M25: Dartford

Gareth Johnson Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holloway]

Absolutely—100%. A few months ago, I had Mr Potts of the Highways Agency in my office, and I got quite heated with him. I got him to admit that, however many crossings he built to the east of the existing crossing, he would at some point have to come back and fix the M25 at Dartford. It is possible to fix the problems of the M25 only if they are fixed at Dartford. Let me explain why.

There are several different types of traffic that all meet in the congested area between Dartford and Thurrock. First, there is what we could call national long-range traffic. Secondly, there is the regional traffic off the A14 in Essex and off the A2 in Kent. Thirdly, there is the local traffic—people going to hospital appointments or collecting children from school on either side at the exits in Dartford. The problem is that those three different categories—fast, long-range traffic to someone doing the school run—collide at Dartford and, into the mix, we also have to throw heavy goods vehicles and dangerous goods vehicles, as well as a huge amount of freight that comes in from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke).

If we want to fix the problem at Dartford, therefore, we have to find some way of separating those three different types of traffic. As I have said, there were originally a number of options, including option A at Dartford, but none of them, including the current option C, meant new roads to connect one bit of the M25 to another.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Can he tell us why he believes that Highways England, the local enterprise partnership, the freight and haulage industry, Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, both county councils, Lakeside, Bluewater, the port authorities, the chambers of commerce —and the list goes on—are all wrong and he is right on this issue?

[Mr Holloway]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. I am about to provide an even longer list of people who are in favour of option C, so I shall answer his question then.

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[Mr Holloway]

I am really enjoying agreeing with everyone so far this evening. As I have said, for many years no one really thought that option B, C, D or E would be chosen. I remember one of my friends, who was the roads Minister at the time, saying, “Don’t worry; it will be option A, another bridge at Dartford.” I have every sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford, and I understand his concerns, but we never thought that options that did not do something to ameliorate the M25 would ever be selected. Even the Highways England guy accepts that at some point you will have to go back and fix the problems of the M25, because the M25 is still going down that route today, as it did 30 years ago and as it will in 30 years’ time.

[Gareth Johnson]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Does he not accept that the solution is not to funnel more and more traffic through the narrow corridor that is the approach to the Dartford crossing at Dartford? Should we not have more resilience, as we have across the rest of the Thames, and site crossings at various different locations? My hon. Friend seems to be advocating the funnelling of more traffic into the Dartford area, whereas the solution, surely, is to take traffic away and site the crossing east of Gravesend.

[Mr Holloway]

I think that the solution lies in any number of measures, but there certainly needs to be further capacity. I agree that we cannot try to squeeze more and more stuff into that collision of long-range national, regional and local traffic. I think that we need to seriously revisit the idea of taking Dartford and Thurrock out of the equation. I have spoken to tunnelling experts who say that that is eminently doable. We need—and it is perfectly feasible—a long tunnel that would start south of the A2 and pop out north of the A14, and vice versa, to swallow up the traffic. The effect of such a tunnel would really depend on numbers, and numbers are a moving target. As I shall explain a little later, Highways England is extremely good at making numbers fit whatever its argument is at the time. However, let us say for argument’s sake that 40%— it could be more, but Highways England would say that it was very much less—of the traffic that goes through your constituency, or hangs around for hours in your constituency, killing your constituents—

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[Mr Holloway]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He and I have been, not always successfully, driving around southern England trying to persuade people that what we need is a long tunnel rather than this road to nowhere. The other day I again had a couple of people from Highways England in my house and we were talking about this. I mentioned that 40% of traffic is long-range traffic, and the guy from Highways England told me that the figure was 12%. Can anybody listening out there in the country or here in the House who has driven on the M25 seriously think that only 12% of the traffic is through-traffic and that the rest joins at, let us say, Dartford or Thurrock and then goes on? It is clearly nonsense, and I do not know quite what is going on with Highways England.

[Gareth Johnson]

I hope we have some time for this discussion. My hon. Friend talks about Highways England’s modelling. Is he aware that it has modelled the possibility of having option C built and has discovered that it would increase overall capacity by some 70%? It has also modelled the so-called A14 option, which is the tunnel my hon. Friend alludes to, and has discovered not only that will it be prohibitively expensive, but that it will take very little traffic away from the Dartford crossing?

