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Mr. Ernie Ross (Dundee, West): No, they will not.
Mr. Kynoch: The hon. Gentleman provides a classic illustration of the Labour party in Scotland, especially his wing of it, which is intent on selling Scotland down the river, and on refusing to recognise the significant improvements that the Government's policies have achieved in Scotland and the help given to those unfortunate enough not to be in employment. All he can do is carp. I suggest--I may have time to enlarge on this later--that his policies would do nothing to help the situation. In fact, they would have the reverse effect.
As I have said, we have a range of policies that have the effect of reducing poverty. Our housing policies have done much to improve living standards for all of Scotland's people. Since 1979, we have issued more than £8 billion in gross capital allocations to local housing authorities. Since it was established, Scottish Homes has invested more than £2.5 billion in housing. Those resources have led to real progress in addressing issues such as homelessness and housing that is below tolerable standard.
Another of the important successes of the Government's housing policies has been the dramatic shift in tenure. The proportion of housing accounted for by the public sector has fallen from more than 50 per cent. in 1979 to less than one third now. Levels of owner-occupation have risen from 35 per cent. in 1979 to almost 60 per cent. now. In the city of Dundee, between 1979 and 1995 the proportion of local authority stock was reduced from 53 to 32 per cent.
Private sector investment in housing has been crucial, especially when there are ever-increasing pressures on the finite public resources available. Scottish Homes has already attracted private investment of more than £900 million, and there is scope for the private sector to play an even greater role. Scottish Homes continues to have substantial resources at its disposal, and will invest more than £500 million in Scottish housing this year and next, which in turn will generate over £300 million of private sector funding. As a result, 10,000 people in Scotland will be better housed.
In the local authority housing sector, we have maintained the net provision for local authority capital expenditure at planned levels of £180 million each year for the next three years. That means more than £0.5 billion-worth of investment in council housing in the next three years, on top of the £2 billion that councils have been able to invest since 1992.
The total net allocations for 1997-98 amount to £171.9 million, slightly higher than those issued to authorities in 1996-97. In addition, next year councils will be expected to generate usable receipts of between £50 million and £60 million to augment their investment.
We firmly believe that considerable scope exists for authorities to increase investment levels by involving the private sector to a greater degree than at present. Authorities should be considering the potential for transferring stock to other landlords. Such transfers benefit tenants, by enabling investment to be made in their
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In some parts of Scotland, people face a combination of low incomes, poor housing and a degrading environment. Tackling either the economic or the social causes of deprivation in isolation cannot bring a sustainable renewal of such areas. We need to focus instead on developing a comprehensive approach, encompassing social, economic and physical regeneration, if we are to achieve a lasting solution for the most needy areas in our country.
In 1988, we published our ground-breaking urban regeneration policy statement, "New Life for Urban Scotland", which acknowledged the importance of taking a comprehensive, strategic approach, involving all partners with an interest in regenerating our deprived urban communities.
At the same time, we established four pilot Scottish Office-led urban partnerships at Castlemilk in Glasgow, Ferguslie Park in Paisley, Wester Hailes in Edinburgh and Whitfield in Dundee. Each of those partnerships has shown the way forward in urban regeneration, winning awards and admiration not only in Scotland but beyond. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) joined me when I recently visited the Whitfield partnership in Dundee, and the project under way there was most impressive.
On 11 November last year, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration announced the designation of 12 priority partnership areas and support for 11 regeneration programmes, with resources amounting to £60 million over the first three years. Included in the list of successful PPAs and regeneration programmes was Dundee, which will receive urban programme funding of £3.3 million for its PPA and £727,000 for the regeneration programme over the same period. Much has been done, and is still
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The hon. Member for Dundee, East and his party believe firmly in introducing a national minimum wage and in signing up to the social chapter. Labour believes in the application of a tartan tax in Scotland, and a teenage tax. It believes in policies that will hit all Scotland, but particularly the poor. Rather than benefiting those on low incomes, the introduction of a national minimum wage and the social chapter would have quite the opposite effect.
