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Mr. Watts: I would be happy to pursue any such possibility, but, although I would not necessarily expect offers of private funding to cover the whole scheme--that would be very ambitious--any private sector contribution would need to be fairly significant to have a significant effect on the rate of delivery.

Following my visit to Cheadle, I asked the Highways Agency to investigate the possibility, suggested by the Woodford Community Council, that part of the eastern section of MAELR between Woodford road and Chester

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road should be constructed before the remainder of the road, to provide relief to those local roads. That suggestion was considered very carefully, but unfortunately we had to conclude that we could not go ahead with temporary measures of that type because there would have been abortive costs. We would have ended up building sections of roadway that would not form part of the ultimate trunk road scheme, and we could not justify using trunk road money for what would have been only a local traffic alleviation in the longer term.

I understand that Cheshire county council is to undertake traffic survey work in that area, with special emphasis on the A5149 Chester road. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle will be aware that my direct responsibilities are limited to the trunk road network. The Chester road forms part of the local road network, for which the local Highway Authority is responsible, and as such it would be for the county council to determine, in the light of its survey work, what measures it may believe that it is appropriate to pursue. I am not in a position to give it any instructions as to what it should do.

Priorities have had to be set within a realistic and fairly tight framework. I hope that we have done so responsibly, concentrating our efforts on key national routes. It would not have been realistic to try to progress each and every scheme in the main programme at the same time, and we would have consumed resources in preparation work at the expense of having money to start construction.

I assure both my hon. Friends and those other right hon. and hon. Members on whose behalf they spoke today that the needs of their constituents have not been forgotten, and that we shall continue to invest sensibly and carefully to meet the transport needs of this area, as elsewhere. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield spoke of the timetable that was outlined at public inquiry. I do not believe that my officials were behaving fraudulently or dishonestly in what they said in their evidence to the inquiry, but the significance of timing is that that inquiry took place before we had had more than £1 billion removed from our trunk road budget. I was therefore

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pleased to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield was able to ask my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor about the importance of infrastructure maintaining a buoyant economy and received a satisfactory reply from my right hon. and learned Friend, which is no less than we would ever expect of him.

Mr. Day: I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will not forget a major point that I asked him to respond to. He may have been coming to it, but I wish to be certain. It concerns Woodford road junction returning to its original design: the junction being closed and done away with, and the road going under Woodford road as originally proposed. That is very important to my constituents.

Mr. Watts: It would ultimately be a matter for the local highway authority to decide whether it wished to maintain the junction as part of its local network. Once we are in a position to complete our trunk road scheme, it would be odd if an unnecessary part of the network were maintained.

Mr. Day: At the public inquiry into the MAELR, my constituents on Woodford road were assured that the junction created there would be temporary. Temporary means that it will be removed. My constituents are not being unreasonable to think that the promise made at a public inquiry should be honoured. They were promised at the public inquiry that, once the road was completed, the junction would disappear; anything else would be to let them down and to have misled them in a way which I am sure my hon. Friend would not wish to be guilty of.

Mr. Watts: Any undertaking given at a public inquiry by my officials on my behalf will be honoured, and I expect that any undertaking given by Cheshire county council will be similarly honoured.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at half-past Five o'clock.

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