Oral Answers to Questions

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

The Government are aware of the impact that electricity lines across the port of Tyne have on businesses in the area. Electricity network infrastructure is a matter for Ofgem as the energy regulator, but the Government continue to engage with the National Grid and the Port of Tyne authority to help find the right solution to manage a key piece of electricity network infrastructure in the area. Of course, I would be happy to arrange any suitable meeting for the right hon. Gentleman and his parliamentary colleagues.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

T5. We were disappointed last year when our bid to reopen Grove station was not taken forward, although I realise that only 13 of the 89 proposals were. However, Wantage and Grove is set to have a population that is 59% larger in 2027 than it was a decade earlier, so the need for a station in the area has never been clearer, in addition to the environmental benefits of getting people out of their cars. Will my hon. Friend meet me so that we can discuss other avenues I might pursue to get the station reopened?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Wendy Morton)]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for Grove station. Of course, I would be happy to meet him to discuss what future options might be available.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank the hon. Member for his question, but I refer him to the 31 trials currently ongoing throughout the country to identify how we can legislate in the safest possible way. We regard micro-mobility as an essential part of the transition towards a much cleaner community, but I will endeavour to meet colleagues in the Home Office to discuss matters of policing with regard to illegal electric scooters.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

T9. I most often raise the need to reopen Grove station in my constituency, but today I want to raise my constituency’s roads. In addition to the ongoing safety issues on the A34 and A420, the general condition of roads gets worse and worse, as a result of thousands more houses and more and more cars. Will my right hon. Friend meet me to discuss how the roads in my constituency can be better maintained?

[Grant Shapps]

We would be very pleased to organise that meeting with my hon. Friend. I will set up a meeting for him with the Minister with responsibility for roads. As the House knows, we are spending £24 billion on roads and at least half of that is for their upkeep and maintenance.

International Travel

David Johnston Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I have to say, we are providing £7 billion of support. The hon. Lady says that the Opposition have consistently called for support, but that is not the case. The former shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), said:

“we can no longer accept public funds paying for projects that make the shift to zero”

carbon harder. In other words, she was not prepared to support the aviation sector, as we have done. [Interruption.] It is on record. I understand the perspective of the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), and I agree with her as it happens, but the Opposition’s policy has been all over the place.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Travel companies in my constituency such as Full Circle and Comfy Class are understandably keen to have more countries on the green list. I appreciate that there is a balance, because I have also had emails from constituents concerned that if we move too quickly, we could end up with further restrictions here. However, will my right hon. Friend reassure the companies in my constituency and elsewhere that it is still his aspiration to get as many countries on the green list as soon as he can, providing it is safe to do so?

[Grant Shapps]

That is absolutely the case. I want to reassure my hon. Friend and the whole House that I wish to see travel reopened—I am the Secretary of State for Transport; I want to see transport operating. No one comes into this job to try to close down travel. We have to be realistic about the pandemic, which is global in nature and is still running at record rates around the world beyond our shores. It is tempting to think it is over because we have managed to vaccinate such a high proportion of our own population, but no other major economy has done the same thing. However, I can provide my hon. Friend with the reassurance that we are moving on this as fast as we possibly can. Subject to the expert advice, I am looking forward to working with my right hon. Friend the new Health Secretary to move things along.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to improve transport connections in rural areas.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to improve transport connections in rural areas.

[Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to improve transport connections in rural areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Stephenson]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We have established the rural mobility fund worth £20 million to trial more demand-responsive services, and we have awarded funding to 17 pilot projects already. We have also published a call for evidence for the future of transport rural strategy that sought views on how rural communities can benefit best from transport innovation.

[David Johnston]

My constituency has lots of the challenges that one would associate with a predominantly rural area, but No. 1 on my list is trying to reopen Grove station, which, in a recent survey, 98% of people supported. We have submitted our bid to the Restoring Your Railway fund. Will my hon. Friend provide an update on when we will hear—hopefully good—news?

[Andrew Stephenson]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his continued advocacy on behalf of his constituency, as I know this is an issue that he has raised repeatedly with Ministers. The Department has received the bid for development funding. Decisions will be made by our expert panel following an initial review carried out by the Department for Transport and Network Rail. We expect to announce outcomes in the summer.

Safety and Littering: A34 and A420

David Johnston Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have secured my first Adjournment debate. As some Members will know already, one of my major transport requests is the reopening of Grove station, which was one of the stations cut in the Beeching cuts. My constituents have wanted it to be reopened for more than 40 years now. It would better connect the people of Grove, where a lot more housing is due to go, it would get people off the roads I am about to talk about, and of course it would improve our environment. I have got my bid in to the Restoring Your Railway fund, and I have everything crossed for hopeful news at some point in the future.

However, that is not my constituency’s only transport challenge. In fact, we have two issues on two roads, which add up to one big problem for the people in my constituency. What I will talk about is the responsibility partly of Government, partly of Highways England and partly of the councils, both county and district.

I will begin with the A420. The A420 has two sections, and I make no apology for being most concerned with the section that goes through my constituency, from down near Shrivenham and Watchfield, up through the Coxwells, round Faringdon, across through Littleworth, Buckland and Kingston Bagpuize, and up through Fyfield and Tubney, which I will come back to in a moment.

The road is known locally—it has been for a couple of decades now—as a “road to hell” or “Hell’s Drive”. The fundamental problem is that it is very unsafe. It is supposed to be a local road going through a predominantly rural area, but it is used for commercial traffic between Oxford and Swindon, with a lot of heavy goods vehicles, which I will come back to, and as a shortcut between the M4 and the M40. All that adds up to too much traffic, and too much traffic of the wrong kind—traffic that is too heavy for what was built as a local road.

