HC Deb 16 September 2003 vol 410 cc236-44WH

4 pm

Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater)

If the Minister would like, I shall finish slightly early so that he can continue with east coast electrification and upgrading, but I am sure that he does not really want to do that. I sympathise with him for having to respond to two consecutive debates. That is remarkable, and probably above and beyond the call of duty.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Nicholas Winterton)

Order. My worst fears are confirmed. We shall break for 10 minutes.

4 pm

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

4.11 pm

On resuming—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. The debate can continue.

Mr. Liddell-Grainger

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope that [do not have to say that again this afternoon. I shall certainly not return to the subject of east coast railways.

I should like to begin with a quotation from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". Alice may never have encountered any of Somerset county council's crazy new speed restrictions, but there is no doubt that Somerset county council currently occupies a kind of administrative wonderland. 'You are old, Father William', the young man said, 'And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head—Do you think, at your age, it is right?' 'In my youth,' Father William replied to his son, 1 feared it might injure the brain; But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again.' Those words were penned by Lewis Carroll, but they might as well apply to Councillor Tim Carroll, the chairman of Somerset county council's environment and transport policy committee.

Last year, the county council came up with a new road safety policy that involved standing common sense on its head. Presumably Councillor Carroll turned cheerfully upside down. There was no danger of injuring his brain, because the brain power behind the policy can be identified only with a very powerful microscope. Somerset county council decided arbitrarily to introduce new speed limits on A and B roads. Its motives were, no doubt, unimpeachable: it wanted to make Somerset's roads safer. We would all agree with that aim. However, in doing so with no proper consultation, it created a complete speed muddle that contributes nothing to safety and has already cost the council tax payers of Somerset a small fortune in public money. Indeed, what it has done might have created a danger to road users.

For example, the council has rightly set strict new limits outside all schools. No faster than 20 mph, says Somerset, but that applies all day and all night, long after the children have gone to bed and the gates of the school are firmly locked. Everyone agrees that speed limits outside schools make sense. Most intelligent councils—I suspect that that includes Plymouth—fix advisory limits and do not operate them 24 hours a day, but Somerset county council could not be bothered with the administrative and legal paperwork. So, outside every school there is a 20 mph limit, even in the middle of the night.

If this were not a short debate, I could list every town and village where the county council contractors have arrived at dawn with drills to erect new metal posts bearing new metal signs and new speed limits.

Mr. Adrian Flook (Taunton)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. He will be well aware of events not many weeks ago on the A358, which joins our constituencies—my hon. Friend lives at one end and I at the other, in Taunton. I am told that there are more than 50 new speed signs, with varying speed limits, along a 12-mile stretch. Is he aware that those were put in not on the basis of what parish councils want but on the basis of safety figures that show that there have been 108 accidents? That sounds laudable, 'but those figures date from 1994 to 1999. It has taken the county council four years to implement them. If nothing else, it is guilty of lethargy.

Mr. Liddell-Grainger

I certainly know the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Flook) on the matter. The Taunton Times and the Somerset County Gazette resound to the noise made by my hon. Friend and long may that continue. He is absolutely right. The figures are out of date, ill conceived and ill thought through.

We have not heard the worst yet. Next come the county council road painters, emphasising the message with stripes on the tarmac. All that would be acceptable if the county council had sought the real views of real people in real villages before implementing the new policy, but it did not ask the district councils, nor did it consult all the parish councils. Somerset county council did what it always seems to do nowadays, which is to assume the role of the nanny, and nanny, as we all know, thinks that she knows best. The proverbial buck is meant to stop at the top. Perhaps Councillor Cathy Bakewell, leader of Somerset county council, deserves the title "Nanny-in-chief".

If the speed management policy had been properly baked, there would not be a single complaint, but it was not baked well, or even half baked; it did not even get into the oven. The result is a heavyweight harvest of completely unnecessary metalwork. Poles are sunk into verges and signs by the hundred have been bolted on, as my hon. Friend said, but it is what those signs say that makes the policy such a sick joke, because they contradict each other. If one drives on the A39 through the village of Holford, one is greeted by no fewer than seven new signs in each direction. That is 14 signs in all, to save the mathematics between us, not including the extra ones that have been painted on the road surface. In case you have not been there, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or the Minister, Holford is the size of a postage stamp. It is a very nice place with very nice people, who are just as concerned about road safety as the rest of us, but they did not ask for those signs outside the village. The council did not send round a consultation form or even a man with a clipboard. It simply turned up, banged in the poles and screwed in the new speed signs. That is how it works.

