A303

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Anne Marie Morris

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Dr McCrea. The hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) is to be congratulated on securing this debate, not least because the A303 is one of the few strategic road links down to the far south-west, and particularly to Plymouth. Its importance therefore cannot be overstated. The recent extreme weather in the far south-west shows how vulnerable we are; we lack rail and road resilience when major road routes are cut.

[Anne Marie Morris]

Is the hon. Lady aware that only last week, the A303 was closed at the same time that our wonderful railway was out of action?

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Lady knows the region very well. I will come to those issues a little later, but she is absolutely right that there are major problems when either the M5 or the A303 closes for one reason or another. We have had relatively little investment in the south-west, as recent weeks have shown. Across the south-west, we have less investment in transport per person than any other region in the country, with the possible exception of the north-east in some modes. We are now reaping the consequences.

I say to the Minister that I fully accept that there is no open chequebook—the shadow Chancellor would jump on me if I suggested that there was—but when we look at the Hindhead tunnel, which goes under the gorgeous landscape of the Devil’s Punch Bowl in Surrey, we can see what could be done if the finance were to become available. As the hon. Member for Salisbury made clear, the A303 has long been a subject of Department for Transport attention, and his predecessor was much admired by all parties for his persistence and the intelligent way in which he tried to find a solution to the problem around Stonehenge.

The South West Regional Committee, of which I was the Chair and which reported in 2010, made it clear that we felt it important that the Department for Transport should value the route in terms of the resilience that it provided to the region. We had instances during the recent storms—I will come back to this—when the A303 was partly closed due to falling trees and the rail line was closed for engineering works, as was the M5. Nobody had actually talked to each other. Business in Plymouth and further south ground to a halt. Fortunately, co-ordination between the Highways Agency and Network Rail is now a lot better, but as the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) pointed out, we have seen exactly what can happen if those roads close.

Tourism and manufacturing are hugely important issues in the south-west and Plymouth. Although rail usage is growing—when there is a line—we also need road links to bring visitors, freight and goods. Companies such as Wrigley, Princess Yachts and Babcock all need to ship products and supplies via road links rather than rail, due to the nature of the products that they are moving. The Heart of South West local enterprise partnership’s top priority is a faster, more resilient transport system, and it is pressing for improvements to the A303 as part of its key area of activity. It understands the need to move people around by road. Certainly, now that Hinkley Point C will be going forward, there will be a greater need for good road links, and improvements will be required.

The region’s transport planners have been grappling with the A303 for decades. What should be done with it? What should its status be? How can we better connect it with roads further west? The dualling argument to increase resilience is made by motoring organisations such as the RAC as well as local authorities. Dualling the road under the Blackdown hills, for example, would be a huge cost commitment, but it is undoubtedly what local people want, in the same way that tunnelling under Stonehenge is important.

Like many hon. Members here, I have driven along the A303. It is a lovely route winding through a number of counties. Judging by the Members here, it does not go through many Labour constituencies, but I say to Government Members that they have a strong, powerful voice. It is their coalition that is in government. I have seen Members from my party in areas such as the north-east make use of the strength of such a body of people. Government Members have a good opportunity, and they should ensure that they use it.

I will wind up, because I am sure that other hon. Members want to make similar points. I point out that the road does not have national status. Unfortunately, it has not been seen as important by this or previous Governments, but I hope that the Minister will now take a close personal interest in it, because it is important. We have seen the impact of weather on the south-west. If we fail to get a grip on the situation, not only will UNESCO look at Stonehenge—the hon. Member for Salisbury made that point clearly—but we will lose the important opportunity to grow the economy in the south-west. We have a lot to offer, including a lot of manufacturing companies that could do a lot more, but we cannot do it without the transport infrastructure. The A303 is a vital part of that.

Water Bills (South-West)

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Anne Marie Morris

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck]

Yes, indeed, and I shall return to that point.

It is welcome that all water companies are now expected to produce water resources plans for the Environment Agency and strategic direction statements for Ofwat, both of which are useful indicators to assist in the long-term planning for the sector, but also help in assessing the likely impact of such works on bill payers.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I very much support this debate. I would like to reinforce the point that although many people feel that we in the south-west live in a land of plenty—a land of flowing milk and honey—there are areas of great deprivation. For many people in our constituencies, the cost of living is high compared with the national income, and they are therefore hit particularly hard.

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and I concur with that view. Again, however, I will deal with that issue in more depth a little later.