In a market economy, wages reflect the productive contribution of employees, and a minimum wage would prevent some people from gaining productive employment. The Government believe in allowing the market to generate jobs, and a national minimum wage would not help families on low incomes--rather, it would cause many people to lose their jobs. The figures for the UK show that, if a national minimum wage was set at around £4 and if only 50 per cent. of the differentials were restored thereafter, 1 million jobs would go.
The attitude of the Labour party has been typical, as has that of the hon. Member for Dundee, East. He, at least, is an honest member of the Labour party, who believes in saying what he thinks. He called for increased funding for local government, and I felt from his speech that perhaps he was seeking to justify that to his own party as much as to anyone else.
In conclusion, I believe that the Government's policies have been good for the people of Scotland, whatever their economic circumstances. We have created sustained economic growth, increased average incomes--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
Order. We now move to the debate on the second Severn crossing.
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Sir John Cope (Northavon):
The second Severn crossing--in spite of having an uninspired name--is a wonderful engineering achievement that has rightly won prizes. It is also valuable to those of us to the east of the river, as well as to south Wales and west Gloucestershire. However, the gains have been at the expense of residents, particularly in the parish of Pilning and Severn Beach in my constituency. The villages have been cut in three by the new approach roads, with a large motorway junction in the middle.
We have known for some years that that would happen. The routes of the roads are determined by the siting of the bridge, which itself was dictated by engineering considerations and by the position of the rocks in this most difficult river. When the private Bill went through the House, it was recognised that there would be great damage to life in those quiet rural villages. This damage was recognised by colleagues who served on the Committee, and by the Government and their agencies.
An undertaking was given that, in making decisions, the spirit as well as the letter of the law would be followed in dealing with the residents. I am here to tell my hon. Friend the Minister for Railways and Roads that it is time to honour that undertaking. The motorway is built and has been opened. The road users are benefiting, and the impact on residents is now apparent.
I asked for this debate because too many detailed matters are still outstanding, which affect residents of the area. There was a tremendous push to get the road open, but since it opened last summer, I have had the impression that the Highways Agency has rather pushed the remaining work to the back of the shelf and told its people to concede as little as possible, as slowly as possible.
There are a variety of detailed matters that I could mention, but I want to illustrate my point with three. They are separate issues, but what they have in common is that they were all left over from the end of the building process. The first issue is noise mitigation. We all know that we cannot have a motorway without noise, but where--as in this case--the road inevitably passes close to the houses because of considerations such as the siting of the bridge, we should do the maximum to mitigate that noise.
To give one example--it is the best, but there are others--the residents of New Passage are insufficiently protected from the noise of the new motorway and the M4-M49 junction, which is near them. New Passage is a hamlet with a number of houses, mainly dating from the days of the railway ferry before the Great Western railway tunnel was built under the river 120 years ago. They are downwind of the prevailing winds off the river and some houses are less than 100 yd from the motorway, which at that point is raised level with the eaves of the houses.
Some protection was supposed to have been provided by an earth bund, which was to be constructed opposite the eastbound entry and exit slip roads of the interchange. I discussed the proposals with the Highways Agency after the motorway opened in July, and I was eventually told in November that the bund is to be continuous instead of having a gap in the middle and is to be 2 m higher than the original proposal. I welcome those improvements.
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However, I must point out that I was told in November that the bund was supposed to be completed by the spring or summer of this year. It will take some months to build, including a three-month pause in the middle of building to allow for settlement. So far, nothing has been done, so it will be late spring--if not late summer--when we can expect even that, by which time the motorway will have been open for more than a year.
In any case, the bund will do nothing at all to shield the houses at the eastern end of New Passage road, which are near the exit from the motorway and the interchange, and where there is nothing between them and the motorway and the interchange. An acoustic fence along the motorway has been refused on value-for-money grounds. Many of the houses are solid Victorian buildings, but the noise inside them--even with double glazing--is continuous. The residents used to live in a peaceful rural backwater, but they are now supposed to live with their windows shut. One needs to shout to hold a conversation in the garden when the wind is blowing. That is a big change in the residents' life style.