To put the safety issues in context, because that traffic adds up to a lot of accidents, we have had 12 fatal accidents in the three years to 2019, compared with five fatal accidents in the three years before that, so the problem has been getting worse. Overall, there have been 1,057 accidents in the past six years, which averages at nearly one accident every other day. The important thing about that statistic is that it is only for accidents that were reported to the police because someone was injured; it does not account for all the other accidents we know happen that simply involve vehicle damage. With those, I think that figure would be a lot higher. Of course, the safety issues are predominantly for the vehicles on the roads, but they are also an issue for cyclists and those on foot, because I stress that this is supposed to be a local road. All the way along the road, people live near it and need to be able to cross it.

One good example of the problem is when we get to the villages of Fyfield and Tubney, which the A420 goes through, Fyfield on one side and Tubney on the other. In order to do anything other than simply stay in their houses all day every day, people need to be able to cross the road. The numbers may be small, but the problem affects 100% of the community. I hope that this brings home to the House how extraordinary the situation is with the road: because it is so difficult to cross—because of the amount of traffic, the speeding that goes on and the HGVs that go down it all day long, from morning till night—constituents are known to get a bus down the A420 to cross at one of the few crossings, and then get the bus back, because they cannot make a simple journey straight across the road.

None of our constituents should have to live like that, and we must again make the A420 a local road that is suitable for the people who live in that community. That means a number of things. It means a proper bus service with safe stops along the route, as well as safe pathways for those who are on foot or on their bike. We need traffic light crossings and pedestrian crossings along the route—it is really quite a long route. We need better signage that diverts HGVs, which should not really be on the road anyway, away from it and reduces the speed on it, and importantly, that will have to be enforced.

Of course, that should be the responsibility of Oxfordshire County Council, but the council says that it does not have the money to make the improvements, even though it recognises that they are needed. I would therefore like the Minister to respond to the question of how we might remedy that situation, because it has gone on for far too long and my constituents should not have to deal with it.

Let me turn to the A34 which, again, is in two sections. Again, I make no apologies for being most concerned about the section that goes through my constituency, which in this case starts in the south and goes past Chilton, Harwell, Didcot, Steventon, Milton and Drayton as it as it heads north. I know that many Members of this House have some experience of the A34. In the past six years we have had 50 fatal crashes on this road, and 2,593 crashes overall, which is more than one every single day. Again, those figures are only for crashes that involve people being injured; they are not the figures for just damage to cars. On Thursday, I was told that I had secured this Adjournment debate; there was a crash on the A34 on the Tuesday beforehand and on the Friday the day after—and I am just talking about the section that is in Oxfordshire.

When it comes to the A34, the problem is much better documented. Highways England has recommended a number of safety improvements. As some of those improvements have been made, I ask the Minister when we can expect the other improvements, because my constituents try to avoid this road because of the safety issues. I should say that that question is separate from that of improving connectivity across the region. The safety issues have been going on for some time, but there is a separate question about how to improve connections for people going across the region.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way on this important issue, which is of great seriousness to residents across the Thames valley—it is good to see that the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) is also in her place.

I fully support the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about safety on the road, which affects people living in the Reading area as well. Does he agree that another potential safety issue is that traffic can come off the A34 at Didcot, travel through Didcot and past Wallingford, and then take the A4074 into the northern part of Reading and use Reading as a shortcut to get on to the M4? We have serious concerns about traffic taking that shortcut route, which affects the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, the constituency of the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) and the Reading East constituency.

[David Johnston]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, for which I thank him. We have all sorts of issues in Didcot and Wallingford exactly as he describes regarding those roads being used in that way. I am talking about certain roads; were this a Westminster Hall debate, we could probably talk for an hour and a half about the issues of traffic and shortcuts and what people are trying to do to get around roads that do not work effectively.

We then come to litter. I have had reports and complaints about litter on both roads. I have had complaints about the A420, but it is fair to say that I get many more about the A34. The litter itself is a safety issue. People drop all sorts—cars, lorries and road workers are dropping plastic bags, plastic bottles, tyres and a whole range of other things, which are unsightly and unsafe for constituents, and not good for the environment either.

When it comes to litter, a couple of odd situations need to be remedied. One is that one company is responsible for mowing the verges along the A34 and another is responsible for picking up the litter. That strikes me as pretty inefficient. Understandably, Highways England will not allow the A34 to be closed during the day because of how much traffic goes along it, which means that the company has to try to pick the litter at night, which is, of course, much more difficult. The question on littering, which I pose to the Minister and which a number of constituents posed to me, is: why can Highways England not be responsible for clearing litter on the A34? It has a number of other responsibilities to do with highways, and it would make sense—given that this growing problem is a regular cause of complaint from my constituents—for it to be responsible for this, given that it makes it difficult to clear the litter another way.

In conclusion, these two roads present huge challenges for my constituents—noise problems, tremors from HGV lorries making their houses vibrate, the littering problems that I described and, more than anything, safety issues, with crash after crash and near miss after near miss. Everybody in the House should agree that it is one thing for someone to avoid a road because there might be traffic and they fear they will be delayed, but it is an entirely different thing to avoid a road because they think there will be accidents and they fear they might be injured. In the case of both roads, my constituents have dealt with that fear for far too long.