Smart Motorways

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

The noble Baroness makes a number of interesting points. There are two things to consider here: actual safety and the perception of safety. On emergency refuge areas, we are doing all sorts of things to ensure that they are more visible. On new motorways, the standard will be that they are three-quarters of a mile apart. We are making sure that, where possible, they meet the 15-foot width standard. As for the perception of safety, the important thing is that drivers understand what a smart motorway is, how it can benefit them, how they should use it and, if they get into trouble, exactly what they need to do.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister take my thanks back to the Government following the debate to which she kindly responded recently? Will she accept that the smart technology is not up to speed for the smart motorways, and will the Government delay the continuation until the smart technology is in place?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank my noble friend for her warm words about the report and put on record my thanks to everybody in the department who worked on it. It was an enormous undertaking, involving a huge amount of data that had to be analysed. I am perhaps not entirely sure to what the noble Baroness is referring as all sorts of technology already exists on these motorways, be that the red “X” signs to prevent people travelling in certain lanes, the enforcement of those signs, or the MIDAS speed monitoring systems. All sorts of things are in place. She may have been referring to stopped vehicle detection, which we are rolling out more quickly than we originally anticipated; that will be in place within three years.

Flybe

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

On the issue of communications with employees, hearing it on the radio is less than ideal. I am sure it is not how any noble Lord would treat any of their employees. It is not acceptable and there are better ways of keeping employees up to date with what is going on. I cannot agree with the noble Lord that all is doom and gloom for employees and that everything must be improved. As I set out in the opening Statement, there are many routes that employees can now take. The Government stand ready to help, working alongside the unions, and the Insolvency Service is able to make payments.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

To pursue the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on routes and the fact that Virgin is a major shareholder of Flybe, what will happen to Flybe’s profitable routes? Can my noble friend assure the House that there will be a proper procedure to make sure that they are sold to the highest bidder, so to speak? I raised the question of PSOs in the earlier Statement: will she make sure that this is dealt with as a matter of urgency?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

Aviation services are part of the market economy and we would expect the profitable routes to be taken up by other airlines. As I have mentioned, we have had proactive input from a number of airlines looking to service those routes. I can say no more about PSOs. The Government are looking at both the profitable routes and those that may need support, and at all possible options to get them up and running.

Smart Motorways

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the safety of smart motorways and what plans they have to review their policy towards them.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to hold this debate. I start by recording my condolences for those who have lost loved ones or suffered serious injury in an incident on a smart motorway.

When smart motorways were first discussed, I sat on the RAC Foundation Public Policy Committee; I am currently a subscribing member of the RAC club. At that time, I expressed in the strongest possible terms real and grave concerns on safety grounds, as smart motorways clearly pose an immediate danger to the drivers and occupants of cars—particularly where they might break down on a hard shoulder that is being used as a running lane—as well as to other motorway users. While the existing road structure may have been deemed to lead to congestion, that a broken-down vehicle could clog up what was essentially used for emergency purposes as a hard shoulder was surely unconscionable.

The department appears to use a formula based on a points system to assess road safety elements. Points are allocated according to the number of casualties or fatalities caused by an unsafe road either to justify motorway improvements or the construction of a roundabout. If the formula of the points-based allocation is not met, nothing will happen. I know this to be the case with roundabouts from personal experience. Many people before me had campaigned for a roundabout to be built on the northern access to the town of Easingwold in the former constituency of the Vale of York. My predecessors had been very vocal in this regard. On election day 1997, three people were killed at the exact spot of the requested roundabout. As a result of that tragedy, the requisite number of casualties had been reached and points satisfied, and the roundabout was built.

I will leave the Minister, whom I am delighted to see in her place, to describe smart motorways and their purpose. Essentially, they rely on technology to make use of the hard shoulder. Initially, the pilot was cautious, opening up hard shoulders only at peak times, with emergency refuge areas closely spaced. Then in the early 2010s, plans emerged to turn motorway hard shoulders into permanent running lanes—managed motorways known as all-lane running. Later, they became smart motorways and the Highways Agency decided to space the emergency refuge areas further apart.

As I understand it, there are currently three types of smart motorway scheme: all-lane running, dynamic hard shoulder. and controlled motorways. The Highways Agency surely believed at the time that the design would be as safe as existing motorways, but it recognised the increasing risk of a vehicle breaking down in a live traffic lane. Highways England, as it became, estimates that congestion on motorway and major road networks in England costs £2 billion every year, yet it acknowledges that 25% of that congestion results from incidents on those motorways.