Bills in the south-west are 25% higher than the national average, which over the course of a year equates to £100 more, while for unmetered customers the figure is considerably higher, at almost £300. For people on low or fixed incomes, that can mean a substantial amount of their income. Indeed, for those on the lowest incomes, water bills can take 10% of their incomes. For elderly individuals living alone on a basic pension—we in the south-west have a larger-than-average older demographic— or for lone parents with young children or single people in rented accommodation, water bills present a struggle.

The Minister will know that the area covered by South West Water is large and diverse, ranging from Cornwall in the far west through to Devon, and taking in parts of Dorset and Somerset. We also have some of the poorest areas of the country. Cornwall is the only area of the country to be in receipt of EU convergence funding—previously known as objective 1 funding—and poverty remains an issue, despite big moves in the right direction over the past 13 years. The Consumer Council for Water has actively campaigned to try to influence price levels in the south-west, and has carried out further, detailed research to try to discover what the bill payers themselves feel should be done to remedy the problem.

The bill payers whom I have spoken to—I am sure that other hon. Members have had similar conversations—feel that it is unfair and indefensible to expect some of the nation’s least well-off families to shoulder the burden of the cost of a system that requires them to pay for the upkeep of beaches that are largely used by wealthier holidaymakers from outside the region who do not pay for the coastline in the south-west. A solution to that long-standing injustice must be found. Many of my constituents have already lost patience with the process. A recent letter from one elderly constituent from St Budeaux expressed utter exasperation at the lack of transparency in how the costs are apportioned.

In acknowledgement of the problem, the previous Government set up the Walker review to examine the case surrounding water charges. Anna Walker was asked, among other things, to examine the current system of charging households for water and sewerage, and to assess both the effectiveness and fairness of the current and alternative methods of charging, and the link to affordability. Anna Walker delivered her extremely thorough report last year, having toured the country and visited the south-west and Plymouth on more than one occasion. The report acknowledged for the first time what most of us knew: that the long-standing high charges in the south-west were a direct result of the privatisation in 1989.

Anna Walker also suggested that the options for tackling the root causes should include a specific one-off adjustment, estimated at around £650 million, to pay off South West Water’s debt, or annual transfers either from the Government—I suspect that this is unlikely in the current economic climate—or from other water customers around England and Wales. That would not be popular either, because Thames Water customers are financing the Thames tideway project around the city, and water shortage issues have a significant future cost in a number of other areas.

A further alternative would be to rely on a package of proposals targeting specific groups of South West Water customers, perhaps through a series of measures such as the use of a seasonal tariff charged for additional summer use. That would pick up second-home users, but also businesses. It could help some residents to achieve a saving of between £40 and £50, but it is not a popular option. It is seen as a tourist tax, and would require compulsory metering, which would also have a cost. I know that the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) is concerned about second-home owners and their potential for benefiting significantly from having meters. He sees that as unfair. Indeed, in a debate on 2 June 2008, he said that metering was

“a way of rewarding people who should be paying more”.—[Official Report, 2 June 2008; Vol. 476, c. 619.]

Another option would be the wider use of affordability measures, and South West Water has been quite proactive in trying to identify and assist vulnerable customers in that regard. Such measures could be more widely applied and could deliver around £80 per annum for low-income households. That would have to be linked to water efficiency, however. It is essential to encourage that, not only for economic reasons but because water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource at certain times and in certain areas.

As a result of this debate, I have received some useful briefings from people on related matters, especially on the re-use of rain water and on building regulations. I suspect that there is a whole new debate to be had on those matters, but I want to put on record my gratitude to the businesses and organisations that have e-mailed me. This flags up just how useful these debates in an often rather empty Chamber can be—it is actually quite full tonight, so thank you to everyone who has stayed.

Low-income customers with medical conditions could benefit significantly if changes to the current WaterSure scheme, as recommended in the review, were adopted. That would result in it being capped, either at a national average or on a regional basis, whichever is the lower, and would have a redistributive effect within the region, but that in turn would mean that other South West Water customers would pay more, which would probably not have broad support. This is not a straightforward issue, which is partly why I am back here tonight, five years after I secured my first debate on the subject.

A national levy is another idea that has been put forward. That would have the effect of supporting South West Water bill payers now, but they could well find themselves having to pay for similar schemes in the future, such as additional reservoirs in the Thames Water area or elsewhere in the south of England, for example. The Consumer Council for Water’s research suggests that water bill payers would consider that option, and we local MPs certainly need to explore it with our constituents. I appreciate that many of the options would have consequences for bill payers elsewhere, but we must resolve to produce a fairer system that does not penalise low-income families merely for living on a peninsula surrounded by the sea.