HIGHWAYS BILL (Hansard, 25 March 1971)

§ THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF me ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD)
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is a substantial Bill—81 clauses and 13 Schedules—but not, I would guess, a Bill which need engage your Lordships' attention deeply or for long. Much of it was prepared by our predecessors and there is little in it about which I would judge there need be much controversy. Only a few clauses are in themselves of great importance, but taken together the Bill's provisions form a most useful body of highway legislation. Out of all the 81 clauses I propose, your Lordships will be relieved to hear, to deal with only four in my opening remarks; but I shall be glad, to-day or at a later stage, to respond to comments or to answer questions on any of the other clauses which your Lordships may wish to raise.
Perhaps I should first say why we now need a Highways Bill at all. The reason is clear when one considers the rate at which Government expenditure on major roads has increased over the last 15 years. Fifteen years ago central Government expenditure on the road programme in England and Wales was no more than £5 million per annum; ten years ago it was £55 million and last year it was no less than £274 million. So far, to cope with 1055 this vast increase in highway planning and in highway building the only major legislation we have had was that introduced in 1946, and that introduced in 1949 to make possible the initial motorway progamme. We cannot now easily continue any longer to plan and to provide the highways needed for the 'seventies and the 'eighties with the legislation of the 'forties. This Bill provides what is now needed.
I turn to the purposes of the Bill. There are four main objectives running like threads through all its diverse clauses. The first is to make it easier for highway authorities to manage and administer their roads. This involves such measures as the power to exercise control over builders' skips in urban areas—that is Clause 28—to control planting in the verges of highways, which is dealt with in Clause 39, and so on. The second, broader purpose is to improve the environment by helping to take traffic that has no business there out of town centres, and particularly out of the centres of historic towns—places which were never created for the heavy lorries of to-day and the great flow of fast, noisy, smelly motor vehicles; cities and villages which cannot and ought not themselves to be altered or redeveloped to accommodate more traffic than is essential for their own prosperity.
The third aim of the Bill is to increase safety and to reduce accidents and casualties on the road. The research and statistics which were deployed in your Lordships' House in the course of the recent debate of Lord Ferrier on road safety showed strikingly how the incidence of road accidents falls most heavily on pedestrians in towns where congestion and conflict in the use of the highway is greatest; they showed also how good, modern road design and new and improved roads have helped, and will continue to help, to keep the accident rate down. If new roads, better designed on better lines, have these beneficial effects, then clearly there is much to be said for providing them with all reasonable despatch. This is the fourth aim of the Bill—to do this and yet at the same time to ensure that all those whose interests are affected by the construction of a new road should have their interests properly considered and protected, and feel satisfied 1056 that they are so protected and considered. It is on this last point that I should like to dwell for a while, and invite your Lordships' attention particularly to Clauses 14, 15, 16 and 17—the only four on which I want to spend any time.
The present statutory arrangements for the planning and the construction of roads, particularly new roads, are too rigid, and Clauses 14 to 17 will make them more flexible. These clauses make it easier for the Secretary of State, the Department of the Environment, the road construction units, the divisional road engineers and the highway authorities to get on with the job, unfettered by needless delays, red tape and formality, where the going is straightforward. But the same clauses retain, and indeed in several respects extend, the scope for objectors to state their case, to be heard at public local inquiries, to have schemes adjusted and modified and to receive compensation for private rights where these have to give way to the public good. These twin objectives are reconciled in a better way than before in these four clauses, and it is done in two main ways. The length of time for the receipt of objections after the publication of a draft scheme is reduced from three months to a minimum of six weeks—the normal time for an ordinary planning case. But, of course, if the scheme is a large one involving a long stretch of road, or likely to be controversial, the objection period can be, and will be, made longer—longer even than the present three months if necessary.
But the controversy and the objections to which a road scheme sometimes gives rise may not apply to the whole length of a proposed new road: the objections may focus upon only a part—perhaps two or three miles out of a length of 25 miles. To cater for this eventuality three options are open. The proposal can be put forward, as it sometimes is now, in three, four or five separate parts—separate draft orders. Or—and this is one of the innovations—the Secretary of State can now decide, in the light of the objections he has received to a single draft order, to divide the scheme into parts so that one part to which there is no objection can go ahead, while another part goes to public inquiry. 1057 Or—and this is another innovation, and the one likely to prove most useful—the whole scheme, after objections have been received, can go to inquiry for the objections to be heard, and then in the light of that and the inspector's report on the inquiry the Secretary of State will be free to approve one part of the scheme which he feels able to approve, while withholding his confirmation of another part, so that it may be further examined and if necessary modified or replaced by another scheme. Thus, three alternative ways are provided of combining the need to get on with the job expeditiously with the need to protect and safeguard the rights of objectors and private interests to the full.
Clause 17 introduces another element of flexibility: scope for adjusting the line of a road by up to 55 yards from the centre line after the scheme has been confirmed. The intention is to have recourse to this when, for example, at the request of an individual affected by a new road, it is found feasible to make some small alteration to the approved line for his benefit. At present any such deviation is illegal once the main line is approved, unless a further order is obtained. The need for this, and all it involves, often rules out any such adjustment in practice, however desirable and sensible it may be. The new clause is, therefore, I submit, greatly to be welcomed.
I hasten to add that there are two safeguards to prevent the Secretary of State from making undue use of this flexibility in his own interests against those of other parties. First, the Secretary of State's right to use his power under Clause 17 has to be written into each particular order, and can itself be objected to at an inquiry. Secondly, the use of the power to vary the line of a road in any particular case must be with the agreement of all affected by the ensuing modification, or else if there are objectors they will have a right to be heard, over and above the right they already have to appear at any inquiry into the compulsory purchase order. I believe that the provisions in these four clauses will prove to be of benefit all round: to those whose job it is to get on with the roads, to those who have their own rights to defend, and to those, both local authorities and amenity societies, who have important public and local interests to safeguard and to defend.
1058 My Lords, without going into any further clauses at this stage, I would, if I may, take this opportunity before I close to pay a tribute to two of the principal parties involved in these highway exercises: first, to the road construction units, for the growing care and skill with which they choose the line of new roads, and the sympathy with which their staff, and their landscape artists in particular, design and build the roads themselves. I welcome very much, as I believe many of your Lordships do, the growing public recognition and appreciation of their work. I should also like to acknowledge the part that amenity societies and others have played and will, I hope, continue to play by their constructive criticisms of the major highway schemes. Particularly to be welcomed is the trend towards the broadly based widely representative society which takes on the responsibility of presenting the case at a public inquiry for a wide range of public opinion and private objectors. While one would not, of course, dream of inhibiting any individual or ad hoc group from coming forward at any inquiry, there is clearly an advantage if the main case can be put forward by an established organisation which has experience of the statutory procedures, a grasp of all the local relevant facts and a clear understanding of who it is they are representing.
I also hope that highway authorities and amenity societies fulfilling this role will both feel that they can welcome these particular provisions of the Bill on which I have enlarged somewhat, and find in it an opportunity to extend the growth of the mutual respect which is so necessary if each side in these inquiries is to fulfil its respective role. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.

