House of Commons Hansard Debates for 5 Mar 1991

Mrs. Maureen Hicks (Wolverhampton, North-East) : Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Snape : Of course ; I am delighted to be thus described.

Mrs. Hicks : I have listened carefully to what my honourable colleague has said. I am rather saddened by his negative approach to the transport system. Does he not realise that, if he opposes the introduction of the private

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roads, he will cause further harm to the process of opening up the west midlands? Anyone who has sat in a car for some time on the M6 north of Birmingham knows about the congestion. I should have thought that he, as a fellow west midlands Member, would welcome the opportunity to introduce the private sector in an attempt to speed up the provision of a choice of routes. Business men in my constituency who will be affected by the western orbital route will be very disappointed by his small-minded approach.

Mr. Snape : Having been described first as the hon. Lady's hon. Friend and then as her honourable colleague, I am sorry that she has been so rude to me. I was trying to explain how her party's ideology had taken over its commitment, as a Government, to alleviate road congestion in the region that both she and I have the honour to represent.

I have been trying to show--obviously inadequately, as the hon. Lady has not understood--that the northern relief road proposals have been part of the Government's road programme since 1980. I shall say this fairly slowly. I hope that the hon. Lady understands that any further hawking of the proposals round the private sector and any further public inquiries, should they be necessary--we do not know whether they will be ; so far the Government have not told us--will lead even more of our business men to sit fuming on the M6. If the hon. Lady will not take my sensible advice and travel by train--Jaguars notwithstanding, Madam Deputy Speaker--I am afraid that, thanks to the Government's ideology, she and the business men for whom she has so properly expressed concern will remain trapped in traffic jams for many more years while this futile ideological debate continues in the ranks of the Conservative party.

The Government amended the Bill at an early stage to allow tolls to be levied after the road had reverted to the public sector. Why? Will that be the norm, and is there some specific reason, apart from the ideological ones, for the making of the amendment in another place? Organisations such as the Automobile Association, the Freight Transport Association and the British Road Federation have expressed concern, fearing--I hope that this will interest the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Hicks)-- that private finance will be not an addition to, but a substitute for, Government money. I hope that the Minister will clarify that, for the benefit of those organisations as well as that of the Opposition.

Will tolls have to pay capital as well as maintenance costs? If so, will not that be prohibitively expensive, as well as causing road users enormous delays? What concessions are envisaged? Will there be tolls for cyclists and motor cyclists, as well as for lorries and cars? How will the toll level be assessed and who will be responsible for assessing it--the developer, the Department or a combination of the two? Will an upper limit to the price of tolls be imposed anywhere in the country? After all, we understand that a study at the North London polytechnic's business school forecast that a toll on the double decked M25--if the Government were daft enough to propose one--would amount to as much as £21 per journey, given a rate of 60, 000 vehicles per day.

How extensively have the Government consulted the European Commission about the proposals in the early parts of the Bill? When other member states have introduced tolls, the United Kingdom has rightly claimed

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that they would unfairly affect our road haulage industry, as hauliers would have to pay two levies--domestic licence fees and toll charges. Presumably the same point was made to other EC countries ; if so, perhaps the Minister will tell us their reaction.

In industrialised countries, transport accounts for about 30 per cent. of total energy consumption. Within that 30 per cent., road transport alone accounts for a great deal. Transport is the fastest-growing cause of carbon dioxide emissions, and nearly 20 per cent. of all United Kingdom emissions are related to road transport. According to figures from the Department, there are 140 million cars and 15 million goods vehicles in western Europe. The Department forecasts an increase in road traffic in this country of between 83 per cent. and 142 per cent. by the year 2025. How and where do privately financed roads fit in with the Government's environmental thinking--a question that I have already asked, but one that I ask again in the context of the Department's own figures? Despite much argument in the other place, the Bill contains no provisions concerning its environmental effects or its relation to land use planning.

The Nature Conservancy Council estimates that up to 160 sites of special scientific interest are threatened by the current roads programme, as are five county sites of wildlife importance, two trust reserves, one national nature reserve and three local nature reserves. English Heritage estimates that the programme will have an impact on more than 800 known archaeological sites ; the National Trust estimates that 32 of its areas will be affected.

Privately financed roads neither benefit the environment nor relieve congestion. Will not many cars and lorries simply prefer to continue to use the existing roads, rather than paying tolls? How will the Bill stimulate a modal shift to rail travel which, supposedly, is part of the Government's philosophy, as espoused by the new Secretary of State for Transport?

Opposition Members believe that the proposals are motivated more by ideology than by any attempt to solve Britain's transport crisis. In Committee we shall do our best to improve the Bill--although we believe that the earlier parts are largely beyond improvement, and the Labour Government who will be elected at the next general election will look again at all its proposals.

