CONSTRUCTION OF ROADS (TIME LIMIT) BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 28 June 1977)

§ Lord AVEBURY
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.

§ Lord AVEBURY
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass.

§ Baroness STEDMAN
My Lords, I have listened on behalf of the Government throughout the stages of this Bill, and I must confess that nothing has been said which leads me to change the view which I expressed on behalf of the Government on Second Reading, that this is a Bill with good intentions but we believe that it would injure rather than help the very people whom the noble Lord wishes to assist. Of course, we want to reduce the period of uncertainty during which people may be unsure when a road will be built, or whether it will be built at all. But, on the other hand, my right honourable friend is frequently asked to expand and elaborate public consultation before firm proposals are made for a road scheme, and even after a line is chosen a great deal of further consultation with individuals is needed about the siting of junctions and the acquisition of land.
Sometimes, I am afraid, problems arise after an order has been made, so causing unexpected delays before construction can begin, but these seldom affect the need for the road. I do not see how allowing an order to lapse, or even bringing it up for renewal by Parliament, could do anything to remove the blight and the uncertainty. It would simply prolong them, because the need for the road is 1037 not determined by the existence or otherwise of the statutory order. We must bear in mind, too, the right of property owners to require my right honourable friend to buy blighted properties, which would cease if an order was allowed to lapse. I am afraid, therefore, that I must advise your Lordships that, notwithstanding our sympathy for the underlying aims of the noble Lord, the Government cannot give their support to this Bill, or promise time for it in the other place.

