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Mr. Home Robertson: Very briefly, please.
Mr. Morgan: I totally accept the case for the A1 dualling, both on safety and strategic grounds. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that an equal case can be made for the A75, which is on a strategic Euro-route from Northern Ireland to western Europe? We are waiting not only for dualling, but for the drawing up of a route action plan and for the action that would follow from that plan.
Mr. Home Robertson: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's anxiety about the road in his part of the world. He must make his own case in his own way. The point is made that we need a different type of review of priorities for roads in Scotland.
I was referring to the proportion of heavy goods vehicles on the A1. The abnormally high proportion of commercial traffic on that road tends to accumulate into convoys; and not just little convoys. These days, convoys of 60 to 70 vehicles are not uncommon on the single carriageway section of the A1. The situation gets far worse with even slower traffic such as caravans in summer time, exceptional loads, farm vehicles and traffic diverting from the A68 and other routes in severe winter weather.
It does not take much to bring the whole road to a standstill: that happens quite frequently nowadays. When it is at a standstill or very slow-moving, reckless attempts are made to overtake. All too often, that leads to violent, head-on collisions. There were 828 casualties, including 42 deaths, on the single carriageway sections of the A1 on both sides of the border between 1992 and 1995.
We do not need a review to analyse the situation: it is a severely congested bottleneck in the national highway system which will remain a running sore until it is dualled. There is no other way of resolving the problem, because there is nowhere else for the traffic to go. I should love to see more freight carried by rail, but it would be barmy to suggest that lorries should tranship their loads on to railway wagons between Prestonpans and Morpeth: it is just not feasible.
Speaking of lorry traffic, the Minister may know that I was a volunteer driver on Edinburgh Direct Aid convoys to Bosnia during the war there, and I found it rather embarrassing that one can drive from south of Ljubljana in Slovenia to Morpeth in Northumberland on dual carriageway roads, but Europe seems to come to an end when the road degenerates into an overloaded country track near the Scottish border. Foreign visitors must think that they are approaching a third-world country when they get to north Northumberland.
The economic case and the road safety case for completing the A1 are conclusive and overwhelming. The Government have inherited a phased scheme for upgrading the road, which specifically includes a fully prepared project for the section between Haddington and Dunbar, with £40 million in the budget to pay for it. We now face the threat of a delay of at least 12 months while the Scottish Office goes through the motions of reviewing the project again. That is absolutely dire news for everybody who has to use the road, and in particular for my constituents in the Dunbar area
There is worse to come, because a massive new landfill site will start operating this autumn just east of Dunbar. The Oxwellmains site will take all Edinburgh's domestic rubbish. Happily, most of that material will be transported by rail, but the Minister confirmed in a written reply on 17 July that the dump will generate 400 more lorry movements each week, which is 800 each-way journeys, on the single carriageway between Haddington and Dunbar, including the long, slow haul up Pencraig Hill.
East Lothian Council reluctantly gave planning consent for that road traffic on the understanding that the road was about to be dualled, and the Secretary of State has just amended the Lothian structure plan to confirm that dualling "is now in hand". Well, apparently it will not be in hand for at least another year, and I put it to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary that he is adding insult to
injury for my constituents and for many other people by stopping the upgrading of the road and sending convoys of trucks with rubbish from his constituency in Edinburgh to aggravate the congestion on the A1 in East Lothian. If the road is not to be dualled in short order, perhaps consent for road haulage to that dump should be suspended until the road is dualled.
Obviously the principal issues are traffic management and road safety, but there is also the small matter of keeping promises. I have been fighting for a safe A1 road for years, and I am not going to stop now that we have a Labour Government. I told my constituents before the election that the phased dualling of the A1 would not be delayed by Labour's roads review. When I made that statement, I was not speaking off the cuff; I was confident that I had authority from the relevant members of the shadow Cabinet to say that the A1 was one of a handful of roads that did not need to be reviewed again.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), who was then shadow Secretary of State for Transport, wrote on 1 August 1994:
I repeat the case for the A1 and to remind my hon. Friend the Minister that clear assurances were given before the general election. I have already had a meeting with him in the Department, as well as private discussions, and I very much regret having to raise the matter in this way. This is one of those cases in which duty to constituents has to take precedence over party loyalty.
Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire):
I am grateful to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) and the Minister for allowing me two minutes to speak in the debate.
I pay sincere tribute to my hon. Friend and constituent the Member for East Lothian, who took the lead in co-ordinating the Safelink campaign, of which I have been aware for 10 years. He deserves the credit for the considerable impact of that campaign, which was the single most important factor that led the Government in 1992 to accept the principle of dualling the road from Edinburgh to Newcastle in due course. He is therefore right to feel disappointed. He is also courageous, in that he has not spared the Labour Government's blushes, and has put his constituents' interests first tonight.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Malcolm Chisholm):
I join the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) in acknowledging the zeal and tenacity of my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) in his continued efforts to secure the upgrading of the A1. I welcome the opportunity to set out what has been done and to reiterate the Government's commitment and approach to the development of an integrated transport system in Scotland.
My hon. Friend's efforts have been remarkably successful. Since 1991, about £55 million has been spent on five new construction projects on the A1, the latest being the dualling of the Tranent to Haddington section, which was opened to traffic in November last year. Two further dualling schemes are under construction: Oswald Dean to Innerwick, and Lemington to Howburn, at a combined cost of more than £7 million.
The movements of lorries carrying waste to which my hon. Friend referred will be allowed only when the road improvements associated with the former scheme have been carried out. The vast majority of movements of waste will be, and indeed ought to be, by rail, and any changes to the consent are purely a matter for East Lothian council.
A route accident plan has been carried out over the past few years, costing a total of £180,000 to date. The plan has provided a number of engineering measures, such as junction improvements, signing and lining and the introduction of speed cameras. All those measures have resulted in a dramatic reduction in the accident rate on the route, particularly within the Scottish borders area. There is, of course, no room for complacency, but accident statistics show that the average accident rate on the A1 is now half the rate for trunk roads.
Further schemes are being prepared. Four minor schemes, for all of which draft statutory orders have been published, will continue. A major scheme between Haddington and Dunbar--to which my hon. Friend referred--has been the subject of a public local inquiry, whose report is awaited. Further procedural work on the
scheme will, in common with other major schemes, be suspended to await the outcome of the review of the trunk road programme that I announced on 19 June.
The review is an important part of our approach to the development of an integrated transport system in Scotland. The trunk road programme inherited from the previous Government was not soundly based, and was unaffordable given the significant reductions made by them to roads expenditure over recent years.
"I have made it clear that the moratorium should not stop progress on some much needed schemes. Amongst those falling into this category I have specified . . . dualling the A1 between Morpeth and the border (Scottish roads being outside my brief). You can rest assured of my support--I have already explained this to George who shares my view".
That was a reference to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Robertson), then shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, who wrote to me on 29 August 1994 to confirm that,
"as far as I am concerned from Berwick-on-Tweed northwards dualling is a major priority on the grounds of communication and safety".
My right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), then shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, wrote in similar terms in 1994, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (Mr. Dewar), now Secretary of State for Scotland, had written to me at length as long ago as September 1991 to state his support for the completion of the dualling of the A1, I felt that I was on safe ground.
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