HL Deb 17 February 1977 vol 379 cc1752-4

3.28 p.m.

Lord Avebury

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have asked for a report to be made by the Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment within a given time, and whether it will be published.

Baroness BIRK

My Lords, the Committee expect their work to take about six months and the report will be published.

Lord AVEBURY

My Lords, will the Minister agree that the extent and strategy of the road programme is largely determined by the forecast of traffic? Therefore, is it not important to ascertain whether the Leitch Report will appear before or after the transport policy White Paper and the annual road White Papers which have been promised by the Government; and if there is any conflict between the Leitch Committee recommendations and what is set out in the White Papers, how is it to be resolved? Will there be a retrospective examination of the schemes which have already been published and which are currently the subject of statutory procedures, with the possibility of revision of those schemes?

Baroness BIRK

My Lords, the Leitch Committee have very specific terms of reference and, as the noble Lord is well aware, they are concerned with trunk road assessment. If the Transport Policy Review comes out before—which I think is highly unlikely—and there is anything in it which affects it or which shows that either way the current methods are fundamentally wrong, then any cases which come up by way of an inquiry will mean that we shall obviously have to look at the schemes which are not yet committed. So there is a fall-back in either case so far as future schemes are concerned.

Lord AVEBURY

My Lords, I am afraid the noble Baroness did not quite understand the second part of my question. If a road has been through the inquiry procedure and has been approved on the basis of traffic forecasts produced to the inquiry by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, and now Sir George Leitch's Committee says that the forecasting methods are wrong, and, therefore, the assumptions on which the decision to go ahead with that road have been proved incorrect, will there be any opportunity of reconsidering the matter?

Baroness BIRK

My Lords, what I said was that if the Committee can persuade us that the current methods of appraisal are fundamentally wrong then we would have to look again at the case for all the schemes which are not yet committed. There is a delay between the recommendation from the inquiry and a scheme's being put into operation, and during that time there will be this opportunity.

Lord POPPLEWELL

My Lords, could my noble friend also assure us that this Committee will also consider alternative methods of transport instead of the trunk road scheme? Is my noble friend aware that, in reply to me only a week ago, her noble friend the Lord Privy Seal told me that 2,600 acres of land per year are being taken out of food production for the motorways? Will the Government give an assurance that this Committee will consider these very important factors before they give authorisation for new road construction?

Baroness BIRK

My Lords, I must point out to my noble friend that this is not within the remit of the Committee. The terms of reference of the Committee were to comment on and recommend any necessary changes in the Department's methods of appraising trunk road schemes, and also to review the Department's methods of traffic forecasting. What my noble friend is asking for goes very much wider than this, and would, I think, be included in the Transport Policy Review.