Road Maintenance

David Williams Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

Staffordshire has the worst roads in the country. I do not have definitive proof of that, but it is something that my constituents in Cannock Chase tell me every time I am out knocking on doors—and I agree with them.

As we have heard many times already this evening, the British people are sick and tired of broken roads, which are costing them thousands of pounds when they hit potholes and making their everyday journeys far more dangerous. Fixing the basic infrastructure on which this country relies is central to national renewal and to improving living standards.

I commend the Government for their work to ensure that 14 years of pothole-covered roads are coming to an end. The local authority is set to share in the Government’s record £1.6 billion of highway maintenance funding, which is enough to fill 7 million potholes a year.

However, my constituents continue to share their concerns with me about dozens and dozens of cratered roads, such as Betty’s Lane and Red Lion Lane in my home village of Norton Canes. Here, short-term fix after short-term fix rapidly fails, meaning that residents have to continue waiting for lasting solutions, ultimately leading to higher costs and greater disruption in the long run.

I was a district councillor in my constituency for six years, and although highways were not part of my remit, I spent a huge chunk of my time on the issue, especially as successive Conservative county councillors were all too often missing in action when it came to my community.

In addition to potholes, blocked drains have been a recurring problem, causing localised flooding and subsequently further damage to the roads and—you guessed it—more potholes. Staffordshire county council, which has been Conservative run for the last 16 years, has cut back its highways budget drastically, except of course in one year in the run-up to an election, and for most roads, routine drain clearage is done only once every three years. Even completely compacted drains that are not absorbing a single drop of rain are frequently ignored as the outsourced highways contractor, who I will come to in a minute, says that they are not a priority and will be cleared sometime in the next three years. In reality, that short-sighted approach often leads to localised flooding and further deterioration of the roads—again, a complete false economy.

A common complaint from my constituents is about the highways contractor, Amey, the epitome of profit-driven, service-limiting outsourcing if ever I saw one. It frequently pitches up having travelled miles from its depot, only to sort out one pothole or drain at a time and leaving others nearby completely ignored, even though addressing multiple issues at once would be far more efficient. I am sure other hon. Members can relate to the frustration that my constituents feel, particularly given that in the face of that dire and costly service, the Conservatives at County Buildings in Stafford have not sought to scrap that contract. Indeed, they have repeatedly rewarded Amey with extensions. Other councils have switched to a more preventive approach and have had success, but in Staffordshire we are still on an endless cycle of patch jobs on those potholes deemed the most dangerous. It is a bit like patching up a leaking pipe while ignoring the rest of the plumbing, and we need a proper fix for the whole system.

I commend the Government’s action to ensure that councils are accountable for road maintenance and improvement. I particularly welcome the news that from 30 June this year, councils such as Staffordshire county council will be required to publish detailed reports on how they are spending the £39 million that they are getting from the Government, how many potholes have been filled, and how they are minimising disruption, alongside gathering input on what works and what does not work—something that has not happened in my county for a very long time.

[David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Josh Newbury]

I am happy to give way to my Staffordshire colleague.

[David Williams]

It is telling that in today’s debate we have five or six Staffordshire MPs debating this matter, and I wonder whether my hon. Friend would agree that that speaks to how let down residents and staff have been for far too long, and what happens under a Conservative-led local council.

[Josh Newbury]

I thank my hon. Friend. I think it is no coincidence that in Staffordshire we went from having no Labour MPs before the election to having nine out of 12, and that so many of us are here today to speak up for our constituents about areas of frustration, and about the failings of our county council and our hope for change in the near future.

Roads are critical national infrastructure, and this Government must and will undo the neglected state that the previous Government left them in. I welcome the record funding announced, but I say to my constituents that we must ensure that that record investment has the maximum benefit for our towns and villages. On 1 May we will go to the polls with a clear choice: carry on with a cosy relationship between the county council and an incompetent highways contractor with the Conservatives; deep cuts to budgets through an Elon Musk-style “efficiency” drive with Reform; or common-sense, good value highways services with Labour. I know the choice I will be making, and I hope my constituents will join me in electing dedicated Labour county councillors who will work with this Labour Government to get the potholes fixed.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

When constituents talk to me about what matters most in their day-to-day lives, roads come up time and again. Whether travelling to work, doing the school run or getting to vital medical appointments, the state of our roads affects people’s quality of life. When those roads are full of potholes and defects, and they damage vehicles and put cyclists and bikers at risk, it sends a clear message to residents: you have been forgotten. That is exactly how too many people feel in Kidsgrove, Talke, Butt Lane, Newchapel, Harriseahead and Mow Cop. Today, I want to speak up for them.