6.28 pm

Mr. Peter Fry (Wellingborough) : Let me take up two points made by the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape). He seemed to suggest that the two midlands schemes should be financed from the taxation currently imposed on motorists and the motor industry. Does that represent a move towards hypothecation on the part of the Labour party? Alternatively, perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell us what other parts of its policy Labour will jettison to fund the roads from the Exchequer. Perhaps he really meant that the roads should be built because taxes would have to rise to pay for them.

Mr. Snape : The hon. Gentleman refers to hypothecation. Labour's transport document "Moving Britain into the 1990s" contains the proposal-- no doubt, in Conservative Members' eyes,

Marxist-oriented--that large companies in major cities should be made to pay a 1 per cent. payroll tax, to be spent entirely on improving

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public transport provision in those cities. We suggest that, to pay for that, companies should reduce the amount that they spend on company cars.

The hon. Gentleman also asked how the roads would be paid for. He was obviously not listening when I made it plain that, given that £19 billion is available, if the roads are essential, the money ought to be spent to pay for them.

Mr. Fry : I thank the hon. Gentleman for his answer. I would merely point out that, when we went to Grenoble to see the new public transport system, involving a levy on employers, we discovered to our interest that there were more car parking places in the centre of the city and more cars coming into the centre of the city than before the public transport system was built. Perhaps public transport systems do not always create the desired effect.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about pollution. Surely he would agree with me that cars that stand in long traffic jams create far more pollution than traffic flowing freely on inter-urban roads. Far from increasing pollution, the creation of inter-urban roads could do something to reduce it.

Both of the matters covered by the Bill have been of great interest to me as joint chairman, for the past 16 years, of the parliamentary road study group and as the senior Conservative on the Select Committee on Transport. As long ago as 1983, the Select Committee argued that the Public Utilities Street Works Act 1950 should be amended. Almost two years ago, in an Adjournment debate answered by my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities, then Minister for Public Transport, I asked for plans to allow further private financing of road building. At long last, we have a Bill before us. Although the Department has not exactly moved with the speed of light, we should warmly welcome the Bill. As always, one or two minor details will need to be examined in Committee, but in general the House should approve the Bill and hope that it will be enacted as soon as possible.

I found the comments made by the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East a little strange. The Labour party apparently feels so strongly about toll roads that it has not even bothered to whip its members and does not intend to divide the House. The hon. Gentleman and I both know that if the Labour party was really so strongly opposed to the Bill, it would have brought its members in to vote against it.

Mr. Snape : Senior Conservative or not, the hon. Gentleman can rarely resist making a cheap political point. I made it quite plain that the Labour party is strongly in favour of the second part of the Bill. No doubt had we whipped our members tonight, the hon. Gentleman would have pointed out how illogical it was to vote against something of which the Front-Bench spokeman had already said we were in favour. The hon. Gentleman's problem is that he does not stick to the script.

Mr. Fry : Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I write my own script. I can only say that, if I have learnt cheap political tricks, it has been in many years of debate with him on transport matters.

Let me refer first to the second part of the Bill, which deals with street works. I do not think that we need say too much about that tonight. All of us have experienced frustration and irritation as a result of the constant digging-up of roads. I am reminded of an incident that

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took place a few years ago. A hole was dug in the road in one of our major cities. It was surrounded by fencing and everybody went away. It was a week before anybody asked who had dug up the road and which authority was responsible. In fact, no one had been responsible ; it was a practical joke. The problem has existed for many years and regulation is needed.

As I said, we shall have to consider one or two points in Committee, including the right to charge a statutory undertaker for his occupation of the road and questions concerning emergency work, and further work after substantial road works have been carried out. I hope that we shall defer to the Committee on all these matters. I hope that they can be dealt with satisfactorily and in the spirit of co-operation already shown by the joint utilities--the cable industry and the highway authorities. The proposals are long overdue. There should be a minimum of further argument about them and we should seek to ensure that they reach the statute book at the earliest opportunity.

As the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East said, much more controversial are the two parts of the Bill dealing with the provision of new roads. There will be those--both in the House and outside it--who believe that we do not need any more new roads. They are perfectly entitled to their opinion, but I feel that they are misguided, for the reason spelt out clearly by the hon. Gentleman--the enormous increase in car ownership that will take place over the next 20 years. We already have the most congested main roads of any developed country in the world. With an influx of new traffic on the scale that has been forecast, our present network is in danger of becoming overloaded--even given the Government's far-sighted plans to improve the motorway system. The task of building sufficient new roads even partially to meet the new demand is clearly the Government's responsibility.