One is entitled to approach the village at a perfectly legal 50 mph, then one brakes to obey the new 40 mph sign, brakes even harder to keep to 30, reduces suddenly to 20, goes back up to 30, then 40 and finally to 50 again, all within a few hundred yards. That is assuming that one goes any faster than 20 mph anyway. The A39 is a busy, winding and narrow road. It carries a huge number of tourists in the holiday season and slow-moving lorries at all times. It services Butlins at the rate of about 9,000 people a week. In my experience, if one averages 30 mph on the A39, one is doing very well. It may need upgrading—that is another story for the Minister—but what it does not need is a set of silly speed limits.

I invite the Minister to take a look at some of the signs. I went out with a camera to photograph some examples and I have pictures of some of them here. They made not only myself but the pictures quite red. I have pictures of some of the signs warning of cameras from one village in Holford. That is not some cheapskate exercise by Somerset county council. It has spent a small fortune planning it. Many of those new expensive signs bear the symbol dreaded by all motorists, the picture of a fixed camera—liable to flash in one's rear-view mirror and guarantee an automatic fine and several penalty points on one's licence.

We all agree that in the right place speed cameras are an excellent idea. I have talked to Avon and Somerset constabulary about the matter and it.knows what it is talking about. It uses mobile speed cameras to great effect where there is room to deploy them, but it would not contemplate fixed speed cameras on winding stretches of the A39. One officer told me: That would be the act of a lunatic. The police have to enforce the speed limits. Councillor nanny Bakewell and her pals simply dream up the loony schemes. The scores of new signs warning of speed cameras ahead are, unfortunately, not a dream. Nobody in their right mind would plant a speed camera where Somerset county council declares that a speed camera should be planted. Some motorists are stupid but not that stupid. When a county council makes believe on an issue as important as road safety, it is liable to bring the whole legal process into disrepute.

Since the new signs were put up, hundreds have been deliberately defaced. I do not condone such vandalism—nobody does—but I understand why people have taken the law into their own hands. They were furious at the high-handed attitude of a local authority that did not listen, did not ask and did not take a blind bit of notice when people complained through elected Members, such as myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton.

There have been as many complaints as there are new road signs. My postbag has been groaning with letters of complaint ever since that madness started. The latest stupidity is in the village of Fiddington in my constituency. The villagers have been pleading with the county council for speed limits and nanny Bakewell has done absolutely nothing about it. Under the enlightened leadership of Somerset county council, one gets no new speed limits where they are actually needed, and a rash of them where nobody wants them.

As constituency MPs, it is my job and that of my hon. Friend to get things sorted. I went to the county council and had a private chat with officials and they said, "Don't worry, Ian,"—no use of "Hon. Members" there—"we hear that the whole policy is under review." There were signs of relief all round as I told everybody that we were going to have a review. That usually means a rethink—an official recognition that they have got it wrong. "Whoops, silly me!" Nanny Bakewell and her Somerset county council cohorts are not as straightforward as that. They do not believe in saying sorry publicly, but they are prepared to admit their errors to one another.

A dramatic and revealing document has just come into my possession. It is an e-mail that was sent to all county council staff by the new chief executive, Mr. Alan Jones. In it, he confesses that the implementation of the new road policy has been "inconsistent and insensitive." Thank you, Mr. Jones. I could not have described the mad hatter antics of nanny Bakewell better. However, there is worse to come.

People who live in Somerset will receive a 21-question survey from Somerset county council. It will seek people's views on what sort of speed limits there should be and where they should be placed. The county council is now adding insult to injury by inviting people to give their views after the work has been carried out. I have been unable to obtain an estimate of the cost of that absurd exercise in pyramid-selling democracy, but I am absolutely sure that it does not come cheap because nothing ever does from Somerset county council and it comes on top of the high price of introducing speed limits that people did not want in the first place.

Road safety is crucial and the Government rightly leave it to local authorities to settle matters of speed, but I was disturbed to read a disquieting article in the Western Morning News on Saturday 13 September under the headline, "Hopeless rural roads are not our concern!" It included a fetching photograph of the Minister with a copy of the Western Morning News in his hands. The state of rural roads is certainly not our fault, but should be of great concern. When a local authority behaves in the way that Somerset county council has behaved, my question to the Minister is, "Please, can you not do something to stop them?"

