Severe Winter Weather

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is new and was not in the House last winter. He asked whether we are keeping emergency grit stocks at full capacity. There were no emergency grit stocks last winter. In fact, there were no grit stocks at all last winter. Local authorities and the Highways Agency have bought grit for their own use, and this year, for the first time ever, we have a strategic stockpile of salt—more than 300,000 tonnes of salt have been ordered for that stockpile, 156,000 tonnes of which have been delivered, and the remainder of which will be delivered between now and the middle of January. A further 250,000 tonnes have been sourced, and we are currently arranging transport to get it to the UK. I do not suppose that he has the faintest notion of the logistics involved in trying to uplift 250,000 tonnes of salt from around the world at short notice and to ship it to the UK in specialist vessels, so perhaps, before asking such a silly question again, he will think about what is involved.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will have noticed that the spirit of Christmas has augmented the already happy-go-lucky nature of the shadow Secretary of State. However, she made one serious point in her reply to the statement, and it was about information. Some companies are using premium rate telephone numbers to get information to travellers. Surely the Secretary of State will be able to use some of his fantastic influence to try to make these information lines free of charge in this current crisis.

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is right that in many cases the only lever we have over private companies is to apply pressure. This is the first I have heard of this issue, but if he has specific examples, I will be happy to follow them up.