Highways (Financing) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Jim Dickson and Greg Smith

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Lewell. Let us see if we can rise to the Minister’s challenge of maintaining this morning’s quality of debate.

Amendment 49, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, essentially requires the ORR to review each licence at least every five years and to publish that review. The review would include compliance, user satisfaction, value for money, financial performance and resilience, toll returns and—continuing a theme of some of the amendments we discussed this morning and that flows through the entire Bill—the effects on surrounding roads off the trunk road network and the strategic road network that are the feeders to the new infrastructure: the lower Thames crossing and potentially others that the Bill enables.

I put it to the Committee and particularly to the Minister: why should a long-term licence not be subject to a mandatory review period published at least every five years, although I am open to other suggestions on the period? This is something that will impact motorists from across the whole country, particularly in the case of the lower Thames crossing. The hon. Member for Dartford has already expressed concerns about the impact on local roads. If a licence is granted for much longer than that—and I cannot see how it would not be, in order to bring realistic commercial payback under the tolling arrangements—what if it is a complete disaster? What if things do not pan out as everyone expects them to?

We do not want things to go wrong, but let us face it: sometimes they do. Often they do not go wrong due to any eventuality that has been foreseen. We would not have done it in the first place if there was a plan that saw things going wrong. But when things do go wrong, we need clear answers from those accountable to those paying the tolls on these roads, and indeed to the Government who will have set up the scheme in the first place. That goes in many respects to the conditions that the Minister spoke to in clause 6 around timely notice.

I gently say to the Minister: yes, it is important for an operator to get timely notice of any change, whether that is termination of a licence as it comes up to its expiration or an extension, but what is missing in clause 6 is anything that addresses the point about things going wrong. What if the Government need to step in and salvage a pretty horrendous situation that we might conceive of in future?

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making a good case; clearly, things need to run well in the interests of road users, the infrastructure provider and local residents. However, clause 11 already provides for the modification of the licence after the grant, which surely includes most of the things he is calling for—that is, an ability to issue a notice and to say that the licence needs to be modified for some reason to do with the operation of the infrastructure.

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is right that there are measures in clause 11 that would address that issue, but we are currently discussing clauses 5 and 6, and the Minister’s comments reflected the fact that clause 6 only refers to extensions of a licence as opposed to reviews of a licence.

I cannot imagine that any of us, whatever walk of political life we find ourselves in at any one moment, would not want to have a statutory review period, so that all of us can question whether a contract is working as well as we want it to. Frankly, there are many projects I can think of that I wish we had had review periods for in the past, because we might have been able to pick up things that were going the wrong way.

If the Minister and the Government do not wish to have a five-year review period, I would welcome suggestions about what sort of review period would be acceptable to them. If they do not want a review period at all, there needs to be a pretty good case for that.

Highways (Financing) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Jim Dickson and Greg Smith

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I hear and understand the points that the Minister has made, but the key word he used in his response was “risk”. Although I accept that such risk can exist, I cannot and do not accept that it cannot be mitigated or worked through. The most powerful question all of us have to ask, particularly when Members find themselves in a ministerial position and wanting to make progress on manifesto commitments or on other things the country needs—and that the Government perceive the country needs—is not one about procedure. We must ask: how? How do we make this happen without a hybrid process? How do we make this happen in the fastest possible way?

From the research I have done, though the risk exists that some would argue that a hybrid process would be the only way forward, I can see that there are pathways to doing it as more straightforward legislation, with a usual Second Reading, Bill Committee, Report and Third Reading before we get to the other place. Therefore, we will press this amendment to a vote. We want to show our commitment to building the lower Thames crossing but not write a blank cheque for other schemes.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith]

I certainly will. I am always happy to give way and have a discussion on these matters—that is fundamentally what we are here to do in line-by-line scrutiny.

[Jim Dickson]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. The Minister has made it clear that it is incredibly important that the mechanism we are setting up today not only works to get the lower Thames crossing constructed but integrates the work at the Dartford crossing, so that tolling is equalised and traffic is hopefully distributed properly across both crossings. The lower Thames crossing is there to take the pressure off the Dartford crossing, which is a single point of failure that leads to costs not only for the economy but for my residents in delays, air quality and all sorts of adverse life consequences. Does the hon. Member not understand that, if we limit the Bill to the lower Thames crossing, there is a possibility that we will not be able to undertake the integration between the two entities, and that the point of what we are doing in this Bill Committee will therefore be lost?

[Greg Smith]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s point. In theory, it is in exchanges like this that we—the four of us from His Majesty’s loyal Opposition and the crowds from the Government side, as fits our current Parliament—can work to improve the Bill, if there is a willingness to do so. I understand his point, and I would be very open to something that connects things by limiting the scope to the lower Thames crossing and the existing Dartford crossing, which affects his constituents so considerably. We have heard from the hon. Gentleman in other debates on that point.

The wider point still stands. The Bill is writing an open-ended, unpredictable future under this model, beyond the projects that all of us can get behind and support and that our constituents will understand. No matter where they are in the country, many people wish to get down to Kent, perhaps to Dover to get on a ferry and go to France, and they will find themselves behind the wheel—worse still, with the kids in the back screaming—because of the delays getting to the Dartford crossing. Therefore, everyone can get behind the need to get this project done, but let us restrict it to this project, albeit with—I state this for the record very clearly—integration with the existing infrastructure for the Dartford crossing. The very worst thing we could create with any new project, of which the lower Thames crossing is a good example, is an unintended impact on existing road networks, crossings, tunnels and so on.

