A303

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Neil Parish

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this worthwhile debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) for securing it and congratulate him on doing so. The number of hon. Members in the Chamber, especially from along the route of the A30/A303, shows how important a debate it is.

I want to quote Hansard first of all:

“The trunk roads from London to the West are quite inadequate for the traffic they have to carry. Queues up to 10 to 15 miles long are commonplace in summer on roads like A.30 and A.303. At many points there are bottlenecks, and the carriageways are quite inadequate.”—[Official Report, 14 May 1959; Vol. 605, c. 1558.]

This is from a speech made by Mr Edward du Cann, MP for Taunton, in an Adjournment debate held in May 1959. It shows that there has been quite a long debate about this road.

My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) mentioned the part of the road in Ilminster that was to be trunked in 1997, before the moratorium on road building by the previous Government. A project involving the A30, moving into the A303, east of Honiton, was also shelved. We nearly got there, but it was stopped.

I am delighted that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), has agreed to drive on the road and see the A303 for himself, including where improvements can be made. That is welcome. I thank him for that. As he is a Yorkshire farmer, I am certain that we will get a truthful answer from him today, and that he will commit the Government to doing something about this quickly, rather than taking too long.

I want to take issue slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell). Rome is one of the most historic cities in the world, with the forum and all the Roman remains, but dual carriageways go all around it, right close to the buildings. Yet that can be maintained. We have to be able to deal with the life that we live today and the need for dualling of the A303/A30, and not live in a prehistoric world. I am keen on history, but at the end of the day we have to find a way, acceptable from both an historical and financial point of view, to ensure that we dual the A30 right the way down to Cornwall.

In this Chamber, we are probably 300 miles from Penzance. I have not done the arithmetic, but I suspect that it is only a little further from London to Scotland. People have to remember that.

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman is right. The distances are not wildly out. It is distressing, when one visits Secretaries of State in some Departments, to find that they think that Plymouth is a bit like Hastings, in terms of its distance from London. Some education is needed in Departments.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Of course, when the Minister drives the route—he has probably already done so, but he will do it officially—he will see the length of the A30/A303 and will only probably get halfway along it. By some magic, he appears to be stopping at Honiton; I have no idea why. But seriously, we have to improve the road.

Hon. Members have said that we have few arterial routes into the west country. Bristol is not the west country; it may be part of the west country, but there is much after Bristol. To get to Devon and Cornwall, people need to cross Wiltshire and Somerset. We need to get that road done. A previous solution talked about in the spatial strategy—building on the A358 and dualling it out to the A303—is not a solution, because all that does is drive motorway and A303 traffic on to and off an already congested road. The west country—Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, and Wiltshire—relies a lot on tourism. We also rely on our businesses being able to be able to move their goods and services around. Come the summer, there are times when those roads are completely blocked. That has a huge economic effect on our businesses. Money for dualling the A303/A30 would be well spent.

I have made the point before in Parliament that, although I am 110% behind the Government taking action on our deficit—the huge sum that we have to borrow day in, day out, to pay the running costs of this country—there is an argument that says that, when interest rates are so historically low, we should borrow money to build infrastructure, because that builds up our economy and gives us a great future.

We expect our fair share of proceeds in the west country. Vast sums may or may not be spent on High Speed 2, yet we have railways that are falling into the sea. We are doing our best to make sure that that does not happen, and that railways are rebuilt. A second railway line needs to come down to the west country. All this is part of the infrastructure. Roads are also important.

On a slightly more controversial note, people say, “If you dual those roads, the traffic will go faster and it could cause more pollution.” However, in my view, it causes much less pollution. There is nothing worse than car engines ticking over for hours on end; cars do not run well when the engines are not running smoothly, and the amount of fuel and carbon monoxide that comes out of cars that are queuing for hours adds to pollution.

In my constituency, especially coming out of Honiton, several villages along the A30, which leads into the A303, have poor access to and egress from that road. There have been many accidents along it, so there are many good reasons, from a traffic safety point of view, for improving it.

People might think that I, as the Member for Tiverton and Honiton, would be telling the Government, “You must start by dualling the A30/A303 from Honiton eastwards,” but I am not saying that. I say that eventually we must dual the whole road. We must not be stopped by either Stonehenge or the Blackdowns in my constituency, because those are the expensive parts of dualling the road. In a former life, I drove around the whole south-west region. I often drove down the A30 into Cornwall. Short stretches of single-track road do not hold up traffic anywhere near as much as longer lengths of single-track road. My point is that we have to start the job. There is a saying that a job started is a job half done. There is no doubt that, once we break the logjam by starting to dual the road, it will be dualled the whole way.

Badger Cull

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Neil Parish

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

This debate has shown that the Secretary of State and the Minister have taken a brave decision to go for the cull, which is absolutely necessary. Farmers in my constituency and elsewhere in Devon feel that during 13 years of Labour Governments they were told that a vaccination was just over the hill. When Labour came to power, 6,000 cattle had TB, but when it left there were 30,000 with the disease. It is the duty of this Government to take action.

Farmers in my constituency are at their wits’ end. There is hardly a cattle farmer in Devon who has not been touched by TB—either it is affecting them at the moment, or during several tests they have not been able to sell cattle because TB is in the herd. All the time, we are removing cattle from herds with TB. We are cleansing those herds of TB. We then turn those cattle into the fields where there are infected badgers. The Secretary of State said clearly how infectious those badgers are—they are giving the cattle TB, so we have to take action.

A badger vaccine will not cure the infected badgers. Furthermore, the current vaccine has to be injected every year. That is not practical. The Opposition know that, but they will not face it. It is great shame that we cannot have cross-party support on the issue, because in the end the farmers cannot go on as they have been. Many of the cattle taken are heifers in the dairy herds, which provide much-needed good food and dairy products. They are being slaughtered. The world has a population of 7 billion and rising—we need more food, but the Opposition did nothing to cure the disease during their period in office.

We have said clearly that not only the badger cull is needed; there are strict provisions on cattle movements, and we will introduce even stricter ones. That is not popular with farmers, but they know that it is necessary provided the Government take the action to take out the infected wildlife.

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

The hon. Gentleman is speaking with great knowledge. He mentioned the importance of cattle movement control. Does he accept that the shift of bovine TB to remote areas is a result of—