Draft Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 1) Order 2019

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 General Committees

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Much preparation is going on to prepare the haulage industry and business for the Brexit deadline. Does my hon. Friend the Minister have any indication or feedback on whether hauliers are taking that seriously, given that so many parties on the Opposition Benches are trying to prevent us from actually leaving the EU? Is that standing as a barrier to businesses being ready? They are perhaps getting the impression from this Parliament that it will do everything it can to stop a Brexit result.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for bringing the order to the House. Representing Dover, which is literally on the Brexit frontline, I think it important that measures are taken to ensure an orderly Brexit.

I have a few questions for the Minister. First, what exactly is a traffic officer? It is important to ensure the orderly control and flow of traffic throughout Kent, not only on the A2/M2, but on the M20. If the Department and the Government as a whole are settled on trying to get people to Manston and to intermediate parks along the way, it is important not only that Kent police are designated as traffic officers, but that local authorities have traffic officer powers.

For example, let us say that a lorry has parked across a box junction in Dover—not a Highways England piece of road—and Kent police are busy elsewhere and do not have any officers available. It is advisable for the local authority to have traffic officer designation so that it can appoint people to be traffic officers to ensure that box junctions are kept clear and that the townspeople of Dover are able to get about their business, whatever the state of the main roads. That is important not just from the point of view of suppliers getting through, people getting to their jobs and emergency services getting access and so on; it is also important from the point of view of the orderly flow of traffic in the towns, and not simply along the main motorway arteries. I hope the Minister can give me some comfort on that.

The Minister will know that the leader of Dover District Council and I have written to the Secretary of State for Transport on the subject. I hope the Minister will be able to provide some comfort and perhaps even some level of direction and assurance. Perhaps he can even get the Department for Transport to focus on the issue to give the appropriate powers in due course.

The other key issue is that we know there are those who doubt that we can manage to leave the European Union. We know that the Opposition are strongly of the view that we should cancel Brexit and simply remain—they have basically said that time and again. We know what they are up to and we can see it. We also know that the transit convention that we extended in the event of no deal will mean that there is no need for any checks at Dover or Calais. There is no need for any “Project Fear” from the Labour party, which uses fear as a cloak for their true belief that we should remain under all circumstances, whatever the people voted for, scything, as they do, at the very foundation of our democracy.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

If Brexit were cancelled because of a fear of congestion, in leave parts of the world—I believe a great deal of the south-east was leave—there could well be demonstrations holding up the traffic and taking direct action, leading to the same congestion that is feared by the Labour party.

[The Chair]

Order. Before the hon. Member for Dover replies, I should say that a number of points have been made that go beyond the scope of this No. 1 order—into No. 2 or No. 3 orders, or the general debate about Brexit. We really have to focus on the No. 1 order.