4.27 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) on securing this debate on this important issue. There is obviously a spat between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Somerset, but I shall not enter that debate. I do not know Councillor Bakewell, but I am sure that, although she is a Liberal Democrat, she is motivated by the best intentions. I shall also not go into the lengthy metaphors that the hon. Gentleman used.

I was also surprised to see the headline in the Western Morning News. The old story is, "Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers." People should certainly not believe everything that they read in the Western Morning News. It was certainly not what I said. I said that I was pleased that the Western Morning News had joined the Government's campaign for better roads in the west country and I said that they were very much our concern. I said that it was the concern of the Government to get better roads, but the responsibility of local authorities to carry that out. I also said that a lot of extra money had been provided for those roads and a former Tory council leader admitted that he had underspent on roads and spent the money on other things, but he said it was all our fault anyway.

Speed and safety are at the heart of the Government's policies. About one third of the accidents in which people, many of whom are children or elderly people, are killed or injured on our roads each year are caused by people travelling at inappropriate speeds, so we should not treat the matter lightly. I was glad that the hon. Gentleman distanced himself from those who take the law into their own hands with safety cameras and signage. That is manifestly not the way in which we do things in this country and we have democratic means of dealing with such matters. Some of the thugs who go around doing that are putting people's lives at risk and I am glad that he distanced himself from those people, as I have.

I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said about Somerset's current programme of introducing speed limits on such a comprehensive scale throughout the county. However, I understand that the county council is only part of the way through implementing the initiative and that some rethinking is taking place. Slower speeds are one of many measures available to local authorities to reduce accidents and to improve the environment, particularly in rural areas. The key is that it is up to local authorities to find the right balance between the quality of life in their communities, achieving the important objective of reducing accidents and maintaining the appearance of attractive villages in rural areas. The policies have been devolved because locally elected councillors are best placed to deal with such matters.

I applaud Somerset and many other local authorities for taking the problem of traffic speeds in their communities very seriously and striving to achieve the right balance in such a difficult policy area. I receive many representations from across the country, including Somerset, from parents whose children are trying to cross roads outside schools. There is a considerable problem in both rural and urban areas of people going too fast. I am not surprised that local authorities are being pulled two ways in implementing the policy, and I cannot help but wonder whether the same people who urged the introduction of measures to slow speeds in their villages are now finding it inconvenient to slow down in others.

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the Government's real commitment to address the serious issue of road safety. In 2000, we published, "Tomorrow's Roads—Safer for Everyone," in which we adopted challenging targets to reduce the number of those killed or seriously injured in road accidents by 40 per cent. by 2010, and to reduce by 50 per cent. the number of children killed or seriously injured over the same period. I am pleased to say that we are on course to meet those targets.

The hon. Gentleman will know that the Prime Minister is committed to the road safety strategy. We published a review of speed policy, in which we recognised the value of 30 mph being the norm for villages. Experience shows that lower speed limits without other measures to encourage drivers to slow down have generally only a small effect on traffic speeds, and local authorities are advised to consider what other measures are necessary to achieve the lower speeds required. It is also for local authorities to target their resources where the problems are the greatest. The resources are best targeted where speeding causes casualties and discomfort to residents.

In October 2002, the Government responded to the Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee report on road traffic speed. Some evidence from that report is pertinent to the issues raised in this debate. If the measures recommended in the report were to achieve a one-third reduction in road traffic accidents, the savings to society could be as great as £100 million per week.

Speed is clearly a major factor in causing accidents. It is highly significant that, when we introduce speed management measures or improve speed enforcement on roads with a high level of casualties, casualties are substantially reduced, in some cases by 50 per cent. or more. That is why it is important to identify where speed is a problem and deal with it effectively with targeted engineering and enforcement, and driver education and training.

I am pleased to see that local authorities, the police and motorists have responded positively to those road safety targets, and there can be no doubt that there have been real improvements in safety on roads in this country, not least in the west country. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the implementation of that policy is, of course, a matter for the local transport authority. We have put in place a system of local transport plans, under which local authorities can bid for new capital funding for local transport measures. I must say that Somerset has done very well out of those measures. Cash-starved a few years ago, it is now doing very well.

We have, of course, provided a real increase in resources to local authorities to implement and to improve their local transport plans and, in particular, to pursue better road safety. In Somerset, funding for integrated transport measures, which includes measures to promote road safety, has increased from just over £0.3 million in 1998–99 to more than £5 million in 2002–03.

