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5.32 pm
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead): I welcome the way in which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions introduced the debate. The channel tunnel rail link will yield big gains to the nation. As much as £6 billion has been estimated. The construction and operation of Stratford station assigns some of those gains to east London. Jobs, regeneration opportunities and significantly improved transport connections are huge benefits which are very welcome. So the station is supported in principle.
However, the project is not cost-free. There is a downside for neighbouring areas such as mine--Leyton, Leytonstone and Wanstead. That downside, in a word, is traffic. My constituency is already overburdened with it, and any extra traffic problems must be considered and ameliorated at an early stage.
The M11 link road remains a bitter bone of contention in Leyton and Wanstead. Promises of improvements for local roads as a result of its construction, which many did not believe at the time of the public inquiries, are already being withdrawn. Rat runs continue in local streets. Traffic delays and congestion on the link road itself due to greater car usage than was originally suggested are acknowledged even before it is built. Leytonstone High road continues to be a major trunk road, even though its part-pedestrianisation was originally mooted. Those broken promises are placing extra burdens on the community.
Traffic associated with Stratford station will upset still further the traffic predictions for the M11 link road. The M11-Lee interchange has been designed to be in balance with the local road network and thereby prevent additional traffic from entering Hackney and Tower Hamlets in peak periods, when the intersection will run at its design capacity. The environmental assessment predicted an extra 400 vehicles per hour--a 42 per cent. increase--on Waterden road in the morning peak. That will lead to huge problems not only in Hackney and on Waterden road but further back down the link road in Leyton and Wanstead.
There will inevitably be pressure to improve the capacity of Waterden road, but that will also mean higher levels of traffic passing through Leyton and Wanstead, including local streets. That will negate the traffic relief that the M11 link road is supposed to provide, especially in Grove Green road, Leytonstone High road and Cambridge Park. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) made a good point when he said that yet more traffic from the private developments which would follow from the station should be taken into account.
London and Continental Railways, together with the Department of Transport and the relevant boroughs, must make proposals to remedy the problems.
Mr. Snape:
My hon. Friend makes a similar point to the one to which I would have replied had I been allowed to do so by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore). I appreciate the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead makes the point.
Of course traffic is a problem. The promoters have given an assurance that there will be both price and physical constraints on commuter traffic to prevent people from railheading in the way that the spokesman for the Liberal party, the hon. Member for Eastleigh
(Mr. Chidgey), favoured. So while my hon. Friend's fears are obvious and can be appreciated, they are not fears which can be generated by the order before the House tonight.
Mr. Cohen:
I accept that the order will go to a public inquiry. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those assurances on behalf of the promoters, but boroughs such as mine will want a great deal more than has so far been suggested to deal with the traffic. I hope that my hon. Friend will relay that message to London and Continental Railways.
The environmental statement proposes up to 2,000 car parking spaces in association with the station. No-where in the statement is there justification for that number of spaces. London and Continental Railways should either justify or reduce the number of spaces. Areas surrounding the station such as Leyton and Leytonstone should not be turned into large car parks--certainly not without enormous ameliorating environmental compensation for the area.
Furthermore, there should not be unrestrained increased traffic on Leyton and Leytonstone roads to service Stratford station. Traffic levels on roads into the station need to be kept to the minimum. One way of achieving that is to increase public transport provision into the station. For example, there should be rail services northwards along the Lee valley. Under no circumstances should there be a new road along the Lee valley.
Road access to the station needs to be tightly constrained in order to reduce the damaging environmental effects of traffic in neighbouring areas. That has not yet been properly taken into account.
Mr. Damian Green (Ashford):
I rise with some trepidation, having heard that some hon. Members on both sides of the House have been fighting these battles for a decade or more. My predecessor was in the front line of many of those battles. He served as Member of Parliament for Ashford for more than 20 years, and one of his most earnest wishes was that the channel tunnel rail link project be built during the equivalent amount of time that he expected me to serve in the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for National Heritage (Mr. Tony Banks):
We shall have to move fast, then.
Mr. Green:
We may have to improve on the speed so far, I suspect.
I join other hon. Members in supporting the works proposed by the Minister. The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) gave one of the most negative expressions of support that I have heard for any proposition.
I want to interject a reservation which will be important for the Stratford area. I draw to the attention of hon. Members with constituencies near Stratford our experience in Ashford, which is further down the process because a station has already been built. Our experience of the disturbance, the effects on traffic and so on will prove relevant to Stratford. By and large, it has been positive.
All reservations about the project must be weighed against the fact that the project should be regarded as an enormous asset, both to those areas of the country through which it runs, and nationally. Inward investment and economic regeneration have come much faster to Ashford because of the existence of the international passenger station. The prospect of a high-speed rail link will not only improve transport links to the continent but allow faster commuting to London and beyond.
However, there has been, and still is, an unfortunate degree of uncertainty about timing and starting dates that has had a severe effect on people whose homes and businesses lie in the way of the link and who will have to move when it is built. One of the things that I have discovered in the past few weeks is that many of those people are disturbed by what they perceive as a lack of openness on the part of London and Continental in giving straight answers to straight questions.
We all know that many questions simply cannot be answered at this stage--no one is being unrealistic about that--but I ask the Minister to use her good offices to urge London and Continental to be more open with people, whether in Ashford or Stratford, who are directly affected by the line's construction and the blight that it already causes, by giving more detailed information about dates and projected building times than it has up to now. I hope that London and Continental will regard the passing of the order as clearing a vital hurdle, and that it will use it as a chance to clear up the uncertainties about the timing of construction work that affects so many people, and that will soon affect more in the Stratford area.
Mr. Stephen Timms (East Ham):
I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the motion strongly. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister opened the debate, because of her long interest in the project. I commend the role of London and Continental Railways because, as other hon. Members explained, this has been a long saga. The contribution of London and Continental has been
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