I do not want anyone to go away with the impression that I am advocating covering the countryside with concrete or asphalt. I believe, however, that successful inter-urban movement is the prerequisite for economic development and achievement. Some people say, "Put everything on the railway." Anyone who has examined that proposition knows perfectly well that if we double or treble what is being carried on British Rail--I would welcome such a move--it would still leave a tremendous amount of freight to be carried on our road network, and that is even if British Rail itself could cope with such an increase in demand. While I do not suggest that more and more money should simply be put into the road building programme-- be it private or public--I believe that there will be an ongoing demand for road expenditure. That is why the Bill is important, as is the move towards securing more private finance.

Whatever our political views, we all accept that public resources will always be scarce and that public moneys will increasingly be needed for all kinds of transport infrastructure projects. Only recently, we read that British Rail needs--or has asked for--an extra £2 billion next year. We have learnt that the new light rail schemes that the Government are approving will be funded almost entirely from public funds. Only this week, London Underground announced that it would take seven or eight

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years to bring about the improvements that are needed, and its chairman said that the company could not achieve that entirely without Government assistance. In addition to such projects are the many experiments needed to improve access to buses and to encourage more bus operations in our towns and cities. All those activities will take up a valuable part of our national resources.

The need for transport finance is becoming enormous. Surely, therefore, we should welcome any proposal that will add to our transport infrastructure and take some of the strain off public expenditure. The urban improvements that we need are on such a large scale that it is essential that we find any assistance that we can. We must put the proposal for private road finance into context, however. The 1989-90 Select Committee report "Roads for the Future" said that private finance may make a welcome contribution but that it will not provide a solution to the fundamental problem. Among the evidence that we received before we reached that conclusion was that from the Bank of America, which pointed out that privately financed roads would make only a minor contribution. However, the Bank of America saw such roads playing a significant part in providing major thoroughfares. It is clear, therefore, that, although the proposal will help, it does not provide the whole answer. I do not think that the Government would claim that it does.

During that investigation, we also discovered that the construction industry still had many reservations. It felt that much still needed to be done to make its involvement in building roads more attractive. For its part, the Select Committee felt that the time between conception of a road and its completion was still far too long. Even with the Government's welcome new proposals on planning and compensation, the period will still be too long.

In addition, there is the problem that the cost of preparing and planning a road project is very high. Figures given to the Select Committee showed that about 5 or 6 per cent. of the total cost of a new road project could be taken up purely in planning and preparation. If a concern is uncertain whether it will win a contract, few construction groups will want to put up or borrow large amounts of money when it will be a very long time--even if the project is successful--before there is a return.

I think that I know what the Government's response to that point will be. They will argue that the schemes that they have put forward have attracted many interested parties. However, it is worth considering the Select Committee's report and another quotation from the Bank of America :

"Investors need to keep a balanced portfolio of assets and this is not possible if the Government releases relatively few schemes at a time as at present. The private sector money would show more interest if and when a relatively large number of schemes is available on the market."

I support the Bill, but I believe that more must be done to attract more private sector involvement because I desperately believe that we must spend more on transport as a whole.

One of my reservations about the success of the current proposals is fairly simple : although there are a number of obvious candidates for private money, at the moment that list is not too extensive. The Select Committee considered that problem. We took up the suggestion that more joint funding between the public and private sectors was desirable. We felt that that was particularly appropriate

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where there would be large benefits to the public which would not be extracted in the form of revenue by the promoter- -for example, an increase in land values or congestion relief for the public road network.

The Select Committee concluded that, properly set up, there was no reason to suppose that joint funding ventures would involve Government subsidies or even Government guarantees. We thought that such schemes were a sensible way of sharing the risks and maintaining the benefits of private sector involvement.

The Government have taken their time to promote many more joint fundings, particularly on a national scale. For a number of years there was an insistence on either totally public or totally private. The most recent example involved the question how to finance the channel rail link entirely within the private sector. However, I believe that there are some encouraging signs. The climate is changing and in that respect I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Transport and to his work in public transport. He has been willing to involve the Government in schemes to improve transport efficiency. I want particularly to pay tribute to his attitude towards sensible light rail schemes and to his approval of schemes that meet the national criteria. However, there are many schemes available, but insufficient money to meet them. Therefore, the more that we can do through joint funding or by other means to attract more private money, the better.

Already many of our local roads have been considered suitable for developer contributions. Although that is welcome, there are problems. For example, it often takes some time to put a scheme together and to reconcile the views and needs of the local community, the local authority and those who want to take advantage of the development. Schemes are being delayed because of a lack of sufficient public money in the form of the local authority contribution and also because the developers must be convinced that the scheme will be to their best advantage.

