Roadworks: Journey Times

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) on securing this important debate.

The consensual nature of the debate shows that if there is one thing on which we on the Opposition Benches and those in His Majesty’s Government can agree, it is that nobody likes road closures and traffic jams and the misery that comes with them. In urban and suburban areas, they often mean unwanted congestion and pollution. As the hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) said, they often mean delays not just for private motorists but for buses and hauliers. I gently suggest to him that after this afternoon’s Budget and the Chancellor increasing bus fares from the £2 cap that we brought in, people will be paying more to sit on the bus in a traffic jam under a Labour Government.

In rural areas such as my Mid Buckinghamshire constituency, and that of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), a 100-yard road closure can often mean a 5 to 10-mile diversion. That is before I even start talking about Government-sponsored programmes such as High Speed 2, for which the road closures seem to go on indefinitely and forever. Fixing that is in the Government’s gift. Likewise, we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) about the intolerable problems on the A77 and A75, which the Scottish Government simply must fix.

Of course, in some cases road closures are not necessarily a bad thing—they are the result of getting things done—but how we manage them is important. Utility companies must be held to account. Whether action is taken by local government or by national Government through National Highways or another agency, it must be taken responsibly. The relevant authorities must remember that they are causing significant inconvenience to real people, their businesses, their school runs and their trips to the doctor, hospital or other medical appointments. If we can manage the situation, everybody will be much happier.

Let us not forget that it is only through economic growth that car ownership, and indeed other forms of transport, became affordable and grew for many. As part of our plan for drivers, the previous Government took action—we can discuss how to go further—on the critical problem of road closures that stick around for longer than necessary. We introduced a performance-based street works regime to ensure that utility companies resurfaced roads to the best possible standard, and a lane rental scheme, through which utility companies can be charged up to £2,500 a day for street works. That programme enabled the delivery of more than 2 million street works between 2022 and 2023.

In January, the previous Government launched a street works consultation, the results of which were clear. We therefore doubled fines in some instances from £500 to £1,000 for utility companies found to have breached the conditions of their jobs. We introduced charges of £10,000 a day for companies if their works overrun into weekends and bank holidays, which are the busiest days on the road network. We gave a direction for at least 50% of the money generated by lane rental schemes to be used for the improvement of roads and the repair of potholes. That money is already filtering down to local authorities.

In my own constituency, Buckinghamshire council’s “pothole pro” is making light work of what has historically been an incredibly time-consuming and labour-intensive task. The pothole pro effectively recycles and reuses damaged tarmac for resurfacing works, and roads are therefore being fixed more quickly and efficiently. That ultimately saves taxpayer money and reduces the time that people spend stuck in traffic or diverting around road closures. Technology is our friend. It can get repairs done so much quicker.

Conservatives are firmly on the side of drivers. What will the Minister and the Government do to improve the experience of Britain’s motorists, those who travel on our buses and that those who require the use of the road network to make deliveries and to get their goods around the country? What will the Minister do to meet the challenges set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne? What reforms will the Government introduce to build on what is already in place to hold those who dig up our roads to account?

It would be a good start for the Government to support the ten-minute rule Bill of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), which the Opposition already support. That would bring about real action to improve the lot of all motorists. Will the Minister confirm the Government’s stance on that Bill, which we also saw in the previous Parliament? Britain’s motorists deserve to know.

The state of our roads is important, as right hon. and hon. Members have said. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government will maintain the £4.7 billion of funding, much of which was to be used to fill potholes across the north and the midlands over the next seven years, that the previous Government put in place in February through the local transport fund? Will it be put to good use in the way that the previous Government intended? Will the Government retain the £8.3 billion of funding for highways maintenance, which was announced in October 2023 in “Network North” and should last until 2033?

Will the new Labour Government continue that exact amount of spending? I fear that the Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget today of £500 million for potholes will simply not touch the sides of the problem we face as a country. Looking at my own constituency, where Buckinghamshire council has a £105 million road repair fund for one county alone, I do not think that that £500 million sum of money will go far enough to challenge and fix the problems facing Britain’s motorists. It seems that both sides of the House agree on the problem. Labour is now in government; will the Minister confirm precisely what it will do?