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[Mr Holloway]

Absolutely. One thing that I have noted in my time here is that we are told that certain things must happen or cannot happen. Back in about 2007, when we again had appalling traffic at Dartford, I remember writing on behalf of constituents to say that it was crazy that people have to pay money at the toll and asking why we could not have a free-flow system. We were told back then—I presume by the same people—that there was absolutely no way that we could have free flow because of some safety thing, but that suddenly disappeared. Quangos change their numbers and what they say depending on where the argument is going. We have seen that in some of the disastrous military ventures over the past decade. Officials do sometimes get it wrong. Ministers are prudent to listen to the experts in their Department, but that does not mean that they are always right or that they are always looking after the interests of ordinary people who, in this case, have to use the road for years.

I completely get where my hon. Friends the Members for South Basildon and East Thurrock and for Dartford are coming from, because when the question of a new crossing at Dartford came up, they would rightly have been horrified, equating it with more traffic. But if I were one of them right now, I would be on my knees begging the roads Minister to look at something that could separate the traffic out at Dartford, and I would be begging the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Transport, and writing to the Prime Minister.

[Gareth Johnson]

rose—

[Mr Holloway]

I will give way in a moment. I fear that something has happened with the political classes in these places. It has almost become a sort of truism: it is quite hard to go anywhere now. I do not know whether I am allowed to ask a question to someone who is about to intervene on me, but I will throw this out there: I would have thought that, if this were possible, my hon. Friend would love to see a long tunnel that could save his constituents.

[Gareth Johnson]

Yes, I would, but that tunnel would be east of Gravesend. I ask my hon. Friend to consider carefully the fact that any road system we put in place at the approach to the existing Dartford crossing—option A, the alternative advocated by him—would result in at least six years of roadworks and would kill the Thames Gateway area. It would kill the house building and enterprise that exists in that place and would be devastating for local communities, who are already suffering from pollution, which is going through the roof. I ask him to consider some of those issues and to understand that the option C route provides an alternative to all those downsides and can help seriously to improve the current traffic congestion from which we suffer.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. May I say to the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) that I am allowing interventions to be very long on the understanding that people will not make speeches, but these interventions are turning into mini-speeches themselves? If people kept their interventions a little more brief, I would be grateful.

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[Mr Holloway]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, and that point has been made by Bob Lane, who has been chairing the opposition to the proposal in my constituency. Understandably, early on, when someone raised the prospect of yet another crossing at Dartford, local residents were concerned that it would lead to more traffic, but they were not aware of the tunnel option. Indeed, I think that there are a few other options that would be considerably less intrusive than what they originally had in mind, which was another great big bridge, squeezing a few more lanes through.

Everyone in this country suffers because of the huge economic disbenefits of millions of hours lost to the economy because of traffic. This is an unquantified figure that is not in Highways England’s cost-benefit analysis. The cost-benefit analysis is traditionally used to assess the value for money of something, so it represents the ratio of benefits to cost. If the benefits of a proposal are smaller than the cost, that is, if the benefit-cost ratio is less than one—I am sorry to do this, but it is important—it would represent bad value for money. Generally, the higher the BCR, the better the value for money.

During the 2013 Department for Transport consultation on options for a new Thames crossing, it is telling that reducing congestion was only one of the five key criteria. A comparison of cost and value for money was carried out and BCRs were produced for option A and option C. In 2013, option A’s indicative BCR was between 1.0 and 1.8 and option C’s BCR was between 1.2 and 1.3. We then come to 2016 and Highways England’s consultation and the BCR for location A had gone from 1.5 to 0.9—that is, bad value—and for location C, it had gone to between 2.3 and 1.7, a complete turnaround. I say it again: they fit the numbers to suit the argument, in my view. That takes absolutely no account of the economic disbenefits of people sitting in that traffic for another couple of generations.

I am sorry to be slightly evangelical, but for the good of millions of people, over many years of misery, I ask anyone hearing this debate to tell their friends and not to say that they were not warned. We only fix the M25 at Dartford by fixing the M25 at Dartford. We have an historic opportunity to fix it for all those people living in the south-east of England, all those people driving through and, in particular, for the people of Dartford for whom, if I were in the shoes of my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford, I would be on my knees.

[Gareth Johnson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in many ways this is a conversation and a debate that we should have been having 15 years ago? Frankly, it is outrageous that nothing has taken place since the bridge was built to tackle the increasing congestion and projected increase in traffic flows at the Dartford crossing. We are therefore playing catch-up after the failure of what has gone before.