I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to take a personal interest in the matter, and not just in New Passage. He must ensure that the Highways Agency, which is responsible to him, acts with sympathy towards local citizens. They did not oppose the road, nor did they dig tunnels where it was to be built--as we have seen in other recent cases. They relied upon the promises given to the Committee by the Government and the agency, and they are entitled to fair treatment.
There is also the wider question of why low-noise porous asphalt is not used where motorways are close to residents. Information from the Refined Bitumen Association suggests that modern porous asphalt--at an extra cost of about 2 per cent. for a new road--will reduce noise by about 50 per cent. I am told that some of it has been laid on the M4 near Cardiff and has been successfully used on the continent for a number of years. I am concerned that it was not used near Pilning and Severn Beach, as it would have been a great help. I am told locally that a top dressing of that type, Safepave, has been laid on the A38 between the M5 and Filton, and--although I cannot be sure whether it is responsible--noise seems to be at a lower level there than before.
I realise that the Treasury--one of my old Departments--will be looking over the Minister's shoulder as he replies, ever present, like Long John Silver's parrot, except, of course, the parrot said, "Pieces of eight, pieces of eight," whereas the Treasury--not being a parrot--says, "Pieces of eight, pieces of seven, pieces of six," and so on. Perhaps the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), is the parrot because he gives an official "Hear, hear" to everything that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer says. But that is another matter.
The next important date is the first anniversary of the opening of the bridge next June. It is important because that is when compensation claims can be submitted. The fact that every successful act of noise mitigation will reduce those claims should be some encouragement to the Treasury. Indeed, at one point, New Passage residents collectively offered to forgo their rights to compensation if the noise was reduced. Whether they were wise to do so is a matter for them, but it certainly shows that they would prefer less noise to more compensation.
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The second case is different. It is that of an individual--my constituent, Mr. Philip Jones. He owns salmon fishing rights on the Severn, which he has fished under Government licence for many years by the traditional method of lave net fishing--highly skilled and potentially dangerous work. It was his livelihood and that of his father and grandfather before him and it is an ancient method of fishing for salmon, much used on the Severn in years gone by.
Two things are clear. Building the bridge, with its many piers, has inevitably altered permanently the currents and, therefore, the sandbanks on the river, although I accept that it is extremely difficult to know exactly how they have altered. It is also clear that, in the same period, Mr. Jones's fishery at Oldbury has become impossible to work because of movements in the sandbanks. His problem is to prove that the one was a consequence of the other, although to the layman the coincidence of timing makes it look highly likely, as far as I can see.
Mr. Jones has spent more than three years arguing the case and has been forced to commission several expert reports because of the refusal of the authorities to decide the matter. It has already cost him and, latterly, the Legal Aid Board a great deal. If the case goes to court after all this time, it will cost even more.
As there are practically no lave net fishermen left, very few people are likely to be able to claim the case as a precedent. Why not pay Mr. Jones a reasonable amount now, rather than paying it to lawyers and consultants and in court fees?
The third matter concerns the attempt of South Gloucestershire council, supported by others, to protect the public rights of way that have been affected by the building of the approach roads. Like me, the council thinks that the Highways Agency is trying to do the minimum, so the public are losing amenity and being encouraged to use their cars. For example, the agency has resisted for months a cycleway between Redwick road and Northwick road, which is an essential link for the national cycleway. It has also failed to provide alternative bridleways at a time when everyone else is trying to encourage horse riders to use off-the-road routes. An example is that it will not provide suitable parapets and fencing on the M4 bridge near Holm farm, and expects the council to provide an alternative bridleway.
The British Horse Society, whose golden jubilee some of us had the honour to celebrate this morning, is rightly concerned about that, and I pay tribute to the society's work in that area and generally. The Countryside Commission is also concerned about the matter. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that it is the Government's policy to encourage the off-road riding of bicycles and horses and that the Highways Agency should provide alternatives when road construction closes or affects footpaths, bridleways or cycleways. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will back the provision of cycleways. As we all know, he is a keen cyclist. I, too, think that they are important. The excellent Sustrans is based in Bristol. It has done so much and is doing excellent work with the backing of the Millennium Commission, particularly on the national cycleway. I am sure that the Minister will want to support Sustrans.
1 pm
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