The integration has to be there, and I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s point on that. However, the core principle of this amendment—it will be no surprise that we fully expect to lose the vote given the current parliamentary maths—is to put down a marker of our support for the lower Thames crossing but also our scepticism about the way this model could be applied to other unnamed schemes in the future.

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[Greg Smith]

In this group I wish to speak to amendments 47, 48 and 68, tabled in my name. I will also speak to amendment 37, tabled by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage.

His Majesty’s official Opposition have considerable sympathy with amendment 37. The unintended consequences that we sometimes see from infrastructure projects must not be brushed to one side; they must be taken seriously. I was in a small hamlet in my constituency at the weekend. The unintended consequence of something as simple as a road diversion in Oxfordshire—I have to say it, as the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage, is an Oxfordshire MP—forced a considerable volume of traffic through that small hamlet, causing considerable distress in narrow rural lanes. The same could happen from any major infrastructure scheme.

We have heard in the oral evidence sessions and on Second Reading about the concerns that traffic displacement immediately surrounding the lower Thames crossing can be a serious problem for communities and for people trying to get their kids to school, get to work and go about their daily lives. Those local roads are the very veins that flow the traffic to the newer infrastructure projects as they are built. They are the roads off which people predominantly live—nobody lives on a motorway, on a bridge or in a tunnel. Therefore, without due regard for how we ensure vehicle movement through those roads from people’s houses, businesses, schools, hospitals and doctors’ surgeries to those new major infrastructure projects, such as the lower Thames crossing, nothing will work. This is almost the very definition of needing joined-up Government, joined-up planning and joined-up approaches to anything that we build in this country, including the lower Thames crossing and the other potential future unnamed projects that the Bill would allow for. The official Opposition have considerable sympathy with amendment 37. If the Liberal Democrats push it to a Division, the Conservatives will vote for it.

Moving on to the other amendments in group 2, amendment 47 would remove the Office of Rail and Road’s duty to have regard to contributing to sustainable development when carrying out its duties under the Bill. The amendment is not an attack on the environment or anything like that; it is about getting the balance right between getting infrastructure built and doing it at the lowest possible cost. We saw in the oral evidence sessions, and I have certainly seen in my research, that one of the things wrapped up in sustainability is—through separate order but fundamentally coming back to the wording in clause 1—the banning of the use of diesel plant in construction. White diesel runs between 20p and 25p a litre cheaper than hydrotreated vegetable oil, which is the current primary alternative that can be used instead of diesel plant—although, it has to be said, it is not a drop-in fuel; it requires mechanical changes to fuel filters and other parts of the vehicle to be operational. Banning the use of diesel plant will just drive up the cost, which ultimately be borne by payers of tolls.

[Jim Dickson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Greg Smith]

I will in one second; I will finish my point. The hon. Gentleman knows I will always give way where I can. The cost will ultimately be borne by toll payers on the lower Thames crossing and in any other scheme that could be built under the Bill. That is a position that I do not think any of us really want to see. We know from other debates that there seems to be either an unwillingness or an inability to name what the toll on the lower Thames crossing will cost, but we can be sure that the clauses on sustainable development and the duty for sustainable development that the Opposition are seeking to remove, such as clause 1, can only possibly drive the cost up.

[Jim Dickson]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and it is absolutely in the interests of my constituents for tolls to be as low as possible, and therefore for cost to be controlled through the project. However, is he mindful of the evidence that the National Highways executive director for the project, Mr Palmer, gave when the Committee spoke to him on Thursday? He said that the cost of HVO and electric plant together was comparable with that of continuing with diesel, and that in any event, that element of the project cost is extremely marginal to the overall cost of delivering the lower Thames crossing. Attempts to prevent measures that will make the project sustainable and

“the greenest road ever built”,

which my constituents care about, are therefore pretty futile, given the overall size of the project.

[Greg Smith]

The hon. Gentleman may not be surprised to hear that we will not find consensus on that point. I accept that Mr Palmer gave us his view of the world, which was that there was no differential in price. However, any simple look at the market prices of white diesel and HVO shows that the differential very much exists. That is not even a point of debate; it is in the market price. Also, later in the Committee’s oral evidence session, we heard evidence that the building of the road pales into slight insignificance compared with everything that will use the road. Operational vehicles powered by either petroleum or diesel will still be the vast majority of vehicles using the lower Thames crossing, which clearly has not been taken into account.

Highways (Financing) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Jim Dickson and Greg Smith

Committee stage
Thursday 29th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful.

[Jim Dickson]

Q I am a very strong supporter of the Bill, because it enables major projects such as the lower Thames crossing to be funded, but the tolling issue is important. We cannot talk about individual toll levels, but we can talk about mechanisms by which reasonable—hopefully affordable—tolls will be set for both industry and individual motorists. Could the Minister enlarge a bit on how the ORR, with the legislation designed and passed by Parliament, will ensure that tolls fit the definition of “affordable” as far as possible?

Justin Madders: I understand why you ask that question. The Bill sets the framework for the RAB model, and that will establish the independent regulator. Its remit is clear, and it is there in the first few clauses of the Bill: to take account of the interests of road users. There will be fair pricing, transparency and long-term sustainability as a result of that. You will also be aware that there will be a stakeholder group in which users will have the opportunity to feed in. We have a pretty robust set of reassurances that I hope will satisfy you and your constituents.