[Mr Holloway]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. People in my constituency have spoken about him—people from Gravesham speaking about the Member for Dartford—and have said what an amazing fight he has put up over the years for his people, as has, more recently, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock. I am not disputing that at all. He is to be commended for that. However, we now have a chance, possibly, and we should be looking into it. I remember speaking to him about the M25 a few months ago, trying to persuade him of this. I think there is a chance.

We should be getting Ministers to talk seriously to Highways England and the tunnelling firms. If we flunk this final chance in favour of a ludicrous scheme that has morphed from solving the misery at Dartford to include road capacity, economic regeneration and all sorts of other things, we will, even by Highways England’s own account, have to come back to fix the M25 at some point in the future. For 30 years or whatever the period is, people will have to sit in traffic if this bizarre decision goes through. I pray that in 15 years’ time people do not look back on us and think that we were the guilty men and women.

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[Mr Hayes]

As my hon. Friend also knows, I am, by and large, in favour of faith, but I am not sure, when one is dealing with road traffic analysis, that things can be quite a matter of faith. I think it does, as I said, need to be empirical, and I will certainly make that point.

The gentleman my hon. Friend referred to has corresponded with me in just the last couple of days, when he was admiring my work as Minister, I am delighted to be able to report to the House. I will certainly discuss with him his views on these matters when I have the chance to do so.

Let me move to my next point. My hon. Friend spoke about the split between local and national traffic. He is right to say that the solutions for each may well have to take a rather different form. Now, I can tell that there is something of a—I will not put this too strongly—creative tension between the perspectives of my hon. Friends the Members for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and for Gravesham. I do not want to draw too much close attention to those differences, but both of my hon. Friends have their point, and both make it well on behalf of their constituents. I understand those arguments, and it is because we are wrestling with them, and trying to get this right, that we are not fixed in our view of what solution would be best. Clearly, we have been through a consultation, we have looked at options for a crossing further east, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham, and indeed the whole House, is well aware, and we are still deliberating on those matters. However, I would not want to give the impression that we are not prepared to listen. We certainly are prepared to continue to listen to the overtures that are made in this House and elsewhere.

[Gareth Johnson]

rose—

[Mr Hayes]

Because I am prepared to listen, I need to give way to my hon. Friend.

[Gareth Johnson]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Although I appreciate and accept that the Department for Transport has an open mind, does he agree that it would be unusual in the extreme for a whole body of experts in Highways England to say collectively to the Department for Transport, “Option C offers the best value for money and is the best route to minimise the amount of traffic in the area and deal with the traffic congestion,” and for the Department simply to ignore that advice?

[Mr Hayes]

If my hon. Friend were a harder and crueller man than he is, he might have pointed out what could be described as a contradiction in what I have said. I said that I was not going to be governed by experts and that I would take the decisions, but shortly afterwards I said that those decisions must be entirely evidential—that they must be empirical. It is true that that empiricism will, in part, come from those experts, but that is not a contradiction for this reason: part of the evidence that we collect will be on-the-ground evidence from the users of the road. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham expressed his concern that those who made the decisions might be oblivious to road users’ interests, but I assure him that they are not. It is entirely possible to square that evidential approach with an approach that is responsive to the real, on-the-ground experience of people who use the crossing and the roads that are linked to it.

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[Mr Hayes]

That is certainly true. It is also true that Highways England needs to do more in the way in which it communicates with Members of Parliament. I have told it so and, to its credit, it has taken that on board. My hon. Friend will know that it is now holding a series of meetings with colleagues from across the country to discuss local and regional concerns. That is a direct result of the emphasis that I placed, when I returned to the Department, on the need for Highways England to provide hon. and right hon. Members with accurate information of the kind that has been requested tonight.

I want to move on, because it is not right that I detain the House unduly, although I want to respond as fully as possible to my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham and others. The existing crossing is at capacity for much of the time, as I have said, and it is one of the least reliable sections of England’s strategic road network of motorways and major trunk roads. Closures and congestion occur frequently and have a big impact on business and communities regionally, locally and elsewhere in the UK.

I emphasise that we can, however, do more with the existing crossing. Reference has been made to the Dart Charge, and hon. Members will know that the introduction of Dart Charge necessitated some changes to the way in which the crossing is managed. Even with free-flow charging, as I have said, there is a congestion problem. We can take a close look at what more can be done. The road signage on the northbound crossing approach is being reviewed, and we are looking at the movements of different types of vehicles as they approach the crossing to see what improvements can be made. Work continues with local authorities on both sides of the crossing to improve traffic flows between the local and strategic road networks. That includes a joint approach from Highways England and Kent County Council on a number of improvement measures for the junctions used by traffic approaching the crossing from Dartford.

