Mr. Gresham Cookeasked the Minister of Transport if she will give in respect of improvement, maintenance, administration, cleansing, and so forth, for the Exchequer and local authorities, respectively, details of the reductions to be made in road expenditure totalling in 1968–69 for the Exchequer£18 million and for local authorities£35 million, and for 1969–70£29 million and£40 million, respectively.
§ Mr. Swingler£15 million of the reduction of£18 million in 1968–69 will be found by reduction of expenditure on major roads in England. About£1 million of this is expected to be achieved by reduction in expenditure on trunk road maintenance etc. and the balance by re-104W duction of expenditure on new construction and improvement of motorways, trunk road and principal roads, including the local authority share of expenditure on the latter.£25 million of the reduction of£29 million in 1969–70 will be found by reduction of expenditure on roads in England but the division of this between trunk road maintenance and new construction and improvements has not yet been determined.
Local authorities in England have been asked to reduce by at least 15 per cent. their planned expenditure on maintenance of principal and other local authority roads, the improvement of non-principal roads and similar expenditure, both capital and current, on car parks, highway depots and plant, lighting of roads etc. in order to find savings of£30 million and£33 million in 1968–69 and 1969–70 respectively. It will be for each authority to apportion the reduction called for between the various kinds of expenditure on roads. Similar requests have been addressed to local authorities in Scotland and Wales by the appropriate departments.