Road Investment Strategy

John Stevenson Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I hope that over the next period of the road investment strategy, we will manage to resurface some 80% of the strategic highway. I know that my right hon. Friend has campaigned for resurfacing in part of her constituency, as I admit I have done for part of my constituency, so I will look particularly at the schemes to which she refers.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

I am delighted with the announcement of a feasibility study for the dualling of the A69, which is long overdue, and I am pleased that my right hon. Friend had the opportunity to see some of the issues there. Does he agree that connectivity between the east and the west of this country is often poor, and that dualling such roads as the A69 will help enormously, as well as boosting the economies of Cumbria and the north-east?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I visited his constituency and he showed me at first hand some of the pinch points around it. I hope we can work with him on dualling and alleviating pinch points in his constituency so that he can get the opportunities and the traffic easing that he rightly asks for.