There are two schemes in my constituency that have a high priority in terms of traffic flows and they are necessary on environmental grounds. One of them, the Wellingborough eastern relief road, which would complete the town ring road and help hundreds of my constituents, has had to be dropped from the county council's transport policy plan because the council felt that it did not have sufficient funds to build it purely as a county road. Therefore, the building of the road has been delayed until developers can fund part of it. A similar problem applies, although to a lesser extent, to the other priority scheme, the Isham bypass.

All that seems to show that joint funding can make a contribution and has much to offer, although the present circumstances need to be improved. One of my minor criticisms of the Bill is that it does not address that problem. I believe that more could and should be done to build more schemes through joint funding arrangements.

Another concern is land use. In recent years, it has been fashionable to develop out-of-town shopping and to open up new land that was previously not used for commercial purposes. That has happened frequently because town centres have become congested. This is not the occasion to debate whether that is desirable, but there is no doubt that the right kind of road and planning policies could cause more developers to be interested in subsidising or paying for roads if they felt that the scheme opened up new land.

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The Bill tends to relate to access on to the road from nearby land. If that is to be the criterion, there is a danger that many firms will want access to that private road. Too many accesses to a road could constitute a road safety problem. However, a limited access to the road, opening up new land away from but adjacent to it, could create more interest without creating road safety problems. It must be possible to allow a promoter to benefit from a development that would not be acceptable without the new road but would be acceptable with it. Such land would then have an increased value and a planning gain. If it was taken up by the promoter of the road and sold later when the road was completed, the proceeds from that extra gain could well form a substantial part of the cost of the whole venture.

The Bill's proposals are good, but I suspect that their impact will be more limited than the Government might like. I have tried to describe further steps which must be taken to encourage more private ventures and I hope that those schemes will come forward. For a long time I have felt strongly that additionality was an essential part of the Government's proposals in relation to private financing of roads. Indeed, I said that two years ago in an Adjournment debate. I believed that we must be sure that we were not merely saving on schemes that the Government would otherwise produce themselves.

I have been impressed over the past two or three years by the enormous demand for transport investment in many realms of activity, and I have become aware that we cannot solve all our traffic problems simply by building roads. We must consider new light rail systems, new bus systems and park-and-ride. Provided that the money saved by building private roads is reinvested in transport infrastructure as a whole, my opposition to no additionality would be much diminished. We face a serious future unless we put more money into the transport infrastructure. The Bill must be supported because, whether we are road, rail, pipeline or water advocates, it will give the Government the opportunity to spend more money on transport as a result of the schemes.

For far too long, transport has been the Cinderella subject in national debate and in political priorities. That is the result of two main factors. First, we discovered that personal services were more important. One tends to win or lose more votes on personal services such as health and education. Secondly, in a local authority that is confronted with a problem, the first item to be cut is capital expenditure. That is true of national and local government. In the past few years, there has been increasing public awareness of public transport problems and increasing public demand for the Government to attend to them. That increasing public awareness is the result of two factors--increasing affluence and the demand for more mobility, and the neglect of transport investment over the past 30 or 40 years.

Public financing will not solve all the problems of congestion, but it can help to ease them. It may not build many more new roads, but it will build some. It will not relieve the Government of their responsibility for public sector finance, but it can help to divert resources to where they are desperately needed. For those reasons, the Bill deserves support.

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6.52 pm

Mr. Gordon Oakes (Halton) : Unlike the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry), I do not like the Bill at all. I do not like parts I, II, III or IV. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am astonished that the Opposition will not divide the House tonight. I wish that they would.

Parts I and II expand the role of toll roads and bridges. It would be a progressive policy to abolish tolls on some roads. The hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Fearn) asked about the Mersey tunnel and the Humberside bridge. At one time, it was the policy of all parties to get rid of the ancient system of tolls on roads and to make all roads the Queen's highways and free to all. Parts III and IV replace the Public Utilities Street Works Act 1950, but they have more holes in them than they seek to prevent in the roads themselves. In parts I and II, the Government wish, in a doctrinaire way, to abrogate their responsibility for public spending and to shift it to tolls, to the private sector and to the motorist. They are taking us back, kicking and screaming, to the Turnpike Acts of the eighteenth century, under which people paid to go along a stretch of road. The Bill is worse than that : at least under the Turnpike Acts the people responsible for roads were elected or appointed to consider local and national needs and to provide proper roads. They were not entrepreneurs who sought to make a profit from the roads, which is what parts I and II seek to allow.

The Government claim that the Bill will provide additional expenditure for public roads. That may be so, but there is always a grave risk under any Government, and especially under this Government, that what is intended to be additional to becomes a substitute for public expenditure on public roads. It is a good cop-out for the Government not to spend more money on roads by introducing toll roads and getting private industry to build roads and bridges.