Last year, Staffordshire county council launched its highway recovery plan, but many of my constituents in Kidsgrove and the surrounding area still feel like they are waiting for it to start. Time and again, residents tell me, “We report defects and we chase them up, but nothing gets done.” Roads such as Gloucester Road, Newchapel Road and Kidsgrove Bank remain in a shocking condition. Vehicles are being damaged and people are quite rightly at their wits’ end. It feels as though Kidsgrove is being treated like the poor relative, left behind while other areas move forward. Roundabouts in places like Talke Pits by the old Normid look unloved and neglected. Some older and disabled people tell me that they fear leaving their own homes because of how unsafe the pavements are. For example, on Chester Road in Talke, residents have to walk in the road as a broken pavement has been fenced off by the Conservative-led council for over four years. Let me be clear: Conservative-led Staffordshire county council is failing Kidsgrove, and that is not okay.

However, just over the border in Stoke-on-Trent, we have seen a very different story. Since Labour took control of the council two years ago, the city has delivered a marked step change in how we deal with potholes. The new administration made road repairs a clear priority, and the response speaks volumes. Back in 2023, about 7,500 defects were repaired. A year later, that figure rose to over 13,000: a 76% increase in just one year under a Labour council. When the council pledged to fix 6,000 defects in six months, it not only met the target but beat it, delivering 6,500 repairs in four months. That is the difference that a Labour council makes.

Under the leadership of Jane Ashworth, Stoke-on-Trent city council has also increased its own capital investment in highways by more than 10% this past year, despite the financial pressures facing councils up and down the country, because it knows that the people of Stoke-on-Trent deserve better than the crumbling roads we inherited from the previous Conservative Administration. The Labour Government are now stepping up to help, fixing the mess left behind from those 14 years. Stoke-on-Trent will receive more than £9 million and Staffordshire county council more than £19 million in new Government transport funding. It is vital that we see the results of that in Kidsgrove.

Let us not forget that, back in 2022, the people of Kidsgrove put their faith in Conservative county councillors, believing that they would be strong voices for our area. Sadly, those councillors appear to have gone AWOL, leaving the residents behind. Residents in Kidsgrove deserve better than that. They deserve to know that their voices are being heard and that the money is there to put things right.

I welcome the extra funding for both Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, but this cannot be about money alone; it must also be about delivery. As we have seen in Stoke-on-Trent and across the country, where the Conservatives fail to deliver, Labour steps up to pick up the pieces and gets to work. I hope that the residents of Kidsgrove and the Talke and Red Street divisions will remember this as we approach the county council elections next month. I say to Ministers and the Secretary of State: keep backing innovative councils to get the basics right, including the Labour-led Stoke-on-Trent city council. Every journey matters, and Kidsgrove should never again be treated like the poor relative. As long as I am the MP for Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove, I will continue to stand up for my local residents.

Driving Test Availability

David Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the availability of driving tests.

It is an honour to serve under you as Chair, Sir Roger.

Driving test delays are a source of misery, anger and lost opportunity across my constituency and the country. Today a new learner will have to wait on average four and a half months for a driving test, which is more than double the wait nine years ago and nearly 50% higher than four years ago. New learners in my constituency must wait on average over five months for their test. Those are some of the worst waiting times in the country, and they have more than tripled since records began in 2015. That is five months during which my constituents’ travel, and therefore their ambitions, are severely restricted. Hon. Members will remember vividly the great feeling of liberation when getting behind the wheel for the first time after passing our driving tests. Today, that rite of passage, instead of a moment of great excitement, is a source of punishing expense, confusion and misery for too many of my constituents.

Take, for example, my constituent Molly, who is having to pay to do her theory again because, like the majority of drivers, she failed her first practical, and now must wait another five months to take a test. I confess that I too did not pass my driving test the first time—a fact that my partner, who did pass first time, always likes to remind me whenever I offer backseat commentary on his handling of Bracknell’s many roundabouts—but what was for me a source of slight irritation is to Molly a significant logistical hurdle with real-world costs. Having struggled to book her test the first time, she now needs to go through the whole long process again. She faces paying continued expenses to keep up lessons, using public transport to get around and possibly retaking her theory simply because it has reached its two-year limit.

Common also are stories like that of Therese, who, unable to find a test for her son for six months, booked him a test in Wales, which involved a costly round trip and an overnight stay, all just to get a test sorted in a reasonable timeframe. Other constituents have contacted me who have gone as far afield as the Isle of Wight and Aberdeen to get tests. Aberdeen is 500 miles from my constituency. When even simple systems like the provision of driving exams break down, inequalities deepen and opportunities dry up. Young people in my area are now seeing their career aspirations and their education take a hit as they look at a half-year delay before they can gain the independence of driving.

