Highways (Financing) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Douglas Lumsden and Greg Smith

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

Or Wales.

Can the Minister rise to the challenge? Can he make a legislative commitment in line with his words at the Dispatch Box and in oral evidence, and accept amendment 82? If the Government are reluctant, or straightforwardly do not want, to accept the amendment, I fear those questions are forever going to persist in the minds of British motorists and of all road users, be they driving a car themselves or reliant on a car’s passenger seat to be taken wherever they want to go. That is an important point of principle on which the Minister must surely accept the view out there in the country, and the view of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition. He should put it on the face of the Bill.

[Douglas Lumsden]

I am struggling to understand something about the Bill. If an improvement is made on a small section of a 100-mile road, is it clear whether tolls could be introduced for the whole road or just for the section that was improved?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, which is really one for the Minister. He highlights one of the key points that the public out there—all our constituents—will be asking about what this really means. As best, the current scope of the Bill allows for a bit of a lawyer’s paradise and for the issue to be argued over for many years and decades to come; at worst, it straightforwardly allows precisely the fear that my hon. Friend outlined.

Let us just have clarity. It is a simple amendment. We are not asking for the world. We are saying we are broadly with the Government on introducing this model for the lower Thames crossing, but there has to be that legislative certainty that does not allow for mission creep from where the current Minister sees the world, under this legislation, compared with where any future Government might wish to try to take it. The Opposition do not believe that tolls should apply beyond the construction of wholly new roads. There should not be the mission creep that is currently allowed, which is why my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton and I tabled amendment 82.

Also in this group is Opposition amendment 81, which would

“require consultation with relevant local and mayoral authorities before granting a licence for a road that is to become a trunk road.”

There is considerable concern in the country about this issue, particularly from councils and a number of mayors. There is certainly concern from the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, who is arguably the best mayor in the country at the moment—he is a very old and dear friend of mine, if I need to declare an interest. Whenever I try to do the journey from Buckinghamshire to Suffolk, where my in-laws are, I am frustrated by the fact that, the minute I hit Cambridgeshire, the traffic stops and everything seems completely dug up. I will immediately phone him to have a go, but he will continually push back and say, “But the Government haven’t given me any highways powers or authority!”, whereas we know that other mayoralties in the country have them.