Like you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and like most hon. Members and their constituents, I am a motorist. I am becoming sick of the way that motorists are kicked about--by the Conservatives and by my party. I pay road tax of £100 a year. The intention of the road fund licence was to build roads for motorists. A vast amount of the money that goes into the Treasury is not spent on building roads but goes into the general maw of the Treasury. As a motorist with a private car, I pay very little compared to the road haulier or bus operator. Where does that money go? It should provide public roads. Each time that I buy a gallon of petrol, I pay a huge duty. Every gallon that goes into my tank contributes to the Government's costs of building an infrastructure that I expect as a return for the tax that I pay. Like other hon. Members, I pay income tax. Part of that tax should provide the essential infrastructure, namely, a proper transport system. If I sell a property and make a profit, I may pay capital gains tax. Again, that goes to a Government who are seeking to opt out of their duty to provide a transport system. I also pay the poll tax. Like many hon. Members, I pay twice, because I pay in London and in my constituency. Part of that tax goes to the county council or to the roads authority for lighting and for improving and maintaining the highways.

In addition to paying those taxes, motorists would have to pay, as a result of the Bill, for the privilege of travelling

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along some roads, but the Government should provide those roads from the taxes already being paid by the motorists.

That is why I object bitterly to the provisions of parts I and II. I do not think that they will work. Contractors and builders will not jump at the chance to provide capital investment in a sector where it will be a long time before they see any capital return. The Bill is a doctrinaire attempt by the Government to deal with a real problem, and I think that it will fail.

Many hon. Members--including the Minister--gave constituency examples. I shall give one because it is apposite, although I do not like to use such examples on Second Reading. My constituency is divided by the River Mersey- -Runcorn is to the south and Widnes to the north. Part of Cheshire is to the north and part is to the south. The first bridge over the River Mersey is in Halton. It is the Runcorn-Widnes bridge, which is unbelievably, obscenely congested many times during the day. People used to cross the river by ferry. Hon. Members may have heard the famous recitation of the late, great Stanley Holloway, which was called "Tuppence per person per trip". That referred to the Runcorn ferry in my constituency. If we have a toll road, as the Government suggest, it will not be tuppence per person per trip. Goodness knows what sum will be paid in tolls. We then had a transporter bridge to replace the ferry. Again, it was a toll bridge, but the toll was not for a highway, but for a bridge. The transporter bridge was one of only three in the country, and it carried vehicles across the river and the Manchester ship canal.

A new bridge was built in 1963 which has two lanes each way. That bridge is now desperately congested, so there is a desperate need for a second crossing of the river. I wrote to the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson), about a second crossing, and he replied that the Government were "considering" a second crossing. He said that they were considering a toll bridge across the River Mersey which would not be near the present bridge, but which would connect Runcorn with Speke airport. It would, therefore, be linked with a dubious scheme by British Aerospace to make Speke airport a hub-and-spoke airport. As two such schemes are being considered at the same time, I do not believe that it would be a viable venture. The toll bridge would take the road over the widest part of the estuary, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) will realise.

As there is an existing bridge, it is unlikely that people will pay to go over a toll bridge. Haulage firms will not do so. We are told constantly by haulage firms in our constituencies how strapped for cash they are, so they will not add to the costs by going over what could be an expensive toll bridge. The bridge will not relieve congestion on the existing bridge. We need two public bridges--two roads. One should go in one direction and the other in the other direction. That would be the sensible solution. The Widnes Weekly News and the Runcorn Weekly News are running a campaign on the desperate need for a second bridge. The local chamber of commerce, Halton district council, Cheshire county council and everyone concerned with transport in the area agree that the idea of a toll bridge to link Runcorn to Speke is one of the most ludicrous ideas imaginable. The doctrinaire

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policies of the right hon. Member for Hertsmere and the policies in the Bill have led the Government to propose that for an area that desperately needs a solution.

Crossing a river is the highest point of expenditure when building a road. Building a road is expensive, but building a bridge is far more expensive. In view of the cost to the construction firm that undertook the private work on the bridge, if it was to get a decent return on its capital, as it would be entitled to do, the tolls for going over the bridge would be desperately high. The Bill seeks to lead us down that path. It will not work, and it is not desirable. In Scotland, in Northern Ireland, in Wales and in England, the Queen's highways should be free to those who pay taxes, as we all do, to a Government who are responsible for building highways.

Parts III and IV are designed to replace the Public Utilities Street Works Act 1950, which needs replacing because it is over 40 years old. In the very old days--the days of smaller units--we did not need such legislation because a local authority, such as my borough of Widnes, provided water, gas and sewerage services. One man was responsible for public lighting, for water supplies and for gas engineering. He would consult with himself or he would go to the highways engineer and say, "We are going to dig up such and such a street. Is that all right?"