There has been national and regional coverage of this story for years, since the 2020 spike in driving test demand, yet the previous Conservative Government failed to get a grip of the crisis. On the one hand, they talked a big game, asking examiners to work ever-longer hours in an ever-exhausting push for short-term solutions—then on the other, they blamed examiners for striking over pay and conditions. What did that fiddling around at the edges get us? Today, waiting lists are more than double where they were in August 2020 and young learners are exposed to more vicious test touting than at any time since.

It is true that the DVSA responded to the immediate spike in 2020 by adding 1,000 more test slots and, over the year 2022-23, cancelling the accounts of more than 600 fake businesses abusing its service to block-book test slots just to sell them on, yet driving test centres in the year to March 2024 also cancelled more than 68,000 tests due to illness and industrial action. Driving instructors in my constituency tell me that that is often last minute and, due to the delays, pushes students back months. An increasing number of students are turning to the black market to get hold of tests, exposing themselves to fraud, abuse and spiralling hidden costs as test touters continue to exploit multiple flaws in the booking system to fuel their exploitative business models.

[David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend talked about driving instructors, and there is also a significant backlog in the driving tests required to qualify as a driving instructor. Does he agree that it is important that we look to address that backlog as well?

[Peter Swallow]

Absolutely. I have also spoken to businesses in my constituency that have highlighted the huge difficulties with getting tests for driving larger minivans and lorries. This debate is about not just bog- standard driving tests to get on the road, although that is a significant issue, but the whole system-wide problem.

Examiner illness is not something that the Conservative party can be blamed for, but whether it was striking doctors, nurses, train drivers or driving test examiners, the Conservative legacy is one of pushing workers to the brink then denying responsibility when industrial action is the inevitable result. I heard from my constituent Chris, a driving instructor, who explained how the local community of instructors are at their wits’ end over the issue, and feel powerless to stop students turning to the black market to book tests.

Driving examiners in Bracknell are getting up before 6 am on a Monday morning, when local centres release a week’s worth of tests, and by 6.02 am every single slot is gone. Those tests are six months away, yet greedy and unscrupulous test touters are using bots and fake business accounts to block-book those sessions and sell them on at ludicrous premiums. My constituents are scraping together hundreds of pounds to pay double or triple the test price only to have their details cloned, and these black market operators then use them to squeeze others out of the market. Meanwhile, some learners are, more innocently, paying big fees to apps and websites that simply trawl the DVSA database and spot cancelled tests for drivers to book at the last minute, which has fuelled understandable concerns. The drivers are showing up to tests underprepared, winging it in the hope that they just about pass, rather than waiting five months to take a test when they are properly ready.

I urge the Minister to set out what steps can be taken to end this financial abuse. The practice of test touting is against DVSA policy, but what more can we do to end it all together? Has the Minister considered whether the practice of reselling driving tests for profit can be made illegal—in line with our plans to tackle ticket touting—or can the system be fixed so that only legitimate driving instructors are able to transfer tests between their students?

Learner drivers pushed into taking their tests early by a broken system are more likely to fail, and therefore more likely to need to book another test, thereby further fuelling pressure on test centres and pushing up demand. What more can we do to ensure that more learners pass first time, unlike me? Will the Minister also ask the DVSA to investigate opening a test centre in my constituency? It sits in a desert of driving test provision between the M3 and M4. The nearest test centres to Bracknell are Reading and Farnborough. How can it be practical that a town of more than 120,000 people is not served by its own test centre?

If I may, I will touch on the connected subject of car insurance. For many young people, the financial pressure of becoming a new driver does not abate when they have finally managed to book and then pass their test. Next comes a hefty bill for car insurance. It is perfectly reasonable for younger and otherwise less experienced drivers to be charged more for car insurance, as statistically they are more likely to have an accident, but too many of my constituents are paying far more than is reasonable. Car insurance premiums have shot up by 21% since June 2022. This is not just an issue for young people in my constituency; I have also been contacted by older drivers, with many years’ experience on the road, who are being priced out of the market all together. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to welcome the action taken by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport today to launch a new taskforce to address that pressing matter.

The struggles faced by my constituents and by learner drivers across the country represent a brake on our national productivity and an unbearable frustration to our young people who, in understandable desperation, are exposing themselves to fraud and financial abuse at the hands of bad actors cynically exploiting this situation.