General Debate

Gordon Henderson Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

It is good to take part in this rather select debate and to have you in the Chair, Mr Benton. It is also good to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), although I wonder whether the next boundary review will change the name of his constituency to Heathrow, since the airport seems to take up the major part of it. It is ironic that the London Mayor wants to uproot Heathrow lock, stock and barrel and move it to my constituency, although Members will be delighted to hear that I will fight that with every breath.

I will not talk about airports today, however. My aim is to highlight a problem in Sittingbourne and Sheppey. I have lived in the constituency for 30 years and I feel immensely privileged to represent it in the House, but almost 3,000 people in my constituency are out of work, and like many right hon. and hon. Members, I want the number of people out of work in my constituency to be reduced. I appreciate that the jobs needed to reduce unemployment will not be created by me, the Government, Kent county council or Swale borough council; only private enterprise can achieve that. Our small, medium-sized and large businesses can provide the entrepreneurial spirit that will help steer industry in Sittingbourne and Sheppey through the choppy economic waters we are experiencing. With a fair wind, I hope we will come out the other side stronger and fitter.

I also appreciate that a prospering local business sector is good for all my constituents. For that reason, I have made it one of my top priorities as the area’s Member of Parliament to help my local business community in any way I can. I am well aware of my limitations and recognise that there is little I can do as the Member of Parliament to make a difference to my constituency’s prosperity, but I can offer leadership and be on hand to offer help and advice to local companies that do not know where else to go to get information and advice—it is always surprising how many do not.

With that in mind, I recently set up a dedicated website called Sittingbourne and Sheppey Link 2 Business, which can be found at www.blinkss.co.uk. The website offers local businesses a direct link to my team so that they can contact me if they have a problem with a Government agency—companies have difficulties with Government agencies every day of the week. Equally, companies that have a problem or a query about Government policy can get an answer fairly rapidly by visiting my website. Link 2 Business also hosts monthly breakfast forums, where local business leaders can share their concerns, frustrations and, sometimes, good ideas with me so that we can improve our local community together.

I am lucky that my constituency has a wide variety of industries: for example, we have a major deep-water port with the deepest water outside of Rotterdam, which is unique; we have the only steelworks in the south-east, as well as one of the last remaining brickworks in Kent and the largest paper mill in the country; and we have just opened a regional distribution centre for a national supermarket chain. We also have a number of industrial sites with a wide range of industries, from refrigeration equipment refurbishment, which is a national concern, to aluminium casting companies.

We have those traditional skills and traditional, old-fashioned industries, but at the Kent Science Park we have a number of high-tech companies that are at the cutting edge of technology in this country. Our largest employer is in the public sector, because we have three prisons; and, last but not least, we have the long-established summer tourist industry, which is based mainly on the Isle of Sheppey.

We therefore have a good industrial base, which provides a higher percentage of private sector jobs than some constituencies can boast, but things could be so much better. Sittingbourne and Sheppey might be located in the south-east, but it still needs a helping hand: for example, much of the unemployment in my constituency is concentrated in areas that are among the most deprived in the country—indeed, two of our wards are in the top 10 most deprived wards in the UK. We can go some way towards eradicating that deprivation if we can ensure that our existing businesses expand and if we can attract more companies into those deprived areas.

On the face of it, Sittingbourne and Sheppey is ideally located for business development: it has good sea links with Europe and good rail links with London, and it is close to the M2, the M20 and the M25. Ironically, though, one of the biggest obstacles to business growth in my area is the local roads infrastructure, and that is where local and national Government have an important role to play.

My area needs help to improve a number of important local roads. For example, the A249 is a good dual-carriage trunk road linking Sheppey with the M2 and the M20. It includes the superb second crossing of the Swale, which was built just three years ago—until the bridge was built, a lifting bridge provided the only way on and off Sheppey, which, as Members can imagine, caused havoc to the local economy in the summer, when yachts were going up and down the Swale and the bridge was going up and down almost every hour. We are therefore really pleased to a have a second decent bridge.

