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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Jesse Norman)
May I say on behalf of us all, Sir Graham, how brilliantly you have chaired today’s proceedings with your normal aplomb and energy?
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) on securing the debate and on his excellent contribution. I was interested to learn that in his previous lives he has frolicked around the stones—I am sure not defacing but enjoying them, and I hope not breathing too close to the road—celebrating his druidical background. As such an erudite and scholarly man, he is a great adornment to the Commons. He has brought that bookish sentiment to this debate. If I may mis-quote John Osborne, with the current Member, there is no “book lack in Ongar”. I will allow the Chamber to enjoy that.
My hon. Friend quoted those famous experts in the area, Spın̈al Tap. It would be wrong of me not to remind him of this important moment in the lyrics of “Stonehenge”, as he will recall from the film:
“Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge! Where a man’s a man
And the children dance to the Pipes of Pan.”
Unfortunately, as matters stand, the children will not be able to dance, because they will probably get run over, and in any case they would not be able to hear the pipes because of the noise of a road travelling so close to the ancient ruins.
To engage with the point made by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), I thought her phrase the “undiscovered past” was a brilliant one and perfectly captured the proper concern that she and my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar framed. She was right to draw attention to air quality and the community-use aspects of the site. Her joy in cycling, I am pleased to say, will be enabled and furthered by the greenways planned as part of the renewal of the site, alongside the removal of the A303. I must, however, put it on the record that I am very surprised and, frankly, sorry that the Labour party’s position is not to support the project. [Interruption.] I invite the hon. Lady to correct me. If the Labour party is ready to support the project, she is absolutely welcome to intervene and say that it will.
Rachael Maskell
I have made it very clear that we need to ensure that we have done absolutely everything possible to preserve the site. As I said, I was looking forward to the Minister’s speech to convince me that that is the case.
Jesse Norman
I am grateful for that clarification—if it was one—so let me say this. If the hon. Lady wishes to intervene before I finish to say that I have given her such assurances, that will reassure the many people in Exeter and Plymouth who might be worried about whether the Labour party supports the project.
Let me frame the proposals in their wider context. As hon. Members know, the A303 is the most direct strategic route between the south-west and the south-east and indeed the east of England. That makes it a vital arterial corridor, as has been noted throughout the Chamber during this debate. Several sections of the road, however, are single carriageway, causing congestion, delays and greater risk of accidents.
Would it were the case that only a visit from a serving President of the United States of America was required to interrupt the traffic and cause congestion. Tragically, as has been pointed out, congestion is absolutely an everyday feature—I visited the stones recently and sat in a traffic jam. The experience is a rotten one for all involved, awful for the site and not good for the stones themselves. Those points are sometimes forgotten.
One of the congestion points is precisely at Stonehenge. The distance of the road from the stones when it passes near them is 165 metres, or less than 200 yards, which is an astonishing fact. The sight, smells and sound of stationary traffic are brought directly into the centre of a unique prehistoric environment. That is bad for road users and local communities, while a world heritage site is cut in half and the setting of that iconic landmark is harmed. After many delays and many years of prevarication, therefore, the Government have decided that we need to take the chance to enhance the setting of such an extraordinary monument and to improve access to the surrounding landscape, while opening the south-west for further tourism and other business.
In the 2014 road investment strategy, the Government committed to a scheme at Stonehenge, and we are following through on that. The project is part of a longer-term strategy to create better links between the M3 in the south-east and the M5 in the south-west by upgrading the entire A303-A358 corridor to dual-carriageway A-road standard, thereby transforming it into a continuous high-quality route to the south-west, with significant benefits for tourism, jobs and the economy. As the House knows, we have already committed funding to three schemes: Stonehenge; the Sparkford to Ilchester stretch; and Taunton to the Southfields roundabout. The hope is to commit to the full upgrade of five other sections of road along that corridor in ensuing investment strategies.
The A303 and the Stonehenge site suffer significant congestion because of additional traffic. Given how little time I have remaining—I think only two minutes—I shall cut straight to some of the key points. The proposed road alterations include a twin-bore tunnel of at least 1.8 miles in length and other features mentioned today, such as the Longbarrow and Countess junctions. Both the Department for Transport and Highways England very much appreciate that the world heritage site contains an abundance of early prehistoric monuments. They are committed to minimising the impacts of the planned scheme. The heritage monitoring and advisory group, which includes a range of prestigious organisations, provides advice to ensure that heritage is at the fore of scheme design decisions, advising on archaeological surveys and the like. The scientific committee has directly influenced the scope of the archaeological evaluation strategy adopted for the scheme.
On Blick Mead, Highways England is carrying out an extensive heritage impact assessment to ensure that the scheme does not create unacceptable effects for important heritage features. It must be pointed out that Blick Mead is a full half-mile from the proposed entrance to the tunnel. The proposed use of a tunnel-boring machine means that the tunnel will be constructed in a sealed and watertight environment. There are a range of other mitigations and a great deal of work being done on the water table and the hydrology, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar knows. The Star Carr site is in many ways not a relevant comparison, although it may serve as a warning, precisely because it was the victim of ill-thought-through land drains and acidification of the site, which I am afraid reduce its value as a comparator.
To round up, there will always be trade-offs of incommensurables of the kind that we have seen—between the history and value of a site, the economic, community and air-quality benefits to be had from it, and the like. The nature of politics is that we have to make such trade-offs, but only of course with the most careful expert advice and scrutiny, for the minimisation of the impacts, as we have discussed. In this case, we must be philosophers in practice. I would like to think that the Government have done everything that they can to strike the right balance along the lines that I have described.