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4.59 pm

Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day) for allowing me to speak in his Adjournment debate. As he implied, the road projects about which he spoke so well and so accurately impact upon my constituency as much as on his. I endorse to the letter, to the word and to the dot, everything that he said to the Minister, through the Minister to the Secretary of State for Transport and through the Secretary of State to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Earlier today, I asked the Chancellor a supplementary question highlighting the importance of infrastructure expenditure and investment to the prosperous and progressive economy, and he agreed that such investment was vital to the on-going progress of the United Kingdom economy.

I am here to represent the interests of the people of Poynton, of the village of Newton and of the large village of Prestbury. All those areas are suffering immensely because of the A34(M) Handforth-Wilmslow bypass and the Department of Transport's failure to proceed with the construction of the MAELR east and west.

I have bombarded the Secretary of State and the Minister with letters. I recently had a letter from the county engineer of Cheshire county council, Mr. Peter Cocker. He says:

"I refer to your letters of 11, 14, 15, 16 and 18 October 1996".

With those letters to Mr. Cocker, I enclosed numerous letters from constituents, mainly--not exclusively--from people who live on or near the Chester road in Poynton.

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Their environment has been dramatically disadvantaged, undermined and damaged since the opening of the centre section of what I would call the MAELR contract project road--that is, the Handforth-Wilmslow bypass, the A34(M).

Mr. Cocker's letter continues:

"Most of your constituents have highlighted the need for the Poynton By-Pass"--

my hon. Friend the Minister will be aware that that is part of the MAELR contract--

"and I can only reiterate the County Council's support for this scheme. The by-pass, and the western MAELR Link, represents the only real means of resolving"

the local problems to which I had referred. Mr. Cocker then makes an important point; he says:

"These schemes are part of the Department of Transport's Trunk Road programme."

We are not pushing something that is not part of the Department's programme.

The letter continues:

"The Department of Transport supported the Wilmslow/Handforth/MAELR schemes through their Public Inquiry process, indicating"--

this is a critical point--

"a programme for an early completion of the MAELR/Poynton By-Pass scheme in evidence at the inquiry."

Was that fraudulent? Was that dishonest? Did the Department mean what it said? If so, it must proceed with the scheme. Perhaps the inspector found as he did because the road would be part of a wider trunk road building programme.

The county engineer goes on to say:

"The element of the MAELR scheme which was considered at the Inquiry (and now completed) forms a part of the protected Trunk Road link between the A6(M) scheme and the M56 spur at Manchester Airport. The failure to carry forward these schemes on a timetable which was specifically put before the Inspector at the public inquiry by the DOT is giving rise to the current problems in this area."

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle referred several times to that matter, and I fully support what he said. Perhaps Mr. Cocker put it even more succinctly.

The Department of Transport owes this road to my hon. Friend and me, as well as to my hon. Friends the Members for Hazel Grove (Sir T. Arnold) and for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery) and to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris), to minimise the unacceptable congestion in our areas which is damaging the environment and adversely affecting the quality of life of those people whom we represent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle mentioned the public inquiry, which I believe has almost finished, into the application by coal contractors for opencast coal mining at Towers farm in Poynton in my constituency. Uniquely, for the first time in 25 years, I appeared personally to object and to oppose the application. I was delighted that my hon. Friend also found time right at the end of the recess to appear and give evidence.

My evidence related to a range of reasons why the appeal should not succeed and my hon. Friend, representing the best interests of all his constituents, highlighted the existing road problems, which could only

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be exacerbated. I hope that I am not out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I express the fervent hope, based on facts and on democratic representation, that when the report comes before my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, he will see that there is overwhelming opposition to the opencast application. I hope that the inspector's conclusions will be the same, that the Secretary of State will support them, and that the appeal will be dismissed.

My hon. Friend the Minister knows the beautiful village of Prestbury. Peter Hayes, a well-known local business man, was elected to the council in May this year. His time has been dominated since then by the representations of hundreds of local people on the matter of the road chaos caused in Prestbury by the opening of the Handforth-Wilmslow bypass and by the huge increase in the volume of traffic flowing through the village, with all the environmental and road safety implications that go with it.

Prestbury parish council feels so strongly that it has set up a special highways road sub-committee, to which it has co-opted people who do not even sit on the parish council--I refer in particular to a Mrs. Lillian Burns, who is becoming an expert on roads and who is doing a great deal of work in close co-operation with Councillor Peter Hayes. Sadly, a past mayor who was the second councillor for Prestbury and Adlington, died recently. The new councillor is Mr. John Braithwaite, another local business man; a great deal of his time is spent dealing with fair and reasonable representations from people who are appalled by what is going on. Because the road schemes have been postponed, people's life style, quality of life and environment have been badly disadvantaged.

I know that my hon. Friend does his best as Minister for Railways and Roads, and I ask him to listen to the concerns of both Conservative and Opposition Members. I do not think that I am being selfish: the areas of my constituency to which I have referred--Prestbury, Mottram St. Andrew, Newton, Adlington and Poynton--contribute massively to the income of the county council, by way of domestic rates, and to that of the Government by way of the business rate and taxation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle referred to some very desirable residential areas of his constituency. Do we want to destroy the environment of those areas? Do we want to deny those who live there--who make a great contribution to the economy through their work and through the taxes, the domestic rates and the business rates that they pay--some return on all that money? The Department of Transport recognises the importance of the roads.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister. He has been to my constituency and has gone round with me to see the sites of some of the road projects that are required. We hear of the huge sums of public money wasted on security for the construction of the Newbury bypass and of the strong opposition to the Salisbury bypass. The people of the area of Cheshire that I represent would love to have roads built. They want to put civil engineers back to work and they want to help the environment. The roads are well designed and some are fairly advanced in the contract procedures. The designs are finalised. The public inquiries may be still to be held in some cases, but a great

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deal of work and money has been invested. How much money have the Government had to fork out on security for the Newbury bypass? I suspect that a large part--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. The hon. Gentleman could table a question about that if he was so minded. This has nothing to do with the Manchester link bypass, which is the subject on which he has been given permission to make a contribution.

Mr. Winterton: I am grateful to you, Mr, Deputy Speaker. However, the money spent on security at Newbury could have been spent on the Poynton bypass, for which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle and I are making a plea to our hon. Friend the Minister. We want an assurance that the A523 Macclesfield-Poynton road improvement scheme, which ties up with the Poynton bypass and is part of the MAELR east and west, will remain a priority in the Government's trunk road construction programme. We are not asking him to say that the project will go ahead within two years, although I would love him to say that. If he did, he could come to my constituency and drink champagne from dawn until dusk at my expense.

The roads are vital. All the elected councils want them: Cheshire county council; Macclesfield borough council; Poynton parish council; Adlington parish council; Mottram parish council; and Prestbury parish council. The Members of Parliament representing the areas concerned also want the roads. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle spoke with great eloquence for his constituency and its councils. I hope that I have added to his argument.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle and I have slightly different views on the airport. I am in favour of the second runway because of its economic importance to the north-west. However, that aside, the airport company believes that if the runway plan is to go ahead, the MAELR projects are essential, although the company hopes that a great deal of the stone that will come to the airport for the second runway will be transported by rail, subject to a freight support grant from the Department of Transport.

If a buoyant area of the country is to continue to play its role in the economy of the north-west and of the United Kingdom, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will appreciate the sincerity with which our arguments have been advanced and will at least go some way towards giving us the reassurances that we have asked for. Surely the views of the public are important in a democracy. The majority of people in the area are in favour. I hope that that carries weight in the House and with the Government.

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