The problem with the A249 is that the dual carriageway stops at Queenborough corner, which is on the outskirts of Sheerness. If the dual carriageway went all the way into the dock area, which is less than half a mile away, it would open up the port of Sheerness for an expansion that would offer the south-east of England an alternative to an increasingly congested Dover as a strategic port of entry. It would help to avoid the expensive Operation Stack that takes place several times a year on the M20. Finishing the A249 would be a major strategic benefit to the country.

The Sittingbourne northern relief road links the A249 to the industrial areas in north Sittingbourne. The latest section of the road, from Ridham avenue to Castle road, is under construction and will be opened later this year. Eventually, the northern relief road is planned to link up with the A2 at Bapchild, but nobody knows when that will be. For the foreseeable future the NRR is destined to become an expensive cul-de-sac. Local businesses on the Eurolink industrial estate and residents living on the new housing estate at Great East Hall want the final link to be built as soon as possible, which is understandable, but many other people feel that finishing the NRR without first planning for a southern relief road, which would link the A2 to the M2, will simply increase traffic problems for residents living in east Sittingbourne and the surrounding villages. It is a square that has to be circled as a matter of urgency.

Another major traffic bottleneck in Sittingbourne is the Stockbury roundabout, which is located on the A249 at junction 5 of the M2. The congestion at that spot has been going on for so many years and has caused so much havoc in the local area that urgent action is needed to solve the congestion if we want to provide easier access to our industrial sites, encourage business expansion and keep the traffic flowing.

While I am talking about roundabouts on the A249, it is worth pointing out that the one at Iwade, which serves the St Regis paper mill and the new Morrisons regional distribution centre, is becoming increasingly congested. One way of solving that problem would be to provide a rail spur into Ridham at Swale halt. Both Morrisons and St Regis Paper are very supportive of a rail spur, which would put more incoming goods on to rail and off the road. Of course, it will take the Government to make that rail spur happen.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, we have three prisons on Sheppey. I believe there is potential to expand the prison estate, solving in advance the undoubted problem of finding suitable sites for future prisons, but the current road from the A249 to Eastchurch, where the prisons are located—the newly designated A2500—is a single carriageway that can barely cope with the current traffic flow, let alone any expansion of the prison estate. The A2500 will need to be upgraded soon, which would be an added bonus to the communities at the east end of the Isle of Sheppey, because it will help to reinvigorate the local economy in one of the deprived areas I mentioned. If we can get extra tourists going to the historical camp sites and the traditional seaside town of Leysdown, we can reinvigorate the whole of that area.

South-east England is acknowledged to be the economic dynamo of the United Kingdom, and Kent is considered by many to be the economic dynamo of the south-east. I believe that improving the roads infrastructure in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, which in the grand scheme of things would be relatively inexpensive, would help make my constituency the economic dynamo of Kent. I am pleased that the Deputy Leader of the House is here, but I do hope the Secretary of State for Transport will hear about this speech, take note of my words, and perhaps agree to visit my constituency, so that he can see for himself the tremendous potential that we offer our country, at a relatively small cost to the Exchequer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

I will happily communicate that request to the Department. The Minister of State, Department for Transport is probably the appropriate Minister, and I will ask her whether such a meeting is possible. We will also see whether we can convey the concerns of the Government on this matter as well as those of individual Members.

This matter may be of interest to the Department for Communities and Local Government. The hon. Gentleman said that he would like to see the London borough of Hillingdon hold nomination rights. Economic development issues will often be mediated by the Department and the local authorities, especially Hillingdon and, I suspect, Hounslow as well. I will bring his remarks to the attention of the DCLG in the hope that it will also have a view on the matter. I am grateful to him for everything that he said today. He made a compelling case on behalf of his constituents, and we all understand the difficulties that they face.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey prefaced his remarks by stressing some unavoidable facts in his constituency. Although we often hear that the south-east drives the economy and that its economic conditions are rather better than those in the rest of the country, constituencies such as his have genuine problems relating to employment and to ensuring that there is sufficient access to growth in the economy. He said that 3,000 of his constituents are out of work, which is too many. We can reduce the number of unemployed people by enabling business to develop. However, that is not something that Government do; they create not jobs but the environment in which private industry can create jobs.