Local authorities are best placed to decide how to use resources in their areas, and they are also best placed to understand their local problems and how they can be solved. Local authorities can, of course, pursue a range of measures to achieve those road safety targets. The policies implemented in Somerset have, in general, reduced accidents in line with targets. To give the figures again, they reduced the number of people killed or seriously injured from an average of 376 to 332 last year, although that figure has risen to 351 this year. I also note that the number of children killed or seriously injured has fallen from 34 to 25 over the same period. They are most likely the hon. Gentleman's constituents.

Mr. Liddell-Grainger

Much of that is to do with the M5, which goes all the way through the county. There have been an enormous number of deaths on the M5, as the Minister is fully aware, so the problem is not just to do with the county.

Mr. Jamieson

I am aware that some of those incidents happened on the M5, but the motorways tend to be among the safest roads in terms of the amount of through-put of traffic. One of the big problems is on rural roads, where local people tend to get killed and injured.

The changes that I mentioned are a real tribute not only to the safety improvements that we have made to vehicles. but to local highways authorities and the police in promoting better solutions to create safer roads.

I understand that there is another reason for Somerset's policy of introducing the new speed limits throughout the county. Put simply, I am told that that is what residents have asked authorities for. Somerset has undertaken an extensive consultation with the communities in rural areas, asking them how they would like to see the resources that are made available through the local transport plans used. I am told that the answer that was given was clear: speed of traffic through rural villages, sometimes at the national speed limit of 60 mph, was a key concern. However, to return to the point that I made originally, perhaps the problem is to do with reducing speed in the village where one lives, but finding it inconvenient when the limit has been reduced in other villages.

Mr. Liddell-Grainger

I apologise for intervening on the Minister again. The speed limits in villages are not in doubt, and we are not here to debate them. However, nobody asked for the speed limits outside villages, and the consultation has only just started.

Mr. Jamieson

Somerset's approach was clearly spelt out in its local transport plan, which was published in July 2000 and which stated: We will introduce a policy to apply a consistent approach to speed limits across the county, particularly in built up areas". That commitment was based on requests from more than 250 parish councils for environmental traffic calming. Somerset has implemented that commitment with a comprehensive programme of promoting 20 mph speed limits at 280 school sites and 30 mph speed limits in about 230 villages, which is an impressive programme.

The aim of the approach, as I understand it, is to achieve a consistent speed limit throughout the county, so that road users know that, whenever they enter a built-up area, they should slow down. No doubt the number of traffic signs that the initiative has required may be a surprise to those who were unaware of what Somerset was proposing to do. Somerset will have consulted local parish councils, as is required, in promoting individual schemes, so parish councils must have expressed a view on the proposals as they were going ahead—there was a statutory duty on them to do so. The consultation will have included details of the signs proposed to be put in place, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

The hon. Gentleman asks what the Government's policy is on such a programme. Put simply, the local transport plan system gives local authorities the powers to implement such a programme, if they so decide, in the light of their local policies and objectives. However, our advice on the production of local transport plans states: Traffic management in rural areas should aim to produce better and safer local road conditions for those who live, work and visit there and help protect the character of the countryside and its communities. Plans must balance the needs of both rural communities and road users.

It is a sad fact that some drivers drive at inappropriate speeds. However, one of the biggest influences on drivers' choice of speed is not the speed limit itself but the nature and appearance of the road in question. It is therefore imperative that speed limits are set that are appropriate and enforceable.

We are always looking at the most effective ways to improve safety on rural roads and working to deliver our road safety strategy commitments on that, including updating our guidance to local authorities on setting local speed limits and how to reduce traffic speeds in rural villages. Local authorities have the powers to introduce 20 mph speed limits, but their success relies solely on drivers reducing their speed without the constraining influence of any physical measures. We therefore feel that if there is a criticism of what Somerset is doing, it is that some the limits have been set without some of the other measures that are perhaps important in reducing the speed of vehicles.

The hon. Gentleman has raised an important matter. I hope that there can be a calm and sensible debate about it in Somerset. Road safety is important, and children are particularly vulnerable. I hope that good sense prevails. He might revisit in today's Hansard some of his comments about certain Liberal Democrat council leaders and how they have dealt with this matter. They may be able to come to some mutually agreed resolution.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes to Five o'clock.