The 1950 Act was introduced as a result of the fact that many local services, such as gas and electricity, had been taken away from local authorities. People had to deal with a nationalised body for public utilities and with a local authority, which made it necessary for new legislation. The public utilities have now ceased to be public ; they are private utilities, whether water, sewerage services, gas or telephones. There is a need for another Act on that basis alone. A golden opportunity has been missed in parts III and IV. It is sometimes essential for utilities, such as telephones, gas, electricity, sewerage and water, to go under the streets. I admit that. A vivid example came in the recent terrible war in Iraq, when we rightly bombed the bridges to stop transport going in and out of Kuwait. In bombing the bridges, we destroyed not only the telecommunications services which were carried along them but the water supply and sometimes the sewage pipes. That brought home to people a fact that we do not usually think about--that streets, roads and bridges carry not only traffic, but essential modern services. I hope that there are not terrible problems in Iraq from plague and from disease as a result of the lack of water supply and proper sewerage systems. What has happened in Iraq brings home the fact that streets and roads are not only for traffic.

Why is there not a far more positive approach in the Bill towards the use of highways for public utilities services? Why is there not a specific requirement for new roads, whether toll roads or not, in towns and in development areas around towns that services should go under the grass verge between the pavement and the road itself? That would cause the minimum disruption to traffic and to pedestrians. There are verges in almost all new developments. Why not put all services there? Pneumatic drills would not be needed for digging and there would be no disruption to pedestrians or to traffic. When services are reinstated or when new systems are being installed, it should be possible to provide a verge for the services to go under.

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We should accept the fact that roads are not only for traffic, but for other services and we should plan for that. I should have liked the Bill to require local authorities, planning authorities and public utilities to use verges to prevent disruption from digging up roads. There should be separate facilities for public utilities. However, the Bill perpetuates the old system as utilities can still go under roads. The initial engineering may be cheaper, but in the long term, in view of the capital cost to the public utilities and the disruption to the public, it would be cheaper to use a special conduit along the highway.

The hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) raised with the Minister the pertinent question of reinstatement. The Minister did not answer him but quoted clause 54. When I checked that clause, I found that it had nothing to do with reinstatement. Perhaps the Minister quoted the wrong clause. I then looked at the provisions on reinstatement and found that the word "pavement" was not there. I looked through the definitions, but the word was not there either. The hon. Member for Battersea is clearly on to a good point.

When I practised as a solicitor 20 years ago, I dealt with many cases of people who fell over on roads, usually as a result of inadequate reinstatement. Unfortunately, such people are usually old, frail, disabled, or blind.

A reinstatement may look all right to the street authority just after it has been done, but two weeks later it may sink and cause poor old souls to fall down. Moreover, there is not necessarily a follow-up. The Bill does not provide that local street authorities must ensure that the reinstatement is perfectly carried out and maintained. The utilities will simply say that the work is temporary and that they will correct it later, but they often leave it for months or even years. Road reinstatements may cause great danger to motor cyclists, who may be thrown off their machines, or to cyclists, who may be thrown over their handlebars. They are also dangerous to pedestrians, particularly old and disabled people, who may fall and injure themselves, and those in wheelchairs.

The matter is important to the public and the Bill should deal with it because there will probably not be another such Bill for 40 years. I hope that the Minister will consider my arguments sympathetically in Committee, as well as those made by the hon. Member for Battersea, who clearly also regards the matter as important.

I expect that most other hon. Members will have received some material over the weekend from the National Joint Utilities group, which is a consortium of people who dig up roads and provide important services. The material consisted of some special pleading, but also raised two important matters. The first was about clause 48, which deals with emergencies. An emergency is an unexpected or unforeseen event, and public utilities must move quickly to deal with it. I know that the Bill provides for that to a degree, and provides that less time can be given to the street authority than it would otherwise have, but sometimes a repair must be carried out immediately as the emergency might be a matter of life or death. People may have to make enormous insurance claims for food that is ruined as a result of a loss of electricity supply to their freezers for more than 24 hours. That may seem trivial to the Government, but it is important to electricity users. Indeed, in a sense, it is just as important to them as using the street. The electricity service must repair the supply as a matter of urgency.

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I do not understand why the Government have included such a provision. The matter was raised in another place. I understand that the Government want to be tight about it because they do not want roads to be dug up unnecessarily. There is much mythology about public authorities digging up roads unnecessarily and they are sometimes a little careless, but, on the whole, the work is co-ordinated. Unlike under the 1950 Act, if no emergency has occurred, the local authority could be prosecuted in the criminal courts for needlessly digging up the road. The street authority has such a protection. Will the Minister consider my fair argument about emergency provisions?

