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"underhand" ; not as open as it should have been--would not it be best, to restore public confidence to the issue, for Travers Morgan to be dropped as consultants for the Leicester eastern bypass and for fresh consultants to be appointed?The A427 from Lutterworth to Market Harborough is also a county council road. Quite rightly, in answer to questions that I have tabled in the past couple of weeks, my hon. Friend the Minister has said that he is not responsible and that it is a matter for the county council. The county council has again written to me to say that, as far as Leicester is concerned, only three bypasses can be funded annually in the county, simply because the Minister quite properly keeps his fingers on the till. Three bypasses a year in Leicestershire means that plans for bypasses that are badly needed on the A427 at towns such as Theddingworth fade away into the dim and distant future.
The A427 runs from Lutterworth to Market Harborough. Only recently there was a march by protesters along the whole length of the road. Some had endearing messages for me and some had not so endearing messages for the Government. It is all recorded on film. The A427 is an important little road. It is the main southern east-west road running through the county. The whole lot needs improving.
Mr. Michael Latham (Rutland and Melton) : Hear, hear.
Sir John Farr : I am glad to have the support of my hon. Friend, who knows the road well. It aggravated the people who were marching the other day that, over 15 years ago, Leicestershire county council agreed a bypass plan for Theddingworth. The plan was about to go ahead. Land was acquired. The scheme had been approved, but it was suddenly dropped like a hot potato because the council had heard that a road called the A1-M1 link road was due to be built in another county.
The county council lost interest in improving the A427 in any manner. Many of us feel that that is a shoddy way to treat people who have the most terrible problems. Villages are almost snuffed out by articulated vehicles every day. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to examine once again the problem of the A427 at Theddingworth. It is a strategic road. Will he authorise, or instruct the county council to authorise, the early commencement of a bypass for Theddingworth and one or two other communities?
10.46 pm
The Minister for Roads and Traffic (Mr. Christopher Chope) : It is with considerable diffidence that I respond to an Adjournment debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir John Farr), who has served his area of Leicestershire for more than 20 years with such distinction. He is an expert, if ever there was one, on roads and other matters in Leicestershire.
I agree wholeheartedly that the Leicester eastern distributor road is a cause of great frustration. The road has not yet been completed and the prospect of its being completed soon are not nearly as good as we would wish. The city of Leicester has developed on a fairly conventional pattern, with main radial roads feeding to business and employment areas in the centre. In recent years, the county council has developed inner and outer orbital routes to distribute traffic around the city. Both the
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central relief road and the completed sections of the outer district distributor road have been funded with the help of 50 per cent. transport supplementary grant.As my hon. Friend says, three quarters of the outer distributor road is now complete. Two sections remain to be completed. The A46-A47 link was accepted for TSG in 1986-87. The first western stage was completed in December 1989. The remainder of the scheme has planning permission, but orders are required for alterations to side roads and accesses and for compulsory purchase. The orders were published in March 1990 and the public inquiry was originally programmed for this summer.
Land will be acquired principally from the Leicester clinic and public open space in the control of Leicester city council. Negotiations have been proceeding with both. The city council previously showed an unwillingness to take the land out of public open space, possibly to frustrate the road scheme, although recently it apparently reluctantly agreed to support the scheme, subject to conditions. As my hon. Friend said, part of the completed first stage is not yet open to traffic and is subject to vandalism.
I am afraid to say that it is a sorry saga and an example of the worst conflicts that arise between a city and a county council which do not act together in the interests of the local citizens. The Leicester eastern distributor road was originally planned back in the 1930s. There was land reservation for a dual carriageway and in the late 1960s Leicester city council--then the highway authority--built houses on the reservation for the second highway. Recent traffic studies justify the need for greater traffic capacity than that provided by a single carriageway, but Leicester city council has recently resolved to reject the option that would have required extensive property demolition, in favour of a more modest improvement of an existing road.
The Government have responsibility for trunk roads and motorways and allocate resources, under the transport supplementary grant system, for local authority schemes. We often express our views on what we would like to happen, but we do not have the ability to require local authorities to take particular courses of action. As I said in an earlier debate, mentioned by the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz), and as I have already told my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough in meetings, it seems totally illogical that the distributor road has not been completed, and I hope that it soon will be. Certainly, any suggestion that it cannot be completed because of the Government's reluctance to give it funding is totally mischievous. It is included in Leicestershire county council's transport planning programme for construction in 1993, 1994 and 1995, and has good economic justifications.
Obviously at the moment grant for 1993 only has been applied for. If the county council thought that it could start work in 1992, it would have put it in the programme submission that is currently under consideration. If the council still thought that it could start work in 1992, it might not be too late for it to propose an amendment to
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the submission, although time is extremely short, because we will be announcing the final determination of the allocations in December.Any suggestion that the Government are holding up the scheme is totally mischievous and without foundation. The Government would be pleased for the scheme to proceed and have always made it clear that it would probably qualify for transport supplementary grant. I also refer to the A427. I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned for a long time for an improvement to that corridor ; and, as he says, again that is not a direct responsibility of the Department of Transport. However, I hope that he will be pleased today--not only for himself, but for his constituents--to know that contracts 2 and 3 on the M1-A1 link road have been awarded to Tarmac Construction. It is a two-year contract with a value approaching £36 million and is a further major investment in the roads infrastructure in Leicestershire.
That road will give tremendous relief to people living alongside the A427. Obviously, it is not as good a solution as a bypass and no doubt that will still be a priority for the local authority. However, I hope that, by getting much of the through traffic off the A427 with the M1-A1 link, it will bring the relief that my hon. Friend seeks. As regards the Leicester eastern bypass, that scheme was put into the roads programme in May 1989, in the "Roads for Prosperity" White Paper. Its planning and design are at a very early stage, with consultants only recently appointed to undertake initial design work. The next key event for the scheme will be a public consultation, which is planned to take place in 1993. The Leicester eastern bypass is thought to be an important strategic route, because it will bring relief to that side of Leicester and will complement the western bypass, work on which is expected to begin next year.
The A46-A6 link, which is effectively the Leicester eastern bypass, was introduced into the programme because it was thought that it would be able to provide continuity in the trunk road network for long distance north- west to south-east traffic. I know that my hon. Friend has concerns about that and about the consultants chosen after competitive tender to be responsible for its design. On the latter point, that was after a competition in which Travers Morgan One was successful. I cannot give my hon. Friend the details of exactly the amount by which it was more successful than any other tenderer. I hope that he will accept that the tendering carried out by the Department of Transport is purely objective.
It is true to say that these are the same consultants who have been advising us on the Leicester western bypass. They are highly esteemed and wholly professional. I ask my hon. Friend to accept that they will look at the scheme objectively and will take into account all the views of the local people which will be expressed during the consultation period that will precede the announcement of any preferred route. It is still possible, even now, if everybody says that they do not need the bypass after all, that the Government may withdraw it from their programme. It would be premature to take such a decision tonight.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.
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