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Wheeler, Sir John

Whitney, Ray

Widdecombe, Ann

Wiggin, Jerry

Wolfson, Mark

Wood, Timothy

Tellers for the Ayes :

Mr. Irvine Patnick and

Mr. Tim Boswell.

NOES

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Beggs, Roy

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Cousins, Jim

Cryer, Bob

Dalyell, Tam

Dixon, Don

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Foster, Derek

Foulkes, George

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Golding, Mrs Llin

Gordon, Mildred

Haynes, Frank

Hood, Jimmy

Illsley, Eric

Kilfoyle, Peter

Leadbitter, Ted

Lewis, Terry

McFall, John

McGrady, Eddie

McMaster, Gordon

McNamara, Kevin

Mallon, Seamus

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Morley, Elliot

Paisley, Rev Ian

Robertson, George

Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

Salmond, Alex

Short, Clare

Skinner, Dennis

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

Stott, Roger

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Trimble, David

Vaz, Keith

Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

Wigley, Dafydd

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Tellers for the Noes :

Mr. William Ross and

Mr. Clifford Forsythe.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1992, which was laid before this House on 14th January, be approved.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(9) (Standing Committees on European Community documents),

Milk

That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 9997/91, relating to additional rules on the

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common market organisation in milk and milk products in respect of drinking milk ; and supports the Government in its intention to secure fair terms of competition for United Kingdom milk processors as well as a wider choice of available products for consumers.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

CONSOLIDATION, &c., BILLS

Ordered,

That, in respect of the Social Security Administration Bill [Lords], the Social Security Administration (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords], the Social Security (Consequential Provisions) Bill [Lords], the Social Security (Consequential Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Bill [ Lords ], the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Bill [Lords] and the Social Security Contributions and Benefits (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords], notices of Amendments, new Clauses and new Schedules to be moved in Committee may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bills have been read a second time.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

MEDICINAL PRODUCTS : PRESCRIPTION BY NURSES ETC. BILL [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified--

Resolved,

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Medicinal Products : Prescription by Nurses etc. Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the provisions of the Act in the sums so payable under any other Act.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

HEALTH

Ordered,

That Mr. Jerry Hayes be discharged from the Health Committee and Sir Anthony Durant be added to the Committee.-- [Mr. Dixon, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

AGRICULTURE

Ordered,

That Mr. Keith Bradley be discharged from the Agriculture Committee and Mr. Gavin Strang be added to the Committee.-- [Mr. Dixon, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

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Weston-super-Mare Relief Road

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

11.37 pm

Mr. Jerry Wiggin (Weston-super-Mare) : I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Minister for Roads and Traffic for coming to the House tonight to apply himself to the important problem of the relief road--that is what I call it--for Weston-super-Mare.

I last raised this and kindred matters in an Adjournment debate headed "Weston-super-Mare and Banwell (Roads)" on 20 November 1986. I shall quote, first from something that I said, to remind the Minister that I shall not be deterred from raising the subject again and again until our road is put right. I said then :

"I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind that he will not have to meet me too often on this subject if he can say something profitable to me tonight."--[ Official Report 20 November 1986 ; Vol. 105, c. 792.]

I concede that the Government have contributed to the first parts of the road, and there has been some improvement in the traffic. That has not been helped by the need for digging up, over no less than three months, the other main access into the town centre. My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) who was then the Minister for Roads and Traffic--the important Government post now held by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Chope)--said :

"My hon. Friend will not need reminding that, with the exception of the M5 motorway, which is the Department's responsibility, all the roads in his constituency are the responsibility of Avon county council. I note his suggestion that we should trunk a further section of road, but at present, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, it is for the county council alone to determine the priority to be accorded to any improvements considered necessary for its roads." The Minister continued :

"The Government are often accused of interfering with local authorities and of wishing to interfere more. I think that this is one of the occasions when, in general, it might be right for Government not to interfere, although I can understand any hon. Member asking why we have not come in with bigger boots and perhaps some financial inducement for the county council to change its order of priorities. A factual description of the situation, however, is that it is up to people in the county to fight for the right ordering of priorities. I hope that this debate will have a valuable role in that."

The Minister's penultimate paragraph was :

"Parliament has given the county council full responsi-bility for the local road network, and it would not be appropriate for central Government to interfere in its assessment of the relative priorities of the many schemes contained in its structure plan."--[ Official Report, 20 November 1986 ; Vol. 105, c. 796-98.]

My purpose in quoting is to paint the scene that presented itself to us, perfectly reasonably, after that debate. Again, I must be grateful to the director of highways, transport and engineering at Avon county council, Mr. Bracewell, for setting out fully the situation about stages VC and VI of the Weston-super-Mare relief road. He says :

"These stages of the scheme together with Stage IVB are those remaining to complete the strategy of construction of a dual carriageway from Junction 21 on the M4 into the Town Centre. Not until these stages are built will it be possible for traffic to divert off the full length of the existing road and provide the essential environmental relief to residents whose homes front onto the A370"--

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and to allow the traffic to flow at a decent and respectable speed even at the height of the summer season and to keep the commerce and industry of our town alive.