The National Joint Utilities group also raised the problem of clause 91, which deals with offences and penalties. Under the 1950 Act, only the highway authority could prosecute the public utility for digging up the road, whereas, under the Bill, any person can do so. That may appear to increase individuals' access to justice, but the Government should be careful. A vindictive, litigious person who wants to stick his knife in the gas or electricity board will be given a glorious opportunity to involve himself in spending enormous sums of money by taking the case to court simply out of spite. I shall not mention names, but I know a shopkeeper in my constituency who constantly complains to me that every public utility seems to dig up the road outside his shop. I am convinced that, with clause 91, he will be hotfooting to court week after week whenever someone digs up the road near him. The clause will also cause increased expenditure for the public utilities, which will eventually be passed on to ordinary people in their bills.

The Government should think again. Perhaps the provision could be expanded beyond allowing the highway authority to take cases to court to include other bodies but not any person. That takes it much too far.

As I said at the outset, I do not like the Bill. It is a cop-out for the Government, who seek to provide for private sector roads instead of what we are used to--transport services. I do not like the slipshod way in which the Public Utilities Street Works Act is being replaced. I should have loved to have been able to vote against the Bill because of those deficiencies, but, surprisingly, shall not have the opportunity to do so. I shall not raise a lone voice against it. However, I hope that the Government will bear in mind that the Bill is imperfect and that there is much to be done. They have a golden opportunity to put things right, especially with regard to street works.

7.16 pm

Mr. David Evennett (Erith and Crayford) : Following the interesting speech of the right hon. Member for Halton (Mr. Oakes), which is always an experience, I can neither agree with his views on the Bill, nor with his showbiz example of Stanley Holloway. However, nor could I follow my hon. Friend the Minister's remark about Flanders and Swann. I grew up in the 1960s and could not think of anyone suitable from among my records of the Beatles and Dusty Springfield to quote in my speech.

I shall begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Minister on his robust speech this afternoon and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on taking a firm grasp on the problem of transport and roads during their past few months in office. For the first time, my constituents,

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who suffer badly from poor British Rail services and inadequate roads in and around Greater London, feel that the Secretary of State and his colleagues understand their problems and concerns. If my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State can do for roads in Greater London what he undoubtedly did so successfully for the people of Scotland in the road building programme in the past few years, my constituents will be delighted.

The roads in our country today are totally inadequate for the needs of the modern age. On excellent roads such as the A2, which goes through my borough of Bexley, constant repair work makes the road much less effective than it should be.

I am well aware that this debate does not cover road maintenance repairs to the A2, which have caused us to suffer so regularly in the past year or so. However, it takes note of the need for a higher quality road network than we have at present. I appreciate that tolls are not always popular, at least in general terms, and tolls for crossings such as the Dartford tunnel hold up traffic and cause some delays-- [Interruption.]

Mrs. Dunwoody : Pay attention. The hon. Gentleman is being funny.

Mr. Evennett : I should be grateful if the hon. Lady, who will no doubt have an opportunity to make her own speech, would give me a chance to develop my theme.

Elsewhere in the developed world, toll roads are a way of life. My constituents warmly welcome the building of the Dartford bridge and look forward to its opening later this year. The fact that a public sector alternative exists in the Blackwall tunnel and, I hope, in the not-too- distant future, an east London river crossing, means that there will be increased choice for motorists who need to cross the Thames in south-east London. Motorists have the choice of paying a toll at the Dartford tunnel and, subsequently, with the addition of the bridge, making an easier crossing, or travelling further, to the public sector road which has no toll, and crossing at Blackwall. The second option involves a substantially longer journey, but at least motorists have a choice. As I am sure the Minister will agree, Conservatives believe in choice. As we have heard from speeches this afternoon, the Labour party always wants to deny choice to the people of this country. Conservatives passionately believe that there should be alternatives and choice.

It is easy for all of us to say that we would like more money spent on absolutely every aspect of public sector development, whether in the health service, education or transport. But Conservatives are realistic and know that there is a limited amount of money for the hard-pressed taxpayer to put into the public domain to spend on desirable but often expensive developments.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State is absolutely correct that any additional money from the transport budget should go to the railway network. Network SouthEast in my district is a poor railway system. However, the investment that the Government have made is beginning to work its way through--it certainly needs to because the hard-pressed commuters in my district are tired of a second-rate service.

This country's road network also needs to be developed, in particular the roads round London, which are poor and inadequate. Therefore, I was delighted to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister that the public

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sector road programme will be unaffected by the Bill. The Government are endeavouring to improve and increase the opportunities for road development, without any extra cost to the taxpayer. Of course, we do not want our countryside to be ruined by building more and more roads and developing a concrete jungle, but I believe that there is a growing demand for road development.

