Dartford River Crossings

Lord Hanningfield Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Hanningfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to construct a further bridge near the current Dartford river crossings.

[Lord Hanningfield (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for having obtained this debate, although I am a bit disappointed that we do not have more speakers, given the importance of the Dartford crossing. Around 50 million people cross it every year, so it is of vital importance to the whole national economy, not just to the south-east. So it is a bit disappointing that there are not more speakers—but it is quality rather than quantity, perhaps.

Today is perhaps an opportune day for this discussion. I have just had messages that parts of Essex are being evacuated because of potential flooding this evening due to the tidal system. Places that were flooded before, in 1953—the Tendring area, Jaywick, Foulness Island and parts of Southend—are being evacuated, and people are being taken from their homes. I hope I am going to be able to get back to Essex when we finish this tonight. It is also an opportune time to be discussing this because it was 50 years ago last week that the first tunnel opened. I will speak a bit more about that later. Looking through the briefing today, I see the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, got in quicker than me and asked a Written Question about this a week or so ago. It got an unsatisfactory Answer, but I will talk a bit more about that later as well. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has a particular interest from his past ministerial experience.

I declare an interest only as a user of the crossing, having lived in Essex all my life. Until the tunnel was opened, of course, the only way across other than coming through the middle of London was by the Tilbury ferry. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were fruit farmers in Essex—and where do you buy fruit trees but Maidstone in Kent? I had many enjoyable crossings as a child on the Tilbury ferry. It was quite an adventure to go to Kent on the Tilbury ferry when I was small. Unfortunately, it probably takes longer now to go through the Dartford Tunnel sometimes than it did on the ferry, when it was operative. A year or two ago, I stood in the car park of the hotel that overlooks the crossing on the Kent side, and saw the congestion, the fumes, and all the other problems of the crossing, particularly where the pay kiosks are. It showed that there is a real environmental problem attached to this. I hope that we get some further answers from the noble Baroness on progress and the process of how this is going to happen.

I was a long-serving member of Essex County Council and leader of it for some years. Some 50 years ago, Kent and Essex got together to build the first tunnel for the crossing, with European funding. The two county councils then built another tunnel, and introduced tolls. It was then sort of nationalised by the Government to build the bridge. The two county councils offered to build the bridge, but the Government decided to do it. I must say that it was done very quickly. From the consultation to when the Queen opened it—it is called the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge—took only four years. During that time, I was chairman of policy and then, when the bridge opened, chairman of the county council, and I was officiating when the Queen opened the bridge. So I remember it all very well; the bridge immediately solved the problem.

On some days now, traffic at the crossing is 70,000 vehicles more than was planned for, so the congestion is acute. I know that any time when I try to cross it—mainly for social reasons now—I almost dread it, particularly coming back on the Kent side. Something needs to be done. The answer to the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was 2025. That is a long way away, so what is going to happen? If the economy improves, what is going to happen during that time? It only needs one accident to cause four or five hours’ delay. Even on a normal day, there can be a lot of delay at peak times. What is this costing our country?

At the moment the crossing is making a lot of profit. The bridge was all paid for in 2002 and, since then, there has been a big surplus from the toll money over the cost of maintaining the crossing. There are suggestions that it might be as much as £60 million a year. I know that it is important and it goes into the general fund, which is supposed to be spent on local improvements, but we have not seen that many local improvements worth £60 million a year in south Essex or north Kent. Therefore, there is money around that could be used to finance a new crossing, although the Chancellor might not like it. I did not hear whether it was announced today that the Dartford crossing was one of the areas they were going to put infrastructure money into, but there is money around from the current crossing that could be used to construct a new bridge.

There is obviously some enthusiasm from the Government. They came out with the consultation paper in the summer and suggested several options. I think the majority of consultants wanted option C, which is the one I could support. Kent, particularly, would like a sort of option C plus, bringing in the road from Dover, which I support, with the traffic there. On the other hand, that could take another 20 years to achieve, and something needs to be done about the crossing now.

When I was involved in Essex County Council, I went backwards and forwards across the Thames in a helicopter looking at potential crossing sites. Clearly the only one that could be built fairly quickly and link into current roads is the one fairly close to the existing crossing. Further down the Thames, that area of Kent is barren marshland, and it would need a lot of roads and a lot of money spent on it. One could achieve a junction into the A2/M2 and the A13 in Essex on a new bridge relatively easily, with some improvement works. It could be done without taking too much time. I hope the Minister will comment on that in her reply.

As I said, time is of the essence. The consultation is there and the Government have said that they are going to announce a result by the end of the year. We are only about three weeks away from the end of the year, so I hope we might get some indication today of when that announcement might be. It is something that we can all benefit from.

There are various debates about how much this problem is costing the economy now. Obviously with all this congestion and the hours that commercial and private vehicles and people doing their day-to-day jobs spend in these queues, the suggestion is that it could be around £40 million a year. I believe that it costs the economy more than that. KPMG has done some work suggesting that we could improve the economy by several billions of pounds by building a bridge, so there is a lot of potential.

A new bridge, built fairly quickly, would help with three things. It would help the environment and the economy, very considerably, and with the problem of housing. A new bridge built along the lines of option C would generate land that could be used for affordable and other housing fairly quickly. We could be talking about 25,000 houses that we desperately need in the margins of the London area. They could be built on the land released by building a new bridge. The whole thing is of tremendous benefit, and the sooner we can do something and actually create a bridge for those three reasons the better. We should not wait until 2025.

I have probably said all that I can today. I have more notes here but, given that Essex may be being flooded and there may be no trains home, we should get on with the debate. I thank everyone for listening to me, and I hope that the Minister can give us some answers to the things that I have been talking about.