§ Lord AVEBURY
My Lords, the noble Baroness has made her attitude quite plain on previous occasions, and she has repeated the Government's view of the Bill which she herself submitted at the time of Second Reading. But I, also, have not changed my opinion that a Bill of this kind is urgently needed in the interests of people whose properties are blighted along the lint of motorways that are no longer required. If I may say so with great respect to the noble Baroness, I think that it is insufferable arrogance for the Department—not the noble Baroness, because I would never accuse her of such a quality—to pretend that once they have settled on the line of a road, their judgment is so infallible that no second thoughts can be had; they must have been right in that, as the noble Baroness put it, the need for the road is not removed by reason of the fact that after five years, under myproposal the order would lapse. That assumes that, wherever they make an order, it is simply a matter of time before the growth of traffic both private and commercial catches up with the demand. So that, if it is not in five years, it may be in 10 or 15 years that this motorway or that trunk road is ultimately required.
I have been given powerful support by the Government themselves in the White Paper which was presented by the noble Baroness yesterday, and which I have now had a chance of looking at. In every line of the chapter on roads I find that there are references to a greater degree of flexibility, which I am delighted to observe. The White Paper states that we now have over 1,400 miles of dual carriageway, trunk roads of two or three lanes, and 1,360 miles of motorways, making 2,760 miles in all, and the original intention was to continue expanding these to a network of 4,500 miles by the mid-1980s. But that concept has now been abandoned.
1038 The noble Baroness's Government are already revising downwards their "planning assumptions for roads"—that is the phrase used in paragraph 246—and the fixed targets of so many miles are not being replaced by any new figure which is to be achieved in some specified number of years. The White Paper states in paragraph 248: The strategic network concept will be modified. As a matter of national transport policy, the Government intends to adopt a more flexible approach and to deal as urgently as possible with the most pressing needs in the ways most sensible for meeting them. This is a matter not of building to lines superimposed on maps". That is precisely what I am saying to the noble Baroness, that some lines have been drawn on maps.
I need not remind her that the genesis of this Bill was a line drawn continuing the M23, along which many people are still living with blighted properties and suffering hardships. It is as a result of the initiative which was taken by the M23 Action Group, in consultation with many others up and down the country, such as Transport 2000 and so on, that this Bill came forward before your Lordships' House. The opinion of those who are living in these areas is that a mistake has been made by the Government, or by the transport planners in the Department of the Environment, and this is a line superimposed on a map which should now be struck off the map. If the Department really mean what they say in this admirable White Paper, about a greater degree of flexibility, now is their chance to demonstrate that there will be, as it is put in the following paragraph, "a more selective approach". The fact that: … there will still be instances where an entirely new road remains much the best approach in both environmental and economic terms implies that there are other instances where a new road is not the best approach in environmental and economic terms. Otherwise, the statement does not mean anything at all.
I am glad to sec that we shall be more cautious about making growth assumptions in planning the road network, and that account is to be taken of an uncertain future in which energy and oil, in particular, are likely to become scarcer and dearer. The corollary of that statement, as the noble Baroness has probably heard 1039 me say before, is that if one looks forward to the end of the 1980s, when world oil production will have reached and passed its peak—and this is not my opinion; I am talking about the prognoses of experts, such as those at British Petroleum, who all say the same thing—it will not keep pace with an increasing demand if the rate of increase in demand is anything like so great as it has been in the past. Of course, this will not happen. Because of the way these matters develop, one would expect the price to continue to rise, as it has done since the so-called crisis of 1973, and that one would come into a new balance between demand and supply at a lower level of production than had been expected when the forecast was made a few years ago. This means that road transport in particular is likely to level off much earlier than the Transport and Road Research Laboratory had thought.
We are not in a position to go into this question in numerical detail because we have not yet received the review, which is promised, of the system of making these forecasts. All we can say in general terms is that it is very likely that the saturation point, which has been one of the main features of TRRL thinking since 1960 when these forecasts first began, is likely to be reached in the late 1980s and not in the year 2015, or whenever was the final point in the TRRL figures. Because we are planning motorways and trunk roads 20 years ahead, even now in 1977 we are at the point where we are thinking about roads which will be coming into use in 1997 when we shall all be some 10 years past this point of inflection in world oil production and consumption and when it is very likely that road transport fuel by means of hydrocarbon oils will have levelled off in this country and started to decline. That is the reason why I say that one cannot draw lines on the map. Therefore I am delighted to see from the transport White Paper that there is beginning to be some recognition by the Government that oil supplies are not inexhaustible and that the internal combustion engine may be starting to level off and decline as a method of powering transport in this country.
For the very same reason—I will not go into it now because it is not the occasion—that means greater emphasis on rail 1040 ways. The assurances that are given by the Government in another chapter of the White Paper mean no major cuts in the rail network. All this adds up, to me, to justification for a Bill of this kind. The Government need a way to withdraw these lines that are drawn on maps when they turn out no longer to be required. If one takes the hypothesis which the noble Baroness outlined in her speech, that minor changes will be needed to the approach roads after the Statutory Order has been made and that this process cannot be completed within five years, I have given a let-out to the Government. They could produce an Affirmative Resolution which they would have no difficulty in getting through both Houses of Parliament because, ex hypothesi, the need for the road in that case still exists; it is only a matter of confirming side road orders.
Therefore, I beg the Government to have second thoughts about the Bill. I am very sorry to hear the noble Baroness say that when the Bill leaves here and goes to another place no time can be found to debate it. Even if her arguments were correct and mine were wrong, the other place ought at least to have an opportunity to look at them. If the Government refuse to find time and merely put up some stooge to shout, "Object" when the Bill comes up on a Friday afternoon, they will be stifling public debate of a matter which is of very great concern—the Minister, I am sure, will agree with me here—to tens of thousands of people up and down the country. Therefore, I beg her to go back to her colleagues in the Department of the Environment, to report what has been said this afternoon and to see whether or not a niche can be found, at least in the Parliamentary timetable between now and the beginning of the Recess, for a Second Reading debate in another place which would allow the views of elected representatives to be heard.

§ Lord DRUMALBYN
My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Baroness intends to reply to what the noble Lord has said. If she does not, then I would say to the noble Lord that while it may well be that the House will not object to the Bill, I do not think that it will achieve very much if the Government do not intend to give it any assistance in another place. 1041 I would add—because, although I am not taking part in the discussion of the Bill I have listened to it—that I do not regard the Bill as having been fully debated in this place. I think that point should be placed firmly on the record before the Bill is passed so that nobody will think that this is the considered opinion of the House. If, however, the noble Lord wishes to go ahead with the Bill on those terms, then he is at liberty to do so.

§ Lord AVEBURY
My Lords, perhaps I may reply to the noble Lord's remarks. I think he will agree that every opportunity has been given to the House to debate the Bill. This is voluntary self-denial by noble Lords who have not taken part in the debate. However, it has had all the usual stages that any Bill goes through.

§ Lord DRUMALBYN
My Lords, I agree entirely with what the noble Lord has said. However, had it been a Bill about which, the Government having indicated its opposition in the first place, a large number of Members of this House held a contrary view, I feel certain that they would have attended the debate.