M6 Toll Road

Julian Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered usage of the M6 toll road.

It is a great pleasure to serve once again under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz.

On 4 February, a day that will live in infamy for west midlands motorists, the M6 motorway was paralysed for more than 24 hours. Drivers looked for alternative routes, which meant significant knock-on effects on nearby roads such as the M42. The only road that was not heavily congested was the M6 toll.

Our country’s only toll motorway was originally designed as the Birmingham relief road, but it brings no relief, so it does not serve the function for which it was originally intended. High prices have driven ordinary motorists from the road, creating a rich person’s motorway, which is underutilised even in normal, everyday conditions.

During times of crisis, when we need a relief road the most, the contingency plans in place might have been deliberately designed to never be used. To open the toll to general traffic costs £300,000, an astonishing sum that represents, at best, a generous estimate of the cost of a day’s toll take—although the toll waiver might not even be needed for a full day, but just for a few short hours. Worse, the final decision to implement the plan, dubbed Operation Freeway, rests with civil servants, who are not accountable to local residents and cannot be fairly expected to make snap decisions about such huge sums of taxpayers’ money.

If the M6 toll is to serve the best interests of the west midlands and our economy, as it was built to do, we must see fundamental reform of how it operates, especially during gridlock and crises. There are several options to consider. We could move towards a system in which the toll road is free to use during periods of gridlock, with an annual fee paid to the operator to secure that service and access, rather than having a one-off, never-generated fee. Midland Expressway Limited needs its compensation, but at the moment it is in the worst of all worlds: it never gets the money anyway, because it is never triggered. Alternatively, an annual fee could purchase an allotment of days of access—five days during the year, for example. Only last night, the M6 northbound, at junction 6, I think, was again entirely gridlocked due to a spillage of diesel. In such cases, such an option could be triggered for a few short hours to bring genuine relief to the people of Birmingham.

Either way, we must vest the final authority to implement such measures in people who are properly accountable to local residents. The new West Midlands combined authority, under the excellent leadership of Councillor Bob Sleigh from Solihull, is the ideal institution to make such a decision. The WMCA’s leadership would be able to take a broader view of the best interests of residents and of the region than a Highways Agency official can do. For example, February’s gridlock is estimated to have cost the west midlands economy an eye-watering £40 million in such things as lost days, products not reaching their intended destinations and people not being able to turn up to work.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate. My constituency is very close to the M6 toll and, indeed, to the M6. Does he agree that any cost is not only financial? When the M6 is blocked, the ensuing gridlock impacts on local communities, on places such as Brownhills, which has the A5 running through it. They can be adversely affected by the extra traffic, so we need to look at ways in which to mitigate that.

[Julian Knight]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, as a strong advocate for her community. As I said at the start of my speech, there is the damage to arterial routes and the heavy congestion in surrounding areas, but emergency services and their access to those areas are also affected. The West Midlands police and crime commissioner is deeply concerned about what happened on 4 February, and has happened on other days. The PCC would like to see action and a fairer means by which we can gain access to the M6 toll when necessary.

It is unfair, however, to expect specialist public servants to take such considerations into account, especially at short notice. That is precisely why they are not the right people to be making those decisions.

We should also consider lowering the day-to-day cost of the M6 toll. When it opened in 2003, the standard fare for cars was only £2, compared with £5.50 today. The charge for vans has also more than doubled, from £5 to £11. The result is a very quiet road, which is an absolute pleasure to drive on for the minority prepared to pay for the privilege, but it does not serve the wider community as it should. In effect, motorists are presented with a game of chicken as they approach the turning for the M6 toll: do they take the risk? Do they go through Birmingham and all those junctions, or do they pay the money to take the M6 toll? I genuinely believe that if we lower the cost, more motorists will make the decision to take the M6 toll, and that alone will help congestion.

A report on the M6 toll was done for Alistair Darling, then the Secretary of State for Transport, soon after the road was opened. It concluded that the road was bringing relief and helping to decrease traffic in the M6 area. According to later reports, however, since the escalation in toll prices, relief has not taken place; a lot of the good work that was done has now been undone by the very excessive charges.

International comparisons are certainly not flattering. Depending on the time of day, the M6 toll charges a car driver between 14p and 20p per mile, compared with averages of 9.6p per mile in France, 8p in Italy and Spain, and only 6p in the world’s largest economy, the United States. It is no coincidence that those countries have a broad network of toll roads, whereas Britain has never built a second. If the operator is interested in the long-term future of road charging in this country, it is in its interests to work with us to make the M6 toll more accessible and attractive to motorists. That could even have an immediate benefit—an increase in traffic—which would be good news for Roadchef’s Norton Canes service station, which has always seemed quiet on the few occasions when I have stopped there.

Renewing support for the project might also allow us, once again, to take an optimistic view of the future of the M6 toll—for example, it could be extended to connect with the M54, as originally intended. Opening up the toll to more traffic will also have considerable benefits for motorists and the wider west midlands region: journey times will be cut; emissions will be reduced as congestion on the free roads is eased by the better distribution of traffic across the system; and better road access will open up the local economy and better connect west midlands businesses to suppliers and customers around the UK. If a day’s gridlock costs the local economy £40 million, the benefits of year-round smooth operation must be considerable indeed.

The system is in clear need of reform, which offers the Government a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the strength and benefits of the devolution agenda. The new combined authority provides the ideal means to put that vital piece of regional infrastructure under democratic, accountable local control, which would not only lead to better management of the road, but be a concrete demonstration to residents of the benefits of the new arrangements and of our decentralisation agenda. Too many voters see the WMCA as just another layer of bureaucracy; they do not yet appreciate the important role it can play in promoting regional growth. If they see action on the M6 toll to ease congestion in the area, they would see a real benefit of the WMCA.

Other measures should also be considered. I have proposed elsewhere that the WMCA be given control of air passenger duty. Birmingham airport is an important employer in my constituency, and we must be allowed to maintain a level playing field for it and its counterparts in Scotland, where the First Minister has announced plans to scrap APD entirely. Control of the toll would be a positive first step. The Government have placed the northern powerhouse at the centre of their agenda, focusing on delivering greater autonomy and improved infrastructure to our cities and regions. There is now an excellent opportunity to put those principles into action in the west midlands engine. Empowering local leaders to fix the problems created by bureaucratic control and unlock the potential of our existing road network will benefit local residents and businesses, stimulate the regional economy, and make a powerful case for devolution.

I do not suggest that what I have outlined is a silver bullet and will somehow solve all congestion. I know that a lot of the traffic that goes on to the M6 gets off between junctions 6 and 8, an area not covered by the toll. However, if people are sitting in gridlock and can see a sign that says “M6 toll clear” but cannot get to it, that is a failing. I believe that the rich person’s motorway is a sign of failings in the transport system in the west midlands, and that by bringing some relief to the situation we can help the devolution agenda, save money for the economy, and promote growth and jobs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz—for the first time, I think. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) on securing the debate.

The motion relates to the usage of the M6 toll road, so I shall begin by reflecting on how it is used. The toll road is open to all traffic, and is priced according to vehicle type. Average traffic levels have recently been rising, and have reached about 50,000 vehicles a day, which is catching up with the volume experienced before the recession.

[Julian Knight]

The current figures I have are about 48,000 to 50,000; the Minister is correct. However, that is still below the 72,000 a day that was originally envisaged when the toll road was built.