Smart Motorways

Debate between Huw Merriman and John Hayes

Thursday 13th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Huw Merriman]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and take his point on board, although it is a bit difficult to go back to the start and do as he has suggested. However, it is a familiar topic about smart motorways that will come up later. He is absolutely right. If the design guide had followed the prototype—I intend to refer to the M42 and where things then moved—we might have found ourselves in a very different place.

The right hon. Gentleman touched on the reason for this scheme, which, again, is to create the extra capacity that is needed to get people off the more dangerous A and B roads and on to the motorway network. Unfortunately, because of what has happened, there is a danger that the opposite is true, and if he will allow it I will expand on that.

There are seven key points in the recommendations that were accepted. First, there will be a pause of the roll-out of all lane running motorways yet to commence construction until five years of data is available for the smart motorway network built before 2020.

Secondly, the Government will pause the conversion of dynamic hard shoulder motorways to all lane running motorways and revisit the case for controlled motorways. Is it all about all lane running smart motorways or are other smart motorways better?

Thirdly, emergency refuge areas will be retrofitted to existing all lane running motorways to make them no further than 1 mile apart, for which the Government have announced £390 million of funding.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will know that I was the roads Minister from the summer of 2016 through 2017, and had been at the Department for Transport prior to that under a different Government. As Minister, I raised the issue of the frequency of those refuges with my office and with Highways England. It seems to me that, for the reassurance of motorists and motoring organisations, it is vital that they come more frequently. The Committee’s report recommends that. I am pleased with the Government’s response, which seems to be positive. However, it is critical that on all lane running motorways—that is the difference he highlighted earlier—those refuges are regularly available so that people can get off the road if and when they need to, without delay.

[Huw Merriman]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the expertise he brings to this debate. He makes some fascinating points. I am interested in whether the advice was followed by Highways England, as it then was. This was a new concept. Our recommendations included giving Ministers and the Department a little more independent advice from the Office of Rail and Road—the roads regulator. Had that been the case, there might have been checks and balances in the system, so the advice that he received might have been better for him. He rightly makes the point that if the build-out had been followed as he approved, we might not be where we are.

The fourth point was the granting of powers to the Office of Rail and Road to evaluate the Government’s smart motorways project plan. Starting this year, the regulator will report on progress annually, and carry out an evaluation of stopped vehicle detection technology and other safety measures.

The fifth point, which comes with a consultation requirement, is to introduce an emergency corridor manoeuvre into the highway code to help emergency services and traffic patrol officers to access incidents.

Sixthly, the Government will investigate the granting of new road safety powers to the roads regulator before changes to design or operational standards are implemented on our motorways and key roads. Again, Ministers would then have that independent four-eyes approach when their advice comes through.

Finally—this is important—we need to revisit the entire business case and rationale for smart motorway conversion. It is interesting that the expectation was that for every £1 spent on smart motorways, £3 would be delivered back, because we would be creating more capacity. There have not actually been that many studies of whether that has been achieved, because a longer assessment period is needed, which is now consistent with the safety assessment. However, one project on the M25 was delivering almost £3 back, although it is fair to say that the experts’ view is that it dissipates after a year, as more people use the motorway network.

The headline is a pause on new smart motorways, but the aspect that I am really determined to ensure that the Committee follows is all the retrofitting work that is needed to make the existing smart motorway network safer. That means vital work has to start on reducing the width between emergency refuge sites. We have seen that if a car is travelling at 60 mph and the distance interval is 2.5 km, it takes 75 seconds for that car to get to the emergency refuge areas. Some 40% of all breakdowns occur in a live lane, and that has to be impacted by the fact that the emergency refuge area is too far for the cars to get to, so it is essential that this is delivered.

I will touch on the stopped vehicle detection technology, which the Government are committed to ensuring is rolled out on the existing network by 2022. The Government are right to say that it was originally planned for 2023, so it will happen a year earlier. The Committee’s frustration is that we were given assurances by Highways England, the predecessor to National Highways, in 2016 that “going forward” the stopped vehicle detection technology would be put in place in the delivery of all new smart motorways. That has not occurred. When we heard from National Highways, as it now is, in our current inquiry, we were told that “going forward” actually meant “after two years”, whereas, to me, going forward means “immediately”.

