Draft Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 1) (Amendment) Order 2021 Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 2) (Amendment) Order 2021

Damian Green Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 General Committees

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and a great pleasure to welcome the Minister to her first Delegated Legislation Committee on the Front Bench. I apologise for breaking the habit of a lifetime and speaking from the Back Benches at an SI Committee.

To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Bristol East, the communities in Kent have, over the years, suffered hugely from disruption at the channel ports, particularly my own in Ashford. For my constituents and others around Kent, Operation Brock is unwelcome whenever it is imposed, frankly, but it is a lot better than Operation Stack. The phrase in the Minister’s speech that I most applauded inwardly was when she said that Operation Brock was relacing Operation Stack. I hope that means that Operation Stack will never be seen again, because closing the M20 all together caused genuine misery and economic and personal dislocation for many of my constituents.

I am pleased that we have managed to get the movable barrier and make Operation Brock possible, but it is also the case that whenever it is imposed, it causes difficulties. It is more dangerous—there are two fairly narrow lanes and a lot of lorry traffic. Domestic motorists driving their cars in that environment often feel quite threatened by it, so it should be used as sparingly as possible. My one plea to the Minister is that she use her best endeavours to ensure that it is used as infrequently as possible. There is a tendency among the authorities in charge of it to put it on as a precautionary measure—we saw that earlier this year—and then leave it on for weeks on end. That angers many constituents, quite rightly, because they see it as an unnecessary use that dislocates their daily lives and makes their journeys more difficult. They will accept it when there is genuine crisis and obstruction at the channel ports, but they do not want to see it used almost routinely, whenever there is a possibility of problems at the channel ports. The one thought I want to leave with the Minister is that Operation Brock is better than Operation Stack, but it should still be used very sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.