§ BARONESS PHILLIPS
My Lords, on behalf of Her Majesty's Opposition I should like to welcome this Bill which has been so clearly explained by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. The Bill was, of course, on the stocks during the period of the last Administration, and we are glad to see that the present Government are carrying on our good work. I understand that my noble friend Lord Shepherd has given to the noble Lord, 1059 Lord Sandford, some points which were raised by the Association of Municipal Corporations and which seem to be worthy of attention. While I should not expect the noble Lord to reply now, nor indeed would there be any purpose in delaying the House, my noble friend Lord Shepherd would like to return to those points during the Committee stage of the Bill. I am delighted to welcome the Bill.

§ Loge AIREDALE
My Lords, I have one point I should like to raise and it is rather a detailed one. Let us suppose that there is a road widening scheme, that part of the land earmarked for that scheme is privately owned and that the owner would otherwise wish to develop the land. He is denied his rights to develop it by reason of the road widening scheme. The question arises, is he entitled to compensation or not for being denied his right to develop his property?
This question of compensation arose in a case which came on appeal to the House of Lords last year. It was a case concerning the Westminster Bank Limited. I suppose this was just before the Westminster Bank became, so to speak, "nationalised". It was the case of Westminster Bank Ltd. v. Minister of Housing and Local Government. I think I can best quote from the part of the summary of the judgment where their Lordships decided that Parliament had chosen to set un two different ways of preventing development which would interfere with schemes for road widening: … it must have been aware "— that is to say, Parliament must have been aware— that one"— scheme— involved paying compensation but that the other did not; since"— Parliament had expressed no preference and imposed no limit on the use of either, the use of one method rather than the other could not, in the absence of special circumstances, be said to be an abuse of power. My Lords, I suggest that that illustrates a somewhat unsatisfactory state of affairs, because what it means is that it is quite outside the control of the owner of the 1060 property involved. The question whether or not he received compensation for the loss of his right to develop depends not upon anything which he does but upon which method the authority concerned chooses to adopt. Not only is this uncertain and unsatisfactory for the particular landowner, but it is surely unfair as between one landowner and another, because the landowner in one local authority area may get the benefit of compensation because of the method that authority adopts, but another landowner in exactly the same position but in opposition to a different local authority may be denied his compensation because of the method which his local authority adopts.
This is not a question to which I can possibly expect the Minister to provide any sort of answer now, but it is a matter which, in my submission, we ought to consider between now and the next stage of the Bill, in order to try to get into the law some uniformity, so that there shall be equality of treatment for people in similar circumstances who will either not get or lose compensation simply according to which method happens to be adopted in their case by the particular local authority with whom they have to deal.

§ LORD SANDFORD
My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, for her reception of this Bill on behalf of the Opposition. May I assure her that I indeed have the document to which she referred. Although we should have liked to have it even sooner, we will nevertheless have it looked at and reopen consultations with the A.M.C. before the next stage, so that any good points they make can be incorporated in Amendments.
The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, asked me some questions about compensation. He rightly surmised that I would not attempt to answer them now without notice, but I should like to say that all questions of a similar nature to the one which he has raised have deliberately been left out of this Bill, because, as I think he will know, Her Majesty's Government are currently engaged in a very comprehensive review of the whole compensation code. So although I take the point that he may want that matter looked at—and I agree that it should be 1061 looked at within this comprehensive code—my first reaction is to resist his suggestion that it should be looked at within the context of this Bill, for the reason I have just given. I hope that he will accept and understand that point.

§ LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX
My Lords, could the noble Lord give some idea of the questions the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has asked in this document on which negotiations may be reopened?

§ LORD SANDFORD
My Lords, I do not think so; it would be tedious and laborious. There are four pages of minor technical points. My reason for saying that we should have liked to have them sooner is because I think they could easily have been disposed of by our officials. I am sure that if the noble Lord will get in touch with the A.M.C. they will be glad to draw him into their discussions.

§ LORD BESWICK
My Lords, the noble Lord will bear in mind that it is not intended to take this Bill in Committee for another four or five weeks, and there will be ample time to look at all these points.

§ LORD SANDFORD
I agree, my Lords.