M56 Motorway (Junctions 6 to 7) (Variable Speed Limits) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Foster of Oxton

Monday 11th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support most of what the noble Baroness said in introducing this short debate. We are starting to hear that the Government are changing metres into feet or miles, but that is completely irrelevant. I suspect that, as the noble Baroness said, this regulation and the policy behind it—if you can call it that—will cover the whole of the country before long. I believe that there are already 236 miles of smart motorway, and that 200 more miles are planned.

I will say a few words about safety, because that is what it is all about. The distance between the places where you can get off the motorway must relate to what happens to your vehicle and the fact that you need to stop. The noble Baroness mentioned a variety of distances between 2,500 metres and 1,000 metres, but there will be situations where even 1,000 metres is not long enough; it depends on the gradient, the speeds and everything else. It is relevant that the AA has banned its recovery crews from dealing with cars that have broken down on smart motorways because it is too dangerous. There has to be a solution. I do not know what the right distance is; it is sad that the Government have not got some proper data on all this—probably over five years, as the noble Baroness and the Transport Committee suggested—so that we have some information to talk about and to see how safety is affected.

Two things are pretty obvious. The first is around the enforcement of speed on these motorways. There may or may not be variable speeds, but it needs to be much more effective and consistent. The electronic vehicle detection machine is supposed to be the Government’s flagship—in other words, if a vehicle breaks down not in a layby but in the left-hand lane, variable message signs immediately come up, saying “Slow down: lane is blocked.” But the figure I have seen shows that this works in only 62% of the examples where a vehicle has stopped, presumably in the nearside lane. That is much too low, because it means that, for the other 38%, there is a good chance that the vehicle behind will run into the one that has stopped. I cannot see why that cannot work properly. The Government should avoid bringing any more of these into effect until they can get this vehicle detection system working.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. As the noble Baroness said, I am pleased she is here, because she has a lot of experience on roads and transport. This is a terrible mess. Frankly, when the Government ignore the House of Commons Transport Committee’s sensible report, and receive the comments that the noble Baroness mentioned in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report, it is as if they just want to ignore the whole lot and battle on regardless. I hope I am wrong.

[Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises some serious and good points. However, I gently remind noble Lords of how these smart motorways came to pass. I recall that, in my time in the European Parliament as the transport spokesman—obviously covering road, rail, aviation and maritime—the huge push for smart motorways came from the regulations and directives in the European Parliament some years ago. This was not just about the UK. We found that many member states were having problems with capacity due to the growth in traffic, and it was about trying to look at a way that we did not have to build motorways in different parts of the country but just expand the ones that we had.

I fully acknowledge that there have clearly been some awful accidents due to the fact that there was no hard shoulder. When motorways were built in the first place, it was known that there could be a risk of accident—obviously, there is always the risk of accident—and it was paramount that there needed to be a safe space to go. I also understand that in some cases where there have been accidents, it has been very much a technological failure because the notification above the lane that it was closed, or the X, was not showing. People have then got confused, and of course some of the results of that have been appalling. There are also appalling accidents even for the miles of motorways where we have hard shoulders, which is why we have tried to make sure that people are alert if they pull in and why we now tell people to get out of their cars, notwithstanding the size of the lorries that sometimes have to pull in.

Can my noble friend say whether the Government are looking at how, for example, the technology can work, notwithstanding that we have spent millions expanding these motorways? I use the M6 with great frequency when I drive down here, and the M56 too, which the noble Baroness mentioned, and we have miles of full lanes where we are doing 60 miles an hour. We have had years of this expansion—obviously not of infrastructure—for all the right reasons on the motorways, to get the capacity, and we have been under terrible restrictions with roadworks; it is now even more infuriating that we have four lanes but are still all crawling along half of the time.

Notwithstanding the issue of technology, which clearly needs to be seen to be working and to work properly so that people and organisations have confidence, I look forward to the response from my noble friend. We need to move this on. As the noble Baroness opposite said, there is clearly a need for more laybys to access. This will take some time, because more roadworks will have to be started, but it is imperative that those can be put in place as quickly as possible.