M1: Junction 28

Esther McVey Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

Order. We look forward to future debates on other junctions on the M1, but the question today is that this House has considered the potential merits of improvements to junction 28 of the M1. We will go to the Front-Bench speakers at 5.25 pm, with the winding-up speech at 5.40 pm. For now, I call Nigel Mills.

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[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship again, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) on securing this important debate, and on his tireless campaigning on this important issue for his constituents. I have much sympathy with him and with the comments he made, particularly about the 1,100 hours of delays, which are obviously going to impact the productivity of that area and the economic levelling up promised in the manifesto on which he was elected. I also thank the two other hon. Members who have made contributions today—it has been a very lively debate.

Motorways are vital to the British economy. Despite accounting for only 2% of our road network in England, they carry approximately one third of all traffic each year: they are essential in connecting people to jobs, and businesses to goods. The hon. Member for Bolsover eloquently told us about the barriers to growing productivity, the issues with air quality, and particularly the high cost of providing those improvements—I think he estimated it would cost £30 million in today’s figures, which is not small change by any means.

Years of short-sighted cuts to our transport budget by successive Conservative Governments have left many of our roads unfit and underfunded. Expenditure on local roads by council authorities has fallen in real terms by approximately 30% since 2010, yet those authorities are responsible for managing 98% of all roads in the country. That fall in expenditure has led to a huge backlog of repairs, estimated to have cost over £12 billion to clear. The number of bridges on our roads classified as substandard has risen by 5% since 2020 alone. There is an estimated cost of £1.6 billion to repair all those substandard bridges, but due to cut after cut to our local authorities, only a fraction of those bridges will get the necessary work carried out within the next five years. As the Government continue to slash budgets as we enter the coldest and wettest months of the year, conditions on our roads will only get worse.

The Department for Transport’s own figures show that a third of all local B and C roads in England need repair. Research by the Asphalt Industry Alliance found that preventive maintenance is at least 20 times less expensive than reactive maintenance. It is both economically and socially responsible to ensure that our transport network is in the best condition possible, yet motorists up and down the country are faced with poorly managed and decaying roads every day. Nine in 10 road users have experienced issues with at least one pothole in the past year, and one in three reported that they had changed their daily routine to avoid them. While the pothole problem gets worse and worse, the Government have been asleep at the wheel, with 75% of motorists surveyed now believing potholes to be a bigger issue than they were three years ago. Why will the Government not take action and reverse their highway maintenance funding cuts?

Labour has long demanded action on the issue of smart motorways, and it is a tragedy that lives have been lost waiting for the Minister to act. The Office for Rail and Road has found that stopped vehicle detection technology is failing to meet National Highways’ minimum requirements.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that the debate is about junction 28 of the M1. We are going slightly out of scope.

[Gill Furniss]

I would like to carry on talking about smart motorways, Ms McVey.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

Order. They are not the topic of the debate; today’s debate is about improvements on junction 28 of the M1.

[Gill Furniss]

It is absolutely vital that the Government do something about this issue. I think they will have listened to the hon. Member for Bolsover, but in the end, as I have highlighted, commitment has not been shown when it comes to funding ways of maintaining roads, growing productivity and delivering the levelling-up agenda promised in the manifesto on which many Members were elected. I urge the Minister to explain to us whether he is going to support this project, following the eloquent speeches that Government Members have made.

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[Mark Fletcher]

We have had a fantastic debate in which we have all agreed about everything, and the Minister is going to go forward and sort this project out. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley for first of all giving us live traffic updates—that is a first for me in Westminster—but for also touching on some of the east-west connectivity issues. He mentioned the regional economic argument and the housing issues, and in particular issues about the design of the roundabout, which National Highways has been looking at in some detail.

I feel like my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield had his Weetabix this morning. We heard of his family connections and he gave us a tour de force on levelling up and what is happening in our region. We are, of course, the warehouse of the country, although we have great aspirations for other industries, including many green industries, to come to our region as well.

I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, whom I am incredibly fond of. Indeed, she is a Sheffield MP, although she did not out herself as such, and so is part of this regional debate. I am slightly bereft that she got cut off in her flow on smart motorways, because I felt like she was just getting to the good bit.

I would also, of course, like to thank the Minister. He has done a number of Westminster Hall debates this week and is a superb operator and a fantastic Minister. I feel safer with him in position when it comes to investing in our road network. I thank him for his many kind comments.

Most of all, I would like to thank you, Ms McVey, because this was by far the best chaired Westminster Hall debate I have ever been to.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

The question is, is there no end to Mark Fletcher’s buttering up?

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential merits of improvements to junction 28 of the M1.