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9.13 pm
The Minister for Railways and Roads (Mr. John Watts): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) for raising this topic this evening. It is refreshing to have heard from him a balanced account of the importance that roads can have--an account grounded in the real needs of a community, its people and businesses.
On our plans for the road network in East Sussex and the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend, we must balance transport benefits against their environmental cost. An equally important concern is the balance between the number of good transport investments that we are called on to support and their affordability.
Frankly, we cannot afford to support anything like the number of good, worthwhile projects available, if we are to continue to control our expenditure. Our review of the motorway and trunk road programme announced in November sought to ensure that we were committed to the most effective overall programme achievable, in the light of the resources available to Government in the next few years.
Before talking about individual road schemes, it may be worth saying something about roads for the county as a whole. My hon. Friend will recognise that East Sussex is served by a trunk road box. The M25, although not in East Sussex itself, provides for strategic east-west movements to the north of the county. It is also, of course, the point of access to the strategic motorway network as a whole.
To the south of the county is the A27/A259 south coast trunk route. The importance of that link to the economies of Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings and other towns is not disputed, and there is little that I would want to add to what my hon. Friend has already said about the importance of those links. The trunk road network is extended south of the A27 by the A26 to Newhaven.
The M25 and the south coast trunk route are linked by two trunk roads to the west and east of the county--the A23 to Brighton and the A21 to Hastings.
We have proposals in the future programme for all those roads except the A26. We announced last year our intention to widen the busiest section of the M25--the section between the M3 and the M40--to five and six-lane dual carriageway.
For the A23, we still have one scheme in our long-term programme, but we have in fact already implemented most of our proposals for the A23, with a programme of schemes costing about £85 million. Regular users of the A23 will be well acquainted with the improvements that have been achieved on the route in the past five years.
On the A21, I was pleased to be able to announce in the November review that two schemes would form part of a package to be built under the private finance initiative. Those are the Tonbridge to Pembury improvement and the much-needed, long-awaited Lamberhurst bypass.
Again, those schemes are not in East Sussex--they are in Kent--but they are on the Hastings link to the M25, and that is a key reason why we have sought to ensure that those improvements are provided as soon as possible. They will be built under what we call design, build, finance and operate arrangements--DBFO for short--in which a single contractor finances and constructs road improvements. He then maintains and operates the road for a 30-year period.
The DBFO package for Kent and East Sussex does, of course, extend beyond the A21; it includes the construction of the A27 Polegate bypass in my hon. Friend's constituency, and he has asked about timing.
The Highways Agency is aiming to award a contract for the project in the 1997-98 financial year. Construction should start shortly after the contract is awarded. All DBFO contracts have an incentive for the contractor to get on with construction as early as he possibly can. As I explained to my hon. Friend in my recent letter, the agency is aware that the compulsory purchase order for the Polegate bypass expires in September. It will therefore serve notices to treat before the expiry date. That is sufficient to ensure that the order is valid and that the statutory procedures will not need to be repeated.
On the proposed Lewes to Polegate improvement, my hon. Friends the Members for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) and for Eastbourne came to see me about this scheme in November and made the case for its importance. The A27 between Lewes and Polegate is a single carriageway with poor alignment. It is common to see long queues trailing behind slow-moving vehicles and even farm traffic. Conditions of that sort inevitably lead to the sort of safety problems that my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne explained, and to unpredictable journey times.
I have also received strong representations from people who are uneasy about the effect of the published scheme. I would add that the total cost of the proposed scheme was estimated at about £82 million, making it one of the most expensive schemes in the programme. Given that those difficulties exist, we need to be very clear that we
are striking the right balance between the need for improvements, environmental protection and overall cost. For that reason, I have asked the Highways Agency to review the scheme to see what the effects of smaller-scale improvements would be.
I am reluctant to anticipate the outcome of the review. In particular, my hon. Friend asked about a continuing commitment to dualling. Without anticipating the results of the review, there is a strong prima facie case for providing a dual carriageway for most, and indeed probably all, of that section of road. But we must have a look at the detail before we can make a firm decision.
If there were an option for single carriageway for some or all of the route, I would want to know the answers to various questions. What would it cost? What would it achieve? What would be the additional cost of a dualling option? What extra benefits would dualling realise? What is the difference in the environmental impact? Those are exactly the type of questions on which I am looking to the agency for advice.
I would add now that, since the existing scheme covers more than 10 miles of road, there may also be phasing options that are worth considering, which might make the scheme more affordable. But I do not want to prejudge the outcome of the review. For tonight, I wish to assure my hon. Friend that we do not intend to walk away from the problem.
I have confined my response to trunk roads, but before closing I must acknowledge my hon. Friend's words about the A22 improvement, which we have funded through the transport supplementary grant at a cost of more than£30 million. I agree that that was a much-needed scheme for Eastbourne, with real economic benefits, and I am grateful that my hon. Friend has mentioned it tonight.
The overall message that I wish to give my hon. Friend to take to his constituents is that I understand the concerns about roads in Sussex. I could not do otherwise, given the continual pressure to which I am subjected--in a most welcome way--by my hon. Friends the Members for Eastbourne and for Lewes. I understand the frustration that people must feel that we are unable to do more, more quickly. The decision to include the A27 scheme in DBFO was taken because that is the quickest way that we can deliver the benefits of that scheme, which are, of course, also related to the benefits from the A22 improvement.
We have tried to take account of the needs in our review and in the difficult choices that we have had to make in recent months. I hope that, as the programme unfolds, we will be able to deliver the sort of road infrastructure that industry in the area desperately needs, and to provide the environmental benefits and congestion relief that will be of great benefit to my hon. Friend's residential constituents.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes past Nine o'clock.
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