The motorist is never supported, but always criticised, and condemned to a second or third-rate service, by the Labour party. But the hard-pressed motorist deserves a better deal. The Bill offers him an improvement in his driving opportunities by providing toll roads in some parts of the country. It is no good to use the green ticket and merely say that it is better to build fewer roads when we have congested roads, bumper-to-bumper cars, emissions from cars that are hardly moving and bad-tempered drivers being made to suffer. We need a developing road network. Therefore, I welcome the first part of the Bill and take issue with Opposition speakers who offered no alternative to road development.

The Opposition have merely said that they want more and more money paid into the public transport system--the railways and the underground. We would all like that, but for many people in parts of the country such as mine there is no underground network system. Roads are vital for people to get from north-east and south-east London to East Anglia because the only means of transport--short of coming into London and transferring to another public transport system, which would take much longer--is the car. There is no other choice. Therefore, I welcome the first section of the Bill, although it contains issues that need clarification. Perhaps those matters can be dealt with in Committee. In principle, I welcome the initiative taken by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and his departmental team and look forward to an improving road system that will be in the interests of the motorist.

I shall concentrate on the second half of the Bill, which I also welcome. I believe that it will go a long way towards relieving existing problems associated with the repair work of our roads. The extent to which street works create traffic snarl-ups should not be under-estimated. That is especially true of prolonged work or where the same road is dug up by one statutory undertaker after another. Those problems occur in my constituency, in districts such as Crayford in London and in other major conurbations. Therefore, I shall concentrate my comments on the second half of the Bill, which deals with the control of street works in England and Wales. The present law, which has been discussed--the Public Utilities Street Works Act 1950--is long overdue for reform. Times and traffic conditions have changed drastically in the 40 or so years since the legislation was enacted. There is now four times as much traffic on the roads as there was in the 1950s and holes are dug in the roads by more service providers than ever before. Some of those providers, for example, cable television operators, did not exist when the present law was passed.

Today's heavy use of roads means that traffic often has to be disrupted simply for carriageway repairs--an issue that I have raised in the House many times in connection with the A2 trunk road and other major roads serving my constituency. If we are to limit the disruption and congestion caused by road works, it is essential that work

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--other than carriageway repairs--such as street works carried out by statutory undertakers should be properly regulated by up-to-date legislation.

The Bill, which implements the changes recommended in the Horne report, will introduce important changes that will lead to fewer holes being dug in our roads, street works being undertaken in a safer and more controlled manner and reinstatement work being carried out swiftly and to a higher standard--we should aspire to higher standards. We all know that many street works have been substandard, with unattractive and potentially hazardous results. I am sure that we have all witnessed the spectacle of the same road being endlessly dug up and refilled by a succession of utility companies. The Bill's powers, enabling local authorities to co- ordinate and control street works, will, I hope, bring to an end the farce of one company digging up what another filled in the day before.

Another feature of the Bill that I am sure will be widely welcomed, not least by the statutory undertakers, is the right for undertakers to carry out permanent reinstatement. Disputes over the reinstatement costs charged by local authorities are all too frequent and are probably the main cause of disputes between statutory undertakers and local authorities. The fact that utility companies cannot carry out permanent reinstatement also leaves roads in disrepair. Temporary repairs often leave humps or holes in the road for long periods before permanent work is carried out, which creates unnecessary hazards for road users, particularly cyclists.

There is no logical reason why utility companies should not carry out the work, provided that it meets the appropriate standards. The change proposed under the Bill is clearly sensible.

One issue relating to street works that is regularly raised by my constituents is safety--the adequate lighting and guarding of street works. It is essential to do everything possible to help eliminate the hazards that street works create for pedestrians, particularly those who are blind or have impaired vision. It is not feasible to include detailed safety requirements in primary legislation. Utility companies use various methods and the safety requirements of a static excavation, where water mains are under repair, will differ from those used for the rolling trench techniques used by pipe and cable layers.

I am pleased that the Bill provides for codes of practice on safety. Will my hon. Friend the Minister ensure that there is adequate consultation on safety requirements, particularly with representatives of disabled groups? Will he ensure that the codes of practice are published as soon as possible after the legislation is enacted?

The Bill contains three issues that worry me. I agree with the issues in principle and wholeheartedly support them, but have doubts about their practical operation and application. The Second Reading debate is not the place to consider clauses in detail and I am sure that such matters will be fully addressed in Committee. However, I shall briefly outline my concerns to my hon. Friend the Minister. The first matter about which I am concerned is the limited definition of emergency works. The aim of the Bill, rightly, is to reduce the congestion caused by street works. Therefore, it is sensible to limit exceptions by tightly defining what constitutes an emergency. However, the present definition, which limits emergency works to those required to stop or prevent circumstances likely to cause danger, goes too far. Clearly, escaping gas is a danger, but

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