Highways Act. There is no other way of doing it open to my right honourable friend. Section 11 of that Act enables a highway authority, including, of course, my right honourable friend, to make a scheme for the provision of a special road, and the scheme can prescribe the classes of traffic which may use the road. But these classes of traffic must be selected from those set out in the Fourth Schedule to the Act. The Minister has power under Section 12 of the Act to vary the composition of any class of traffic in the Fourth Schedule or add further classes to it. That is the power that the Minister is exercising in this Order. It is the only power he has and as I say, he can exercise it only in this way, even if it does seem rather elaborate.

The present position is that only Classes I and II of the Fourth Schedule—that is private cars, motor-cycles, buses, lorries and so on; and the special vehicles used for carrying large pieces of industrial equipment or belonging to the Armed Services—are allowed on the motorways. But we now have three road projects of a new and different type coming along. They are the Severn, Medway and Maidenhead bridges. The 837 Maidenhead bridge forms part of the Maidenhead by-pass, and if all has gone according to plan it was opened this morning. We hope that the Medway bridge will be opened early in. 1963 and the Severn bridge in 1965 or 1966. In all three cases cycle-tracks and footpaths connected to local roads at either end will be carried on the bridges alongside the main motorway carriageways but completely separated from them by fenced barriers. Access to the cycle-tracks and footpaths can be obtained only from the side roads across which the motorway will pass, and not from the motorway itself, but they have to be treated as part 'of the motorway where, so to speak, they share the bridge with it, because the whole bridge is in fact part of the motorway.

In the schemes I mentioned provision was made for the cycle-tracks to be used by pedal cycles and the footpaths by pedestrians, each of which constituted one complete class in the Fourth Schedule. But it does seem reasonable and perfectly possible on these bridges to allow mopeds and invalid carriages to use the cycle-tracks to cross the bridge and pedestrians to take with them their dogs and their prams. This could not be done under the Fourth Schedule as it stands, because mopeds and invalid carriages were covered in a class which also included a great many other vehicles, like tractors and excavators.

Prams were covered by Class IX, which also included quite a number of other pedestrian-controlled vehicles, like costers' barrows and, I believe I am right in saying, mowing machines and that sort of thing; and dogs were in yet another class which included other animals, such as flocks of sheep. Therefore, to use these categories and to find excavators using the cycle-tracks and flocks of sheep the pavement is not very practical.

What the Order does, therefore, is to take the mopeds and the invalid carriages out of Class IV and put them into two new Classes X and XI, and to amend the definition of pedestrians to cover those who are pushing prams or leading dogs. The schemes which are already made refer simply to Class IX (which is pedestrians) and Class VII (that is pedal cycles) will have effect as if they included with pedestrians their prams and dogs, and by Article 4 of the Order mopeds 838 and invalid carriages will be included with pedal cycles.

I know that your Lordships do not like legislation by reference and neither, I think, does the public. We have therefore reproduced the whole of the Fourth Schedule in its new form as the Schedule to the Order. I think that this will be very helpful to those who are concerned with these matters and this course has the advantage of showing exactly where things now stand.

No new offence is created by the Order. It is already an offence under Section 12 of the Highways Act for traffic not of the prescribed classes to use a special road, but the Order varies slightly the classes themselves. The public cannot be expected to know in detail either the classes of traffic set out in the Schedule or the contents of every special road scheme. That is why, at the entrance to every special road and at the entrances to the cycle-tracks and footpaths, where these are provided alongside the main carriageway, notices are or will be exhibited saying precisely who may or who may not use it. I should perhaps make it quite clear that the new classes as they refer to schemes in existence, will not make it illegal for anyone who may now use a special road to use it in future. What it does is to add some new traffic to certain classes which may use special roads in a very restricted way.

I should naturally have liked to be able to bring before the House a much simpler Order than this one, and I am sorry that I have felt obliged to take up so much time with this explanation. I am afraid, however, that under the Act it is only in this rather complicated way that we can deal with this particular problem. There is nothing in the Act which enables my right honourable friend simply to prescribe directly who may or may not use a motorway, and schemes must refer only to the prescribed classes in the Fourth Schedule by their numbers. As experience has shown that the classes as drawn up have not allowed full and appropriate use of these new roads, they must be amended under the powers available to my right honourable Friend; but I am advised that the classes of traffic as amended by the Order should prove adaptable for all foreseeable requirements.

839 I hope that, with this explanation, your Lordships will agree to approve the Order, but I will, of course, endeavour to explain any points and to answer any questions which your Lordships may have. I beg to move.