Of course, the challenge now—it will be a funding challenge as well as an operational challenge—is that once those motorways are open and running, it is a lot harder and more expensive to retrofit the technology in place, which we have been told will be one of the blockers. In my view, that is precisely the reason they should have been put in to start with. I know the Government are now committed to ensuring that whenever they finish the existing smart motorways—which, rightly, cannot be stopped because they are almost there—they cannot open until the technology is in place.

Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021

Debate between Huw Merriman and John Hayes

Monday 26th April 2021 General Committees

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Given the various opinions and comments that I have been listening to, I thought it was poignant and relevant to reflect on the words of Lady Hale in the Supreme Court judgment of 2018, when the Court determined the matter of abortion in Northern Ireland. She said that

“this is not a matter on which the democratic legislature enjoys a unique competence. It is a matter of fundamental human rights on which, difficult though it is, the courts are as well qualified to judge as is the legislature. In fact, in some ways, the courts may be thought better qualified, because they are able to weigh the evidence, the legal materials, and the arguments in a dispassionate manner, without the external pressures to which legislators may be subject.”

I contend that she might have had this room and this debate in mind when she made that point.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will my hon. Friend allow me to intervene?

[Huw Merriman]

How could I refuse?

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely contentious point, of course, with his usual style and elegance. He is saying that the Court took the view that it was better able to judge sensitive, controversial matters than democratically elected people are. That is, by the way, precisely the same view it took about Brexit, and it is extremely controversial and in my view reprehensible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

But these regulations apply to Northern Ireland, and what I said was that the people in the Committee who are elected in Northern Ireland by the people of Northern Ireland have spoken with absolute clarity about the views there—expressed not only in the Assembly and by both communities in Northern Ireland, by the way, but in every poll and test of opinion that has been taken in Northern Ireland, including among women. I think we have to pay some heed, rather as I pay heed to the hon. Lady’s experience from her own part of the country, to those who speak for and represent Northern Ireland.

It is unsurprising—

[Huw Merriman]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will. I am going to give my hon. Friend a short lecture on law in a minute, because he is confused about it, as he was the last time we met in this Committee. Before I give way, perhaps he will chew on this. The Act to which the Good Friday agreement gave rise, the Northern Ireland Act 1998, says, at section 26, that there are only three grounds on which Westminster can intervene in a devolved matter in Northern Ireland: giving effect to international obligations; safeguarding defence or national security; and protecting public safety or public order. Given that we now know, from the explanatory notes for the Committee, that these were not international obligations, on what grounds are we doing what this Committee is being invited to do today, and on what grounds did we in Parliament pass the law that gives rise to these regulations?

[Huw Merriman]

I do not need a lecture in law because, quite frankly, I do not think my right hon. Friend is qualified. I referenced the judgment from the Supreme Court, which is qualified to give a judgment, that made it absolutely clear that the international obligations with regard to articles 3 and 8 of the European convention on human rights were not being complied with. Ultimately, neither of us is qualified on that front, unless he is going to become a Supreme Court judge.

The point that I wanted to make was on the suggestion that the Government, in what was a free vote, managed to dupe MPs to vote 328 in favour and 65 against. My right hon. Friend knows as well as I do that, when the Government try to fix free votes, Parliament, because it knows its own mind, tends to do the opposite of what the Government say. Does he really think that MPs are completely stupid in a free vote and do not know their own mind?

[Sir John Hayes]

I would never say that all MPs are completely stupid, as you know, Mr Hosie, but if my hon. Friend does not value as highly as he ought to the 1998 Act and the devolution settlement that arose from the Good Friday agreement, perhaps he will recognise two other pieces of law that are directly pertinent to our considerations.

The first is the 2005 agreement, whereby the devolved constitutional settlement in Northern Ireland established the consent for constitutional change, described as a fundamental principle of devolution. It made clear that in terms of constitutional change it was essential that the Northern Ireland Assembly took a view, and indeed made a decision, that was consistent with anything that this Parliament did. That is the underlying principle of consent in the devolved arrangement.