Mr. Bracewell continues :

"The County Council decided that it would make a joint bid for Stages IVB, VC and VI in its TSG bid for a commencement in 1992/93. The total value of this bid was £12,406,000 and the 93/93 expenditure was estimated at £2,088,000.

The objective was to complete construction of the whole PDR early in 1995 and hence maintain the target date set previously despite slippage on other earlier stages. The County Council made this bid its first priority in its submission. The second priority was for a scheme known as the Avonmouth Link. This is a small, but essential, section of a larger scheme being promoted by the DTp to provide better access off the motorway at Junction 18 and to relieve Avonmouth of the worst effects of heavy industrial traffic. It is the County Council's view that this scheme should be promoted and fully funded by the D.Tp as part of their scheme. The County Council have tried by various means, (including a deputation) to persuade the Minister for Roads that this is the case. It has been unsuccessful in these endeavours and hence, at a late stage, was obliged to include it as a bid for TSG in the 1992/93 submission. This has been done to match the timescale for construction of the DTp's own scheme. The County Council had pleaded that any settlement on this scheme should, given the special circumstances, not be at detriment to its bid for funds for other projects. The total cost of the Avonmouth Link is £2, 381,000."

I have no desire or suggestion about what should happen to the Avonmouth bypass. I am sure--and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) assures me--that the scheme has priority and is an urgent job. I was astonished to read in a glossy brochure produced by the Department of Transport and headed "South West Regional Brief"--I suggest that a few miles of pavement could have been built for the cost of producing the brochure--under "The Trunk Road Programme" the following sentence :

"and to provide a trunk road link from M5 to Avonmouth Docks, enabling motorway traffic to bypass the community of Avonmouth." So even the Minister's own Department actually believes that the bypass for Avonmouth is a trunk road. We have all believed that the Avon link road is a trunk road. The entire Avon road programme is being messed up because the Department will not accept that the main roads--the national roads--in the county should be paid for by it. I am sorry to say that I believe that, by forcing the county council to put in for transport supplementary grant, the Department has been guilty of very substantial trickery.

Now to the positive and more important aspect of the southern end of the county : Weston-super-Mare is the largest town in the old county of Somerset, yet it does not seem to be getting the attention from the Department of Transport that it deserves. We have a new railway station, paid for partly by the county council, but the high-speed trains cannot stop there because the platform is not long enough. We have half the new road, but one cannot get to it, because the essential first part, to which I have referred tonight, is not now to be completed for four years.

I have letters from the district council, the mayor and charter trustees and I know from my discussions with business men, hoteliers and those who manage our tourist industry that visitors do not expect to come off the motorway and drive straight into a traffic jam. I do not want to paint a picture of permanent disruption because--one has to be honest--the traffic does flow, but the newly completed road is now extremely busy. My hon.

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Friend the Minister would be amazed at how quickly the new road becomes congested, to put it mildly, at peak hours.

There are those who would like to come to Weston-super-Mare for the very good reason that it is a splendid place, but if they realise that their factories are about to be sited half an hour away from the motorway--even though they know that it is only a couple of miles--they will not come. They will go to places with better roads.

In the previous debate, I referred to the impact in sheer economic terms of the traffic delays in Banwell, for example. Within months of our building a bypass for that village, there would be a financial reward for the United Kingdom. The whole question of traffic in rapidly developing areas such as mine must be tackled in a much more determined manner.

I hope that my hon. Friend will not tell me that Avon has done well in a league table or that we have got more than our fair share in some way. I contend that the share is not big enough for anybody. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) was Secretary of State for Transport, he announced--much to my pleasure and with my great support- -a doubling of expenditure on roads. But where is the money? It is not forthcoming. OK, there is to be some widening of the motorways but, frankly, they should have been built wider in the first instance, and many of us told the Ministry of Transport, as it then was, that that was so. I was born and brought up in the county through which the M5 runs. I remember telling Sir Peter Agnew--all that time ago--that it should have been a three-lane road and, today, it is being made into a three-lane road. I hope that some of my remarks may be passed to the Treasury because, although my hon. Friend the Minister will be too loyal to say so, I am sure that that is the source of our problems. In the age of the motor car and road transport, it is no longer acceptable for the Government to sit back and tell us that our road is to be given priority, then to deprive our county of that priority and cheat over the money, spending county money on roads for which it is responsible. A review of the trunk roads system, paying special attention to the problems of Weston-super-Mare and our area, is long overdue.

11.43 pm

The Minister for Roads and Traffic (Mr. Christopher Chope) : My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) has argued persuasively the case for completing the final stages of the Weston-super- Mare primary distributor road. He has eloquently represented the views of his constituents, and the House can have no doubt about the strength of local feeling on this issue in Weston-super-Mare.

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is essential that the new road should be completed. Until the final part is finished, the full benefit of the investment in the project and the environmental benefits in the residential areas on both sides of the existing A371 will not be realised. The reason for not accepting the final three stages of the road for transport supplementary grant next year has nothing to do with the Government's view of the scheme's priority in relation to other Avon county council proposals.

The problem that we faced in deciding which schemes to include in the settlement was simply one of resources.

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