My hon. Friend told us some of the things that he is doing on behalf of his constituents. I am rather jealous of the acronym in his website—BLINKSS. It would not work for my constituency because it would become “BLINKSF”, which sounds like a speech impediment. He is clearly attuned to the needs of his constituents.

Despite the difficulties in north Kent, my hon. Friend listed a number of major employers in the area, such as the deepwater port, the steel works, the brick works, the paper mill, the distribution centre, the high-tech industries and the three prisons. The tourism industry is unrelated to the three prisons but, nevertheless, they co-exist.

[Gordon Henderson]

Not entirely.

[Mr Heath]

That is an interesting observation, but not one on which I will expand. We always hear that economic difficulties and deprivation take place in regions such as the north-east, which is true and I do not in any way minimise them. None the less, such problems also exist in the so-called prosperous south-east and south of England. Sometimes, it is more difficult to deal with pockets of deprivation within an otherwise reasonably affluent part of the country. I applaud what my hon. Friend is doing on behalf of his constituents.

My hon. Friend raised a number of road issues, most of which will not come as a great surprise to the Department for Transport, because they are matters that he has raised before. The A249 is the principal road serving his constituency. I hope that he is impressed that I have a full colour map of his constituency—I brought it along so that I could understand his geographical points. He mentioned how effective the new Swale crossing is in making the A249 fit for purpose, but then pointed out that it peters out on the outskirts of Sheerness, which means that it cannot effectively serve as an artery to the port facilities. As I understand it, Kent county council has not submitted an application to the Department for Transport for that to be dealt with, but one may be submitted in the future. If there is, my colleagues will be interested in considering it. However, the thrust of Government policy is that decisions of this kind will, as far as possible, be taken at a local level. He will recognise that in much of what has been said by both the Department for Transport and the DCLG. Such a policy is entirely appropriate, because local people know how resources should be applied to provide the best outcome. On matters such as the dual carriageway beyond Queenborough corner on the A249, and Sittingbourne’s northern relief road and its connection with the road at Bapchild, we are looking for a clear steer from the local authorities in the area. I know that my hon. Friend will be constantly pressing the case with Kent county council and with the other local authorities, which, in turn, will be applying for substantial amounts of capital investment from the Department for Transport to make such projects a reality.

I was intrigued by what my hon. Friend said about the rail spur and the effect that it will have on the movement of freight in his area. He also mentioned the prospect of improving the B2231—at least that is how it appears on my map, but it has apparently been renamed, which means that my map is out of date. He is talking about the road that serves the east of the Isle of Sheppey and provides a communication link to Eastchurch and Elystan. I can see that improving the road would make an immediate difference to the area.

My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot give any commitments on behalf of the Department for Transport. I suspect that even if a Transport Minister were here, they would be equally unlikely to make firm commitments in response to his requests other than to say that they would seriously consider any applications.

The hon. Gentleman made a very strong case on behalf of his constituents. I will ensure that what he has said today is communicated to Ministers at the Department for Transport, and I will also ensure that he receives specific responses to his points, because I understand that he is seeking to make sure that the infrastructure in his constituency meets the aspirations for economic development that he has for his area, which I am sure his constituents appreciate.

I assure the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington and for Sittingbourne and Sheppey that I will ensure that messages are passed to the Department for Transport about the specific points that they have made today and that responses will be passed back from the Department to them.

I thank both hon. Members for participating in the debate; I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to have the debate; and I thank you, Mr Benton, for chairing the debate.

Question put and agreed to.