The safety record of smart motorways was not good and has deteriorated. Thirty-eight people died on smart motorways in the five years to January this year. On one section of the M25, the number of near-misses since the hard shoulder was removed in April 2014 increased from 72 in 2014 to almost 1,500 in 2019. That is staggering.

Clearly, every fatality represents a human tragedy and wasteful loss of life. I want to refer to just one: the case of a mother who was killed on the M6 elevated area. The driver pulled over, but the hard shoulder was in use as a dynamic lane where there was no emergency refuge area or exit for 2.5 miles. I would say that that death was preventable.

Cars which break down in a live lane leave occupants fearful whether they can safely exit the vehicle or whether they will be spotted if they remain in it. Highways Agency figures show that it takes on average 17 minutes to reach a vehicle in such circumstances.

A welcome pause came on 30 January this year when my right honourable friend the Secretary of State—I do not know whether he is still in position as we speak; the Minister indicates that he is, so I congratulate him—stated that the M20 and other stretches of road will not be opened as planned as smart motorways until the outcome of the government review is known. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take this opportunity to speak as freely and openly as she can to let us know what the state of that review is.

I want to take a moment to consider the alternatives, of which there are essentially three. First, I know that many such as the AA would scrap smart motorways and hard-shoulder running lanes and revert to using hard shoulders as they were originally intended, allowing police, ambulance, fire and other emergency vehicles to access injured occupants as quickly as possible. The second option is to increase the number of existing emergency refuge areas so that, in the event of a breakdown, there is more chance of a vehicle reaching the emergency refuge area. Thirdly, we could widen existing carriageways or increase the number of lanes from three to four, albeit they may be narrower.

How will such improvements be paid for? While I recognise that hypothecation is not normally permitted, one or two motorways have been seen to benefit recently from hypothecated funding. I urge the Government to consider spending road tax revenues on improving road safety and investing in an alternative infrastructure to smart motorways, thereby making our roads safer.

I want to end with a number of questions for my noble friend the Minister. Does she agree with, and will she have regard to, the words of the national chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, who has said that smart motorways are inherently dangerous, put lives at risk and are death-traps? No one should know better than the police and other emergency personnel how unsafe smart motorways have turned out to be.

Can the Minister put our minds at rest that cost savings have not been chosen over human life and road safety? Will the Government take this opportunity to reverse the priority and either return the hard shoulder to its original use or increase the width and number of lanes?

As asked in Local Transport Today, is it acceptable that a risk should have consciously been designed into smart motorways in order to deliver the benefits of increased road capacity? Surely the benefits of road capacity must be secondary to the fundamental safety of those using the motorways.

Smart motorways may have been considered as safe as traditional motorways, but that has been proved not to be the case. Even when they were initially piloted, it was known that they could have been safer. It is unacceptable that cost appears to have been chosen over road safety, and what a cost it has been. Now is the time to end the speculation, to end this catastrophic experiment and to put safety first.



Cost and saving money must not trump road safety.

Flybe

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has made some very helpful suggestions, should they ever be needed in due course, about looking at which domestic routes would benefit from support. I reiterate that this airline continues to operate as normal and therefore at the moment the Government have no plans to kick off that work.

On the airline insolvency review, it follows from the important work which was done for the department by Peter Bucks. He looked at airline insolvency. As I am sure the noble Baroness knows, it is incredibly complicated. When he published his report, he said that there is no silver bullet. The noble Baroness will also know that we announced legislation in this area in the Queen’s Speech, and I expect it to come to the House in due course.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely endorse the commercial strictures that my noble friend set out, but will she take this opportunity to explain to the House the Government’s policy towards regional airlines so that they will have a vibrant future going forward and, in particular, the possibility of regional airlines delivering on public service obligations?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My Lords, my noble friend is quite right. I reiterate that regional connectivity is critical in aviation and across all modes. We will do whatever we can to ensure excellent regional connectivity going forward. Public service obligations can be incredibly important for social, medical and economic reasons. At the moment, we can add PSOs only on existing routes to London where they are in danger of being lost. However, we will look at all options for expanding the scope of our PSO policy in future.