Motorways

Lord Trefgarne Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Grand Committee

Asked By

[Lord Trefgarne]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are satisfied with the present arrangements for monitoring and patrolling motorways.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, the motorways are the vital commercial arteries of our nation. They are for the carriage of goods, for the carriage of people and, sadly, occasionally, for the carriage of villains but above all for the purposes of commerce. They have replaced in that role the railways of previous centuries. Indeed, we now have some 5,000 kilometres of motorways altogether, and they are a vital part of our national transport infrastructure.

Until the early 1990s, they were patrolled largely by the county constabularies. Each constabulary patrolled its own proportion of the motorway which went through its particular county. That, naturally, was not a very efficient way to do it. As the networks grew and vehicle numbers increased, county constabularies gradually withdrew from regular patrolling. Today, you can drive from Leeds to London without seeing a single police car. That is not to say that there are no police available, but nowadays police activity is largely in response; that is, police units respond to calls, often from long distances and often not even from places on the motorway. I do not wish to denigrate or decry the efforts of the police who do their best in these circumstances, but response is obviously longer, inevitably so.

What is the task? It is to respond to accidents, obviously, to police motorway activity generally—for example, dealing with dangerous or unsafe driving or vehicles—and, particularly nowadays, to detect and intercept vehicles wanted by the police for one reason or another. The police are assisted in that task by the so-called automatic number observing system, which I have seen in operation. Virtually every vehicle entering the motorway system these days is observed by a camera of some kind or another. The registration number comes up on a computer and those that are wanted for one reason or another can often be intercepted, even for the most minor transgressions—for example, an expired MOT or a lack of proper insurance cover.

Not all motorways lack regular patrols. There are two units, one in the north-west around Manchester and another around Birmingham, where five or six local constabularies have come together to pool their resources and provide regular patrolling or a dedicated response. Indeed, I was lucky enough to visit the Central Motorway Police Group last year and spend a valuable day watching and hearing about its work. I am particularly delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Dear, will speak in a moment, because he, I believe, founded that group when he was chief constable in the West Midlands. I look forward to hearing what he has to say. The Central Motorway Police Group and its colleagues in the north-west represent, I suggest, a valuable template which I hope commends itself to Ministers. I recognise that there is little prospect of additional funds for these purposes, or indeed any other, at present but the CMPG model represents a reordering of existing resources and not, I suggest, new money.

Perhaps there is another way forward. Would it not be possible to extend the role of the British Transport Police to include not only the railways, which it polices very effectively at present, but perhaps the motorways and some other major road routes as well? For now, I put it to my noble friend the Minister that the expansion of the British Transport Police’s role as I have suggested might be considered. As before, I see this as a reordering of existing resources, not new ones.

Before I end, I must refer to the traffic officers of the Highways Agency. I do not for one moment wish to decry or denigrate their efforts. There are some 800 of them, and presumably only about 200 or so are ever on duty at any one time, but their powers are very limited, although I recognise their usefulness in dealing with minor incidents and perhaps assisting the police in major ones. Yet if the highways officers are to be of real value, they really need more power. Most of them are, I gather, retired police officers, so perhaps they could be re-enlisted as special constables or community support officers, which are quite fashionable these days. I fear that, for now, they are something of a wasted resource.

Our motorways are a vital part of our national transport infrastructure. They need to be better patrolled and supervised, and I invite my noble friend to bring forward proposals for that purpose.