Moreover—I know my hon. Friend will have read his papers very closely before coming to the Committee—the Delegated Legislation Committee that looked at the matters before us made it very clear that what we are being asked to do today is entirely exceptional in terms of the devolution settlement for Northern Ireland or anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Unprecedented was the word that the Committee that studied the regulations before they came to us used to describe them.

It is unacceptable to argue that because we took a decision when there was no Assembly, now that the Assembly has been re-established, we should ride roughshod over the view that it took and that it takes about the issue. It is inexcusable that the explanatory memorandum should suggest that the new regulations, which are so much wider than the 2020 regulations, should depend on the consultation process for the 2020 regulations, which in any event was sharply criticised as being far too short and deeply controversial.

Having had a deeply controversial and inadequate consultation process for the first regulations, we have now introduced regulations that are more wide ranging and that could, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge suggested, lead to—

Abortion (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Debate between Huw Merriman and John Hayes

Monday 8th June 2020 General Committees

[Sir John Hayes]

This is a contentious issue. Abortion debates always arouse, stimulate, catalyse strong opinions. But this, in essence, is not about abortion. These regulations and this debate are about devolution. They are about the willingness of this House to respect the settlement that it made with the people of Northern Ireland. It is my contention that these regulations—these proposals—are unconstitutional, unwanted and unwise. The risk that we run by voting for them is of opening a Pandora’s box in respect of our constitutional settlement with Ulster. If we take this out of the box, why not something else? What is to be next? All at a time when that settlement is fragile, this tests it to a point where I would not be sure that it will not break.

As a Unionist, I have protecting the strength of the United Kingdom at the heart of my political credo, and I know the same is true for colleagues across this Committee and, indeed, the whole House. With that in mind, I urge members of the Committee and the House to reflect on the importance of devolution in the context of Northern Ireland. The UK Government have an ethical duty to honour their promise to the people of Ulster, as well as a constitutional duty to preserve our Union.

It was that sentiment that I imagine the hon. Member for Walthamstow had in mind when she initiated the measures to which these regulations give flight. She said:

“I understand that, if it was not for the fact that we do not have an Assembly, this would absolutely not be the right way forward, but we do not have an Assembly and we will not have one any time soon.”—[Official Report, 9 July 2019; Vol. 663, c. 183.]

Of course, the truth is that we do now have an Assembly, and that Assembly has the understandable expectation that it should decide on matters on which we ask it to do so. The extraordinary behaviour of the Government—I say that with all respect to the Minister, who, as I said at the outset, has behaved with great courtesy and decency in the discussions that we have had with them on this subject—given that there has been an election since the original decision was taken to impose their views and these regulations on Northern Ireland, flies in the face of the devolution settlement.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend consider the right that I have to effect legislation as an hon. Member? I did so last year, and I expect that legislation to come into force. Will he also consider the point that treaty obligations are a requirement for this institution to take into account and not for the Assembly in Northern Ireland?

[Sir John Hayes]

To be clear, when that decision was taken, Stormont was not sitting and there was no prospect of its doing so. We were not to know then—I am sure that my hon. Friend voted in good faith—that Stormont would reassemble and thereby be able to come to a view about these matters. This is a devolved matter, after all. Were this a matter that would normally be decided by this Parliament, I would not be able to make the point that we are imposing our view in an area of policy that we chose to devolve to the Assembly.

It would be no different if we were doing this in Scotland or Wales. It not only risks the settlement in Northern Ireland, but undermines the very principle of devolution. I was here when we first debated that, and I think I voted against it when the Labour Government introduced it, as most of my party did. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend would have done so too, had he been here. However, the settlement that we came to went through, and that is where we are.

[Huw Merriman]

My right hon. Friend is very generous in giving way. The point that I would make, though, is that treaty obligations, which are what the Supreme Court said Parliament was out of step with, are a duty and requirement of this place, and not a devolved matter.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am not sure that that is the view that the Northern Ireland Attorney General took. I refer my hon. Friend to his advice, of which I have a copy if he wants to read it in detail; I cited it earlier. I am also not sure, although he would have to ask this question of course, that it would necessarily be the view that our Attorney General would take. However, that is not for me to judge or gauge, and since I could not encourage the Minister to give any greater clarity about the Attorney General’s advice, perhaps I will leave it there.