Clive Efford
Main Page: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham and Chislehurst)Department Debates - View all Clive Efford's debates with the Department for Transport
(14 years ago)
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Mike Penning
My hon. Friend has campaigning for many years to get the tolls removed from the Dartford river crossing, but we need the investment not only for vehicle recognition, so that we can have free flow coming through and the realignment of the road, but for the preliminary work for the new crossing.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
In the Secretary of State’s response to the resilience review, he stated that he was dissatisfied with previous performance and the level of disruption and that it would be sorted in time for this winter. What went wrong? His response just now was not good enough. It is not good enough just to say that there has been a bit extra snow.
Mr Hammond
Let me make this clear: when we have extremely heavy snow and extremely low temperatures, there will be disruption to the transport system. The question is not about whether there is disruption. The question we now have to ask is whether anything could or should have been done that was not done. If there is anything, we will learn the lessons from that.
In the events earlier this year, the problem was that local authorities and the Highways Agency had inadequate supplies of salt and grit. We have more than adequate supplies of salt and grit and we have new equipment out on the strategic road network. Six runs per day across the strategic road network have been going on over the past 48 hours. The strategic road network, with one or two specific exceptions, is open and operating today.