Highways England will continue, on my instruction, to monitor the conditions at the crossing and to understand the various factors contributing to its performance. I want to make sure that, notwithstanding the wider debate about a second crossing, we are using the existing system as effectively and efficiently as we can. I note that point, which has been made by various hon. Members, and I think we can probably do more. We are certainly looking at the matter closely, and I will bring further information to the House when we have done so.

[Gareth Johnson]

I am heartened that the Minister appreciates that wherever the new lower Thames crossing is situated, a lot of work will need to be carried out to mitigate the existing problems at the Dartford crossing. Does he agree that Highways England needs to take a radical approach? It needs to look at the possibility of partially closing junctions and at the better management of box junctions, as does the Department for Transport. Highways England needs to look at this whole matter in a radical way so that we can ensure that, during the approximately 10 years it will take to build the lower Thames crossing, my constituents are not held to ransom by the traffic congestion that we suffer daily.

[Mr Hayes]

I never like to use the word “radical” except pejoratively, but my hon. Friend is right that we need to be imaginative and lateral in our thinking. The appropriate application of imagination that he describes is necessary for making best use of the existing capacity, as well as when looking at changes that are needed.

To that end, it is worth saying something about the M25 more widely. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham mentioned the M25, if I may put it in these terms, in the round. He is right to say that looking just at the crossing without considering the wider road network would be an error of judgment. We will look at it more widely, and in my meeting with him I want to explore the issue of the M25 in full to ensure that while the steps we take may be many miles from the crossing, they will have an effect on it. He is right to draw the House’s attention to the M25 per se.

My hon. Friend was also right to talk about continuing dialogue with the community. I have spoken about the exchanges between Highways England and hon. Members, but it is important that the community—through Members and other representative bodies such as local councils—is taken fully into account. I will ensure that that happens in parallel with the work that Highways England does with colleagues.

Highways England has a challenging task, and it is easy for us to be very critical of it. I am quite tough, frankly, with those who work with and for me, but I think that we should adopt a tough and appreciative tone. We recognise that Highways England will be trying its best to get this right, and we need to work with it to ensure the best possible outcome for road users. I will be demanding, but at the same time I want to be appreciative of its efforts.

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[Mr Hayes]

I will not go into great detail about—

[Gareth Johnson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I do not want unnecessarily to suggest that there is antagonism in the Chamber, but given that I have already given way generously to one side of the argument, in an exercise in balance I ought to give way to the other.

[Gareth Johnson]

In a final intervention, may I be so bold as to give the Minister a brief history lesson? When in the 1600s it was decided that London bridge was too congested, the town planners of the day decided that they would not put another crossing right next to the existing one, but would give some resilience to London. The same situation happened again and again, so we have crossings at various locations in London. That is exactly what we need to do for the future. We must ensure that we have a separate crossing location east of Gravesend.

[Mr Hayes]

I wonder whether the House has heard enough about the origins of London bridge and whether my hon. Friend might apply for an Adjournment debate on just that subject. I would be delighted to respond to that debate if I were given the opportunity to do so. We could then explore the veracity of his suggestion about the arguments that were advanced then, and why they were advanced. I have a limited knowledge of the history of that time in London and of that bridge, so I assume that everything he has said until now has been entirely accurate.

This matter has been brought before the House a number of times. It is of great concern to the Government. We went about the business, as Members will know, of consulting on the crossing of the Thames that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford strongly supports, and more than 47,000 people took part in that consultation. I said earlier that we are analysing the results, and we will say more in due course. But I emphasise again that this debate has served a useful purpose in drawing the House’s attention to the balance between the pressing imperatives at Dartford, which I fully appreciate and in no way make light of, and the wider need to ensure that there is adequate capacity to deal with demand to cross the River Thames, which my hon. Friend has articulated so effectively.

The assumption sometimes affects politicians—sometimes, indeed, emasculates them—that we are merely creatures of circumstance. That is not true. In the words of Benjamin Disraeli:

“Circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.”

It is now for good men and women to consider these things fully and in the round, on the basis of the evidence that I described earlier, and to come to appropriate judgments. That is the job of Government. These things are not easy, for government is not easy, but we are determined to do what is right. To that end, I say again that my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham has done the House a service in drawing its attention once more to these important matters.

Question put and agreed to.